That’s what Corporate Accountability International (CAI) recently found after spending nearly two years examining its list and building the internal consensus to cut nearly 40 per cent of its email subscribers.

Tim Arsenault, CAI’s membership and data administrator, says before embarking on the email analysis, he’d fallen into a trap that may be familiar to other nonprofits. He was reporting on what The Lean Startup author Eric Reiss calls “vanity metrics,” information that might sound good but is disconnected from actual progress of goals and desired final outcomes.

Each week, Tim was responsible for sharing CAI’s email list size and growth to the leadership team.

For nonprofits like CAI, whose organizing strategy is to engage and mobilise tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people, list size is an important metric, says Sarah Doltich, CAI’s managing director of communications.

It’s people power challenging the abuses of some of the world’s most powerful corporations that helps the Boston-based nonprofit succeed in its mission to protect human rights, public health and the environment.

“We wanted to grow our list as an indication of a group of people we could activate that would be our power base,” says Sarah.

But, as Tim and Sarah can attest, list size is a means and not an end. The real goal is building engaged supporters who act with CAI.

Tim credits attending a presentation on cleaning your email list, where the presenter recommended removing unsubscribes and anyone that hasn’t opened an email in the last year, as motivation to begin exploring CAI’s email list and metrics.

While CAI’s email open and click-through rates were in line with the industry average, Tim wanted to dig deeper to learn about who was opening emails, and how frequently.

Tim began to separate the list into active and inactive emails. He found CAI’s email list included many inactive emails, which are all email addresses the host would not send to because people have unsubscribed, reported the emails as spam, or had entered their emails incorrectly or the emails were non-existent.

Focusing on the active emails (all emails CAI could actually send emails to), Tim segmented this group into people who opened CAI emails, and those who hadn’t.

Over the years, CAI has grown its email list through organic growth and partnerships and some voluntary acquisitions, contributing to its large subscriber base. Tim found that some of these people have never opened an email from the nonprofit.

Tim separated the open email list once more, creating a separate group for people who haven’t opened a CAI email within one year.

As a result of many un-opens, some of CAI’s emails never made it to their subscribers, but instead their spam folder.

Based on their findings, Sarah and Tim decided it would be best to cut all of their email addresses who hadn’t opened an email within a year, decreasing their list to people who have opened a CAI email within the past 12 months.

With a better handle of the numbers, Tim and Sarah would need to educate the executive team on the need to cut subscribers who weren’t opening CAI emails.

Making the case for deleting inactive emails would be an easy argument. However, it’s more difficult to explain why you should cut a swath of people simply because they haven’t opened an email in a year. What if they are a donor, or eventually opened an email and took action? What harm is there in keeping them?

“The truth of the matter is if they haven’t opened an email from us in more than a year since they’ve been on, or more than five years, chances are they’re not going to open an email and it’s just hurting us and it’s not giving us more power,” says Tim.

Sarah and Tim took time to explain spam scores and what it meant to be on a spam list to the leadership team. They emphasized how a large number of people not opening their emails results in more of their emails ending up in people’s spam boxes.

To reinforce their point, a staff member tested a CAI email, which promptly went to spam.

Regarding the concern of cutting off current or potential donors, Sarah says they had to explain to the leadership team that email is only one form of communication, and if they haven’t opened an email in a year, they’re not engaged with CAI’s email. CAI has a multi-engagement strategy and direct mail, telephone calls or web content might be more appropriate ways to engage.

It wasn’t an easy sell, and took time and much negotiating. Sarah and Tim recall wishing they had another organization that has cleaned their list to point to as a best practice.

The leadership team eventually agreed, and CAI sent a last chance email to people who had an active email but hadn’t opened an email in at least a year. The last chance email let people know that CAI didn’t want to bother them, and as a result were deleting them from their email list. If they’d like to stay on the list, they were encouraged to click on a link to keep receiving CAI email.

The last chance email was sent to tens of thousands of subscribers, yet only several hundred choose to opt-in, which Tim says reinforced their argument to delete them.

The cuts came at the end of the year, and directly before CAI’s largest fundraising opportunity, its annual year-end appeal.

Yet the results were very appealing.

Despite the list being 40 per cent smaller, the open rate doubled, and the click-through rate rose by 50 per cent. CAI also raised more money than last year’s year-end appeal.

“It’s night and day,” says Tim on the changes. “We have such a healthier list and we’re able to measure how well our emails are doing so much better because it’s not watered down with all of these inactive emails that are basically just going into a black hole never to be heard from again.”

Unforeseen Advantages

While the increase in opens, click-throughs and donations were enough to validate the smaller list size, Tim and Sarah say they’ve also discovered several unforeseen benefits.

Now, email test results are coming back statistically significant. With the larger list size, any A/B test other than a subject headline would come back statistically insignificant because of the number of inactive subscribers.

This is helping CAI learn valuable insights from its testing that it can apply to future emails.

As a result of a smaller and healthier email list, CAI team members also have a much better idea of who their subscribers are, and can message accordingly.

The email list cleaning was done simultaneously with improvements to email messaging, better online content and optimized web pages.

Tim adds they can now say confidently that 90-95 per cent of their email list will take action in the course of a year.

Shift to Smart Metrics

Tim and Sarah along with Echo Ditto’s Jesse Littlewood recently presented on Vanity Metrics versus Actionable Metrics at the Nonprofit Technology Conference 2013. The presentation used the Lean Startup definition for smart metrics, which states good metrics are auditable, accessible and actionable.

For Tim and Sarah, the actionable definition was most important, helping them shift from seeing email list size as a goal to understanding how metrics should tell a story, and tell you what to do.

“It’s important to remember the people behind the list. Who are they, what compels them to take action, how are we engaging them, are they unsubscribing or taking action?” says Sarah.

“Really thinking about and remembering the people behind the email list helped us visualise what makes a smart metric.”

Beyond Email List Size

Tim and Sarah say they still plan to include their email list size as part of their metrics and grow their list through paid and voluntary acquisitions, as well as cross promotions.

The team is hoping what they’re learning through testing and smarter messaging will help them keep and cultivate an engaged power base. They also plan to focus on creating successful welcome emails to engage potential supporters from the start.

“It’s one thing to add 10,000 names to your list but it’s another thing to keep them on your list,” says Tim.

Quarterly, CAI plans to evaluate its email list to better understand its base and adjust accordingly. Annually, they plan to make cuts when needed to keep its list size healthy and engaged.

This article is part of a MobLab series exploring how to increase email opens and response rates. The 2013 eNonprofit Benchmark study, found an overall decline in email response rates in 2012.

Stay Connected: @StopCorpAbuse

Related Posts:
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Top ten tips in email writing from organisations changing the world

Do you have an innovation in mobilisation and people-powered campaigns? Share it with Mob Lab by contacting moblab@greenpeace.org.

FrontlineSMS helps Indonesian community win world record for garbage clean up

KPC Bogor members collecting plastic garbage from the Ciliwung River 2012. Image: KPC Bogor

A community group called Community Care Ciliwung Bogor is using FrontlineSMS to recruit weekly volunteers to collect record amounts of garbage along the Ciliwung River in the city of Bogor, Indonesia.
Initially, using SMS text messaging, the group was recruiting 2-100 volunteers weekly. But the approach was time-consuming and unsustainable. The group switched to FrontlineSMS, which enabled them to send out messages seamlessly to the approximately 200 interested community members.

The approach has been so successful that they started a “Garbage Scavengers Race,” which last year brought 1,500 people to the river to help collected 1,300 bags of garbage in just 3 hours.

This year, the group is recognized by the  Indonesia – World Record Museum for setting a record garbage clean up. June 1  saw more than 2,000 participants collect 2,458 sacks of inorganic garbage. Via Idea Lab and tjiliwoeng.blogspot.ca

United Airlines urged to lead on climate — or at least get out of the way

More than 500 elite United Airlines premier status frequent flyers signed a letter to the airline’s CEO Jeff Smisek urging the company to lead on climate, or at least get out of the way, by ending its lobbying against policies that would significantly cut pollution.

Some 85,000 everyday flyers, including 2,700 elite frequent flyers signed a petition as well. Both were delivered to the company June 10.

This is part of a new campaign called Flying Clean, which has a dozen organizational partners representing millions of members, including SumOfUs, the Sierra Club, 350.org, and Stop Fooling California.

In South Africa, organizers combine old and new media to take on corruption

Photo credit: Tech President

In January of 2012, civil servants, trade unionists and other community leaders launched Corruption Watch, a civil society organization dedicated to ending the scourge of corruption in South Africa.

In just one year, the anti-corruption campaigns of Corruption Watch have exploded onto the South African public’s radar through their massive outreach on the ground and online, video, and multiple digital channels.

In Corruption Watch’s first 11 months, it received 1,227 qualified reports of corruption. Via Tech President

Stop Watching Us.

A new campaign was launched to demonstrate concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, revealing secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

The site carries a hefty list of organizational support and in total has more than 100,000 signatures. Stopwatching.us

Sparticus wins with grassroots voices

While many disability charities in the United Kingdom were struggling to mount big public campaigns to oppose welfare reforms that were unfair to disabled people, an unexpected one took off.

We Are Spartacus is a group of disabled people who started a grassroots online campaign using free blogs, Freedom of Information requests and crowdsourced responses.

They pushed and pushed — and broke through into the Twittersphere, galvanizing many people and helped to influence what was happening in Parliament. Named one of the controversial Top 5 digital campaigns of all time via Scope.org.uk.

What’s Missing?

Have a people-powered campaign you’re tracking that should be here? Use and follow #CampaignSpot to share creative mobilisation campaigns.

There is this mad rush of adrenaline in all kids whenever I go to schools for presentations. I look around and find myself surrounded by curious eyes, sheepish grins, or even students nudging each other to sit at the front row. I find teachers with their hands on their hips, frown lines across their forehead and raising a finger to their lips and asking all the very excited students to keep quiet.

I simply smile to myself thinking “okay … making these kids listen to you is a challenge but I just hope .. really hope *fingers crossed* that our message will reaches out to them in a way they really enjoy”. And there goes my frown lines too, as I am lost into whirlpool of thoughts. I am at St.Mary’s School situated in one of the posh localities of New Delhi. It’s a huge well maintained campus and I had come here as part of Green Warrior to raise awareness about the environment for students.

Green Warrior is a Greenpeace India programme designed to motivate students, teachers and parents to act in a more socially and environmentally responsible way. We regularly reach out to hundreds of school students, and further into colleges across India’s cities. Today we have active Green Warrior projects in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata. And although a new programme, things are going really well.

So how do you start?

The process starts with a Green Warrior mapping out a list of schools in a particular zone and the necessary contact details. Much of this comes from the personal networks of the Green Warrior or internet research. Then the long process of calling and dropping proposal letters to concerned eco-club coordinators and schools principals. Finally one needs to have the patience to wait for the phone to ring, and a curious teacher to invite you to come to her school for an appointment.

What does an appointment look like?

Good communications focused on Greenpeace key messages are critical for a Green Warrior event, but designing the content to be ‘student friendly’ is as important – to connect them to the cause through practical eco-activities.

Dissecting the communications – we start with an introduction about Greenpeace – either a verbal presentation or by screening relevant videos, currently with a climate change focus. We then follow up with an interactive session of perhaps 45 minutes, ideally for students from class 7 to 9. During this introductory session the Green Warrior will talk about the current campaign and the concept of giving a missed call on 080 300 88 435 for the current forest / Jungistan campaign.

After the introduction phase, where the students have been sensitized to the issues, Green Warriors organize a photo exhibition, open for all students from classes 1 to 9. The photos are focused on a current campaign and are displayed on school premises as an open space. With the help of volunteers, students and teachers are invited to visit. The explanation of the campaign and stories behind the photos further sensitizes them to environmental issues. Again the idea of giving a missed call is introduced.

Finally other activities are conducted like poster making, paper bag making, shirt writing, slogan writing, pledge tree writing or thumb imprints on a tree and so on. The main objective is to engage the students further, by giving them a platform to share their views and opinions in a creative manner. These are the communication tools of a Green Warrior – words, videos, images and creative action.

So what makes the programme different?

Well unlike many offices Greenpeace youth or Greenspeaker projects, the Green Warrior programme has a unique blend of fundraising element running through its veins …

During each session, Green Warriors talk about “Giving a Missed Call on 080 300 88 435″ to support the cause of Jungistan and saving forests – a current campaign of Greenpeace India. From these missed calls, leads are generated and then the communication, tele-fundraising and supporter services call up students or their family members, to sensitize them about Greenpeace and where appropriate to ask for support financially or as volunteers.

What is the role of volunteers?

Just like humans need oxygen to breathe, Green Warriors rely on support from volunteers. Volunteers are recruited from colleges, Direct Dialogue teams or through Public Engagement activities. The volunteers once recruited, are then inducted through an orientation process where they are introduced to their role and how their support makes such a valuable contribution to the programme.

Each volunteer performs a range of functions as per their capability. From fixing up an appointment at schools and colleges, to conducting presentation, distributing pamphlets (or other Green Warrior materials) or organizing an activity. Green Warrior volunteers are encourages to take forward the mission of Greenpeace, using their creativity, and their own network of contacts.

Feedback from volunteers has been very positive, and the programme has proved itself as a resource platform for everyone involved from students to working professionals, to develop their own opportunities and to rediscover themselves.

And the role of Green Warrior coordinators?

I started as a coordinator in Delhi, one month and fourteen days ago, and so far it has been a good experience. I’ve visited four schools across Delhi city, and have received entirely positive responses. For a recent visit to Panipat (in the state of Haryana) the school visit was entirely led by a volunteer.

I believe that programmes such as Green Warrior really illustrate how important mobilization is, to not only achieve the goals of the campaign, but also to build the people power that supports and sustains Greenpeace beyond our immediate campaign goals. Educating and inspiring the youth of today, to grow up into environmentally responsible citizens and Greenpeace supporters of tomorrow, is a worthwhile goal.

But sometimes being a Green Warrior coordinator seems a little crazy, and an uphill struggle. After mailing twenty letters, direct visits and phone calls my efforts really did start to pay off, the results were sweet and the calls inviting me to visit made my day – so yayy for that!!!

Finally in the next two years, I am confident that the Green Warrior programme will reach out to different cities across India and every school will be covered … that phones will keep ringing, inviting the coordinators to come down to a school, along with enthusiastic volunteers to start with a presentation, and to end with an inspiring future of a green and peaceful world.

I heart the Arctic human banner

This is the story of how Greenpeace inspired 17,000 people to take action offline and why it worked so well. Globally we reached beyond the known and trusted network of active Greenpeace volunteers to other organisations and the diversity of people who have never taken action offline with Greenpeace before – but had perhaps signed an online petition.

Humble beginning: from the first meeting to 280 human banners

In fall 2012 the volunteer coordinator community of Greenpeace sparked the idea of a global day of action for the Save the Arctic campaign (www.savethearctic.org). The idea was not only to gather online signatures, the petition to declare a global sanctuary in the Arctic, but also to take the campaign out into the community.

After the meeting in Paris with 20 volunteer coordinators; Markus one member of the core team recalls: “When we made our way home the next day, all of us were thinking about the idea of thousands of people coming together across the globe to show their love to the Arctic, to the planet and to the people.” To implement those goals they came up with, two main tools, human banners and speech bubble.

I Heart the Arctic speech bubble

Hearts for the Arctic – human banners as a visual expression

Holding up a banner on the main street is not exciting anymore. We needed new creative ways to demonstrate that a huge number of people care for the Arctic. Instead of holding a banner, we wanted people to ‘be‘ the banner.

Starting with social media the idea started to spread, and as more Greenpeace offices and local groups got involved, the creative juices continued to flow. By inviting people to develop their own ideas and to share ideas online, Greenpeace US did a great job recruiting a wider community of people to get involved, and to join the global day of action.

The mobilisation and why it worked so well

We wanted to make the idea as simple as possible so that everybody could join in. Toolkits on how to build a human banner were created centrally and spread widely, so that people who have no office around the corner, or local group in their city, could do it themselves.

“When creating the ‘I Love Arctic’ toolkits, we tried to strike a good balance of providing helpful guidance, and leaving as much creative space as possible. This creative space allows local organisers to take on real ownership for the event, and it makes the events so much more colourful and diverse.” said Markus.

Previously Greenpeace has focused its iconic mobilisations on the worldwide network of 14,000 volunteers. With these new “ready to go” toolkits we also could reach out beyond our usual suspects. For every tool in the kit, you could find detailed instructions of how to use it and what to take into consideration (for example: how to deal with the media, how to invite more people, etc.). Check out elements of the toolkit in the pdf files listed here:

• Background Briefing
• Recruitment Planning Guide
• Event Planning Checklist
• Guide to Getting Media Coverage
• How to Make a Human Banner
• Engaging in the I Love Arctic Global Day of Action

Outcome – or what happened on 20^th of April

”As the photos and videos keep popping up in our I Love Arctic inbox, we see the absolutely amazing diversity, creativity and general awesomeness of the events all around the world,” said an impressed Markus. “We recieved pictures from 280 cities in 38 countries with more than 17 000 people. And round about 2000 speech bubble pictures were sent.”

A colourful outcome of this global day of action was the creation of a book with photographs and statements from all the countries involved in the event. The book was given to members of the Arctic council on the 15th of May in Kiruna, completing the circle from online mobilisations to offline, and creating a tangible campaign impact. Find out more about how this worked in a Greenpeace blog post.

Results – or what made the global day of action that successful –

“It was inspiring to see all the images from all over the world. Especially the human banner from Jamaica where we don´t have an office.” said Markus.

For him, these are the main reasons, why this global day of action became a success for Greenpeace:

1. Political purpose: The Arctic Council narrative of the project gave the “I love Arctic” campaign the political purpose. All the questions and feedbacks around the Arctic Council showed that this political meeting gave a lot of motivation to take part in the “I love Arctic” day.
2. Flexible toolkit:  Not to give strict guidelines about how to build the human banner. To make a heart of 10 people on an iconic place can be just as effective as with 200 people. All the photographs show that it generated a great creativity by the volunteers.
3. Early start of the planning process:  Starting in October 2012 ( 7 months before the event) was a good timescale to anchor the global day of action in the year program of the offices and get in contact with the volunteers very early.
4. Co-creation within the project development: There have been regular meetings, bi-weekly core team calls and community calls made sure that everyone is on the same organization level. The communication within the team worked quite good, using Skype and conference calls.

To be continued

To make our work even more efficient in the future Markus closed with two points:

1. The human banner from Jamaica showed that there are groups and countries which can be mobilised. The internal networking functioned at its best. Now we need to focus. To reach out beyond our active volunteers and mobilise a greater number of organisers, who are not associated with Greenpeace. Other organisations do this very well already and we can learn from them to use  social media channels more efficiently during key mobilisation periods
2. It was great experience for volunteers, coordinators as well as for the whole organization. An excellent lesson to be learned for our next campaigns and projects.

Kony 2012 Network locations prepared by SocialFlow.

If these issues resonate with your organization, join us for a special event in Washington, DC, that we are co-producing with Communicopia: “Networking your Institution for the Citizen Age.”

We’ll be sharing our latest thinking on the cultural, political, and technological context that has changed how social change happens, and the attributes of networked institutions that are structured in fundamentally different ways than traditional NGO’s and punch far above their weight online and off.

Registration is limited to Director level and above (people with the ability to influence organizational structures and cultures). This is a free event with refreshments provided thanks to our partners. RSVP’s are required, please register today!

Networking Your Institution for the Citizen Age: The traits of successful people-powered organizations

Many traditional NGO’s struggle with digital innovation, supporter engagement, and integrating campaigns and communications across silos. Yet there is a new category of typically smaller, more nimble, less hierarchical, and highly collaborative “networked institutions” who integrate people power into their core and are seeing great success.

Networked institutions, typically those “born after the Internet”, behave quite differently from traditional NGO’s, and because their structures are more aligned with the fundamental organizing principles of the web, they punch far above their weight online. But traditional institutions who want the benefits of people power are also integrating new behaviors and practices to become more open, adaptable, and networked.

In this free workshop we will discuss:

• the differences between traditional NGO’s and networked institutions
• why networked institutions are an adaptation to the unique challenges and opportunities of our times
• a developmental framework for how institutions manage digital, including limits and opportunities at each level
• integration behaviors of successful people-powered institutions and network centric campaigns

The presentation will be sprinkled with multiple real world stories from networked institutions and recent innovations from across the Greenpeace International network.

RSVP here.

Event Hosts

Jason Mogus is the principal strategist of Communicopia, a Vancouver, Canada based firm that has helped social mission organizations create world class digital programs, projects, and teams for 20 years. Jason has led digital transformation projects for Human Rights Watch, the UN Foundation, the Elders, the TckTckTck climate coalition, and the new Tar Sands Solutions Network. He is also the founder and current board member of Web of Change.

Michael Silberman is the Global Director of the Digital Mobilisation Lab at Greenpeace. The “MobLab” exists to transform how campaigns are fought and won, pioneering a powerful new era of “people-powered” strategies that amplify campaign impact and create positive change. Silberman and his team work with Greenpeace and its allies in 42 countries to envision, test, and roll out creative new means of communicating, organizing, and fundraising online. He is a co-founder of EchoDitto and on the board of Web of Change.

Presented by Communicopia and the Greenpeace Mobilisation Lab. Thanks also to our co-sponsors Sunlight Foundation and EchoDitto.

RSVP today.

2M take part in global march against Monsanto #MAM

On May 25th, two million people took part in the global March Against Monsanto, representing a truly global movement with protests in six continents, 52 countries, and 436 cities.

The event — a social media-generated call to action against genetically modified foods and the multinational corporations that produce them — marked the first such global, unified protest for this cause, organizers said. Via Everyday Rebellion and Planetsave

Facebook Responds to 15 Companies Dropping Advertising Over Domestic Violence Content

A petition started by Women, Action & the Media, the Everyday Sexism Project and author/activist Soraya Chemaly has prompted Facebook to review and improve its policies on gender-based hate speech.

The campaign was launched just over a week ago and since then participants have sent over 60,000 tweets and 5,000 emails. The coalition has grown to over 100 women’s movement and social justice organizations.

15 major companies have pulled their advertising as a result, including online bank Nationwide UK, Nissan UK, and J Street.

One week later, Facebook has responded with an important commitment to refine its approach to hate speech. Via Techilicious

A million heroes for the Arctic

Gamification, a Turkish celebrity partnership, and more are getting a million Turkish people to act for the Arctic. The camaign has collected more than 400,00 signatures so far. 1 Milyon Kahraman

Sod the poor –  take your money offshore

A new website by ActionAid U.K. is mocking corporations for dodging their bills in the world’s poorest countries. The campaign is asking supporters to sign a petition calling on David Cameron to put an end to tax havens and to make sure that the poorest countries benefit when he chairs the G8 summit on June 17-18.

Petition building for young rapper imprisoned over ‘terrorist threat’

More than 85,000 people have signed a petition calling for Cameron D’Ambrosio’s release after he was jailed for writing what police call “Communicating a Terrorist Threat” on Facebook. The campaign, run by the Center for Rights, has more than 1.5 million views, with almost all of the growth coming from people sharing on Facebook.

What’s Missing?

Have a people-powered campaign you’re tracking that should be here? Use and follow #CampaignSpot to share creative mobilisation campaigns.

Volunteers in St. Petersburg, Florida took part in the I Love Arctic Day of Action April 20, 2013 by creating a human heart on the beach.

I Love Arctic was the biggest global mobilisation plan for Greenpeace, with 20 offices representing 30 countries co-creating events with their volunteer networks to host massive on-the-ground protests April 20, 2013. The digital-grassroots campaign extended into the day of the event, when supporters uploaded photos live to Twitter and Instagram. The idea was that the momentum created by the posts would strengthen the message Greenpeace was sending to the governing body for the Arctic, the Arctic Council.

The Challenge

Merging digital engagement strategies with the offline mobilisation efforts proved to be an exciting frontier, say both the online manager, Cassady Sharp, and the offline strategist, Mary Nicol.

Focused around the single day of action, the newly formed team worked to engage volunteers in either hosting an event or attending one.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen us come together as an organization across countries and across niches to collaborate on a campaign,” Mary says, calling the campaign an “audacious goal.”

The goal was to mobilise effort around creating a global sanctuary in the Arctic, free from any form of extraction.

An audacious goal, to be sure, given the “powerful minds” that would need to be changed and the challenge of accessing the Arctic Council and its various state departments.

“We targeted a lot of players,” Mary says, pointing to a wide range, from oil companies to the U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.

“The main thing is we focused on not being able to do it on our own through grassroots engagement,” says Mary. Admitting that Greenpeace’s offline engagement was particularly successful with one-on-one communications, Mary says this campaign clearly called for a “global mobilisation” that would leverage the support of volunteers more actively engaged in online activities.

Enter the digital team, who had organized itself into an online advocacy team for blogs, websites, social media, e-mail delivery and petitions, but had little engagement with the grassroots campaign management.

Getting Started

Before the first brainstorming session, the strategists held a competition on the popular blogging platform Tumblr. They invited 12 staff to post pieces of campaigns that have been most inspiring.

“The idea was to get more people working with us,” Mary says. “People posted ideas of things that work well, things that reflect what’s cool, what’s inspiring.”

Then the team used that momentum to think collaboratively around the global day of action for the Arctic.

Choosing Tactics

Before this collaboration, a traditional grassroots campaign focussed efforts on volunteers known to Greenpeace; the digital team also had a list of known volunteers, although communication systems to each group were different. Marrying the two was the ultimate goal of the U.S. team going into this campaign.

“We knew that when people would come to our website and say they wanted to volunteer, they’d fill out the information and receive an e-mail auto response. Then they’d get a downloadable toolkit when a campaign came up, and that was it. We often never heard back from them,” Mary says.

For this campaign, the digital team chose a different tactic, one that was visually appealing with the use of two buttons, and offered an option.

Once they hooked a volunteer into a host stream, grassroots campaign organizers layered in the specialties that they are best at — phone calls each week to committed volunteers, group conference calls with campaign leaders, chats with other campaigners, for example.

Mary says there was a lot of learning in the collaboration. The on- and offline teams shared  documents, understanding, time lines, work packages and responsibilities. The challenge, and something the team hopes to better next time ‘round, was ensuring clear communication between all the strategists from the get-go, she adds, mentioning that having the right people in the room for all strategy conversations proved to be crucial.

Digital Weigh-in

From the standpoint of the digital players, the campaign goal to mobilise 200 events across the U.S. was equally intimidating.

I Love Arctic website included a dual-ask.

They’d had fortunate results from e-mail campaigns dedicated to direct interested volunteers to a sign-up page or online petition, but engaging people in an on-the-ground day of action was something new, Cassady says.

Also new: a mixed-message tactic, where the call to action is two-pronged, offering choice to potential volunteers, in this case, either host and event, or attend one.

“We toiled with that – usually we have just one ask,” Cassady says. “This was a little different. Our web page had two big buttons, one for hosting an event, and the other to find an event to attend.”

In the end, while there were more than 60 events on U.S. soil April 20, and while the mobilisation effort fell short of the highest hopes, both Mary and Cassady agree it provided valuable learning for the future.

“I felt like we learned that we should have been focused more on getting people out to something, rather than asking them to either attend or host an event,” Cassady says.

The Digital Process

Digitally, the campaign ran with a website starting March 5. The home page linked to the “ask” which offered the two options.

The main campaign page was viewed nearly 43,000 times and an average time spent on the page was six minutes, four minutes longer than the site-wide average. The page included a live Twitter feed around the hash-tag #ILoveArctic, with an auto generated tweet sent to John Kerry.

While 500 people clicked on the “Host an event” button, a much smaller number pulled the trigger on that “ask.”

On the other hand, the “Find an Event” page was visited roughly 6,000 times and, “surprisingly enough, a big chunk of that came from organic search traffic,” Cassady says. Organic search traffic might include anyone searching for a volunteer opportunity with Greenpeace, for example.

“It was interesting for this campaign people spent longer on the home page, poking around at information and possibly enjoying the live Twitter feed,” she says.

“It was surprising to me that most of the time we can count on e-mails to our list being pretty successful in getting people to sign up, but this time people came to us not from email, but via generic Arctic or Greenpeace search terms.”

Day of Action

18 senior citizen activists in Portland Oregon, including Linda Zenicanin, front, show their love for the Arctic during the Day of Action April 20, 2013.

On- and offline collaboration was particularly effective on the day of action, when the live posts to Instagram and Twitter proved to engage teams in a wide variety of locations.

“A cool thing happened,” Mary says. “When we were looking at photos after the events and seeing who had participated, there were lots of new people, people we hadn’t seen before on the ground.”

Even during the event itself, as organizers watched the live blogging, they remarked on the number of new people that seemed to be involved. One of the people they hadn’t met yet was Linda Zenicanin in Portland, Oregon.

She didn’t fit the stereotype for a Greenpeace volunteer; she isn’t young and she has a physical disability.

“One of our team blogged about that, and Linda, herself, replied, saying how pleased she was to be involved. That generated energy around the event,” Mary says. “Had we not had collaboration with the digital team that would not have happened.”

New learning

In the end, the teams grew a new understanding of one another’s strengths, reasoning and strategy, Cassady says.

“That was really encouraging. We took something that was a tricky thing to do, difficult to sell people on, and mobilised an effort around it.”

Building on the strength of the communication between the grassroots and online teams from the I Love Arctic campaign, Greenpeace plans more mobilisation this summer using similar collaboration.

Cassady says she’s looking forward to more communication with her grassroots colleagues, particularly in explaining what dedicated grassroots volunteers think of as the most “cool” tactics.

The U.S. campaign team delivered a photo album to Secretary of State John Kerry following the event. An album was also delivered to the Arctic Council in May.

“We can certainly learn from the more qualitative data that grassroots get,” she says.

Following the day of action, the team collaborated on a photographic display which they presented to Kerry’s office. The presentation was made by a group of volunteers clad in polyester cheer-leading outfits, and the series of events leading up to, and during the presentation were tweeted visually to engage the online audience.

Across the globe on April 20 more than 17,000 people in 280 cities spanning 38 countries came together to speak out on behalf of the Arctic. They made human banners in the shape of hearts to spell “I Love Arctic”. Photos of the events were presented to the Arctic Council May 15 in Kiruna, Sweden.

Stay Connected: Cassady Sharp: @cassadyblair  IPS Arctic Council: @ArcticPeoples

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“We are not as sophisticated as some of the larger organizations such as Greenpeace,” says program director Alex Miller. “For us, it’s about meeting people in their worlds and showing them how their worlds intersect with politics, and then convincing them that political activity is not just possible, regardless of age, but also effective.”

Washington Bus engages youth on the ground through events like the Capitol Hill Block Party, which builds online engagement.

Yet over the past year, Washington Bus has found regular and consistent spikes in its e-mail open rates and click through rates. In fact, Alex estimates e-mail open rates are up by about 25 per cent on average since last year.

The 2013 eNonprofit Benchmark study seems to suggest this is an anomaly: an analysis of 1.6 billion e-mails send to 45 million subscribers showed e-mail open rates have stayed the same, a 13 per cent open rate for fundraising e-mails and 14 per cent for advocacy e-mails. Click-through rates declined in 2012 by an average of 22 per cent.

“Regularly, we see increases (of e-mail open rates) upward of six per cent over last year,” he says. “With spikes that are also occurring more regularly, the average open rate is up significantly,” says Alex, adding click-through rates have increased consistently with e-mail open rates.

This is good news for the Washington-based mobilisation organization that aims to increase community engagement from high school students to young adults, but it’s a bit of a sidebar to their regular work, Alex says.

Instead of trying to turn youth onto politics, the Bus philosophy meets the people in their own arenas. They turn the questions inside out until young people realize that in order to keep the food-bank shelves where they volunteer stocked, and its doors open, they need to become involved at a level other than serving soup.

If there’s one thing Washington Bus members are good at, it’s connecting on the ground, in communities. They admit it usually looks like a party or celebration of some kind — hundreds of students, for example, gathering annually to for the Capitol Hill Block Party.

While many advocacy organizations are intentionally focusing on digital engagement opportunities and then managing the flip to offline engagement, Alex says it’s ironic that the Bus is finding their offline engagement is driving their e-mail-open rate success.

Over the past year, one of the intentional and common-sense strategies the Bus used was to wring out its e-mail list.

“There were a lot of high-school students on the list, and we know high-school students rarely check their inboxes,” he says.

They cleaned up their list, and then went on the hunt for addresses of people who were more likely to engage through e-mail. They found that was people who they’d already connected with on the ground through their offline work and are interested in politics.

Beyond that, Washington Bus staff accidentally noticed a trend: when they switched up authors of e-mails, the open rates spiked.

E-mail open rates for youth aged 15 to 35 are bucking the trend, say Washington Bus organizers who have seen better-than-average results.

“People are curious,” Alex says.

They also like pictures, he adds.

“People care about people. Pictures of faces, e-mails about new fellows, new staff, new people seem to correlate with a spike in e-mail open rates,” he says.

Probably the biggest factor in the rise in Washington Bus e-mail open rates, Alex says, stems right from the core philosophy the Bus movement has adopted: providing something of interest, even if it has nothing to do with what might be the obvious reason for the e-mail.

Alex says he was shocked to find that when he added a link to an Easter egg this spring, the e-mail moved more people to click the link than usual.

“It was just something extra, something unrelated to the real reason for the e-mail,” he adds. “People find that engaging and entertaining, and it makes a connection for them apart from the main reason for the e-mail.”

It is similar to what Washington Bus organizers do in an offline engagement. They gather people for one cause, and then use a game or another fun activity to engage them in an intersection point between their passion — be it music, or art, or something else — and the potential for civic engagement in decision-making organizations.

Alex says he thinks there are several reasons for the spike in e-mail open rates, not the least being the use of e-mail to giveaway tickets to events and parties.

“You have to stand out in the crowd somehow. Many of these people are very politically engaged, and get tons of tons of e-mail. We want to make sure there’s value in the e-mail,” he says.

Asking people for something regularly is not going to be successful, he says.

“We have the philosophy that all the things that would annoy you about a person in real life will equally annoy you about a person on the Internet.”

“Keep it light, fun , short, sweet, irreverent, and provide just enough information to intrigue the reader,” he says.

The Washington Bus plans to do more of the same going forward. Right now, one of the items Alex is considering is how often to send e-mails. The Bus sends less frequently than some other organization, just one e-mail every week or two.

If you are interested in more information about the Bus movement across the nation, get in contact with Alex, alex(at)washingtonbus.org.

This is the first in a MobLab series exploring how to increase e-mail opens and response rates. The 2013 eNonprofit Benchmark study, found an overall decline in e-mail response rates in 2012.

Stay Connected: @WashingtonBus

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That was the case for Johnny when running one of 38 Degrees’ fastest growing campaigns ever, its Save our Forests campaign in 2011.

It was members of 38 Degrees, a 850,000 people-powered campaigning organization, who voted in favor of creating a Save our Forests campaign. The campaign successfully mounted a 500,000 strong movement calling on the United Kingdom government to not sell the country’s forests.

According to Johnny, what made the campaign effective was the acknowledgement that people wanted to take part. The 38 Degrees team found creative ways to involve them.

More than 500,000 people signed the “Save Our Forests” petition and 100,000 people e-mailed or called their MPs urging them to stop the forest sell-off.

38 Degrees asked members to fund a people-powered YouGov poll, which found that 84 per cent of the public wanted the forests kept in public hands.

Building on this momentum, 38 Degrees members chipped in nearly £60,000 ($91,670 U.S.) to pay for ads in national newspapers to highlight that 84 per cent of the British public opposed the forest sale.

The campaign was growing at an unprecedented rate and the 38 Degrees team of three knew they couldn’t manage it alone. So they began encouraging people who were really involved to set up their own local groups. More than 30 groups cropped up.

“That meant we had local groups all over the country putting up posters, talking to the press and holding rallies,” says Johnny.

“I think that was how we won, being relaxed enough and realistic enough to know the members created this movement and our job was to help steer it and direct it but to let it run wild and not try and hold it back.

“That’s what excites me about supporter-led campaigning. If you can enable those movements, a lot of awesome stuff can happen.”

Johnny’s latest work focuses on the untapped potential for mobile mobilisation.

After leaving 38 Degrees, Johnny began researching the success of other supporter-led campaign organizations like Moveon.org, Avaaz, and GetUp! Not only were these groups present only North America, Europe and Australasia, none of them had figured out the mobile Internet.

“That’s a big problem because the emerging world only owns basic smart phones,” says Johnny.

Johnny became fascinated by the potential for supporter-led campaigning in the emerging world with improved technology.

“I’m pretty convinced that Internet-driven campaigning is going to become a global phenomenon,” he says.

It’s this passion that landed him his current role at Change.org, where he’s tasked with the goal of innovating Change.org’s technology to empower as many people as possible around the world.

It’s seeing people harness the power of personal story to drive change on issues they care about that has Johnny predicting the role of professional campaigners driving professional campaigns will evolve.

“If you can get professional campaigners supporting campaigns and advising them that’s when we start to see huge, small-scale change across the world,” says Johnny.

Johnny points to examples like the No More Page 3 campaign in the U.K. started by actress and writer Lucy-Anne Holmes. Lucy-Anne, who has no professional campaigning experience, has been able to galvanize 100,000 people to sign her petition. Most recently Girlguiding U.K., which has 530,000 members, issued a statement, which supports the campaign calling for “No More Page 3.”

Rupert Murdoch himself hinted several months ago that he may scrap the feature. He was responding to a tweet asking him to scrap page three, which was first published in 1970.

He tweeted: “page three so last century! You maybe right, don’t know but considering. Perhaps halfway house with glamorous fashionistas.”

Johnny’s most recently helped launch Campaign Bootcamp, a five-day residential course for young people who want to run more effective campaigns.

Johnny was one of five guests attending Greenpeace’s Digital Mobilisation Skillshare in February.

Stay Connected: @j_chatterton

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Child abuse billboard contains ‘secret message’ not visible to adults

Via Gawker.com

To try and do more than simply raise awareness of child abuse, the international nonprofit Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk (ANAR) recently joined forces with the ad agency Grey Group Spain to create a public service announcement that both draws attention to the problem, and may actually make a difference.

Using a technology known as lenticular printing, Grey Group designed an ad that contains a “secret message” that is only visible from the POV of children (~4’4″). (Submitted by Katie Flynn-Jambeck)

Stop Coca Cola from curbing Australia’s Cash for Containers program

#cokefail

Beverage producers led by Coca-Cola have stopped effective government action across Australia to introduce a 10c refundable bottle levy. To drum up support for a national ‘Cash for Containers’ recycling scheme, Greenpeace Australia is running a successful campaign that’s collected 70,000 petition signatures, and compelled 10,000 peopel to e-mail their local MPs.

Soccer video sends powerful deforestation message to Brazilians

Via pinterest.com/darrenbarefoot/remarkables/

To show that every four minutes an area equivalent to a football field is deforested in Brazil, WWF-Brazil in partnership with the agency Grey 141 launched an unusual tactic aimed at football fans. During the rerun of a football game of Brazilian women on TV Bandeirantes, the  the color of the lawn and game field gradually changed from green to brown.

At the end of the game, viewers received the following message: “Every four minutes a football field is cleared in Brazil. Visit the site (wwf.org.br) to learn how to help. After the game, access to the website increased 73%. People are more aware of the problem of deforestation. And Brazil won on and off the field.

Unicef’s Little Bet on Pinterest

Via bethkanter.org

While not a new campaign, we still love this creative approach to Pinterest. Created by UNICEF, the fictional Pinterest profile of Ami Musa features the less-than-luxurious desires of the 13-year-old girl from Sierra Leone. On a board called “Really want these,” Musa has pinned an image of hands holding plain rice, a rusty faucet and running water.

Read Beth Kanter’s blog as she interviews Unicef’s head of digital engagement Laila Takeh to learn more about their cost-effective experiment to raise awareness using Pinterest.

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