Online Messaging Best Practices
Bri West, Piedmont Environmental Council
, 540-347-2334
The Thought Process
•What do you hope to accomplish?Before you start writing, decide what you want people to do or to get out of youremail? Is it purely informative, do you want them to write elected officials, attend a hearing, etc?People are busy -- be realistic. The tone of your email will depend on the amount of effort involved in the action you request. And remember, you are not likely to get more than one action from an email.
•Who should get the email? Is it your whole list, or a subset?
•Who’s going to read it? Think about the emails you read or delete. Better yet, think about the emails your brother/sister or mother/father read. Do they care about an issue for the same wonkish reasons you do?
The Email Itself
•Use easy to scan, bold headlines, a great image and action buttons in multiple locations.People read differently, some read every word, some scan, some look only at images/captions. Provide a mechanism for each type of reader to feel informed and engaged. Keep your paragraphs short (2-4 sentences).
•Limit the Links
•While newspaper articles can be validating – be careful about linking to them. People get lost or distracted reading newspaper articles and may never end up taking the action you wanted them to.
•Build credibility. Be defensible. Make sure everything you say can be backed up with documentation if requested. People break off relationships if they think you’re not giving them the truth.
•Never use ‘Click here’ or ‘Click this’, it can put you into the spam box.
•Don’t over bold, over underline or over italicize. It just confuses people.
•DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING ALL CAPS. Unless you really really know what you’re doing.
Before You Hit Send
•Shorten the email. It’s too long. I promise.
•The subject line is the most important part of your email. It determines whether the email gets opened or not. Spend time thinking about what the most compelling 5-8 word subject line is. Don’t use inside jokes and try to avoid puns.
•Send the email from people (i.e. Bri West, PEC), not the organization (PEC). Build a consistent voice for different members of your staff, this will also add to your credibility.Your audience wants email from other people, not a faceless organization.
•Don’t let the advocate be the final reviewer. Let the staff point-person write the first draft and provide the backup. But don’t let that person be the only person to read the email before it goes out. They care deeply about this particular issue and might not have the long-range goals of the organization in mind. Depending on the size of your organization you might designate a final reviewer, run the email by legal staff, have a small group who reads each alert that goes out, etc.
After You Hit Send
•Get and use all the feedback you can. Don’t guess at how compelling or effective your messaging is. Bounce rates, open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates are key to honing your game over time. Encourage reader comments and be willing to listen and adapt.
•Don’t forget to tell them what happened. We often get sky-is-falling emails, but how often do we get the follow-up? If we do, it usually comes with an ask for money. Consider foregoing the ask. Make yours the email they want to open. Build them up with the pats on the back they deserve, and let them down gently when a hard fight didn’t go their way. Send good news on other subjects. Don’t just email when there is a crisis.
Online Advocacy Best Practices
(Letter to elected officials, petitions, etc.)
Creating the Campaign:
- Decide what you want to accomplish and who you want to target.
- Choose a concise call to action for the headline.
- Keep your explanation/introduction as short as possible (3-6 sentences).
- If you have a lot of additional information put it in a “Tell Me More” section somewhere else on your site and provide a link.
- Make sure your letter is “above the fold”. This will change depending on screen size and browser type.
- Make your letter to elected officials editable. People feel strongly about what they write to elected officials and don’t like to be constrained by your wording.
- Add instructions to clarify the process, especially if your audience is older:
- “Edit your message (optional), then enter your contact info at right; the software will automatically replace [Decision Maker] with your elected official's name and send your message to him/her.”
- Keep your letter to decision makers short and to the point. Don’t write like a policy wonk, write as if you were a regular citizen.
Tell-a-Friend, Thank you and Website:
- Send participants in your advocacy campaign to a “Tell-a-Friend” page after they send their own letter. This enhances your campaign participation and could help grow your email list size.
- Write the basic Tell-a-Friend message as if you have friends. I mean, as if to your own friends.
- Write a thank you note; make sure to provide a link to your website or next steps in the thank you note.
- Don’t forget to post your advocacy campaigns in relevant pages on your website.
Preview/Launch
Preview your campaign, make sure:
You have considered the ramifications of targeting or singling out a particular elected official(s) or organization.
The letter to decision-makers is “above the fold” on your campaign page.
There is an option to sign up for email alerts.
The target information is correct (especially important for local data).
You have spell checked the explanation AND the letter to elected officials. Spell check using a program like Microsoft Word, but also check the old-fashioned way (with your eyes).
LAUNCH!
Piedmont Environmental Council