5 Online Advocacy Campaign Tips

Advocacy is a critical step in getting potential donors interested and engaged with your organization, and there’s no better place to run an advocacy campaign than on the Internet. Online advocacy is a low-cost way to reach and inspire activists, grow your e-mail list and increase donations.

In its guide, Online Advocacy: Tapping Into Your Most Passionate Supporters, Convio reports that of those organizations engaged in online advocacy using Convio, 8.31 percent of constituents on their e-mail files took at least one advocacy action. For some sectors, such as public affairs, as much as 15 percent of constituents engaged in online advocacy. Furthermore, 7.33 percent of online activists also supported the same organization financially online, and 8.06 percent of all online donors on Convio’s file also took an online advocacy action with the same organization.

These numbers show the power that online advocacy holds. With that in mind, Steve Daigneault, vice president of M+R Strategic Services, provides five tips to make the most of your online advocacy campaigns in the guide.

1. Leverage the 24-hour news cycle
“Content on the Web changes every minute,” Daigneault writes. “That means the actions you post and promote need to be hyper-relevant to the moment: Why does this action matter right now, this very minute?”

2. Talk about what else you’re doing
“Expose the full breadth of your organization’s work on an issue, and how this one petition fits into your overall plan to move an issue forward. That could be your staff visits to the Hill, an event you’re holding where you’ve invited media, or partner organizations that are pooling names to make a bigger impact.”

3. Confirmation pages matter
“Once someone signs a petition, you’ve got a split second to capture their interest to take the next step,” Daigneault says. “Oftentimes that means asking them to tell their friends, but some organizations might find more success landing them on a donation page that has a thank-you message above it. That simple soft ask can sometimes convert more activists to donors than a straight-up appeal.”

4. Don’t ask just once
“Everyone’s inbox is flooded these days; sometimes you have to send the same action a few times to get traction. Build a campaign around an action, promote it two or three times via e-mail, post it on your social-network pages, and create a homepage promotion for it.”

5. Set goals and deadlines
“In the absence of a real-world moment,” Daigneault writes, “sometimes you can create your own moment. Set a hard deadline and a specific goal for the number of actions you need. Reinforce that deadline and goal wherever you promote the action. If possible, show progress toward your goals with a thermometer.”