EchoDitto - Email

Be Gentle with Me (I’m not as young as I was) - posted by Anne Keenan

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:07:04 -0700

I’ve been listening to this song quite a bit recently. Not only is it the ideal mix of depressing lyrics/upbeat music that we all love so much, it echoes my thoughts on non-profit strategy.

Really? Really.

These days, I feel like too many non-profits are trying to rush me, and I really want them to take it easy, romance me, make me fall in love, aim for a long-term relationship.

How do I mean? This week, my friend, Jacque, sent me a MoveOn campaign to my gmail about Fox News and how they are being racist in their coverage of Obama. Okay. Because I love Jacque (+1 for leveraging social networks!), I went to the page, watched the video (+1 for interactive content that’s convincing!) and found it compelling enough to add my name (conversion—success!). So far, so good, right? Then, the minute I hit submit, a giant donate button appeared—-help MoveOn change media by giving us money.

Whoa—all of a sudden we’d skipped from flirting to something a little more intimate, and I felt icky and strangely violated in a similar way. I understand that there’s probably some research out there that says ‘as soon as someone signs on, ask them for a donation’ and probably they’ve made some money from it. But all it did for me was feel like they were rushing things.

Now, maybe it’s just that I’m getting older, and I don’t sign up to every email list that catches my eye. But now I’m on their email list again, kind of too lazy to unsubscribe, and also only marginally interested in the other current campaigns. Just not that satisfied with the way things are going, and thinking about breaking up.

So what’s my advice?

First, I think they did a great job creating compelling content—I love the video, and it was interesting enough in a few minutes to a) encourage my friend to send it to me, and b) for me to give up my gmail address, which I keep pretty close to the vest.
I also don’t necessarily think it was a bad idea to ask for a donation. I think it was just a bad to ask me for a donation *at that point in our relationship.* We’ve been on a few dates, sure, let’s split the check, I’ll even get the whole bill. On first meeting, why don’t you just spring for my ice cream cone?

One of the most amazing things about technology is that it allows such incredible personalization and segmentation.

Amazon recommends things based on my previous purchases—We think you like the wire. Maybe you want to pre-order Season 5? Yes, yes I would.
FreshDirect constantly asks for my feedback on everything from delivery time to product selection.
Doctors Without Borders usually remembers that I’m a monthly donor, and doesn’t hit me up for additional gifts via email.

I guess at this point I expect that organizations and companies are tracking my activity, and in exchange I want them to talk to me in a way that respects what I’ve already told them about myself. I know you can tell how I got to your website, where I live, if I've been on your list for a day or 5 years, so use that information to show me you care. Talk to me as an individual, not a list. Yes, I know it’s not easy. Yes, I know it takes time. Yes, I know it’s not really in anyone’s job description. But it makes a huge difference—probably the difference between my staying involved with your organization, or ignoring your emails, and pretending we’ve never met.

So, MoveOn, if you’re out there, I still think you’re pretty smart and good-looking, and I’d be interested in seeing where things go, but… be gentle with me, okay?

What's Your MailRank? - posted by Matt Stempeck

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:58:52 -0700

Google's PageRank system singlehandedly organizes billions of webpages and baffles SEO charlatans. It works well enough that I never have to click through to the no-man's-land of search results that is Page 2.

But what is your MailRank? Or in other words, where do your emails rank with their recipients? It's hard to tell and you probably don't want to know.

One of my coworker's email clients mysteriously marks all of my missives as 'read', ensuring that some slip through the cracks. He swears he doesn't know why this happens.

Of course, when I'm chugging that first coffee and scanning the day's terrifying tally of fresh emails clogging my inbox, there are definitely emails that are going to have to wait until some other fires are out. People who might yell at me, on the other hand, get a Smart Mailbox of their very own. It's a very scientific system.

One thing is certain. If you use Apple Mail, you need to be using Mail Act-On. It lets you order the herd like a keystroke cattle prod. The initial setup is a little confusing, but once your system is in place, you'll shoot emails from inbox to folder in fractions of a second and you'll feel like Mary Poppins let loose on a filing cabinet.

Practicing what we preach - posted by Phil Lamb

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:26:25 -0700

I recently assumed the mantle of Chicago Bears event coordinator for my local (well, sorta) pub, The Gael, which meant that, with the season quickly approaching, I needed a system easy to rapidly deploy for getting the word out to Bears fans in New York. After the (amazing, fantastic) NFC Championship game back in January, one of the pub's owners passed around an email signup sheet (wonderful forethought on his part!) and invited anyone interested to give us their email address.

I managed the email addresses using Campaign Monitor, a cheap ($0.01 per subscriber) email campaign system, and set up a Drupal-based site for blogging and other user management (check it out here). We've now got over 100 fans subscribed, and have used the massive turnout to work with the owners of the bar to become the only place in New York City to serve Vienna Beef Chicago-style Hot Dogs and Polish Sausage, and Goose Island Beer - all imported from Chicago. The next step: Old Style, the classic Chicago sports beer. All in all, it's been a successful few weeks, and a lot of fun, and just goes to show that at EchoDitto we're great at what we do because we use this stuff in our daily lives.

Presidential 2.008 Site Analysis - posted by Cristen Perks

Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:44:18 -0800

So, the election is a full 21 months away and there are already a number of campaigns in "full gear." Being the DC nerd that I am, I went searching for the cool, hip, new features and functionality that campaign sites have for the election.

I was surprised by some of the stuff out there so I ended up doing a review of campaign sites for the 2008 Presidential election. My chart makes it pretty easy to see which candidates recognize the importance of their web site, and have already committed to using the site as a tool to be elected.

I've reviewed all the major players who have official sites (not PAC sites or grassroots supporter sites). I'm assuming that some of these folks have an amazing online strategy including the features listed on my sheet, however to save myself from drowning in my inbox at this time next year, I didn't subscribe to every list and instead based the comparison on what's "promoted" on the site. I'll try to keep this chart updated throughout the election cycle.

Highlights of the review:

Someone in Hillary's camp obviously read about the lessons learned from the '04 cycle. She took a page from Bush's handbook and is using the site to organize offline. Great idea to start early. Let us know if it works.
Barack, "Where's your blog?" You're the only D without one.
Granted John Edwards has a lot of content on his site from his PAC site, but he also has an awesome Mac OS X Widget. (I realize my "nerd level" just increased) If you're a blogger you can sign up to help him too, or grab a badge to put on your site.
While Kucinich's site is pretty blantantly drupal, he does have some pretty neat user tools including a supporter map.
Mitt Romney is leading the pack for the R's. He's highlighting videos on MITTtv. You can grab the code to embed the videos too.

Please let me know what you think of my review. If you have any suggestions, let me know and maybe I'll build them into the next version.

Freedom and Logic Puzzles - posted by Gisele Toueg

Sat, 01 Jul 2006 09:28:33 -0700

With the approach of the Fourth of July weekend, most people's thoughts turn to bbqs, beer, fireworks and traffic on the Long Island Expressway. Don't get me wrong, I'm thinking about all those things as well (maybe traffic on I-95 actually), but I'm also thinking about the Constitution, and freedom and liberty. Which brings me to my point.

Over the past few years, technology has made it fairly simple for nonprofit organizations to empower their constituents to contact lawmakers over the internet. Doing so has allowed organizations to mobilize quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively, and to turn supporters into advocates.

Last month, certain Congressional offices started implementing a new piece of software that forces users who flow through these nonprofit organizations to answer a "logic puzzle" before submitting a comment over email. Unorganized individuals who go directly to a lawmaker's website don't have to answer the logic puzzle, it only applies to people who wish to communicate as part of a movement through nonprofit organizations. EchoDitto's Jamie Ruth blogged about this on June 14; his post is available here.

A diverse group of organizations, from the right and the left, came together to send Congress a letter on June 19, asking that legislators stop using this software. EchoDitto, along with many of our friends and allies, proudly signed the letter. Consumers Union posted this website to host the letter and ongoing coalition work, including a form for people to fill out to lend their support to the petition.

We're happy that two offices have already turned off the logic puzzle--Lucille Roybal-Allard, 34 CA and John Dingell, 15 MI. But over thirty representatives are still using it.

So this Fourth of July weekend, in between dipping your toes in the ocean and watching Brazil play France, take a second to think about what it really means to live in a democracy.

Have a safe and happy holiday.

"Mass email", or email from the masses? - posted by Jamie Ruth

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:43:49 -0700

The internet could be hailed as the best thing for democracy since the Australian ballot, empowering the masses to participate meaningfully in politics. But the house.gov web portal has taken steps to make it more difficult for issue campaigns to get off the ground and for citizens to communicate with their elected officials by filtering out what it calls “mass email”.

Most internet users are familiar with CAPTCHA, those psychedelic letter combinations at the end of a form designed to determine your humanness (and screen out the robots). Now, the House of Representatives has installed its own form of CAPTCHA on its “Write Your Representative” (WYR) site, the chief online conduit between citizens and their representatives. Check it out (try with "District of Columbia" as your State and "00000" as your zip code).

WYR’s new logic puzzle improves upon traditional image-based CAPTCHA by asking users (in plain text) to solve a simple logic problem, such as “What is nine minus one?”. Hence, no doors are closed to the visually-impaired, though some might find the need to brush up on their Kindergarten math skills. Correct completion of the puzzle gives you a voice in Congress, or at least with the intern tracking constituent concerns.

For the moment, this puts a hitch in web-based “Tell your Representative” campaigns. Traditionally, advocacy organizations have simply tapped into the House’s WYR service to submit customizable form letters on behalf of individuals to their representatives. The logic puzzle, for the time being, puts a roadblock in front of such automation.

Given the growing consensus that many in Congress are “out of touch” (as evidenced by recent polls), these measures are a step in the wrong direction. Our representatives ought to embrace efforts at streamlining constituent-representative communication. “Tell your Representative” features may give Congressional offices more constituent email to file through. But such is the small price of extending civic activism to citizens who might not otherwise go out of their way to share their thoughts with their elected officials. These are the people Congress must hear from now more than ever.

Like most e-mail users, I’m a recipient of excessive amounts of junk mail and would sympathize with House.gov efforts to screen out questionable Ugandan investment opportunities and underground Viagra deals. It’s even reasonable to withhold Congressional e-mail addresses from the public in favor of a standard “Write Your Representative” form. But the introduction of the “Logic Puzzle” represents more than a legitimate interest in filtering out irrelevant scams and solicitations; it strikes at the heart of online organizing and advocacy.

Invest, Test, Track and Target - posted by Joshua Shimkin

Tue, 02 May 2006 05:48:15 -0700

I attended a briefing on the eNonprofit Benchmarks Study two weeks ago. It is a must read for any nonprofit online professional because it provides a timely and robust analysis of online fundraising and advocacy programs for nonprofits. It even breaks down email and ROI metrics between nonprofits focused on civil rights, environmental protection, and international aid. With the study, nonprofit online professionals can measure their email marketing programs against the results of these 15 national nonprofit organizations.

There is one grand story to tell after reading the whole report: you have to invest, test, track and target for your online activities to pay off. Don't expect to flip the switch of an online fundraising program and miraculously fundraising will go through the roof. Of course, disasters and emergencies are a rare exception, but most of the organizations doing this work have had online programs for years now. Here is a summary of the key findings of the report:

Findings you would expect:

Bigger organizations = Bigger email lists = Bigger results: More resources pay off.
Email open rates declining: I think most online programs have seen a decline over the last year because of the sheer number of nonprofits running online programs and using similar content to advance their programs.
Online activists outnumber online donors: An average of 47% of all email subscribers took at least one online action, while only 6% made a donation.

Findings you wouldn't expect:

Investment pays off: If you measure results just in terms of fundraising, online programs don't start earning a profit until they have spent more than $600,000 over the life of their online activities.
Email list churn at 28%: It's a reality, so plan for it.

At the end of the report, you'll find the best practices, which follow directly from these findings. During a Q&A, Kira Marchenese from the Environmental Defense and Jeff Regen from Defenders of Wildlife offered some great advice and lessons learned about how to manage an online program. I found the following tips very helpful as a way to invigorate online advocacy and fundraising activities: (in no particular order)

Do an email burst to inactive supporters when you have some down time and use your edgiest content. What do you have to lose? You might just find a new message that particularly resonates with supporters.
Set aside a budget for online acquisition. Defenders of Wildlife spends 50% of its online budget on advertising.
Hire an analyst to inform your future online activities. If that's too resource instensive, make traffic analysis and optimization part of someone's job description and set aside time every month to focus on that. You have to schedule it and make it a priority or you will never learn from the data you have collected.
Schedule a weekly editorial meeting to discuss the message, actions and metrics.
Pay special attention to the patterns of new visitors to your site. Their paths through the site are a real-time focus group for what is working -- and what isn't.

Unfortunately, the study didn't analyze the optimal frequency for sending emails in a month. The authors addressed this omission by noting how difficult it would be to compare the email blasts to different list segments. I recommend that you test different frequencies to see what works. Defenders of Wildlife sends an average of 9.8 emails a month.

In defense of "Sent from my Blackberry-Treo-Sidekick wireless handheld." - posted by Michael Silberman

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 18:05:45 -0700

I'd love to know what percentage Blackberry, Treo, and Sidekick users are aware that they can edit or disable this obnoxious signature from appearing on their emails. My bet is that most people, if presented with the choice, would and DO actually leave the tag on. Sadly, I speak from personal experience.

Why do we continue to willingly muck up our own communiqués with this free advertising? What does this say about us! Surely we'd protest if our mobile providers inserted a similar ad at the beginning or end of our phone calls: "This conversation powered by the Sprint Wireless Network." Totally unacceptable.

At first, I thought it was our vanity. It's tacky, yes, but some part of us wants everyone else to know that we've got the latest and greatest smartphone on the planet -- that we're part of that glorious techno-future enjoying seamless connectivity everywhere... ubiquitous computing! We can easily turn a blind eye to that signature setting and let our phone do the bragging on our behalf: "Note: You should know that the message above was sent to you from this hip dude who strapped a Blackberry Wireless Handheld to his belt. This guy's going places."

Then, of course, there's the theory that we're so important to our colleagues and to the success of our respective operations that our input might be needed at the drop of a hat any second that we're away from the desk. That "sent from" tag reminds folks exactly what type of person they're dealing with.

I'm happy to announce that both of the above theories can now be debunked, despite any truth that you may have seen in them. In fact, there are two highly rational reasons for keeping the cute little "Sent from my ___" message around:

First and foremost, it's our much-needed disclaimer. We require sort of cover for those curt, SMS-like notes we might shoot back in response to your thoughtful, well-articulated, multi-paragraph messages. It's not easy typing on those little keys, you know.

Second, it's our subtle little way of saying, "we care about you" (and we'd like some extra credit for that please). If we're responding to you from our phone or blackberry, it generally means that we're going out of our way to respond under some inconvenient circumstances. It's not like we took our phone to the cafe to catch up on email. We're risking our life to respond to you while walking, eating, drinking, traveling, or juggling. You can thank us later.

Let no smartphone user ever again feel the shame of using his/her phone's default signature.

--
Sent from my Treo

From one mother to another - posted by Jennifer Powers

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:07:53 -0700

It takes a lot to get someone like me to stop and read an email from the many mailing lists I'm on. Even if the subject line is interesting, my work moves at broadband speed and I usually just don't have the time. But today, for the first time in a long time, I read an email from beginning to end. It was an email from Elizabeth Edwards expressing her support for Cindy Sheehan and her efforts to meet with President Bush in Texas.

What was remarkable about it was the fact that Mrs. Edwards drew parallels to her own son, Wade, who died in a car accident on April 4, 1996 -- exactly eight years earlier than Casey Sheehan, who died on April 4, 2004. As someone who followed the 2004 presidential election closely, I know that the Edwards family are intensely private about Wade, his death and their grief. I saw John Edwards on more than one occasion decline to discuss his son in interviews in 2004, so this email really made me stop what I was doing and read.

Elizabeth was incredibly sincere and open as she talked about her son and she made Casey real for me in a way that hasn't happened in the last few weeks Cindy has been in Crawford. There is a lot of significance in one mother putting aside her own need to grieve privately for her son in order to bring attention to another mother's very public expression of grief for hers. I signed the petition provided at the end of the email, and I hope many others do as well.

Get Your Email On - posted by Emily Thorson

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 14:22:21 -0700

Last week, I headed out to San Francisco (my first time ever in CA!) to speak on a "Politics and Technology" panel at the Young Democrats of America convention. Many of the leaders there were just beginning to learn how to effectively use the internet to organize on the ground. I spoke about email--the first and best weapon in any online organizer's arsenal. What follows are my (somewhat condensed) remarks.

It's true that EchoDitto compulsively reads techno-geek websites like O'Reilly Radar and go nuts for the Google maps API. But at the end of the day, all of us are practicioners. We use the internet to effect real change for our clients. And more often than you'd think, that means convincing them to STOP worrying so much about their website.

This may sound counterintuitive, because whenever you hear about the future of politics online, you'll hear a lot about the web. Blogs, virtual communities, comments, forums, online advertising, ad infinitum. All of that is fascinating--and important--but right now, 60% of Americans still don't know what a blog is. They will. In five or even two years, they will. But when you need people to knock on doors, or contact their representative, you need them to do it NOW, not in two years.

And that brings us to email. The big secret of successful online organizations is that email is what actually drives people to take action. This runs counter to the idea that many people have about the prototypical "Web Surfer." This phantom "Web Surfer" just putters around on the internet, clicking on links and online ads and surfing to websites. Sometimes, he comes across a website he likes and just signs up for the email list, or adds his name to a petition.

This guy does not exist in any meaningful way. Very few people enter through the "front door" of a website, or just from surfing from another page. Most folks visit sites via links in their email--from friends, family, or organizations.

The statistics bear this out. When we launch a new campaign, we generally use a lot of components to spread the word--we put it online, we buy blogads or Google ads, and we email our list. By far, the biggest spike in traffic comes from the latter--not just the first time you email them, but every time thereafter.

This axiom may seem obvious, but internalizing it will have a huge impact on how you choose to allocate your resources. Most of you are or will soon be in leadership positions in your organizations, which means that at some point, some consultant will put a shiny website in front of you and tell you how it will change your organization or campaign's life. And maybe it will--but only if you can get people to visit it.

Real-life fact: email drives traffic and participations. Implications:

Stop stressing about your website. Yes, it should have regularly updated content and look halfway professional. But it shouldn't drive your strategy, it should be driven by your strategy.
Figure out what organizations have big lists and befriend them. In DC, this might mean MoveOn or Democracy for America. If you're running a local organization, it might be your local Planned Parenthood or League of Conservation Voter chapter.
Always be growing. Constantly ask yourself "How can I make this into a list-growth activity?" Tell your list to tell a friend. Do campaigns that encourage signups. Partner with other organizations.
Write decent emails. Just follow a simple principle: write emails as if you're talking to a friend. There are a couple of points that go along with this.

Your emails should be from human beings, not organizations. Put the name of a person in the subject line. The candidate, the campaign manager, whoever.
Watch out for overly complex sentences. I try to do a "term paper check" a few hours after writing my first draft, where I go through and figure out which sentences sound like they belong in a political science paper, and delete them.
No email newsletters! People have very, very short attention spans. Figure out the action you want the email to focus on, and write the email around that link. Paragraph, link, paragraph, link, paragraph, link, signature. PS: link. Even though you also want to include a link to the photo gallery, and the front page, and the campaign you did last week, and the event calendar...don't do it! Just pick one. Just pick ONE.
Write out the link. This sounds petty, but it makes such a huge difference that I would be remiss in not mentioning it. Do not make "click here" into a link. do not make the name of your campaign into a link. Write the whole thing out, with the http://www. for each one. People like to know where they're going when they click.

Mass media requires sound bites and fifteen-second pitches and canned speeches. Email communications are an amazing tool because they let you talk to people as if they're humans.

So the next time you're writing a group email, think about what you do when you get an email address at a bar. You think for awhile about what to write. Should you be funny? Serious? Will you ask them to go out with just you, or you and your friends? You put a lot of thought into that email. If you do the same thing with the emails you send to your list, you'll start seeing results very quickly. Write your emails as if you're writing to people--because you are. Respect them.

Open Letter to 'Internet Teams' - posted by Michael Silberman

Fri, 04 Feb 2005 09:14:21 -0800

Please do all of us email users a favor and ask yourself the following question before sending a bulk email out under your signature: "Who the hell am I to sign this email?"

Just because you have the technical ability to send out bulk emails does not necessarily mean that you should sign them and send them out under your name. Yes, emails should come from real people—but they should also come from the right people.

For example, the "DNC Internet Team" writes to us yesterday about how Bush's political agenda would effectively do the opposite of what he outlined in the State of the Union address on Wednesday night. Fine, but why is the Internet Team telling me this? What does this very political message have to do with the internet? And why did it criticize Bush's agenda without giving me anything proactive to do in response—like read about the Democrats' positive vision for the future.

Direct mail teams don't sign their shiny letters with "Direct Mail Team," and neither should internet teams. Unless the purpose of the email is to tell me about something internet-y, like your new website, I want to hear from the person responsible for whatever it is you're telling me about. No need to treat me differently from your other members simply because I use the internet.

In the future, I hope that more internet teams can become transparent and integrated parts of organizations rather than an isolated department. Everyone benefits when the entire organization—not just a team of geeks in the basement—is thinking about ways to build and maintain an engaging, current, active online presence and relationship with its members.