Innovative digital campaigning actions - February 2023
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We looked at ways to make your digital campaigning actions more appealing, engaging, relevant and impactful, illustrated with example actions from Shelter, Four Paws, Sands, World Animal Protection and more, all using the digital campaigning and fundraising platform Impact Stack. For more info visit https://www.impact-stack.org/
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Innovative digital campaigning actions - February 2023
- 2. Supporters / public Ask Target Does your action consider and balance everyoneโs needs?
- 3. 50+ clients Progressive non-profits, parties and unions across Europe 100+ agency projects / year
- 5. Offer extra information within the page
- 8. Collect comments on a petition
- 10. Add a comment to an email to target action
- 13. Offer choice โ for fun
- 18. Offer choice โ to introduce variety
- 21. Offer choice โ to make your action more targeted
- 25. Tailor the action to the target
- 34. Make good use of the information you collect
- 42. Take part in a consultation
- 48. YOUR TURN
- 49. QUESTIONS?
Editor's Notes
- Title โInnovative campaigning actionsโ - objective to look at some ways of offering digital campaigning actions beyond the basic level actions of asking supporters to sign a petition, or send a form email to their MP. Crucially though, Iโm not here to suggest thereโs anything wrong with those! Gathering individual signatures of support and asking people to contact power-holders directly are not going away as campaign tactics. Theyโre still around because they work. An โinnovativeโ action doesnโt mean you have to be using the latest shiny piece of technology, or to have spent loads of money developing a new digital tool or piece of content. (Anyone else here old enough to remember puzzling over whether we could get campaign impact by organising a demo in second life, please post in the chat if anything came of it!) Innovation can be as simple as executing a tactic in a creative and thoughtful way. Something that makes it stand out with your target and/or supporters. Because what actually makes a digital tactic โworkโ, is usually more mundane than โis it innovativeโ. Itโs campaigning basics; power analysis, theory of change, narrative. Every campaign action has to take into account what will influence a target, or deliver change, and what will motivate people to act and/or make it easy for them to do so. Chasing the โnew and shinyโ without that clear strategy can be risky, expensive and ineffective. So what Iโll primarily be highlighting today are ways to change up your digital campaigning tactics to make them more effective, (though if anyone has a story of how theyโve used TikTok or ChatGPT to deliver campaign impact, thereโll be a chance to share that too).
- But what do we mean by effective? Normally when we offer supporters digital actions weโre trying to achieve two things - 1/ Move forward our campaigns by influencing a power-holding target, either directly, by providing them with information, evidence, policy solutions, or indirectly, by demonstrating support for your issue or solution, either from the public, or from a stakeholder group 2/ And do that by engaging people, and persuading them to take some kind of online action. And youโre balancing these with your organisationsโ needs - to give your supporters something to do, keep them engaged, build your list etc. Sometimes these objectives align, often theyโre in tension. For every action youโll need to understand what your target and supporter audiences need, how youโre going to meet those needs, and often, which youโll need to prioritise.
- All of the example actions Iโll show today were built using our campaigning and fundraising platform Impact Stack, but the ideas are very transferable.
- Thereโll be a chance for follow up questions about the individual actions at the end; there are campaigners here from most of the organisations weโre featuring. You can post your questions in the chat as we go along, or if you prefer to keep Chat closed so you can focus, feel free to note your questions down and weโll pause for you to post them at the end. Weโll circulate the slides, recording and Chat log after todayโs session, and weโll include links to all the actions which are still live, so you can take a closer look. Weโll start with some ideas about how to make simple actions more engaging and accessible.
- A campaign action is always a balancing act between telling your supporters EVERYTHING and overloading them, and oversimplifying things. This might annoy your supporters by patronising them, but itโs also likely to lead your target to take your action less seriously, and even undermine your organisationโs credibility, if they suspect that most people signing a petition donโt really understand what theyโre being asked to do. You also donโt want to link someone away from your carefully crafted action page to get lost in your website, or a lengthy PDF download. Hidden and pop up text can help you provide extra info in context. Here are a couple of examples.
- Loom recording
- This petition from Shelter asks people to call on the government to take the action itโs already promised on rentersโ rights. This accordion allows them to offer more detail on what the legislation would mean, without weighing down the page. VIDEO
- A campaign target needs to know that the people taking your action understand and are engaged in the issue. One way to show this is to collect something more than a โyesโ from people.
- Shelter message to PM โ screenshots This action, asking the Conservative government to follow through on promised action on the housing crisis, had an interesting life as it started off being a โwish you were hereโ summer message to Boris Johnson, became โA message to theย next Prime Ministerโ and then, โA message to Liz Trussโ during her brief stint as PM. Collecting a short message reinforced the โSend a postcardโ concept, carried through in the artwork and copy, and the messages were also displayed on the thank you page, reinforcing peopleโs sense that they were part of a movement.
- If youโre asking supporters to write directly to a target, youโll be balancing trying to make sure they say the things you want, with the need to demonstrate to the target that your supporters are engaged. You offer people the chance to edit a draft message, but most people wonโt change it, especially if your draft message is super technical, or if youโre asking them to email multiple targets. One way of making this easier is to ask people a simple, direct question and add the answer to the message to the target.
- World Animal Protection ran an action targeting holiday company TUI, asking them to stop selling tickets to captive dolphin attractions. Ads targeting holiday customers and TUI staff directed them to this email to target page, where they were asked โNow that you know that TUI profits from the suffering of dolphins, what do you want to tell them?โ An amazing 75% of people put in some form of personal message, some short, some long, which was included in the email which TUI received. https://action.worldanimalprotection.org.uk/be-voice-dolphins-say-notankstui
- In this example from Friends of the Earth, supporters are asked to share why they care about the right to protest. The suggested text in the box means that something will be added to the message even if they choose not to add anything personal. This also gives people a clear idea of what kind of statement is expected here, which might make them feel more confident.ย FoE https://action.friendsoftheearth.uk/target/urge-your-mp-protect-our-rights-its-too-late
- Another way to make an action more engaging is to offer people a simple choice - people really like it.
- So, the Shelter action we looked at earlier offered supporters a choice of four different postcard versions, linked together so that all the versions displayed a cumulative total.ย
- This Four Paws action asked supporters to contact the Vietnam tourism minister to highlight how the trade in dog and cat meat can endanger public health and, in turn, negatively affect the tourism industry. As well as different language versions, it offers a choice to send a โdog versionโ or a โcat versionโ of the postcard, with beautiful artwork, focused on positive animal-human relationships.ย ย VIDEO
- The e-action garnered over 13,700 responses from concerned citizens across the world, including the UK, USA, South Africa and Austria. Following the e-action, the postcards were 'presented' to Vietnamese government officials at an in-person stakeholder event that included medical professionals and tourism companies representing the industry's support for an end to the trade. And, because I know youโre going to ask: cat postcards beat dog postcards (the South African supporters HEAVILY favoured the cat one for some reason!
- And this action from ocean climate campaigners Our Fish offered a choice of postcard artwork to send to EU fisheries ministers during the COP 27 climate conference, collecting over 1100 personal messages.ย https://save.our.fish/send-postcard-cop27-un-climate-conference-0
- In the examples we just looked at the message and โaskโ were basically the same, but you could use the same technique to direct people to entirely different versions of an action, with different message copy for your target, if variety would help make it more effective.ย Thatโs potentially a lot of work though, so you can also use choices within an action to introduce variety into the message.
- For example, this action from anti-poverty charity Trussell Trust allows users to pick which of a list of essentials theyโd like to highlight in a message to their MP, drawing attention to the fact that the cost of living crisis and the social security system are leaving many people struggling to afford the essentials we all need. https://action.trusselltrust.org/node/212ย
- The chosen โessentialโ was added to the message text as a token, as well as their personal message, meaning any individual MP received varied messages according to what supporters chose to highlight.ย This action had a physical postcard equivalent, distributed via food banks, using the same artwork to reinforce the idea that it was the โsameโ action.
- One size fits all often wonโt be the most effective, so you can offer choice to enable people to take the most effective action.
- In the UK, this may mean considering the devolved administrations of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In this action for Baby Loss Awareness Week, baby loss charity Sands offered four different actions, with a landing page that filtered supporters to the right version according to where they live in the UK, and asked them to contact their MP, MS, MSP or MLA accordingly.ย ย https://act.sands.org.uk/ask-your-government-fix-staffing-crisis-and-support-bereaved-parents
- Alternatively, you might have particular groups whose voices are especially valuable.ย
- For over two years World Animal Protection campaigned to stop one of the UKโs last reptile markets, held at Doncaster Racecourse. At each event thousands of captive-bred wild animals suffered, trapped in tiny plastic boxes. They knew that the venue, and the local council, who provided the licensing for the event, would be more influenced by local voices. One action targeting the Racecourse management, asked people if they lived near Doncaster, and added this information to the message. A second action used postcode to filter supporters to separate actions: people local to the racecourse were put in touch with their ward Councillor,ย using the postcode-mapped Councillors dataset provided by Impact Stack, and others were redirected to an action contacting the Doncaster Mayor. [SCREENSHOTS] It might be driven by location, expertise or experience or something else, but every issue, and every target will have certain groups who theyโll be more influenced by. Which takes us to our next idea.
- No-one likes to be asked to do something they canโt do, or harangued about doing something theyโve already done. Itโs a good idea to set your actions up so that, as far as possible, you're not encouraging supporters to contact targets for whom the action isn't relevant, and that youโre taking into account who the target is as an individual. That might mean sending a different message to a relevant Minister or to an opposition backbencher; acknowledging a particular partyโs position; or an individualโs existing activity.ย
- For example Young Minds is asking supporters in England to invite their MP to attend a parliamentary briefing on youth mental health. Thereโs a message upfront to let people know itโs just for England, with a pop up explanation. And anyone going ahead and entering a non-England postcode will be prevented from contacting their MP and offered an explanation of why [SCREENSHOTS OF ACTION AND FILTERS] https://act.youngminds.org.uk/node/94
- But there are also tailored versions of the invitation for particular groups and key individuals with relevant roles. The action also has pop up messaging tips to help supporters craft the personal message section of the invitation.
- The โrightsโ action from Friends of the Earth EWNI we looked at earlier has a filter set up to exclude Scotland, as the organisation doesnโt work there, another to explain to people whose MPs are suspended, or who donโt take up their seats in parliament, why they canโt take the action, and a tailored message for Labour MPs, asking them to press for protecting the right to protest to go into the Labour manifesto for the next election.ย ย https://action.friendsoftheearth.uk/node/2183
- Sometimes itโs easy to fall back on โemail to MPโ type actions because the data and tools are available - if theyโre not the right target right now this doesnโt help your campaign, and it certainly doesnโt help poor MPs to do the best job they can. Save MP contacts for when you really do have something for them to do, and use your power analysis to think about who can effect change for your issue. And if you work in the UK on devolved issues such as health, education or the environment, youโre probably wasting everyoneโs time by asking supporters in the devolved nations to email their MP.ย Weโve seen examples already of actions with a custom target, such as the World Animal Protection one targeting Tui, or Four Paws contacting the Vietnamese Tourism minister.ย
- As well as tailoring actions to different UK nations, as weโve seen above, Sands created an action targeting the Chief Executives of Hospital Trusts/Health Boards in England and Wales to ask them to invest in bereavement care training for their staff. We worked with them on a bespoke dataset and functionality for this. Thereโs no postcode mapping readily available for this dataset, so we worked on the basis that while people donโt know the name of their Hospital Trust or Board, they do know the name of a local hospital. People could start typing the hospital name, find the right match, and be connected with the right local target.ย Over 1000 emails were sent, reaching 92% of the Trusts and Boards which provide maternity services. About half responded to the emails, and some of the Boards have followed up directly about how Sands can help them improve their bereavement care training. [SCREENSHOTS]
- This Shelter action takes a similar technical approach with an โautocompleteโ field. It encourages supporters to send a โletter to the editorโ to a local newspaper to highlight the need for rentersโ rights, and that these policies will influence voting intentions at the next election. Supporters could start typing to see a list of possible titles that matched, and then pick the publication they wanted to contact. A prompt offered them the chance to add a personal message to the template email, and an additional โview messageโ step made sure that supporters understood that their message might be published. Over 200 letters have been sent, and at least 46 have been published so far. https://campaigns.shelter.org.uk/node/310/
- This action from Friends of the Earth targets local Councils across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to ask them to take their pension investments out of climate-harming funds (you can also take the action in Welsh). It has filters set up for Councils which have already committed to do so, so that supporters get a friendly message telling them that the news is good - they donโt need to contact their Council.ย ย https://action.friendsoftheearth.uk/node/2038 [SCREENSHOTS OF THE FILTERS AND TEH MESSAGES THE SUPPORTER WILL SEE]
- We also worked with Shelter on this action, targeting Members of the House of Lords. The introduction of a Social Housing Regulation Bill was a key opportunity for Shelter to promote its goals. Unusually, this Bill started its journey through the parliamentary system in the Lords, meaning getting in touch with Peers (members of the House of Lords) was an important early chance to influence its content. Lobbying Lords is much trickier than Members of Parliament (the Commons). While everyone has an MP elected to represent the constituency where they live, the Lords donโt represent any particular location, and thereโs no reason for a member of the public to contact one rather than another. And not all Lords take an active part in parliamentary business anyway. Shelter uploaded a custom contact dataset of active Peers, and we built new functionality which simply matched each supporter with a Peer at random, providing them with a template letter highlighting Shelterโs suggested amendments to the Bill, and linking to a detailed briefing from Shelterโs policy team. Over 4,300 emails were sent to Peers, and while Shelterโs preferred amendments werenโt voted through this time there was a lively discussion, with Shelter and Grenfell Unitedโs key points being raised. The amendments have been subsequently added to the Bill and are getting good support from MPs as the Bill makes its way through the Commons.ย Now, the takeaway from this shouldn't be โYay, letโs all spam the Lords nowโ! One of the reasons this action was so effective was that Peers arenโt accustomed to contact from the public, and if this tactic is overused, it will likely not only become ineffective, it may even be blocked. Peers arenโt obliged to deal with the public in the way that MPs are. The real reason this action was so effective was that it was strategically spot-on. It was the right target at the right time - when the Lords were about to debate this Bill - and crucially, offered real value to the target, with clear actions they were called to take and a high quality briefing, which many Peers clearly read and drew on in the debate.ย
- Closing and handing in a petition can be an important moment to gain visibility, feed back to supporters etc, so do consider how you can make the most of it.
- Our Fish handed in their petition to the European Commission in the form of this beautiful artwork, with signers names around the edge. https://our.fish/news/3400-europeans-sign-artwork-calling-on-european-commissioners-to-save-the-ocean-and-climate/
- And later in the year their supportersโ COP 27 messages were printed on one of the three postcard designs chosen by supporters and handed into Commissioner Sinkeviฤius (Environment, Oceans and Fisheries) in Brussels.ย https://www.instagram.com/p/ClVtGvotN2K/ But beyond making your hand-in to your target more compelling, collecting more and deeper information or testimony from people may be the point of the action.
- Eurordis is an international Alliance of organisations representing people with rare diseases. Their action, in 23 different languages, collected over 2000 personal 'reasons' for action on rare diseases.
- These have been published on a dedicated campaign webpage, where they can be browsed by country and theme, and were turned into a book, which was presented to the EU Commissioner, selected MEPs, health ministers around Europe and even the Pope. They also drew on the statements for localised briefings for MEPs before an important European debate, meaning the MEPs could reference case studies from their own countries. The personal statements they've collected will have a value in their campaigning far beyond the closing of the online action.ย
- As part of their campaigning for more and better social housing, Shelter asked supporters to share stories of how social housing had helped them. Nearly 200 people did, ranging from one line to long personal stories.ย Additional work engaging with those supporters allowed Shelter to turn those into 39 shareable case studies, used on social media, and in a presentation at a parliamentary event, to support a positive case for social housing as a solution to the housing crisis.ย [Action screenshot] [Social share thingy screenshot] [parliamentary event screenshot]
- World Animal Protection are making the most of the personal comments they collected in the dolphin action we looked at earlier. So as well as sending really personalised emails to their target, Tui, World Animal Protection are sharing a compilation of messages in a short social media video, pushed out on social channels this week during the TUI AGM to highlight that they should pull out of supporting captive dolphin entertainment.ย ย World Animal Protection UK on Twitter: "Hey @TUIGroup, we told your customers you are still profiting from captive dolphin entertainment. Here's what they had to say ๐ฌ: https://t.co/wgifSXm4fh" / Twitter
- Sending messages directly to a target via email might get a targetโs attention, but itโs not always going to be the right way to influence them.ย Support from Councils is really important for Shelterโs campaign for rentersโ rights: they will need to help administer the new powers that the legislation will bring in, so the Government needs to see that theyโre on board, and their buy-in is vital for the implementation to succeed once the changes become law. But Shelter knew that a mass email campaign would be very difficult for Councils to deal with, and risked alienating them. So we worked with them to build an additional action type in Impact Stack, which works in the same way as our โemail to targetโ tool in that it uses supportersโ postcodes to lookup their Councillors and then collects their messages, but instead of immediately triggering individual emails, it simply stores the supporterโs messages and data in Impact Stack for Shelter to deliver at a later date. The action gained over 6,000 signatures in the three weeks it was live, and provided local names and support for an open letter to every relevant Council in England, which Shelter could deliver. Within a few months, a third of English councils were on record as supporting the policy change, including Councils led by different political parties. Weโve now extended this functionality into a new Impact Stack feature, which weโre calling โMatch to target. It can be used with any dataset, both our UK postcode-mapped datasets, or any custom dataset you add yourself. If youโre an Impact Stack client and would like to know more, just reach out. James from Shelter shared a more detailed case study of this action at a previous event, so weโll share the video recording in the follow up email.ย
- Asking supporters to take part in public consultations can be really effective - this is after all a moment where a body (government, company or whatever) is specifically asking for input. Public consultations can often be quite offputting or technical, so your action can help make it easier for people to participate. You might be able to help them generate an email into the consultation process, or collect submissions to match the consultationโs questions. We have a whole free report on this available, which draws on case studies kindly shared by Shelter, Friends of the Earth, Young Minds, RSPCA Cymru, Woodland Trust and others, but just to highlight a couple of recent examples.ย
- This action from Our Fish cuts the consultation down to the relevant (plus the mandatory) questions, provides contextual tips for supporters, and adds a statement to the message based on their response to a yes/no question.ย https://save.our.fish/node/318/wizard/form
- And this action from Friends of the Earth really pushes the boat out, with multiple steps and conditions, with a view to generating lots of different, personalised submissions. Over 2000 people filled it in, taking an average of twenty minutes over it. Itโs a good example of prioritising unique messages over volume. When FoE ask their supporters to send a pre-written email, they might expect 15-20k people to do this. They werenโt really expecting more than a few hundred super-committed supporters to take this action, but the step by step customisation obviously made it more accessible and compelling, generating a significant number of unique consultation submissions.ย https://action.friendsoftheearth.uk/node/2050/ SCREENSHOT OF MESSAGE STEP TO SHOW TOKENS
- I wonโt go into the detail of how it was done - this one deserves a whole case study of its own, but the message template here will give you a sense of the complexity.
- Obviously thatโs a very brisk gallop through some different examples of ways to take your actions beyond the basicsย - special thanks to the organisations who kindly agreed for me to share their actions today. Iโm sure you have lots of questions for them. Even if youโre already applying lots of these ideas already, I hope theyโve offered you inspiration and insight.ย But if youโre looking for some help with really blue sky idea generation, we have something additional for you too. The Impact Stack campaign tactic generator contains a list of campaign tactics and possible โhookโ opportunities to generate novel combinations. You can use it to try and break out of a creative slump, or prompt discussion at a teamย meeting or planning ideation session. Weโd love to hear your feedback, and your suggestions of additional tactics to add.ย https://tactics.impact-stack.org
- Ok, so that was a lot, pretty quickly. Weโre grateful to all the organisations whose actions weโve shown, many of them are here. Before we move to questions, we wanted to take another chance to get input from the room.
- Weโll take a couple of minutes to collate questions, so if you have one, just pop it into the chat now. Weโll get through as many as we can, and collect the rest to see if we can get an answer later.