The latest buzzword in the charity sector is “e-campaigning”; literally taking offline campaigning and using online tools for data capture and communications.  Many charities are currently either testing the water or diving straight in.

You may not think that the e-campaigning fits your profile, but more than 60% of the UK population now use the web and the majority of “activists” come from the younger and therefore more web orientated generations (with apologies to the extremely active silver surfers and pension campaigners).

E-campaigns also work just as well for local organisations as national and global ones. Combining a web landing page with a sign up form and a call to action with local PR and local radio adverts is an excellent way to mobilise the community without the hassle of manual data capture and responses.

E-campaigning offers many advantages over the traditional paper based methods. Websites provide neat, easily managed and easily updated “brochures” about the campaign. The internet also offers a way to manage data capture, form filling, petition sign ups and a host of other activities for the prospective campaigner. No more data entry and scrappy petition forms to manage.

So the web can form a local or global platform for the campaign giving a relatively cheap and easy to manage focus to the activity. But to get people to the site requires a concerted effort, some of which needs to be offline, the normal PR, postcard and poster type activity (as appropriate), and some of which should be online.

If you have an email list use it, and keep using it to remind people about the campaign, the actions, activities and how they can help. Like with many calls to action, setting a deadline or giving a target encourages people to act, and with electronic tools you can keep that up to date and communicate in a very short time frame.

Viral mails are an art form, they need to be either very clever and polished or very very simple one liners. But they are always worth trying even if it is just to your contacts, staff and volunteers as they can form the basis of the sign ups to the website and email newsletter.

Once you have started collecting names, email is a great way to communicate cheaply and regularly with people who have signed up, allowing the campaign team to build a relationship, inform about results and events. 

It is essential to keep the information flowing in every available method. Asking people to make a commitment and then leaving them high and dry is the worst possible way to build a campaign. So critical to the success of any campaign, on or offline, is planning the communications cycle after the launch.  Planning a website, the PR and advertising to set the world alight with your burning issue is only the first step to an ongoing strategy.  All too frequently the ‘launch’ becomes the focal point of everyone’s energy and what happens next is forgotten.

Campaigning is the same as any other marketing activity in that we want people to do something. Succession planning for the post launch activity is critical, both for any chance of campaign success and for the detailed planning before launch.  If you haven’t thought about how you are going to communicate, how do you know what data you need to capture, what data protection statements you need or how you are going to segment and deal with sign ups?

And more than a casual – “we’ll email them the results” - e-campaigns should have a full rolling communications and marketing plan. What will be done to enliven the website and get visitors back, what will the emails contain, how often and to whom. Are the campaigners being asked to do a series of actions leading them up a campaign ladder until they are marching the streets?

Without forward planning the launch may be a raging hit with the media, but the ongoing campaign will be a damp squib when the public is left with no ongoing interaction.

So think about your audience, do they use the web – remembering that many non-computer owners use internet café’s and libraries? Do you have a burning issue that makes it worth the effort to build and launch a campaign – do you have an audience who might respond? And if the answer is yes to both then the web, online forms and email undoubtedly offer a great platform for your communications, an efficient system of data capture, and the opportunity to keep your campaigners up to date in a fast and effective way.

Sue Fidler
www.suefidler.com
March 2007

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