The third webinar in the Train The Trainer (T3) program of the Association of State Democratic Chairs (ASDC) dives deep into using email as a medium, as a point of human contact and as a technological communications strategy. We use the term “email” in so many ways these days, it can be confusing to some people what it means in the heat of in-depth training. But the trainer, Brittany Switzer of the Texas State Democratic Party, is an excellent resource and presents the kind of email strategy that furthers the party’s message instead of just spams people to death.
Technology is a double-edged sword: it cuts through barriers among people and yet, handled clumsily, can cause people to put up defenses against it. There is a delicate, and very human, line between spamming someone and communicating with them when you are using email. In this webinar, Brittany does a very good job of showing how to find that line: to refine and plan your “asks” of the person with whom you are communicating so they give you feedback before you ask again. Starting with clicking on a petition, you can then invite them to a coffee; they attend the coffee, you ask them to attend a rally; they attend the rally you ask them to volunteer. And so on.
In all these technological stratagems, there is no avoiding the fact that you have to sit down and really think about what you want to say, and to say it in ways that don’t tax the reader too much or confuse them. Writing is hard work, always. Having powerful emailing technology does not change that fact. You still need to think through every word and image and button and link in the document and mean it, or leave it out.
T3-Session Three: Email Organizing
Aired: April 24, 2017
DNC Department: Digital
Outline:
Why Is Digital Important?
- A digital program is incremental
- Be consistent
- Set goals
- Make posts easy to read & good looking
- Remember people want to see & hear from you
- The cost is low
Making The Ask & Setting Goals
- With email, we can do:
- Fundraising
- Messaging
- Organizing
- “The Ask” Is asking people to do something
- Each email asks for an action, which then leads to the next “ask”, etc.
- Each time the reader responds, they increase their level of engagement in your program
- Therefore, carefully set goals for each “ask” and the whole series of “asks” leading to more engagement
- Create a plan for growth & content
- RSVP to an event
- Raising specific goals of money or time
- Fill a specific number of volunteer shifts
- Get a specific number of people to share a Facebook post
- etc.
What To Use
- Emailing Tools
- More power = higher costs
- NGP VAN
- Blue State Digital
- Salsa
- Free is easy to start
- The Action Network
- Mail Chimp
- Gmail
- Fundraising Tools
- Use fundraising to invest in higher-power digital tools
- NGP VAN
- The Action Network
- ActBlue
- DonateWay
- Blue State Digital
- Higher-power tools allow you to zero in on successful strategies faster
- Sign-Up Processing (where you send people to sign up with your links)
- More power = higher costs
- NGP VAN
- Blue State Digital
- Salsa
- Free is easy to start
- The Action Network
- Mail Chimp
- Google Forms
What To Write About
- Plan before you write
- Make a calendar of posts, starting on Election Day and working backwards
- Include all messaging & field strategies with the digital plan
- Think about why you are writing them in an email
- ELECTION
- Election Day
- Primary Election
- Primary Runoff Election
- Candidate filing Filing
- MOBILIZATION
- Volunteer events
- Blockwalking kick off
- Voter registrationdeadline
- First day of early vote
- Last day of early vote
- Vote by mail (VBM)
- Last day to request VBM
- Last day to turn in VBM
- MESSAGE
- Beliefs, hopes, &values
- Expected endorsements
- Campaign launch
- Poll results
- First TV ad buy
- TV/radio interview
- Letter to editorpublished
- Debates
- Opposition
- FUNDRAISING
- End of Month Deadline
- FEC/TEC Deadline
- Donor match
- House Party
- OTHER OPPORTUNITIES
- Personal posts
- Family birthdays
- First day of school
- Major national holidays
- Religious holidays
- Anniversaries of majornational or local events
- Gatherings of majorconstituencies in your district
- Major festivals,parades, fairs, local events, etc.
- Think about what you are asking the recipient to do in each email
- For each email, what are your goals?
Constructing An Email
- Decide on a wrapper
- Logo
- Disclaimer
- Unsubscribe link
- Contact Us link
- Build the content of the email within the wrapper
- Why are we sending this email?
- Who is it going to? Decide how targeted the audience should be
- Let folks know why you are emailing
- Make it clear what you want people to do
- Tell them why they should take action
- Always include a hard URL they can see
- Always sign it with someone with a title and an organization
Tips For Growing A List
- Earn your list
- Sign-in sheets at events
- Block walking contacts
- Ask local activists, precinct chairs & their friends and family
- Keep your list engaged with good content
- Make sure new folks are added within 24 to 48 hours
- Keep a clean list
- Remove duplicates
- Cull bounce-backs
- Remove addresses what haven’t opened a message in a year
- Don’t spam — if you have to think about whether to send it, you probably shouldn’t
- Beware of list swaps and lists from consultants
- Build your list yourself for best results
- Don’t send out press releases by email
- Link all of you online platforms together
- Include social media links in emails
- Include links to web pages for more details and messages
- Let people add themselves to your email list
- Have buttons for donating, volunteering, registering to vote or run or serve
- Social media links
- Point Facebook action button to your website
- Link to a sign-up form on twitter
- Add your donors to your list
Resources:
Twitter: #ASDCT3
Email: asdc@dnc.org
For information on how to register for these webinars, see my introductory diary in this series.
The depth of content in this session is truly incredible. A lot of ground is covered, and a lot of wisdom is imparted during the Q & A at the end. You want a response rate of 10% to 25% for a successful “ask”. Under 2% means going back to the drawing board. Make sure your side of the equation responds quickly to any ask which require follow-up. Be sure to follow-up on every response to an ask.
Again, the recipients are people, and rightfully expect to be treated with respect for them and their time. The higher-cost tools allow you more control over the whole email plan by letting you know if people are opening your messages, how many are going to spam folders and how many resulted in a response, and out of that, how close did you got to your goals with that email in the overall campaign you are conducting.
I found it refreshing that most of the examples were not just asking for money, but were focused on organizing people by getting them together and preparing themselves for the topics of conversation when they get together. Email is only one part of a whole digital program, but it is an invaluable one for the modern political party.
Most of all, be honest and authentic in every medium of communication, especially digital ones. Let them know who you are and why you are taking some of their time. Let them unsubscribe or change the frequency of emails from you. Don’t over-send emails to the same people. Show the recipient respect and they will feel more comfortable taking the actions you hope they will — to engage with you in a cause greater than any one of us.
From the flow of the conversation, it sounds like a lot of netroots groups start with Mail Chimp or Google Mail and some Google Forms (the free stuff) and do some fundraising to move to the more sophisticated tools, which makes a lot of sense. The work of laying out the messaging strategies and actually writing the content is the same no matter the tools used, but having to upload lists and download results and coordinate all that yourself with your fundraising database does eat up time. In Iowa, we have licenses to VAN, but they are tightly controlled at the county level and out in the precincts we don’t get access at all, so it is pretty useless to us. They won’t export even to a spreadsheet without permission from the state-level team. All we can get are PDFs, and only for our precinct and only for Democratic voters (door-knocking lists), so we have a lot of constraints unless we sign up with a candidate and use their access to VAN.
So we need to put pressure on the Democratic Party organs up and down the line to open up at least the basic voter information so more minds are analyzing and using voter information for more issue-oriented and party-building activities. But at least the tools are getting closer, and, in the end, building our own list in conjunction with Facebook organizing may be of more value in the end. We are the future of the party, and if we have to kick their ass around a bit to get them there, then so be it.
Still lots to absorb from this one. The next one is on social media, which will build upon the principles in this webinar. In any case, we now have enough information about where we are going to lay out our messaging plan for the metacycle:
- 2017 local and non-partisan or lightly-partisan races
- 2018 take back the state legislatures and the national Congress
- 2019 local and non-partisan races and beginning of caucuses and primaries
- 2020 take back the national destiny from the fascists
It really isn’t a lot of time, so let’s get going!
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