I’m fascinated by the importance of trust in driving campaigning activity, and increasingly convinced that it’s a key element for successful advocacy, both in the context of the trust that individuals feel towards the person or medium inviting them to take action and also the target that we’re asking them campaign towards.
Which is why the results of Edelman Trust Barometer (a summary of the UK findings are here) last week are interesting to reflect upon.
Although the Barometer isn’t really focused on NGOs, instead being produce for businesses wanting to understand how to better position themselves, many of the messages that come out of it are really useful for anyone thinking about how best to position their campaign.
Here are a few reflections;
People need to hear a message 3 to 5 times to believe it. This isn’t new news, but once again it’s useful to be reminded. What implications does this have on the way we communicate our campaign messages and the importance of ensuring its reinforced through multiple communication channels. How do we get better at ensuring the ‘trusted messengers’ are the ones delivering them.
Globally, academics and technical experts are considered to be the most credible spokespeople. When people are asked to form an opinion of a company, academics have a 68% trust rating, by comparison CEOs have a 38% trust rating.
Does this mean we should be more proactive at making use of academics in our endorsing our campaigns, perhaps using them to publish research that will support our asks? As an aside, the growth in ‘someone like me’ (peers) and a ‘regular employee’ suggest that we might want to make more use of ‘normal’ supporters in our campaigning communications.
Growing separation in the trust that people place in the media. The survey found that in the UK’despite selling millions of copies, only 14% trust the tabloids to tell the truth. While broadsheets command around 50% trust, TV and radio is almost 60%‘.What does this mean for the channels we use to communicate our campaign messages. Interestingly, globally Social Media is only ‘trusted’ by 14% of people, but that’s jumped by 75% in the last year.
Trust in governments is falling, with the majority of countries now distrusting their governments. Indeed in almost all EU and G20 countries trust in government is well below 50%.
Does this have implications on our campaigning when we invite individuals to take action to ask the government to do x,y or z? If the majority of those we’re asking to take action, don’t implicitly trust the government, what does impact does this have on their belief that the action they’re calling for will ever be achieved?
People trust NGOs. The research found that ‘for the fifth year in a row, NGOs are the most trusted institution in the world, and in 16 of the 25 countries surveyed, more trusted than business’.
Great news and an exciting opportunity, but as the decline in trust in countries which saw scandals involving NGOs happen a figure the sector will have to work hard to stay at the top.
Category: learning
The beginners guide to getting your email updates read
While I’m certainly not an expert in e-campaigning, occasionally in my role I get asked to share (or offer to share!) some thoughts about what makes an effective campaign email.
I did this last week while in Geneva with Micah Challenge campaigners from across Europe, or before Christmas with some inspiring campaigners involved in this campaign in Brazil work to stop the sexual exploitation of children during the 2014 World Cup. In both cases, the campaigns didn’t have huge budget or capacity, so they were looking for some simple and actionable ideas.
From working alongside some fantastic e-campaigners over the years I’ve picked up a few tops tips, so here are my top 5 thoughts about what makes a good campaign email. I’d welcome comments or links to other useful resources.
1 – Send your message at the right time – There is a whole bank of evidence about when emails are open and action and while I’m sure this is likely to differ a little from country to country and issue to issue, this research from Mail Chimp is a good place to start. They looked at the open rates for millions of emails and found that more messages were opened between 2-5pm and that midweek lead to the highest open rates, with the weekend, perhaps predictably the worse time.
2 – Opened emails are read emails – The reality is that if your email remains unopened in someones inbox its not going to lead to the action that you’d like to see. As such it’s key to think about the subject line that you use and the ‘from’ field.
Go for a subject line that intrigues the reader into open in but also let’s them know what to expect, and make your ‘from’ field from a real person not an organisation, even if you end up going for ‘Joe Bloggs (Make Poverty History)’ it making an effort toward greater personalisation.
3 – Be clear about what you want your email to achieve. To many email updates sent don’t have a clear objective to them, before you write it be clear what one thing you want to achieve from the message. There is a reason why organisations like Avaaz and 38 Degrees only ask you to do one thing in their email message, because they’ve found it’s likely to lead to a better response rate.
While making lots of different asks might make it sound like your campaign has got alot going on, in reality the more choices you give people the more likely they’ll choose not to do any of them. They become paralysed by choice and overwhelmed by the options, so choose to do none.
4 – People scan read emails. Just like webpages, people interact with emails in very different ways to letters or printed documents, so big blocks of dense text aren’t likely to work. In general, people scan a message, so using short paragraphs, bold and underline is key to help people navigate around the email and understand what you’re asking them to do. (For more have a look at this evidence drawn from research into using eye-tracking software into how people read emails)
Try to make the ‘ask’ more than once in your message, and don’t forget that for some strange reason the ‘PS’ is one of the most read lines in any email, so make use of it!
5 – The metrics matter – The best way of knowing if people are actually reading or responding to your emails is to use a website like MailChimp or CharityeMailto send out your messages. They’ll provide you with a user-friendly ‘dashboard’ of what people are actually doing with your messages by measuring open and click-through rates. Over time you’ll be able to build up a better picture of what your audience responds to and what they don’t.
If you’ve got the time invest in testing different subjects, from fields, etc. Sites like MailChimp make this easy to do, as well as taking the hard work out of managing your e-lists as they manage the subscribe/unsubscribe function.
I’m aware that I’m just skimming the surface of a vast bank of evidence, and haven’t even written about how to compose the content of a good action email (have a look at this for a good summary).
I know that a few e-campaigning gurus read this blog so I’d especially encourage them to comment or share other useful links.
Campaigning for the 'long haul'
We’re told that patience is a virtue, but if we’re honest with ourselves it’s not one that’s always found in abundance within the campaigning world. As campaigners we’re paid to be impatient people, we want things to change now.
But a recent conversation with a colleague who’d been involved in the start of the Australian anti-smoking campaign over 20 years ago reminded me that some times our campaigns are going to take years, even decades to win rather than the weeks we’d like it to!
My colleague was celebrating because just the week before the conversation the Australian government had announced another victory for the campaign, that packets of cigarettes would no longer be able to be sold with any branding on them, a step that advocates on the issue believed would help to reduce sales of cigarettes to minor, another important step in the campaign to reduce the public health impacts of cigarette smoking.
It was a good challenge, as it raised questions for me about how we plan our campaigns for the long-haul. Here are a few thoughts about what we can do, if we subscribe to the belief that sometimes change will be a ‘long time coming’!
1 – Be clear about the steps on the journey to success – I often come across campaigns that are quick to announce their ultimate goal, but are less clear about the journey that they’re going to need to go on to get to it. How much time in our planning do we map out the potential steps that we might need to take on that journey, the policy wins, the changed attitudes or the key individuals that we need to bring on board to be successful. These interim goals are as important to identify as the final goal.
When we do this do we need to do more to communicate our anticipated story to our supporters and donors to give them a sense that we’re on the right trajectory as opposed to demotivating them when the final goal doesn’t feel likes it coming around as quickly as we’d like?
2 – Consider the ‘What If’s’ – Do we spend too much time thinking about a simple and clean liner path to success in our campaigning. We assume that we’ll be successful every step of the way along, but sometimes that doesn’t happen, we find that a target is immovable, or the argument that we’re using isn’t getting the traction that it needs, but how often in our planning do we ask ‘what if’ and come up with multiple options towards eventual victory, anticipating when we might need to shift our plans. The excellent paper ‘The Elusive Craft of Evaluating Advocacy‘ has lots of more on the importance of this approach in successful campaigns.
3 – Communicating our ‘signs of transformation’ – We often have stories to share that help to prove that we’re heading in the right direction. Where I work we’re encouraged to capture and communicate our ‘signs of transformations’ to staff and support, these are the tip bits that we pick up in conversation with policy makers, politicians or others that help to justify our decisions. In the long battles for success capturing and celebrating the small victories become important both to those working on the campaign but also those supporting it.
4 – Holding something back – Thinking back to the experience of Make Poverty History, and perhaps to a lesser extent the climate campaigning ahead of Copenhagen, one of the biggest challenges that I observed was that after the main moment their were few people around to keep the campaign going.
During Make Poverty History everyone became so fixated on the G8 meeting in July that their were few people around to keep the campaign going for the second six months of 2005. I’m increasingly convinced that campaigns need to be developing a ‘bench’ of experienced campaigners who can come in to keep the momentum going after these key moments. For those leading campaigns that are going to take time to ‘win’ we need to consider what we have in reserve.
What lessons have you learn’t about campaigning for the ‘long haul’?
Video – How to plan highly effective campaigns
This video of a talk that Chris Rose gave at the last eCampaigning forum is fantastic. I’d recommend that you put aside 40 minutes in the coming week to watch it.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/28497758 w=400&h=225]
How to plan highly effective campaigns by Chris Rose from FairSay on Vimeo.
Originally found on the shiftlabs website.
The key ingredients for a good campaign action….
Getting the ‘target’ and ‘ask’ right in your action is fundamentally important if you want to have a successful campaign, so here are some thoughts about what should go into a ‘good’ action.
It’s not often that cry out in frustration at a campaign action but I did this week when a colleague forwarded me this action from Stop the Traffik, a campaign which aims to bring an end to human trafficking worldwide.
Now I’ve tried to avoid highlight ‘bad’ campaigning on this blog, preferring to celebrate the creativity and ingenuity that’s been demonstrated by many campaigns, but I wanted to mention this one as an example of ‘not so good’ practice.
Why? Because I’m saddened that a campaign with such a great aim hasn’t done its homework to identify the most effective things to be asking an MP to do and had instead come up with a ‘shopping list’ that I fear will mean most will choose to ignore the action.
I’m not suggesting that every action that it written from now on needs to be the length of an essay. Indeed many of the actions that organisations like Avaaz and ONE ask me to support are often little more than a sentence or two long, but that’s in part because the web or email copy that accompanies it sets out a clear rationale for why I should be supporting the action and are supported by evidence of extensive policy expertise.
Now I know that many campaigns are run by a small staff teams who are juggling multiple priorities (and I’ve made suggestions before about how that shouldn’t hold you back and that lots of campaigners would love to help out) but getting the target and ask right in your action is fundamentally important if you want to have a successful campaign.
For me a good action should have the following components.
1 – Be specific – To a named individual not an ambiguous group like ‘world leaders’ or similar, this post from futuremediachange.com explains why its a bad idea. It needs to be targeted to the person who can make the change that you want to see happen. Sometimes this will be the Prime Minister or President but often it won’t be.. Indeed I’d argue that when campaigns make more use of different or unexpected target it has the potential to wield more influence than when it focuses on a ‘usual suspect’.
2 – Be achievable – Now by this I’m not saying that we should compromise our asks to make the politically palatable, if you want to ‘stop climate change’ or ‘put an end to world poverty’ continue to include that it your action.
But do ask what’s the one or two things that you want your target to do that will lead to the bigger goal. What’s the step or steps that they can take to achiever your ask? The challenge for the writer of the action is to help the person taking the action understand how achieving the immediate ‘ask’ will make the big goal move a step closer.
3 – Be informed – Linked to the above. Spend some time thinking about routes to influence on your target, who are the people that they really listen to and at the end of it don’t be afraid to change the person you’re focusing your action towards. Equally find out what your target can actually do and if you’ve got a menu of options then choose the one that your intelligence tells you will be most effective at this moment.
4 – Be measurable – How are you going to be able to know if you’ve achieved what you’re asking your target to do. Good asks should have something in them that can be measured to show if it’s been successful. It could be doing something by a date, or increasing support by a certain %, or including certain language in a piece of legislation. Include that and the report back to that took action when you’re successful.
At the end, I find that it’s help to ask, does my action pass the ‘Elevator Test’. It’s a simple rule taken from the world of marketing. Imagine that the person you’re targeting walks into a lift with you. Suddenly you find yourself with 15 seconds to make your ‘pitch’. Are you able to explain what you want them to do succinctly enough that when they walk out they’re able to turn to their advisor or aide and instruct them to do it.
What tips do you have to ensure effective actions?
NB – If you’re reading this from Stop the Traffik, please consider this constructive criticism, and get in touch as I’d be very happy to have a chat about how you could sharpen your asks.
Post in The Guardian on making use of the Freedom of Information Act
Do have a look at my first contribution to The Guardian Voluntary Sector Network blog on how charities can make use of Freedom of Information Act.
Great campaigning resources
Looks like it’s a day for lists of useful guides on campaigning.
Firstly I came across this list that Mark Parker, a campaign organiser in Southwark has put together of books to read on activism on his Southwark Organising blog.
Secondly, it’s the last day of The Right Ethos resource tweeting marathon! For the last month they’ve been sharing ‘a series of 30 daily guides covering campaigning, policy & parliamentary’ via their twitter account. It’s a really useful list full of some great resources, many of them come from the work of the NCVO Campaigning Effectiveness programme, but they’ve also linked to some interesting resources from the US and beyond.
The full Right Ethos list is below;
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What resources, books or guides would you add?
Five for Friday…..29th July
Slowing down for the summer? Here is a round of up of interesting articles on campaigning to read this Friday.
1. Hands Up Digital with some excellent advice about how charities can get more out of Facebook.
2. Stephen Pound MP has a few issues with 38 Degrees and the curse of the automated e-mail, while in Washington campaigners managed to overload the Congress system with calls and emails.
3. The Guardian invites some experts to ponder on how we can measure social impact.
4. ConservativeHome asks MPs and journalists which media platforms have the most impact.
5. The Right Ethos is tweeting recommendations of different guides covering campaigning, policy and advocacy for the next month.
Finally, some good advice….(h/t @gavinthomson)
Summer Reading….
Summer is here and I’m hopeful of a few ‘quieter’ weeks which will allow me to leave the office at 5 and spend some time reading in the evening (it won’t happen but I can dream).
But what should campaigners be reading this summer?
I asked friends on twitter for some recommendations and here is my crowd-sourced list of what they suggested.
1. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s been around for a few years but it’s still one of the best books about how to make your communications more effective. I’ve read it twice and I was delighted that it was suggested by @JessDay.
2. Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine. Clearly good as it was suggested by both @JessDay and @rossb82.
3. Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World by Tina Rosenberg. Suggested by @CasperTK the book explore the power of groups to motivate positive changes.
4. The Common Cause Handbook by PIRC. A really helpful look at the role that values and frames, which is something that every campaigner should be considering. Suggested by @martinhall81 and @GlenTarman.
If you enjoy Common Cause, you might also find Finding Frames: New ways to engage the UK public in global poverty by Andrew Darnton & Martin Kirk (suggested by@sullyserena) which looks at frames and values from the perspective of international development sector of interest.
5. Fool’s Gold by Gillian Tett. For an insight into what caused the financial crisis that is still impacting the political and economic landscape many of our campaigns operate in. Suggested by @timsowula.
6. The Social Animal by David Brooks. A really interesting look at the wealth of scientific research about the mind and the impact it has on the decisions we make. One to read while considering the implications for our activism. Suggested by me.
Updated on 23/7 with a few more recommendations….
Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit which charts the rise of a non violent movement united around campaign struggles in the 1980s and 90s. Recommended by @lucypearceox who also had some other excellent suggestions.
How to Win Campaigns by Chris Rose which has just had a new edition published and is possibly the best ‘how to’ guide on campaigning in the UK. Recommended by @hughmouser
In the Tiger’s Mouth: An Empowerment Guide for Social Action by Katrina Sheils by Katrina Shields which is described by a reviewer on amazon as ‘Filled with useful, helpful ideas and activities on planning, envisioning, sustainability, avoiding burnout, and more’. Recommend by @NCVOForesight
Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Recommended by @emmataggart who says ‘provokes thought about how to use online tools (there’s more to it than sending an email!)’.
Saved: How an English Village Fought for Its Future… and Won by David Hewson. A case study in how an English village fought for survival and won. Recommended by @LABatSMK
Waging Nonviolent Struggle by Gene Sharp. A classic and part inspiration for the Arab Spring, useful for all campaigners. Recommended by @paulhilder who also suggested his own excellent ‘Contentious citizens: Civil society’s role in campaigning for social change’ which is a really good overview of progressive campaigns in recent times and some useful reflections for the future.
MP Keith Simpson also has a list of recommendations for politicians for the summer. Some that might be of interest include Everyday Life in British Government by R. A. W. Rhodes and The Cameron-Clegg Government: Coalition Politics in an Age of Austerity edited by Simon Lee.
What would you recommend?
Five for Friday…15th July
Here is my semi-regular round up of interesting articles on campaigning and advocacy….
1. Harmit Kambo reminds us that ‘one of the most important challenges to injustice is to simply ‘bear witness’ to it’
2. Untangling the Web has an interesting interview with Karina Brisby, Head of Interactive Campaigns at Oxfam. While NCVO asks how charities will use technology in 5 years time.
3. Campaigning and influencing must always be at the top of the agenda argues Brian Lamb. While research by NCVO reports the views of trustees about how involved in campaigning charities should get.
4. Gavin Thomson has an interesting reflection on the value of different email address (does anyone have any data on this?). The Manifesto Club worry that the opportunity to use the humble leaflet as a campaign tool is being lost.
5. The On Think Tanks blog asks if those involved in developing policy in think tanks (and NGOs) can learn anything from the intelligence services!
What else have you read that you’d add?
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