This document summarizes an e-action review and practices survey of 84 online campaigns run by various organizations in July/August 2009. It finds that while most organizations offer easy-to-use actions, there are weaknesses in providing background information and follow-up communications to build supporter relationships. The survey of 45 organizations finds that email is central to successful online campaigning but targeting and tailoring messages for supporters remains a challenge. The document provides recommendations to benchmark organizations' e-actions and focus on improving the overall user experience including thank you messages.

1. E-action Review and Practices Survey
www.advocacyonline.net www.fairsay.com
Jess Day
linkedin.com/in/jessday
Version 1.1

2. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 2
E-action comparison
Summary
Most organisations are offering
actions which are easy-to-use, well
presented and easy to find. The
trend seems to be towards
straightforward actions to specific
targets, with fewer complicated
rich media interfaces.
We see more problems when
looking at the action in the context
of a supporter’s relationship with
the organisation – weak or
disjointed background info, thank
you pages and emails which waste
the opportunity to build a
relationship.
online actions were defined as
web content which calls on the
reader to do something
specific, using their computer,
to further a political cause

3. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 3
What is the e-action comparison?
Definition
A snapshot of online
campaigning (UK, Canada,
International). 84 online
actions carried out during
July/August 2009, reviewed
against a specific set of
criteria.
It looked at some points of fact
- eg type of action, target etc,
and some subjective
assessments, eg easy to find,
relevant to campaign etc.
• Easy to find
• Quality
• Content
• Background
• Ease of use
• Opt in
• Thank you page
• Thank you email
• Follow up

4. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 4
What it isn’t
• Confidential
• A list of the top e-actions
• An assessment of a campaign
• A website review
• A review of emailing programme

5. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 5
What are organisations doing?
• 64% of actions asked people to write/edit their own
message
• 26% were petitions
• Only 3 ‘enhanced’ petitions
• Quite a few ‘DIY’ actions (eg download a letter)
• Majority using email forms, half via a hosted system

6. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 6
Who is doing well?
• Size isn’t everything. Little correlation between turnover
and performance
• ‘Primary campaigners’ do better than other
organisations
• Environmental and international poverty organisations
performed strongest, Unions weakest
• Global organisations strongest, UK orgs performed
better than Canadian

7. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 7
What’s being done well?
• Easy to find - 58%
• Quality (relevance to campaign) - 52%
• Content/copy - 60%
• Ease of use - 60%

8. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 8
Weak areas
• Background - 43%
• Thank you page - 42%
• Thank you message - 26%
• Follow up communcation - 31%

9. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 9
Practices survey
Email is seen to be at the
heart of successful e-
campaigning, with involvement
in blogging and social
networking sites relatively
small. Many organisations are
struggling, though, with the
complexities of targeting and
tailoring communications for
their supporters.
• “Consistently we find that
email delivers the most
actions”, (survey
respondent)

10. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 10
About the survey
• 45 organisations - self-selected
• Confidential
• Mostly UK (33) and Canada (9)
• Carried out online June-Aug 2009

11. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 11
Email
• ‘Small’ campaigners likely to have more of their
campaigners online
• 49% are taking into account supporters’ previous
actions/preferences to inform emails
• 72% send single-message action alerts
• Only 3 split test emails
• 31% systematically ‘cleaning’ their list
• 33% have an email ‘welcome route’
• 9% have a strategy for ‘reactivating’ people who don’t
respond

12. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 12
Campaigning and fundraising
• 76% ask donors to take campaign action
• 69% ask campaigners to donate/subscribe

13. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 13
Online actions
• Most popular actions: email elected representative
(84%), email government (78%) and tell a friend
(76%)
• 73% are using hosted campaign services
• 11% use free services, eg ‘Write to them’

14. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 14
Blogs and social networks
• 31% using blogs to support campaigning
• 93% have a presence on a social networking site
• 38% engaging directly with supporters
• Facebook and twitter most popular

15. full report at: eCampaigningReview.com 15
What does this mean for me?
Learning points
Contact me for your organisation’s
e-action review results.
Benchmark yourself - review and
adapt the methodology to suit you.
(Contact me for tipsheet.)
Look at an action in the context of
the user’s experience. Some issues
will be harder or take longer to
change such as tailoring email
messages, but others, such as
thank you messages, just take a
little time and thought.
• Jess Day
e-campaigning consultant
• Jess@jess-day.co.uk