Is it just me, or is this year just flying by a Japanese Maglev train? I wrote this piece a little while back, and continue to be surprised by how many campaigns aren’t familiar with the ladder of engagement.

Through my work in campaigns, and even earlier in student politics, I’ve always tried to answer the questions: who are my people? When my task is to inspire people to do the extraordinary, how can I locate those kindred spirits and bring them into my cause? How can I engage in a way that is meaningful to them? And how can I recognise and work with people who have differing levels of interest? And is there a way I can get people more invested?

Anyone who’s done this kind of work will intuitively understand the concept I’m writing about today: the ladder of engagement. The ladder of engagement is a model that has been around campaigning for many years and it was mainstreamed by the Obama campaign which helps campaigners relationship-build with supporters and get them more involved (this article by Tectonica is a fab introduction to organising frameworks). You see, we understand that not everyone has the same amount of time and commitment to a campaign or a cause. There’s a hierarchy of engagement: from the flakes to the folks who are first in and last to leave. 

National, pan-European or even global campaigns often end up accidentally engaging people in this way. They offer a range of opportunities and see who comes along. Sometimes, people will naturally seek out additional ways in which they can support the cause. But we can use this model to intentionally drive engagement. The wise campaigner will learn to identify the potential ‘rungs’ in their engagement ladder and be intentional about moving supporters up it.

Who are your supporters really?

I’ve written before about how to identify people’s individual interests and dial in communications on what motivates them, so I won’t rehash old territory here. As I said then:

It’s important to try to understand people’s previous involvement in your cause, what motivates them and what gives them purpose. If you know this, then it’s easier to frame a request appropriately.

Don’t assume all your supporters are the same. They may have different motivations for joining your cause. They may not yet be fully committed, or they may have years of experience. They are different ages and life stages. They have diverse and varied ways of looking at a problem or a social movement. All these aspects can strengthen your campaign—if you understand them. 

Where are they on the ladder right now?

Let me give you an analogy for the ladder of engagement that might be useful. I’ve used this analogy at training sessions. The ladder of engagement is a bit like your path to getting married. You typically have a first date, then a few more dates. You’ll meet the person’s friends and their families. You might move in and get engaged, and finally get married. 

Some people take every step on that ladder in that order. Some people take the rungs out of order. Some people get to a certain stage and stay there. People can move up the ladder—but also sometimes down. And of course, there’s always the occasional couple who head to Vegas on the first date. (In fact, I once met someone in a training session in Sweden who’d proposed to her husband on the first date, and last I heard they were still married!)

Cultivating someone along your ladder of engagement is honestly a bit like the courting process. How engaged is a person with your efforts? You need to tread carefully. Going in too big, too soon, can be off-putting. There’s also a danger of going too low. Someone might not feel that your offer is satisfying, or in line with their skills or commitment level. It’s vital to test the waters, so you know exactly how to proceed with cultivating a relationship with a supporter.

What do you want them to do?

As a campaign or an organisation, you have volunteer roles and needs to fill. You have a sense of the ideal activities you’d like volunteers to do. Prospective volunteers have their own interests and needs. It’s important to find a balance between these two halves of the equation. What do you need to meet your strategic goals versus what are people interested in doing?

This is a great time to canvass your employees or campaign team. What are the specific needs that you have to fill? That might be finding a few volunteers to take on gold standard leadership roles like running canvassing sessions. It could be to raise a certain amount of money. These might be lofty goals: in fact, you might be reading this article because you’re struggling to find volunteers to tackle these big jobs. 

You could also break goals down into manageable chunks. Not all commitments have to be the same. By doing this work you can also start the process of developing a recognition scheme for your volunteers. In my experience working in politics, this is a great way to build and sustain people’s engagement. Weigh the activities you include in your recognition scheme by importance—how much the volunteer is moving the needle—not by hours. This can really help encourage people to take another step up the ladder of engagement to take on more responsibility and commitment.

How do you get people there? 

Consistency, consistency, consistency. 

Once you’ve identified your volunteer needs and tasks, create your ladder of engagement. Mapping out every step of your ladder of engagement gives you the power to create consistent ‘offers’ across your campaign or organisation. You can all work as one team to get people more involved, instead of creating internal barriers and mini-programs of work that prevent volunteers from connecting with other parts of your organisation. All your departments, areas and parties must be working from the same ladder of engagement and the same plan: that’s how people external to your organisation see you!

The more sophisticated your organisation becomes, the more important it is that all these opportunities to get involved can be linked. Becoming a donor could lead to someone volunteering at a fundraising event. A really great donor onboarding process might therefore highlight other simple, fundraising-relevant opportunities available for a new supporter. Meanwhile, someone who was onboarded for clerical work might be interesting in picking up the phone and doing some canvassing. Why not? They’re already coming to the office once a week.

Finally, at every step of a supporter’s journey you should be strategically gathering data. A complete picture of a volunteer will give you important clues about where and how to engage them next. Follow the program I’ve laid out here, and you’ll be moving people up the ladder in no time.

Every campaign is different and comes with its own challenges and nuances. And yet, with every campaign comes the same fundamental truth: somehow, you have to get people aligned behind your vision and get them to take action for your cause. You have to compete for people’s time in an over-saturated attention economy. You have to manage diverse stakeholders and audiences. You have to maintain the fidelity of your overall message while tailoring it to these different recipients.

Oh—and you have to do it on a budget. 

It’s time to get tactical about this work. To employ tactical communications is to be strategic and intentional about how you communicate. It means developing the right messaging, the right balance of content, and using compelling ways of engaging with people. It involves considering structures, content, channels and approaches. 

Learning to be a really great campaign communicator might be the work of a lifetime, but in this post, I’ll tell you a few of my top tactics for tightening up your comms strategy.

Tactic 1: get the content mix right 

Every communication plan will require two different types of decision-making: business-as-usual communications and ad hoc messaging. Sometimes we make things hard for ourselves by thinking too short-term. We prioritise the time-sensitive email that has to go out soon over the long-term cohesive strategic plan for communication.

A focus on reactive communications can be absolutely necessary in a short-term campaigning context like an election. Some campaigns and organisations really make it a strength of their work. But, generally speaking, a lack of ongoing, broad-strokes planning can make it hard for your campaign to drive consistent and relevant messaging. Think about it: if you’re always reacting to current events and time-sensitive issues at the expense of your long-term messaging and lines to take, aren’t you letting other players drive your communication strategy? Where is your own campaign’s voice in this approach?

If you’re running an advocacy- or issue-based campaign, most of what you’re releasing through your communication channels should be planned. You can be agile with the implementation of your strategy and incorporate new data and feedback as they come in. However, all the base pieces should be in place, and they should be pieces which strongly reflect your mission and goals on your own terms. 

Lessons: 

• Ask yourself: what’s the overall aim of this communications plan?

• Don’t send something for the sake of sending something, thus sacrificing the long-term for the short-term.

Tactic 2: use complementary messaging

Regardless of the medium, your messaging should work in harmony with a wider theme. When you create a common theme across all media, you can tell a powerful story. This strategy forces you to hone in on the exact, distilled message that is most important to your campaign. This will prevent you overwhelming people by pushing out potentially conflicting messages, or distracting people with smaller issues that take away from your most powerful talking point. 

Leading up to the 2015 election, the Conservative Party talked consistently about their long-term economic plan for the nation. This is a level of consistency in messaging that pays off especially well over a long campaign because the story can connect and develop. You might consider phasing your communications plan so that your initial phase pushes out the core message, while later communications can build on this work. Don’t be tempted to mix things up, and sacrifice your overall message for short-term variety. 

Lessons: 

• Ask yourself: what is the single most vital message my campaign must send?

• Find ways of delivering the same core message through different formats and channels

Tactic 3: choose the right channels

You can have the best messaging in the world and a perfectly optimal mix of content, but if people can’t access it through their preferred channel then none of it will matter. Disparate channels appeal to different users and both your content and your budget need to address that reality. 

Think about how campaigners used to use consumer data. Data could develop powerful profiles that informed what kind of material people were likely to want to receive. Different types of literature and messaging could reflect the language, design, tone, layout and media preferred by different geographical areas and demographics. 

It is now much harder to use this data at a more granular level than in the past. Still, the questions remain: where are people at and what’s the most cost-effective way to start reaching them? I’ve written about this topic at length before. I always recommend campaigners use technology to segment and personalise. Think about the following steps:

1. Start with your own email list

2. Then your own social media lists

3. Use earned over paid at first to get to the low-hanging fruit

4. Use your website wisely

5. Use more expensive interventions like texts, direct mail, phone very tactically. They can be very impactful with crucial or hard-to-reach people not responsive to your other channels but they come at a steeper cost

Lessons:

• Be data-driven—use what you know about your supporters and audiences to target messaging

• Be budget-wise—efficient use of contacts you already have is the best place to start

Conclusion: consistency and planning are key

I hope you can see that when you do your planning and strategising ahead of time, you can create capacity for yourself and your staff. The last thing you want is to be worrying about your regularly-scheduled messaging when it’s all hands on deck to handle a true crisis communication or develop something time-sensitive in a pinch. Set up your strategic communications plan to run well ahead of time. Much of your work should be planned and budgeted upfront so that execution is quick and easy on the day. (Do remember in times of crisis to pause scheduled comms immediately, though!) 

Your messaging should be just as consistent. As the campaigner, you might worry that everyone else will get tired of the same message. Remember that you are not the audience for your own campaign. You’re receiving a very concentrated dose. As soon as it leaves your office, your campaign message has to hold its own against all sorts of other messages and distractions. Cheap communication tricks and panicky, reactive messaging doesn’t help—it hinders. Let other people dilute their messaging and use social media gimmicks as a crutch. You’ll be on time, on message and on budget.

The Great Resignation is on everyone’s radar right now. With nearly ¼ of UK workers thinking about getting a new job, we seem to be having a cultural moment of debate over what it means to be satisfied with our work life. An overheated job market and the shockwaves from COVID-19 have people questioning career choices, travel opportunities, work-life balance and work culture. I’ve spent the past twelve years working in the campaign world. At the end of last year, I left NationBuilder (a company and team that I deeply love and respect), and it was a good time for me to introspect about why I’m still chasing joy and growth at work. I planned on posting this in December, but it’s been a few busy months. Nevertheless, I wanted to share with you some ways to find it for yourselves and your teams.

1. Know thyself

Before you can empower other people, you’ve got to take stock of your strengths and your capabilities. Ask yourself, too, what you value and what you want more of in your professional life. Personally, I enjoy talking to lots of different people about the work they’re doing, what they like about it, what makes them tick and what brings them joy. For me, a job I love and that I’m passionate about must include helping others stretch, grow and come together to enjoy what they do.

2. Look for companies that are intentional about their culture

This piece of advice may feel odd given how many of us now work fully remotely or in hybrid models. I think it’s even more relevant than ever. How do we maintain those connections to other people which are so important instinctively as human beings? At NationBuilder, I had the real joy of working with a leadership team that intentionally created community and nurtured a sense of belonging with a fully-remote workforce. Leaders in work settings need to find the right balance between flexibility and structure to ensure teams can still come together; a challenge for many organisational leaders and employees right now. 

Implement brief recurring check-ins with your team. Ask open-ended questions: how are you doing as a human being? What things are you working on? What’s new with you? Your agenda is to learn and hold space, not to catch people out. 

Encourage cross-functional 1-to-1s and weekly pairings with key stakeholders from other teams to learn more about their work. Understanding how other teams operate and what their priorities and challenges are can assist you in your own team-building and problem-solving efforts.

Create spaces for your team to just ‘be’, and to talk about what is happening in the world. This might be an emotionally-charged place, especially right now. Be prepared for that, and encourage people to step away as needed or hold space for it as a workplace community.

3. Create cultures of empowerment

In a culture of empowerment, team members are treated as adults, trusted to manage their own time and ask for help as needed. When you treat your team as the authorities on their own portfolios, their time is freed up to do their best possible work and maximise impact. If you empower and challenge in the right proportion and offer a strong support network, staff will flourish. 

4. Lead with honesty and transparency

Commit to transparency in your interactions. Are you creating a culture where you can have the hard conversations before they become harder? As humans we have a tendency to overthink things. We have conversations with people in our heads when we see potential conflict on the horizon, but we don’t think to have a kind conversation with the people in question to alleviate that conflict. If someone says something you don’t understand, or that doesn’t feel right, offer the benefit of the doubt and ask for clarification. Also, it’s okay not to have all of the answers but kindness and transparency are especially key during times of uncertainty.

5. Feed your growth with good data 

Growth is such a core aspect of feeling successful and joyful at work. We all innately want to grow and learn. I spent many years in politics, which is a risk-averse culture. I learned a lot, but there was also a lot I wasn’t able to put into practice until I started a job with a culture that let me build confidence in my leadership skills and make difficult decisions. 

Start-ups and newer companies can be a great opportunity for people with a lot of knowledge who’d like the chance to apply it in many different ways. When you’re evaluating the culture at an organisation, ask yourself whether you’ll have the freedom to get the information and data you need to be successful. I personally like to debate ideas and projects, which probably has its roots in when I did competitive debating. So for me, important questions would be: are decisions based on data and wisdom? Does everyone want to keep learning, and does the workplace facilitate and encourage that? Is it okay to not always be right?

These are some of the things I was reflecting on in December before I transition into my new role. And what about you? Are you making a career shift right now, or rethinking your priorities? If so, what questions are you asking yourself to make sure you’re maximising the best parts of your career and finding the strongest opportunities possible for growth?

This week I’m reflecting on the practical and emotional changes that have come along with transitioning into a post-lockdown world. I spent early October in Manchester for the Conservative Party Conference, my first in-person event since the pandemic started all those long months ago. They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Attending Conference was definitely eye-opening in that regard, and I’ve been thinking about what still applies and what new norms are being established. If you’ve got mixed feelings about attending in-person events, are planning or hosting an event, or are new to your career and have never experienced professional networking in person, this post is for you!

Norms about physical contact have changed

We all seem more mindful of people’s comfort levels around physical contact and personal space. Ask if you can give someone a hug or go in for a handshake—and do it in a way that gives them permission to say no.

Supporting people’s efforts to stay safe is appreciated

If you’re organising an event, think about ways you can protect your attendees and make it easy for them to protect each other. Everyone’s comfort levels are different but we have good guidance now on the safest courses of action. Reminders to distance, adequately spaced seating, verifying people’s vaccinations, giving people an outside option and providing simple courtesies like hand sanitiser are all really welcome.

Reconsider how you communicate on behalf of, and about, your organisation

I was interested to see the ways companies are changing their approach to communications, or reframing how they work. Two big takeaways for me were the promotion of working from home or hybrid work as a competitive advantage, and the use of QR codes for networking and engagement. The latter is timely; people have become used to using QR codes in day to day life for tasks like opening a restaurant menu. It makes sense that this is a newly-popular strategy for engagement. It’s no-touch, it’s easy, it functions like a business card of a flyer, and best of all it’s trackable. Even LinkedIn is providing QR code support for personal profiles.

Lean into the weirdness, but evolve

We’re all a little under-socialised lately, right? People who are showing up for in-person events are desperate to meet new people and connect with old contacts—use that to your advantage! If you’re new in your career, now is the time to get out there and capitalise on everyone’s relief at being able to attend these events again. Recognise that we’re all relearning some of those skills. You’ll find that getting in front of the right decision makers and stakeholders is so much easier in person than virtually. Dropping someone an email just isn’t the same as an in person meeting where you can rely on shared attendance and casual conversation to connect.

If you’re organising something in-person you can brand it as a big social and networking opportunity. Acknowledge that things are a little different, reassure your attendees that you’re being responsible, and consider offering creative icebreakers and ways to facilitate new connections. And consider who might be left behind as we move back into in-person environments. It’s easy to make assumptions about who can participate, but you don’t have the option of convenient trackable links and sign-ups to tell you exactly where your audience is coming from. Your audience also can’t rely on post-conference recordings or networking opportunities if they can’t attend in-person. Virtual accessibility has benefited people with less flexible schedules, childcare arrangements, complex out-of-work responsibilities and tight budgets. I’m interested to see how we can maintain spaces for as many people in our field as possible even when virtual options are no longer the standard.

Have you ever noticed that when something’s on your mind, you start seeing it everywhere?

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about the right to privacy laws and the regulation of free speech and political advertising. At the same time, I’ve been in the process of selling my flat. As some readers probably know, it’s a process that involves speaking to some of the many real estate agents out there and making a decision about who to trust with this stressful and complicated event. I made my choice of real estate agent and continued working on my pre-sale to do list. 

Then, something strange happened: an agency I didn’t engage with contacted me to say they noticed my property was going up for sale. The communication was addressed to “the legal owners of the property”. My first reaction was one of distaste. It feels strange and uncomfortable when people reach out to us with no prior relationship based on some secondary information they’re able to access. Since the first letter, we’ve had another five. I felt in some way that I was being observed, or that my privacy was somehow compromised even though it was all perfectly legal and acceptable.

The mainstreaming of advanced privacy

It’s ironic that I should feel uncomfortable about a real estate agent sending me unsolicited communication when discussions about advanced privacy are heating up in the corporate and political sectors. Apple seems to be moving towards treating sophisticated advanced privacy options as a competitive advantage, while Google is choosing to give people more power over their personal data. Meanwhile, the UK's information commissioner Elizabeth Denham has called upon the G7 nations to act on the prevalence of cookie banners and pop-ups. The British government is getting in on the action too. It has opened a data consultation with the stated aim to “maintain high data protection standards without creating unnecessary barriers to responsible data use”.

Consumer choice, it seems, is the buzzword du jour. In previous years, new legislation or some kind of scandal has prompted discussion about what communications consumers have a right to opt-out of. Now there’s been a shift in discourse. We’re starting to see a new idea: that putting consumers in the driving seat might actually be leading people to develop decision fatigue surrounding choices about their personal data. 

The challenge and promise of social media for campaigners

For better or worse, we’ve got to acknowledge that most of the communication channels available to us as campaigners are privately-owned, and subject to both changing corporate directions and government regulations. The general public has never been so easily accessible for campaigners, but we’ve also never lived in an era where the rules and guidelines are changing so rapidly. Add in the difficulties that these complex privacy options can present for the average person trying to make good decisions about their data, and you’ve got a recipe for confusion and uncertainty. 

This constant state of change also throws up questions for us as campaign professionals. What is the current legislation on privacy and communication? How does it impact my work today? When does regulation protect individuals and what are the unintended consequences? How do we continue to access people for the purpose of informing voters about their political options? How do you meet people where they’re at when where they’re ‘at’ is constantly changing? Are my metrics still meaningful (I highly recommend reading this piece by my friend and colleague Lison Laissus) and how do I test them?

How do we protect our ability to campaign?

Digital and data are sometimes seen as shortcuts to getting our message out. That’s not always a bad thing: we can use the data we have on the general public to target our digital messaging wisely and focus our effort and efficiency. But how do we do that in a way that respects the people we’re reaching out to? And what should we do to protect ourselves as the rules and technologies change?

Take a multi-channel approach

First, be sure to engage across different platforms and media. I always recommend this as the most foundational strategy to keep your member lists active and keep the door open to target people in different ways as needed. When you diversify contact options like email, phone and address, you can triangulate those people who move away from social media platforms. Relocating your lapsed members is much easier when you’ve got multiple ways to contact them. Don’t put all your faith in the idea of Facebook still being around or accessible in one, three or five years!

Establish meaningful checkpoints throughout the engagement process

Check-in with your members, your volunteers and your colleagues. It’s your responsibility as a campaigner to educate others. This is an area that a lot of people don’t fully understand, so take it as an opportunity to have an honest conversation about privacy and data use. 

And, establish evaluation checkpoints for your campaign at every step of the member engagement process. What metrics are you using? Are they returning useful, actionable data? If not, what needs to be improved? With Apple’s new privacy protection changes, for example, email open rates are rapidly going to be obsolete as a tracking metric. Keeping a dialogue open with your team and your member list is going to give you a lot of insight into how the digital media and privacy landscape is changing and what those changes look like on the ground.

Future proof: plan for the inevitability that things will change

Change is constant! One of the brilliant things about our jobs as campaigners is the multi-sectoral collaboration and how cross-cutting our work is. We truly do work at a unique interface of governments, corporations, the general public, and individuals. With this mix of actors, opportunities and threats abound. 

We’ve always got to be on the lookout for positive changes in the privacy landscape that will assist us, or provide important avenues to innovate and educate. We’ve also got to be vigilant about protecting our data, our campaigns and our reputations. Especially in the political sector, we should strive not to be the people who send vague leaflets and unclear communications. As always, be agile. Don’t fear adapting and changing.  Instead, work from a place of data integrity and clear communication: two campaign strategies that never go out of style.

As someone who’s lived in many different countries and settled in the UK as an expat, I think a lot about living across borders. Much of my family life and work structure is dispersed across countries. Thinking back to my university days, this has been a running theme for me: I used to chair my university's 1600-strong international students association, and I had to try to build a network of people whose only trait in common was that they were away from home and seeking belonging. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same! I'm still trying to help clients and employers connect with volunteers and supporters in a deep and authentic way. It's part of my job to understand how communities can form around an issue, and to know how to strengthen and sustain them. So, like everyone else I've been immersed in conversations over the past months about the respective strengths and weaknesses of building and maintaining connections virtually and in person. 

I see a lot of commonalities in building community online and offline. Unlike many commenters on this topic, I don't feel the need to place one above the other or set up a false dichotomy. Connecting virtually has been part of my life for a long time—COVID changed less than you’d think for those of us who rely on the internet to sustain vital relationships. I think we seek connection in consistent and predictable ways regardless of setting. For those of us in the business of community-building, it means we can apply my favourite thing: tactics! 

Tactic 1: Find out what motivates people to join a community

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink suggests that people are motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose. As humans, we want to learn and grow, and join together with others to achieve meaningful goals. When you’re working to build a community, think through ways that you can offer your early volunteers and supporters a sense of purpose. Consider your mission and vision and how you will turn it into a set of projects and actions for change. Develop multiple ways for people to participate, learn skills and take on leadership roles. Encourage new ideas and reward people who keep showing up, day after day and week after week. Many people get their start in politics and campaigning through volunteer work, so make sure they have the opportunity to develop some real and lasting skills.

Tactic 2: Use the right tools for the job

Your job as a community builder is to create shared experiences. You’ve attracted people to show up by tapping into their desire for autonomy, mastery and purpose. Now you need to facilitate their work. We’ve never had a wider range of tools and strategies for organising people, so get creative with your events. Consider how traditional, in-person events can be adapted or run alongside a virtual version to maximise participation.

For example, you can run phone banks in person. Volunteers can show up, socialise, bond with one another and keep each other motivated and accountable through working in the same room. You could also run a virtual phone banking event, where you start with a social group hosted through software like Gatheround and pair new volunteers with experienced ones to assist with learning and motivation.

(See my recent post, too, for alternatives and upgrades to door-to-door canvassing!)

Tactic 3: Think of communities as sets of teams

Community health takes ongoing work. You can’t just put someone to work and assume everything will work out now that you have bodies in chairs. To keep people engaged and feeling supported, make sure you’re creating the conditions for positive experiences. One way of thinking about ongoing community management is to take the approach outlined in Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Lencioni has identified five of the most damaging dysfunctions for work teams: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to objectives. Our first two tactics help build commitment and accountability. 

You can help keep people invested in your community goals by coaching your volunteer leads and staff to initiate conversations with volunteers about what your community is doing and why it matters. It could manifest differently for each person; make space to listen and learn from the people who are giving their time and energy to your cause. A fatal error is to assume that volunteers and supporters will always be there because they care about the cause. Take their concerns and their experience as seriously as you would those of an employee, and build mutual trust and respect.

Tactic 4: Get comfortable with disagreement

In healthy communities, there’s space to disagree and to work through that disagreement. If there’s no mechanism to bring up and discuss problems, then there’s no avenue to improve. You’re probably familiar with Bruce Tuckman’s catchy phrase about small group development: forming, storming and norming. Without a storm—some adversity or external challenge—it’s hard to build a really tight and effective group. Don’t think of disagreements as problems. Hear them, hold space open for people to discuss, and resolve to take a healthy approach to conflict. 

As Lencioni says, conflict is a natural and necessary part of growth for a team or community, and running away from it just leaves problems to fester. Besides, conflict and critique are important growth tools. Our community members have experiences and knowledge that could meaningfully contribute to our shared goals.

Tactic 5: Harness the power of story

We relate to one another through shared visions and values. We can also build relationships through our personal stories and lived experiences. I work in London, but my managers are in the US and my clients are all over the world. Something that brings us together is finding commonalities with one another and making time to appreciate what we have in common.

Asking your team to share their stories of how they got to where they are today, can be an incredibly effective way of making them feel connected (more to come in a future blog post).

Alternatively, some prompts for your volunteer groups could be:

• How did you end up living or working where you are?

• Did you study or live abroad?

• Talk about your family or siblings - what experiences are common? How did your family shape who you are and what you’re doing today?

• Have you ever made a career change? What was it, and how did you do it?

• Why did you choose to volunteer here? Where else have you volunteered, and what were those experiences like?

These common topics are places we can find relatability and points of intersection. Listening to others share their experiences and offering our own in return creates a sense of community that is hard to force. 

Community-building is a conversation

We create community by identifying our shared values and mission, making space for people to show up and help out, and collectively working out our disagreements. It’s a reciprocal process that benefits everyone involved. Networks of families, networks of international students, of volunteers and supporters and colleagues: they’re all built and sustained in similar ways. 

When it works, we win together. When it doesn’t—well, nobody could say it better than Toby Ziegler in The West Wing:

We're a group. We're a team. From the President and Leo on through, we're a team. We win together, we lose together. We celebrate and we mourn together. And defeats are softened and victories sweeter because we did them together... You're my guys and I'm yours... and there's nothing I wouldn't do for you.

Organisers and campaigners I speak with regularly seem to share a common trait: a constant thirst for knowledge and learning. We all seem to be invested in developing new skills. I know I’m always finding bits of time in my day to learn about what other people are struggling with, how they’re problem-solving and what successes they’re enjoying. In 2016, I got into the habit of walking to work and listening to audiobooks and podcasts. During the pandemic, the habit became an early morning walk and I continue to consume large amounts of content. 

In the past year, I’ve been fascinated by a few key topics on work and productivity that continue to resonate in our weird, upside-down, COVID-recovery world. In fact, a recurring topic for every in-person meeting I’ve had in the last month is the future of work and work-life balance. This month on the blog, I’m sharing my recommendations on that topic.

• This four-part piece on remote working by the incredible Toni Cowan-Brown should be mandatory reading for everyone, as the debate on what model is best rages on.

• One of the podcasts I discovered this last year is So Money with Farnoosh Torabi. It bills itself as interviews and deep conversations about money. Money can be a stressful topic, but I’ve learned a lot and found it quite inspirational at the same time. This 2019 episode with George Kinder covers the concept of life planning versus financial planning. The key difference between the two is the freedom to do what you want. Certainly, the pandemic has made me ask myself what is actually important.

• Spoiler alert: work culture is such a huge part of what makes us happy, fulfilled and on the path to personal and professional growth. I’ll speak more about the book in my next post, but The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni is a terrific read.

• Another podcast on my morning walk list is Beyond the to Do List by Erik Fisher. Described as the podcast that “explores all aspects of productivity and the true end goal of productivity: living a meaningful life.” This one has had a real impact on my approach to work. After listening to Charlie’s Gilkey’s appearance on talking about his book Start Finishing, I decided to try to limit myself to five projects for any given time period.

• Earlier this year, my friend and former colleague Daisy Powell-Chandler interviewed Victoria McKenzie-Gould, Director of Corporate Communications at Marks and Spencer for her podcast “Why Everybody Hates You”. A recurring theme in Daisy’s podcast is what businesses can learn from politics. I especially enjoyed this episode as the women discuss why retail is a lot like working in politics and other leadership lessons from the pandemic.

  I hope you all enjoy these podcasts and books as much as I have. Stay tuned for future themed round-up posts on topics like digital organising and negotiations.

At least once in the past week, I’m sure you’ve tried to organise a social event or a work meeting and asked: are we doing it in person, or should we still be online? Shall we meet in the park, or at a restaurant, or stick to Zoom? You’ve read the guidelines and the studies, you may find yourself wearing a mask despite the lifting of restrictions, and you're probably still wondering if you’re doing the wrong or right thing.

You’re not alone.

We’re going to be asking ourselves about the best and safest ways to transition back to regular life for quite a while yet. And just as we’ve been trying to make smart decisions in our personal lives, I’ve been thinking about how campaigns are going to have to continue to be flexible and responsive to the needs of their volunteers and the general public. Specifically, I’ve been questioning the feasibility of in-person canvassing. Is it too early or worth the risk to volunteers? Is it still as effective in 2021 as in 2011? Can we split the difference and combine it with other canvassing methods? What does the research say? 

Meeting people where they are… literally

When I worked for the UK Conservative Party, we tended to act on the common belief that face-to-face interventions were the most effective. We targeted every door-knock, trying to canvass the public so we could later on target the right people in marginal seats to cast those all-important votes. 

That’s a common strategy in the United States, too, where door-to-door canvassing has long been part of the bread and butter of politics. I've certainly seen how this was drilled into field campaigners, especially those working on President Obama’s initial election and re-election campaigns. Similarly, avid readers of Alan Gerber and Donald Green’s earlier work (including myself) have supported this notion. But it takes serious time and people to get the results - and we also now know that normal canvassing doesn’t return the same results in every constituency, or every country. In fact, research by Joshua Townsley from 2017 suggests that partisan canvassing in the UK is less effective than leafleting. It may even have the unintended effect of mobilising opposition voters instead. 

As new research emerges and people’s way of life change, campaigns and candidates must adopt. During the 2020 election cycle in the US, there was a lot of industry-wide coverage of high-impact, ultra-personal methods like deep canvassing that have driven incredible change across vast political differences. While the research suggests it's much more effective than traditional canvassing, I struggle to see how realistic it is to do at scale for the majority of campaigns who don’t invest in serious, long-term movement building.  

I remember listening to members of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s 2018 campaign discuss some of the challenges with door-to-door canvassing in New York City. People were working at all hours and living in high-density areas like apartment buildings. It was a coin toss as to whether the canvassers would be able to find people at home, or even still living in the same place. Volunteers were only available at times when many people were at work. 

Start wide, and narrow down

Okay, so door-to-door canvassing is costly, time-consuming and maybe not as effective as we thought. Instead, why don’t we consider starting by engaging a wider spread of people in a less targeted way? AOC’s campaign solution to the problem was placing canvassers at high-traffic locations. They could talk to a much higher volume of people, even though they weren’t targeting potential voters in the same way. Five years ago, I would have adamantly challenged this idea but now I can’t dismiss that blanket canvassing can be a good tactic in high population density areas, at times of days when there’s lots of traffic.

We can try giving people the opportunity to self-canvas, offering them the chance to share their opinions with us on various issues. They might not be interested in every issue we present, but we can start a conversation and add a voter intent question to the script. People are often more responsive to friends and family, so this would also be a great opportunity to mobilise supporters to do some small-scale canvassing in their social circles. Consider also homing in on specific segments of interest by meeting them on their platforms of choice and asking them to complete issue-based surveys.

Make it fun, make it easy

We can still reach out to canvass in interactive ways, even if we can’t show up on people’s doorsteps. Interactive tools and media can engage people in a way that feels easy and novel. Ahead of the 2015 General Election, the Conservative Party developed an online tax calculator that people could use to see how much money they could save. By offering them a useful tool, we engaged and connected with them in a way that was reciprocal. Instead of just firing questions at someone via email or social media, offer a way for them to receive feedback, learn something, or share results with their network. Use the strengths of face-to-face canvassing in a virtual setting: let people express opinions, ask questions, see you responding with interest to the things they care about. Tying in a voter intent question helps you connect the information you need about potential voters with their contact information. As always, be transparent and ask for consent. 

Use your data wisely

I’m going to assume you’re a smart and organised campaigner and you’ve already collected the required consent to talk to your supporters through email and text. So why not use these avenues for canvassing? For people who are already connected to you, a quick email or text question could return you exactly the information you need, for a fraction of the time and effort of face-to-face canvassing. Combined with some personalised engagement by segment, and you’ve got a canvassing method that is low-friction and practical for your campaign, but doesn’t feel perfunctory or mass-produced to supporters.

And, think more broadly about aggregate data sources that you have access to. What geographical areas are you prioritising your limited resources for face-to-face canvassing? What information do you already have about canvassing in that area? What are your target subpopulations? Where are your swing voters? The answers to these questions will inform where you decide to narrow down from those broad canvassing strategies to your higher-cost, higher-impact face-to-face options. 

Treat a hybrid approach as an opportunity, not a problem

In canvassing as in life right now, thinking really critically about trade-offs and limitations is vital. For the overexcited volunteers out there, I am not suggesting you don’t ever have to canvass someone in person again. Rather, I'm proposing that as campaigners we have a great opportunity to challenge our assumptions about what works, test some hybrid strategies based on the latest research, and work within the comfort zones of our volunteers and supporters. As I’ve said on the blog before, I advise leaning into the uncertainty and using it to drive flexibility and growth in your campaign. 

I’m always advising campaigns to evaluate their initiatives and to be bold about trying new things. Now I’m taking my own advice! After listening to Charlie’s Gilkey’s appearance on Erik Fisher’s Beyond the To Do List and reading his book Start Finishing (I cannot recommend it enough), I now try to limit myself to five projects for any given time period. This blog will remain one of them.

Going forward, I’ll be sticking to the same twice-monthly schedule but I’ll also be trying some new post formats:

• Once a month, I’ll tell you what I’ve been reading and give you recommendations for articles, books, podcasts and other websites that are inspiring and educating me. 

• I’ll also post regularly about campaigning topics, just as I have been doing. This will be a deeper dive into areas that particularly interest me. 

• I’ll also be taking questions from you, my readers and my network! This is your chance to request a topic, ask about some work I’ve done, or throw a problem at me to try to solve. I’ll be turning your requests into posts, so if there’s something you want to know or learn about, now’s your chance to ask.

Got a question? Contact me on LinkedIn or by email at l.kristensen@linestotake.co.uk

In late May, I had the joy of joining the jury panel for the 2021 Polaris Awards. My inner political geek has always been obsessed with seeing what works and doesn’t work in campaigning, and I’ve spent many days over my career working and evaluating efforts across political divides.

The truth is, I’m a bit of an election leaflet anorak. I’m into them the same way people are into sports trivia or trainspotting.

I could generally tell you whether a constituency was a target seat for the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems, Green or UKIP based on the literature voters received during the 2015 and 2017 general elections. During my campaign trips to the US from 2012-14, I came home with all of the literature I could get my hands on. It didn’t matter whether it was from Democrats, Republicans, super-PACs or independents, or what level of government they were running for. 

In Denmark, in May 2015 I critiqued election posters on lampposts as I walked from Billund Airport to Legoland. In France in 2017, my now-husband and I stopped to talk to canvassers from François Fillon’s campaign. Once again, I brought home the campaign leaflets including one from Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign. (I have more than once told my husband off for throwing out campaign literature in our flat before I had a chance to read it. When I say I’ve read thousands of election leaflets, I’m not exaggerating.) 

So, getting a chance to be on the jury panel really fed my obsession with campaign strategy. I reviewed approximately 45 submissions entered into some of the 67 individual categories. As I reviewed, I put together a few thoughts about trends I saw and thought effective.

1. QR code advertisement campaigns

The COVID pandemic has seen QR codes become truly mainstream, especially for outdoor campaigns. Previously, it looked as though campaigns used QR codes just to pretend they understood digital, despite the fact nobody seemed to use them. However, it’s my impression that this has completely changed. As people’s fear of germs and contamination has increased, so has the desire to use QR codes to check in to places, read menus and learn more about campaigns. 

2. Smart use of geo-targeting

The best overall local elections campaign winner (one of two winners) was "¡Súmate al Cambio!" submitted by 303.Digital LLP on behalf of local candidate Christian Cortez in Puerto Rico. The authenticity and smart use of data was what really struck me as impressive. Regular blog readers will know that I have mixed feelings about microtargeting. This campaign used it in a really effective way that avoided the pitfalls I wrote about here. The campaign’s decision to geo-target local government workers to assure them that their jobs would be safe if Cortez won the election was a great use of data.

3. Scrappy COVID campaigns

The Total Croatia Travel INFO Viber Community campaign didn’t win an award (correction: in good news, this one actually won three awards under the agency name Manjgura. I excited I was wrong because I thought it was pretty dope too!), but it did something that I wish all other campaigns would do: it responded to the moment. One of my biggest frustration is when campaigns have an opportunity or a moment in the public eye, but they decide not to capitalize on it because their product isn’t perfect. The end result: they miss their chance to take advantage of the momentum and instead launch weeks or months later when that moment is gone. Repeat after me, folks: it doesn’t have to be perfect to launch!

While I didn’t find the campaign particularly pretty, it served its purpose well and was ready to go when it mattered the most. The campaigners found innovative ways to make information available through Google Translate tools, at the very moment when the travel community was looking for reliable information. 

4. Engage younger voters

Something I’ve not seen much is campaign ads that play like music videos. It surprises me that in the era of video content, more campaigners aren’t making ads that you might catch on television or YouTube. Two campaigns out of the Dominican Republic did particularly well in this area. Luis Abinanda for President by De Vengoechea & Associates won for Best Use of Humor in a Presidential Campaign, while this video featuring Carolina Mejia for Major of Santo Domingo by Le Black Room won Best Local Web Video and also Best Overall Local Campaign. 

I saw a number of videos targeting younger voters, and the overall favourite one that had me laughing out loud was Voting is Important by BuzzMaker for the Unity Labour Party in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. I still remember it, despite only having watched it a couple of times.

5. Go where your audience is

Sure, TikTok and Instagram are popular platforms, but their value for campaigners really depends on what audience you’re trying to reach. LinkedIn is my own personal favourite, and the next campaign that I really enjoyed was from the winner in the Social Media Campaign (NGOs and others) winner VAJT Ltd. - Introducing Digital Nomad Visa in Croatia. 

Creating beautiful and effective campaigns with a solid budget isn’t difficult, but doing so with purpose and no budget takes real skill. The campaign for the introduction of the Digital Nomad Visa in Croatia was done exclusively through organic LinkedIn campaigns. The strength of this campaign was that it didn’t feel the need to be everything to everyone on every imaginable platform. The end result was that the campaign was featured in more than 150 publications, received more than 2.1m views, and made the visa a reality within 44 days. That’s a testament to purpose, focus and thoughtful targeting to their audience.

Want to win too?

It’s possible to submit your own work for consideration to industry awards such as the Polaris Awards and Reed Awards, so if you always wonder why other people win - this is your chance to change that! Nominations for both seem to open early each calendar year, but sign up to their newsletters to avoid missing out. And, if you’ve come across any campaigns you think I’d enjoy, feel free to email me at l.kristensen@linestotake.co.uk

Lobbying: it’s something businesses, advocacy organisations and charities alike are spending a large amount of money on these days. In the field of top-down advocacy strategies, there are many options to choose from, like paid and earned media, or direct lobbying. Through my work in Parliament I’ve seen plenty of people setting up 30-minute meetings, organising round tables or hosting breakfast meetings or receptions. 

Still, I’m left asking myself: is this the most effective way to engage and lobby elected officials? 

I think there’s a better way. A layered, interactive approach that pays off in the long run. It’s the 360 degree engagement campaign, which combines traditional avenues of influence like media and businesses with the effectiveness of a bottom-up campaign by regular people. And, given the size of communication, public affairs and marketing budgets businesses have, I’m puzzled by the lack of investment in this strategy.

Okay, it’s rarely a quick fix and requires commitment from the top, but it’s cheaper in the long run and allows you to build trust and meet your goals. Creating a two-way conversation with key stakeholders about your purpose and how it relates to the day’s most significant issues is always an excellent investment. When mobilised intelligently with strategy, purpose and finesse, thousands of voices are more potent than any costly paid advert. 

1. Focus on the people who can help you move an elected official

In my last post, I spoke about how the rise of social media has tipped the balance of who wields influence. It’s not just social media that’s changed the dynamics though. In first-past-the-post systems like the UK, political parties are forced to focus both on a national strategy and a targeted constituency by constituency strategy. As a result, if you convince supporters who are normal every day voters to engage with their elected officials directly, then they can be moved to act in favour of your cause. 

Create bottom-up pressure on elected officials to drive local, regional and national governmental change. Empower your grassroots supporters to engage opinion-makers and their elected officials at local, regional, and national levels in a meaningful way.

Most elected officials want to get re-elected, and those in marginal seats are more responsive to pressure from constituents. I spent most of my political career working to help parties hold or gain target seats. These critical seats are the most volatile regardless of your political persuasion. Due to the nature of these seats, elected officials have to listen more and represent constituencies better to continue to gain support. My advice for campaigners in the UK - target the fifty or so most marginal seats at Westminster, and similarly for the devolved nations.   

Those in safer seats are more responsive to those who can nominate (or not nominate) them at the next election. They are more likely to rebel, either with permission or regardless of what others may want them to do if an issue turns out to be a real vote grabber with the right people. Local party groups wield significant influence in what constitute safe seats, as they may have the power to deselect the parliamentarian. These groups are influential in selecting who could represent the party in the future and are also frequently in contact with their local representative. It’s hard for elected officials to tune out strong opposition from this group of people. How do you get your message through to the right people, who can exert pressure on elected officials in safe seats on your behalf? If you want to go down this route, try a mix of engaging local individuals (such as councillors) and using good social media targeting to get your issue into the public eye.

2. Turn elected officials into champions

Developing meaningful partnerships with elected officials across the country can get them invested and move them to more significant action. Members in marginal seats run ongoing incumbency campaigns to engage with voters on various issues. If there is a natural hook to any of your campaigns, individual MPs can be great partners. 

Leading up to the 2015 and the 2017 General Elections, it was my experience that these officials had a natural appetite for adopting great national campaigns with a local spin in their seats. This was significantly true if the campaign helped with good photo opportunities and copy. There is a real opportunity to create momentum, raise awareness and generate earned media through these campaigns ahead of future elections. 

3. Encourage supporters to make it personal

Over the years, many MPs have refused to engage with blanket letter campaigns that follow the same template without any other personalisation. Some simply refuse to reply, while others share responses written by party-aligned researchers that reflect the party’s view on the matter. 

When I was an intern in Parliament, the Cameron government put forward a proposal to sell off about half of the publicly-owned Forestry Commission land. The MP I worked for received more than 100 letters from his constituents opposing the proposal, and the picture was similar in other MPs’ offices. We held out for about three weeks, then wrote to all 100 constituents holding firm on the government line. The very next day, the Government changed its mind due to the intense pressure from the public (especially from those writing their local MP). 

As more organisations mobilise constituents, it’s becoming an important part of the overall engagement of parliamentarians. It makes it more critical to encourage your supporters to personalise their letters and communications. Staff must take the time to read the letters and respond accordingly. Customised letters that speak to personal experience are more likely to be memorable and generate conversation than the same number of standard template letters.

4. Getting your supporters to take action once is only the start

It’s easy to use letter writing as a vanity metric, and state the number of supporters who signed a petition or wrote to their MP. In my opinion, what you do next is just as important.

• Are you regularly updating your supporters about how your campaign is performing and what responses you’re receiving? 

• Has anyone been successful in meeting their Member of Parliament and lobbying them on the issue? 

• Are you asking your supporters if they have received any responses, and if so, what the response was? 

• Similarly, if not, then it’s an opportunity to send a follow-up email or letter to the elected official.

The subsequent follow-up could also bring supporters together to hold an online writing session. Walk your supporters through what makes an effective letter, and help them tailor a template to be more personalised. 

5. Digital campaigns are the next layer of engagement

A less-employed technique in the UK and Europe than the US is using thoughtful social media and paid digital display advertising to target a small select group. I spoke about this method briefly in my recent piece on targeting, and it is another option for organisations and charities. 

Platforms such as LinkedIn allow you to target people based on their place of employment and title, among other things. This means that the enterprising individual could target issue-based campaigns at elected officials specifically, and aim similar content at local political groups if they list them on their LinkedIn profile. Similarly, you can also focus on display advertisement on a niche website that is likely to see traffic from elected officials and their staff. I’ve frequently seen this on political gossip sites in the UK and US.  

Interning and working in parliament has taught me that mobilising your advocates to lobby on your behalf is often more effective than individual meetings and roundtables with an endless number of MPs. (Oh, and that it’s more like The Thick Of It than The West Wing. But that’s a blog post for another day.) You should empower your advocates to engage with and lobby their local elected representatives, approaching each official with an understanding of who can access and influence them the best. When done right, you can empower your supporters to add their voices, stories and experiences to their letters and emails, and explain precisely why they care.

In my last blog, I wrote about how politicians should be thinking about long-term brand building. Today, let’s flip the script and look at a similar idea from the opposite side: that corporations can learn from the non-profit sector and political campaigns. In many ways, corporations are in a similar position to campaigns and political parties. Social media and the 24-hour news cycle means that nobody has the ability to control the news agenda as they used to.

Reputations, it seems, now have to be earned under an increasing culture of public scrutiny. If you need a living, breathing example of this, look no further than at the fallout from the European Super League last week.

Expectations have changed. Edelman’s hugely respected Trust Barometer 2021 showed that a year into the pandemic there is broader trust in businesses than government, NGOs and the media. With that trust comes an expectation that companies and CEOs engage with the public on the issues of the day. The barometer showed that 86% of those surveyed expected CEOs to speak out on one or more of the following areas: impact of the pandemic, job automation, societal issues and local community issues.

Despite CEOs performing better than government officials and journalists on trust measures, Edelman also found that individuals are more likely to trust academic experts and people like themselves. There’s a belief in collective power at play here. 68% of consumers and 62% of employees believe they have the power to force corporations to change. And why not? Everyone has an opinion and can quickly start an issue-based campaign if they feel moved to do so.

This means that in today’s environment, a top-heavy approach with one-way communication doesn’t work. Instead, it’s time to put your customers and employees at the heart of everything as if you were cultivating voters.

So, here are my top tips for corporations who want to embark on a corporate advocacy campaign.

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Be strategic about what you champion—and how

It’s important as you embark on this journey that you understand it’s not just about broadcasting information to yet another email list. It’s about generating deeper, more meaningful engagement. Ask yourself and your teams:

• With what issues are your company uniquely positioned to engage? How do these issues align with your overall brand and purpose?

• Are you willing to create real engagement, or do you just want to broadcast your own messaging?

• If you just want to broadcast a message, aren’t you already doing so through marketing? How is that working for you?

• Is broadcasting changing people’s behaviour, or are you just getting stuck in a vanity matrix land of impressions served?

• Are your teams and senior decision-makers within the company aligned on why corporate advocacy is important?

• Is there a budget to do it, or are you simply hoping someone will do it off their own back in their spare time?

What’s the vehicle for the engagement?

Do you want to use your leading brand for your advocacy, or do you want to develop a sub-brand for corporate engagement? A sub-brand might make it easier to be more agile and flexible in your engagement strategy. You may also find it helpful to create a sub-brand identity with its own website, social media channels and domains.

Consider dedicated channels for your corporate advocacy work. Ideally, these are separate from your primary corporate sales and marketing channels, letting you communicate differently. You can engage more frequently and with a warmer and more personalised approach to your ambassadors. Your sign-off process is quicker this way, too. No need to go through ten layers of sign-off to get a single email out.

Of course, you should still promote your corporate advocacy on your main channels from time to time to encourage people to convert.

What does engagement look like?

Your goal is to create deeper relationships through the intentional, long-term engagement of your customers and employees. Now, what does this unicorn of engagement look like?

• Frequent readers of my blog know that I think surveys and quizzes are great engagement tools. They can be a fun way for people to offer feedback, share their opinion and test their knowledge (and learn something in the process).

• Collect stories. How do the issues you’re championing impact people and their lives? In my experience, the best campaigns put people and their stories at the centre of the narrative.

• Encourage people to contact their elected representatives. I am a massive fan of grassroots campaigns (now more so than when I interned in Parliament and helped reply to all the letters). The more voices that are advocating with you, the more likely you are to see action on the issues that matter to your company.

• The more, the merrier—help make it easy for employees and customers to bring in a friend. As mentioned above, people are more likely to trust people like themselves. Moving away from using traditional spokespeople and enabling normal people to help you is a powerful strategy. Ideally, you should be able to track these recruitment efforts to reward your advocates.

• Donate to the community fund. Mobilising the community to support a partner’s cause is a great way to show support for an organisation that aligns with your purpose, while also doing good in the world.

Educate and empower

Once you have engaged with your customers, you have the opportunity to educate them. Share with them your broader corporate social responsibility, purpose, and motivation for advocating for change or awareness. Through education, you can demonstrate how you are different, and why that makes you trustworthy.

These people can be your biggest advocates both in good and bad times. The best way to equip them for this is by letting them feel connected to you and knowledgeable about your company. Be open: people like to feel involved, and by offering a peek behind the curtain, you will be more approachable than most other corporate brands. Equip people with the facts: what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, and what you’re hoping to achieve.

The goal isn’t getting customers to recite soundbites, but rather to understand what you stand for and how you’re taking action to live into your values. For example, how do you view employees’ rights or the environment? What value do you bring to those issues? While I’m not a huge fan of detailed policy documents telling people what they should and should not say, I am a fan of sharing the ‘why’ behind the work you’re doing to create alignment. Once there is alignment, empower people and offer them opportunities to take action with you about the issues they care about.

Encourage and reward

Impact matters. Do you make it easy for people to help you, do you share the impact their contribution has and do you reward them when they take action? It can be as simple as a virtual feel-good with a pat on the shoulder, or consist of rewards, exclusive opportunities or freebies. Elevating stories of how people like them are helping you do good work is both motivating, and a chance to generate great content that resonates.

Encourage yourself too, through processes that allow you to see the progress you’re making in the area of corporate advocacy. This is an ongoing opportunity to make a difference, and you’ll want to know that your actions are having an effect. Ensure you develop a mechanism for setting goals and evaluating how you are progressing so you can adapt and change accordingly.

Do you see the strategic lesson here?

Here it is: forward-thinking businesses know the public relations environment has changed.

In addition to engaging with customers, they intentionally build up their staff to help them advocate in the long term. The employees on your teams are now crucial when it comes to real, authentic engagement. Internal and external communication teams, customer engagement and public affairs teams must all work hand-in-hand to create complementary strategies that cover top-down and bottom-up advocacy.

Everyone has a role to play, both as enablers of customer advocates and as advocates in their own right. Harness that collective power, generate reputation and goodwill, and you’ll be less likely to score an embarrassing own goal like the European Super League.

As the field of politics has become more unpredictable, those of you who are in it for the long haul with high-level goals must start from a solid foundation of support. Regardless of what country you're in, it's never been more crucial to prepare yourself early and intentionally. I’ve had my fair share of conversations with candidates and politicians with big ambitions, and this is my advice to all of them.

You need to develop your public profile, build a community of supporters, mobilise people for good and have a backup plan. Just like an insurance policy, you need to set it up and pay for it before you need it. If you wait, it won’t be there when you need it the most. 

Nurture your profile

Building your personal brand as a politician isn’t just about climbing the greasy pole. It’s about owning your relationship with supporters at every level. They might be interested in your campaigns locally or nationally; they might even think you could go all the way to lead the country. While you can’t be everything to everyone, take the time to understand who you are, what your unique contribution is and what you care about. Once you're clear on those points, use them to drive the conversation forward. 

By building up a coherent and consistent profile outside of your network, you'll find opportunities you wouldn’t have otherwise. If no one knows who you are, it's unlikely that you'll get the same opportunities to make a difference. Conscientiously and intentionally developing your profile makes you memorable. It helps people immediately understand who you are and how they can connect with and work with you. 

That's going to lead to more options. Political promotions, media appearances, opportunities to speak at high-profile events, or opportunities to publish interesting content. And, when you’re done with politics, the work you've done building your public profile can lead to an excellent job in which your personal brand is of value. People are going to want to work with you because they know you have a unique contribution to make. You're not just any old politician.

Build your own list--and start today

If you harbour long-term ambitions to do more than what you're currently doing, especially if you are thinking of running for office or a serious senior position, then you need to start building your own list of supporters today.

It's more authentic and impactful to work on building a long-term relationship with people from the start. Ask them to sign up to receive updates from you, get them involved in your work, and keep them up to date with your efforts, even when you're starting on small or local campaigns. If you only start to do so because there's a general election or a leadership campaign coming up, you'll come across as cynical and self-serving. 

It takes months and sometimes years to build up a proper supporter network, and it’s about five times as hard to recruit new people as it is to keep them. Even if you do a great job of keeping them, it’s estimated that your list will decrease by 20-30% each year, so you'll need to continue to acquire new supporters to address that. 

Who owns the data? 

It might sound like boring advice, but find professional guidance on how you collect your data and who the data controller is. GDPR has changed the game and just because you collect the data, it might not make it yours if you do so under a party umbrella. 

What are you going to share? 

Be clear with your subscribers about how you're going to engage them. How frequently are you going to communicate with the list? What is its purpose? Are you sharing news about what you’re up to, offering insights as an expert, sending fun facts? If you want to build your brand more long-term, or you have greater aspirations than local politics, then it’s also worth giving people the option to subscribe to either news related to their local area or to your work more nationally. 

How can you build your list? 

Think through your current workflows, and identify opportunities to bring people closer to your work by asking them to sign up for updates. You can ask when you host events, attend as a guest speaker, promote on social media, and also include it in your email signature and on your website.

Leverage your list to support your causes

As you build up your profile and your list, you'll have opportunities to effectively mobilise an audience that connects with you for a cause you care about. It could be a campaign to raise awareness, to advocate for a change in the law or to raise money for something important to you. People who are already invested in you are more likely to also be invested in the issues you put front and centre. 

Accidents happen, and you need a parachute 

In politics, one day you're in and the next you can be out. It could be by your own choice or because someone has chosen that for you. UK politics has certainly been turbulent since the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum, and since then it really has been one long-running political soap opera. There are all sorts of pressures and considerations that come along with office, and you can't control all variables. 

Think about the difference between an American and a European campaign. The vast majority of American campaigns are more independent than European ones, because individual candidates are mostly responsible for their own success. They're responsible for infrastructure, funding and their overall campaign messaging. That makes for more diversity of thought but also more short-term thinking, because candidates only need to think of themselves and their own electoral success rather than party success. They also don’t need their party's permission to run.

Contrarily in Europe, candidates often rely heavily on their political parties to get approved to run on their behalf, for infrastructure, funding and overall advice. This reliance makes it easier to enforce party discipline and top-down messaging, because going outside the standard framework could mean the end of your career. It makes it harder for outsiders to break through if they don’t fit the mould and renders even the most established politicians replaceable.  

So what happens when you're cut loose? 

In February 2019, there was a row between the Labour Party and Joan Ryan, one of the eight former Labour MPs who joined the Independent Group later Change UK (fun fact - five of them are writing a book). The row centred around one of the MPs trying to access supporters' personal data, especially canvassing data, that had been collected by them while they campaigned on behalf of the Labour Party. However, the Party was the data controller, rather than the individual MPs. 

Then in September 2019, 21 UK Conservative MPs were suspended from the Conservative Party when they voted against a “no-deal” Brexit scenario. For many it came as a shock, myself included. I thought this might happen one day for one or two MPs, but I’d never imagined it would happen for that many MPs at once. The majority of them decided not to stand in the following general election. Some landed on their feet because they had built up their own profiles, a couple defected to another party, and the ones who decided to stand as independent candidates didn’t get re-elected.

I hope you can see how being in control of your own communication platforms, owning your data and building your profile over time means you have options. If you don’t build your own brand, your victories and losses are likely to be tied to the political party you belong to. Despite what most elected officials believe, it’s rare that a politician is truly elected off the back of personal rather than party votes. Your insurance policy is there for you whether you want to take a deeply unpopular view, if someone takes it on your behalf, or if you're just thinking ahead to a life after politics. Don't just rely on party support or your close networks. Put together a strong and authentic profile and you'll be ready for anything.

There's one thing that unites all of us as committed campaigners: we have to ask for things all the time. We ask people we may never have met before for their votes, their money, and their time. We know it's a vital and powerful part of mobilising supporters to create change, so it should be easy to motivate ourselves and others to do it, right? And yet, one of the starkest contrasts I’ve found between campaigns in North America and those in Europe, the UK, the Middle East and Africa, is how much more comfortable our American counterparts are with making a hard ask. 

Here's an example: after President Obama’s successful re-election campaign in 2012, the campaign team studied their approach to volunteer mobilisation. Obama’s grassroots campaign had always been seen as especially strong, yet the report showed that 71% of volunteers were asked to help while only 29% volunteered themselves (by signing up online or contacting the campaign directly). The campaign's fundamental strength was its ability and willingness to ask others for help. 

When I trained campaign managers, organisers and volunteers, one of my favourite training exercise involved spending an hour making phone calls to strong supporters, in order to ask them to volunteer. Some people took to it like ducks to water, while others showed real reluctance and discomfort during this practical exercise. 

This kind of asking is important. We cannot expect people to come to us: we must engage them and ask them to join us. Today's post is all about how to do that. Read on if you're struggling with this skill in your own work, or if you want a starting point for training others. 

Believe in what you’re doing and know why you're doing it

If you don’t believe in your cause, then why should anyone want to come and join you? Enthusiasm and energy are contagious: bring them to these conversations and project your excitement about making a difference. 

People who join a political party or campaigning organisation want to get involved in some way. Many expect and want to be asked to do more. They might not know what tasks and opportunities are available, so tell them and explain why it's important. In my experience, if people don’t want to do something, they will find an opportunity to say no. Don't remove their choice to have a greater impact before they've had the chance to say yes. 

Don't let the fear of the unknown get in your way 

I’m hugely experienced in training people on capacity building and campaigns, especially taking solid best practices from the States and localising them for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I often find that what gets in the way of people adopting solid capacity-building techniques centered around asking is the fear of the unknown, and of truly committing to a new course of action. 

Often when I've introduced new concepts that have proven successful elsewhere, I’ve been met with hesitance and reluctance. People worry about the culture fit of new techniques, fear coming across different use-cases that they won't know how to handle, and assume that if they've never done it before it won't work.

This leads to a lack of buy-in at all levels of the campaign. People don't see a clear throughline from theory to practice and so they back off. That's a fatal error, and it sabotages the success of powerful new engagement techniques. Pilot projects fail or are too limited, and as a result, there's no appetite for a change in the culture around asking. Further, there's no self-reflection around the process - what wasted time and effort! 

Who are you asking? Target your ask

Being selective is a good thing. I’ve spoken about the ladder of engagement previously, and the importance of meeting people where they are. It’s important to try to understand people’s previous involvement in your cause, what motivates them and what gives them purpose. If you know this, then it’s easier to frame a request appropriately. 

What are you going to ask for? Be specific

Be clear and specific about tasks, roles, time commitment and required skills or training. If someone can’t picture themselves doing the work, or doesn't know what you’re actually asking for, it's unlikely they will volunteer to do it. 

Why are you asking and why should they do it now? 

Creating a sense of urgency is important when getting people motivated and involved. Explain why you need their help now. How do they fit into the big picture activities? Centre your asks on the specific impact a person can have by showing up for you next week, next month, before the next election. Create and communicate milestones, highlighting key deadlines and talking about the potential for change.

How are you asking? Avoid cognitive overload

I’ve previously spoken about the importance of not overloading people's cognitive skills when making an ask in an email, and the same goes for a verbal ask.

My son is nineteen months old and knows his own mind. He isn't shy about letting me know he wants me to carry him when we’re out and about, but hauling 14kg of toddler around gets tiring fast. So I ask him, “do you want to walk or be in the stroller?”

Adults are much the same in this regard. Frame your ask as an either/or question. Would they like to stuff envelopes or make phone calls? Canvas door to door regularly or help out at a single event? This way you make the assumption that the person will say yes to one of the two options. They'll likely join you in that assumption. 

Then, keep things simple by being clear and not waffling. If that's hard for you (it is for me), practice your ask. Write it out, say it out loud, practice, and repeat. Don't preempt excuses by putting words in people’s mouths, such as “I know you’re busy”. Let them tell you they're busy, otherwise, you might find that you've just helped them say no. 

When is it time to ask and when is it time to be quiet? Silence can be a strength. 

Anyone who knows me knows this is a muscle I have to continue to build over and over again. Stop and give people a chance to respond. You don’t have to fill the silence immediately. Count to ten, take a few deep breaths and wait. 

Use active listening before you assume the answer is no 

You’re not always going to get a yes right away when you ask, and that’s okay. When you think you hear a soft no, ask follow up questions to check your understanding and gather more information. If you've targeted your individuals carefully, you're unlikely to hear that someone doesn't ever want to help you. Instead, they might be saying:

• No, not this specific task or issue. 

• No, not this time or date.

• No, not at this location. 

Reflect back what you’re hearing to check for understanding. Say, “It sounds like you're not interested in door-to-door canvassing because you’re not as active as you used to be. Would you prefer to help us phone canvass or stuff envelopes in the office instead?”

Are you building for the long term?

Especially as a result of the pandemic, I’m seeing campaigns care more about creating connections with their people, volunteers and members. Some focus has shifted towards creating community, because campaigns aren't able to operate as normal and fill typical volunteer roles.

When I first started to train people on asking more effectively, I often spoke about being respectfully persistent and asking consistently. We can't be transactional and measure success by counting bums in seats. When someone gets involved it should be truly and mutually beneficial. Making the ask isn't just about getting volunteers right now - it’s about building something together that gets people coming back.

It's important for voters to feel seen and heard, and personalising communication is one way to do that. Voters want politicians to be in touch with ordinary people like themselves: to understand their lives, hopes, dreams, fears, and the issues they care about. 

Voters rarely have the appetite to consume large amounts of information that's not relevant to them. Most people can't be found attending town hall debates or local resident association meetings, and they certainly don't want to read each political party's manifesto from start to finish. Voters often have limited time to engage with politics. 

They're not the only ones constrained by time and resources. Politicians wear many hats—trying to represent electors, meeting voters, researching the issues they vote on, and advocating on behalf of their communities. We also want them to be human beings with hobbies, families and friends. It's physically impossible for them to engage personally at scale. While they may recruit and get help from volunteers, I can tell you that none of them ever have enough volunteers to talk to everyone within a regular constituency.

How can we help politicians scale up a personal approach that addresses voters on the issues that matter to them? You probably guessed it from the title: targeting. 

What targeting is and what it isn't 

The word often gets used indiscriminately, but there are two specific types of targeting. Targeting is narrowing the audience for any communication by factoring in different criteria. Microtargeting tends to refer to either targeting a smaller group of voters with ads, or conducting survey research against a list of voters with the aim of forecasting what others are likely to say.

Cambridge Analytica, and some other campaign professionals selling fairy dust for monetary gain, have given targeting a bad name. They've given the general public the impression that targeting is all about manipulating people. But buyer beware: there's no real data that backs up Cambridge Analytica’s claims around the actual impact of their targeting.

The idea that the vast majority of campaigns have the time or resources to create micro ads for hundreds of small cohorts of 20-50 people is unrealistic. Remember, someone has to create the creative elements, write the copy, sign off on the messaging, and then go and set up the paid advertisement or share the content organically. Unless there's an ultra-competitive race such as by-election or special elections on the line, campaigns just can't allocate the resources to do that at scale. Even in a by-election it would be very cumbersome to do. Of course, some high-stake campaigns may geo-target parliamentarians or other opinion leaders about specific causes. Still, this kind of targeting of voters is not my reality, or my experience after more than a decade of campaigning. 

The rules for good targeting

Effective targeting is about relevance, integrity and dialogue. It's about finding meaningful and manageable ways to craft messaging that speaks to different groups of people. Criteria such as a person's income, the neighbourhood they live in, whether they have children at home or which industry they work in can all impact their priorities. 

Consent must be at the heart of it

In the post-GDPR world, everything is about consents and that can make engagement hard. On the other hand, it does give you a valuable opportunity to ask people what they want to hear about, and play by their rules. This makes them more receptive to you. I actually believe gathering granular consents is helpful when targeting voters and supporters. This can be done as simply as asking what topics are most important to the individual, and then tailoring your communications to these topics. Of course, for this to work you have to engage them in the first place… but you're already doing that, right? 

Similarly, surveying voters on topics like their lifestyle, age range, family composition, and their likelihood to vote gives us a great opportunity to gather the consent to speak with them about specific policies relevant to them. We can create better and more informed relationships with voters.

Good targeting isn’t just about sending one letter to someone. It’s this interactive process of continuously engaging with the voter over time, always remembering to give people the choice to opt-out, and also to provide feedback. 

Don’t push conflicting messaging

Good targeting must be consistent. Don’t share conflicting messaging with different target audiences. It’s deceptive, unethical and an open goal. 

In my political career, I must have seen this mistake made in about ten thousand political leaflets and digital ads. It's an error that no political party or third party campaign is immune to making. Astute readers will notice, whether they work for political parties, for the press, or are hyper-active members of the local community. It’s naïve to think that micro-messaging doesn’t get picked up. It only takes one target piece to go to the wrong person and it will be shared with the other side.

What does this mean for our democracy?

Bad press around micro-targeting has a lot to answer for, but targeting can be a useful way to get people involved in politics. If targeting creates greater engagement by being relevant, then quite frankly that’s what our democracies need. There's already enough disinterest in and lack of appreciation for our model of governing that anything we can do to increase participation is a good thing in my book. 

I believe most non-targeted engagement creates a feeling of indifference. It makes people feel that their struggles, priorities and interests aren't recognised by the people who represent them. It would be great if our politicians could combat this by speaking with everyone one-to-one, but the reality just is that they can't. Allowing space for some personalisation scaled up with the use of technology is a good thing. Those who want to engage with their politicians in greater detail should of course then be able to do so.

Targeting someone based on what is relevant to them is not a bad thing. Actually, we do it all the time. My son loves vehicles and cooking. He has two friends at his nursery, Amelie and Josh. Amelie likes trains, building with blocks and cooking, whereas Josh likes vehicles and dancing. If Magnus wants to convince Josh to play with him, then it would make sense to focus on vehicles. If he wants to persuade Amelie, then a focus on cooking is more likely to yield results. We’re always engaging people on selected, shared interests in order to achieve common ends. 

If you're sending out a consistent message rather than saying conflicting things to different micro-groups, and it’s based on consent, then it can be a good thing. Those arguing otherwise either don't understand targeting, or they don't understand the reality of politics.

I despair each time a campaign tells me their core strategy is social media, and that’s what’s going to win them an election or campaign. As we’ll see in today’s post, the world of social online campaigning is changing dramatically right now. Assuming that social media followers will always be accessible is a strategy that has never been less likely to produce results. Let’s find out what’s no longer working, and think creatively about what does work.

The new, old power structures

Once upon a time, traditional print and broadcasting media had the authority and power to be kingmakers. They decided which opinions deserved a platform, and there was little to do about it if they decided your cause was not worth any airtime. The internet and social media gave normal people the opportunity to talk about the issues they care about. However, with social media and search engine giants and the power of algorithmic content strategies have come a different set of challenges and debates. 

Political content on social media is an increasingly controversial topic. In October 2019, Twitter announced that they were banning all political advertisements. At about the same time, Mark Zuckerberg said, “I don't think it's right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy.” However, after the U.S. elections in November last year, Facebook changed its tune and Google also banned political advertisement. These bans have been extended repeatedly since then, with Google finally announcing last week that they are back in the game. It's unclear what Facebook’s intentions are. These changes show that smart campaigns need to focus on long-term movement building that isn’t just sustained by paid advertisement.

So you might think, that’s fine! I’m going to focus organic reach on social media in my campaign. And I get it—I love the impact relational organising (as mentioned in my last blog) can have. However, this still doesn't futureproof you completely. There’s a real danger that digital platforms overcorrect, and as a result, it could get harder to reach people through peer-to-peer content sharing. Facebook just announced on February 10th that they are now also changing their algorithm to decrease the amount of organic political content in users’ feeds, starting with Canada, Brazil, Indonesia and the U.S. 

Campaigners need to work within European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the regulation of paid political advertisement on social media and search platforms like Google, and now Facebook’s experimentation with changing algorithms to show less political content. The message is clear: if you want any control over the message you push out and its timing, then digital marketing and organic social media campaigning are no longer the sole solutions. 

Social media has become impersonal

You can’t tell your supporters engagement and commitment apart on social, and that makes each message hard to customise. I’m a huge believer in respecting people’s time and engaging them specifically on topics they care about, rather than each and every policy idea you may want to take forward. With organic social media engagement you can’t tell what matters to each follower, so blasting out messages about everything under the sun isn’t going to work. Throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks is a waste of your time, and of theirs. More to come about this in my next blog.

Social media channels do have their uses. Twitter is still a great way to reach thought leaders, journalists, and other politicians. Facebook is a great platform for people to have conversations with one another. It’s a place to start your engagement strategy. But the real goal is to drive supporters to your owned media platforms, such as your website. Once there, you want to convert them into named supporters so you can build the more personalised engagement that is so effective. 

In the world of campaigning, one size does not fit all. People don’t care about all the facets of politics to the same extent as you and I. Ronald Reagan famously summed up the core question for most people at election time: “are you better off today than you were four years ago?” Different people have different ideas about what 'better' looks like; they have their own priorities and experiences, and respond to different elements of your messaging. Getting that messaging right is the battle you have to win.

Is peer to peer the solution?

Convert people into real supporters that you can communicate with on your, and their, terms. In order to do that, you must ensure that you own the data and have the necessary permission. If you’re reading this post, then you probably know that you don’t own the data you collect on Facebook, Twitter and most established crowdfunding and petition pages. If you decide you want to use a different platform, or if the platform decides that they don’t want you, then you get nothing. 

All campaign efforts on social media should therefore focus on conversion. We want to convert people who might be quite passively following us on social media into active supporters who have consented to receive direct email and texting communications from campaigns. Social media posts and advertisements should all be driving towards this goal. The same goes for your peer-to-peer engagement. Continuously encourage your supporters to be your advocates in their own communities, let them know about your campaign priorities and messaging, empower them to create shareable content. And don’t forget to make it easy for those who just want to forward set pieces of content. 

When you convert someone into an active supporter who’s opted into receiving your messages directly, you have the opportunity to communicate with them on the issues that matter to them. You control the timing and the content of your messaging. You can personalise and engage. With recent events showing that campaigns can’t rely on social media to communicate with voters, supporters, and volunteers, the smart campaigners will start futureproofing now. 

Campaigns who want shortcuts are running out of options, and anyone telling them otherwise isn’t being truthful. Start working on a strong conversion strategy, and think about how to engage your supporters actively and on a personal level.

I’ll be looking at some strong trends from last year’s American elections, and helping you understand why they worked and how you can apply them to your campaigns. For as long as I’ve worked in politics, most of Europe has looked towards campaigning trends in the US. Smart, agile campaigners look at how the Americans are innovating, trial the strategies in their own countries and adopt what works in their cultural context (this is going to be a reoccurring theme on my blog over the next few months). This year, COVID and social distancing will continue to change and challenge our conventional wisdom. It’s time to get proactive, not reactive about the unusual social landscape for campaigning in 2021.

Increase voter participation during COVID 

While the US elections last year saw record high turnout during early voting, that’s not the story everywhere. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), turnout was down in two thirds of all national elections and referendums, and down in three quarters of all sub-elections. Some countries postponed elections, others went ahead as planned or with some changes. The picture for this year’s elections is similar. 

Lacking clarity until later in the year, campaigners need to step up and help voters be prepared for anything. There are two elements of voter participation to consider: getting them registered, and having them cast their ballots. 

First, get as many supporters as possible to register for postal voting, or early voting if available. This especially holds true if your target segments are older, and therefore more likely to be isolating due to the COVID crisis. 

Second, once they’ve registered, help them make a concrete plan to vote. This is crucial to create a structured way of getting supporters to cast their ballots. Making plans to vote is now a commonplace tactic in most American elections, and there’s a good reason why. It’s a strategy that can increase turnout between 4 and 9%. I’ve only seen it used a handful of times this side of the pond, but this year in particular it could be the powerful strategy we need to help eliminate pre-election confusion and drive voter turnout.

Through a conversation or an online survey, ask your voters to consider the specifics of their voting plan. Where and when will they cast their ballot? How, and with whom, will they get there on the day? Or is a postal vote a better choice? Campaigns can even use digital tools to send reminder emails to voters with their own personalised plans to vote, making the experience personal and meaningful.

Get smart about socially-distanced canvassing

For more than a decade, it’s been impossible to talk about getting out the vote in the US and UK without also talking about the impact of door-to-door canvassing. Now, suddenly, street stalls, canvassing and in-person events (which could even include leafleting) are out. 

In their book Get Out The Vote, world-renowned experts Donald P. Green and Alan S. Geber show that phone canvassing by volunteers can be almost as effective as door-to-door canvassing. They estimate that door-to-door canvassing by volunteers costs $33 per vote gained, while phone canvassing costs $36 per vote. So it makes sense that many campaigns are now looking to ramp up their phone canvassing efforts.

Phone canvassing is not without its challenges. It’s been increasingly hard to reach voters as they switch from landlines to mobile phones. No longer can you simply open up the local phonebook or the electoral roll and find the phone numbers you need to contact voters in the most marginal areas. Reliance on mobile phones also makes it harder to make educated guesses as to the location of the voter. You might waste time calling people who no longer vote in the area you’re targeting. Similarly, technology has made it easier to screen calls—in some countries, people can even enrol in nuisance prevention programmes that make it illegal to phone them.

On the volunteer side, it can be hard to get novice canvassers to make phone calls, even from the comfort of their own home. For most people, making phone calls to strangers is a scary thing. It’s also incredibly hard to train them and to conduct proper quality controls for new volunteers working from home.

So if we can’t rely on breadth in our phone canvassing, how about depth? What if we spent more time and effort investing in both volunteers and potential voters?

Joint phone call evenings over Zoom could help create some of the camaraderie you get during an in-person phonebank. New volunteers could shadow experienced callers to learn the ropes and receive individualised coaching. Alternatively, it’s not uncommon for commercial phone software providers to provide inbuilt coaching features, that allow an experienced coach to guide someone new through the process. Devoting time to coaching new volunteers and building camaraderie is the kind of strategy that could pay off not just when we’re all social distancing, but in your future campaigns. 

Deep phone canvassing is also starting to gain momentum. A group called People’s Action gained global coverage with their research results during last year’s US elections. Deep phone canvassing consists of deep, empathetic phone calls to undecided voters. Callers focus on listening rather than on pure data collection. The callers undertake fewer calls; just one call with a swing voter will often take up to thirty minutes. This strategy is hard to scale, but it could be easily deployed and highly effective in very marginal or special elections. 

Reach out to people who are less comfortable online—safely

We’ve all had to transition more online over the past year, and I even recommended in my last post that campaigners beef up their digital strategies. Still, we should remember that not everyone finds it easy to connect over the internet. 

Door-to-door canvassing, direct mail or blanket drop leaflets were common pre-pandemic options to target these segments. However, cost and data quality often prevent campaigns from doing direct mail, especially in countries where no official voter register exists. And, a blanket drop of leaflets in key geographical areas is also expensive, with no guarantee that volunteers will be allowed to do that work with pandemic restrictions in play. Most campaigns are keen to use text messaging, but few have the consent to text most voters directly as collecting these consents has not been a priority over the last few years. There is a growing demand for SMS-based campaigning in Europe, and yet the cost is a big barrier to entry in many markets.

For economic, practical or emotional reasons, many people and demographics are simply more responsive to a peer-to-peer approach. Especially right now, when people are really feeling isolated and seeking meaningful connection, campaigns can focus on having friends, family or neighbours reach out to get the message across. 

Many campaign professionals have been talking about relational organising for years. My friend and campaign consultant Alex Wilks asked me on a forthcoming episode of his podcast, is this the year in which it becomes mainstream? I can’t predict the future, but I think it should be.

Relational organising is when a volunteer reaches out to someone they already know—a friend, coworker, neighbour or family member—in order to persuade them to support their cause, volunteer or vote. Meeting at home or out and about (nearly impossible due to COVID, although what an interesting concept to explore on Zoom), making a phone call to a grandparent or sharing the link to a petition on your social media account, all count as relational organising. When COVID has taken many in-person options off the table, this approach is even more crucial in order to reach all segments of society. 

For years, I’ve been advising every campaign I’ve worked with to try relational organising. Getting people together in their own communities, talking to people they know, like and trust, is the most effective way of changing minds and increasing turnout. While campaigns in Europe aren’t able to use the same peer-to-peer tools due to advanced privacy legislation, they’re still able to encourage supporters to talk to their own local networks.

So what have we learned?

Build deeper relationships and community with your core supporters, invest in your volunteers, and encourage informal peer-to-peer engagement. Use digital tools to connect safely, but don’t forget who might be left behind by that approach. Let voters know you’re there for them by helping them get registered and making a plan, so that they show up for you on election day.

In early January, the UK Conservative Party published a guide for their campaigners on acceptable and unacceptable campaigning during the current COVID lockdown. It’s an area many political parties and campaigners across the world have been trying to navigate and most are not prepared to make the necessary changes.

COVID doesn’t mean you need to stop all campaigning. In fact, you shouldn’t. The reality many campaigners have faced within the last few months is that you can’t keep postponing your campaigning activities in the hope that the pandemic will end soon. If you’re a campaigner and you’ve been pushing your short- and medium-term plans into the long grass, then you need to stop right now. It’s time to reassess and futureproof your campaigns with the following strategies.

1. Ensure your house is in order

I’m a strong believer in the “Will it Make the Boat Go Faster” principle. Before you do anything else, you need to assess where you are with your campaign for 2020-2021 (especially if you postponed a lot of your planned activities) and what you need to achieve. If something doesn’t help you get there, then don’t do it. If something must be done, then you need to work out how you will be able to do it within the current COVID restrictions—and remember, those restrictions could become even tighter depending on the country you’re in.

In 2017, I ran the UK Conservative Party’s general election review. In my experience, politics is an unpredictable game. So far national approaches to COVID and elections have varied greatly across the European continent. Romania pressed ahead with theirs in December, but the French regional elections have been postponed to June In the UK there are rumblings of postponing until September, while the Netherlands has decided to go ahead but spread the election across multiple days. Even if you’re not expecting an election soon, your house should be in order and the foundations strong. 

If an election is called, are you in a position to run a successful campaign with restrictions in place? Where are the audiences you need to reach, what’s the message you’d prefer to send and during the pandemic what will that message have to be? They probably won’t be the same. How will you reach your audience, and what activities have you planned that cannot be postponed or that lend themselves to what you’re already doing?

2. Think digital first

Digital has been treated like an afterthought for many years, and that’s a critical mistake. I’m amazed by the number of people who disregard it and just rely on social media channels to push their message out. There are a large number of political campaigns who have non-existent, weak or very static digital presences outside of Facebook and Twitter. Don’t let that be you!

During the Conservative Party leadership contest in 2019, I frequently talked about the importance of owning your relationships with your supporters. You need to have a home for your content where supporters can come and engage with you, and not just read pages and pages of stale content. Your website strategy should involve thinking about where people are on your ladder of engagement, how to meet them where they are, in order to get them to do more and be more involved in the future. That place is unlikely to be Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

3. Don’t just broadcast your voice, but engage and listen

I’ve long been an advocate of complementing your in-person or over the phone canvassing conversations with online interactions. In most countries outside the US, it’s virtually impossible to canvass the majority of a constituency unless you start very early, have loads of resources and are working in a constituency with low transience. However, I’ve worked in polling and so I know that most of that work can successfully take place online. 

You just can’t do door-to-door canvassing in the world we live in right now. While in-person conversations within your community or electoral area are an important part of the political process, there’s nothing stopping you from surveying and engaging with supporters and voters online. Engage on the issues that matter the most to them. Let them share their opinions about local and national issues, the direction of your campaign or party, and who they would support if there were an election tomorrow. Keep it simple—no more than two or three questions per survey, per week. Offer feedback about survey results, and what you think or intend to do about the matter. 

4. Help your people be in community with one another

People are craving community right now. We’re all either forced or inclined to limit in-person contact. That means that your core supporters are more likely to be open to interesting conversations with new people, as they are unlikely to meet any in another social setting. It's an excellent time to run phone banking exercises from home, targeting lapsed members, members up for renewal and volunteer prospects. Even if people haven’t been active before, a warm and welcoming phone call can be the nudge they need to muster up the courage to come to one of your online events.  

I’m hearing anecdotal stories across countries at the moment that people are finding online events more successful than in-person ones because they slot into people’s everyday responsibilities better. It’s easier to commit to a full hour on Zoom after you put the kids to bed or you’ve finished work, than to an hour for the event, an hour for travel and half an hour of waiting around or small talking. 

For fundraising, they’re also popular because there is a minimal cost associated, you can get a better geographical spread of attendees and better quality speakers. If you’re not currently doing this, I highly recommend that you get on it.

The flake rate (the people signing up but not showing up) is quite high for online events. It’s essential to keep doing normal audience building with reminders leading up to the event itself. And think about demographics: older people might not be as accustomed to the technical side of things (although the pandemic has certainly helped introduce people to tools like Zoom), while some socio-economic groups might not have the same online access as you do. 

5. Use your list for good

You might think there’s little news in the world right now other than COVID, and so you’re tempted to just keep quiet. Instead, you should be thinking about how you can help with the wider relief efforts where you are by sharing local initiatives, volunteer opportunities and guidance. It’s the right thing to do—and it has the added benefit of keeping the conversation going, and your email list warm.

Focus on flexibility and ingenuity

Brands, companies and campaigns who are still effectively continuing their good work have two things in common: they’re creative and they’re agile. Knowing they’ve been dealt a bad hand, they’ve kept on target and found smart ways to drive towards campaign-relevant goals. While you may not feel as though you have a lot of control over current circumstances, you too can stay focused on success by employing these five strategies for campaigning during COVID. 

My last blog covered the basics anyone should know when it comes to email deliverability and key metrics, including senior leadership working with digital teams. Basic understanding of the digital landscape is becoming a must for any campaigners, regardless of whether you work on the digital team or not. This is especially true because Covid has stopped many from running in-person events and campaigns, so it’s adapt or stop campaigning all together.

In this blog post we will cover:

• Why targeting is a good thing for you (and your recipients)

• How to use impactful content and effective calls to action to drive engagement

• Why testing is crucial to the success of your campaign (especially for fundraising)

• How to write good subject lines to get those emails opened

This blog post is especially for:

• Campaigners who want to be more impactful with their email campaigns

If that’s not you, then you might want to come back for my next blog post instead. I don’t try to be everything to all people. In my next blog post, I will talk about how to optimise your calls to action using ‘the hard ask’. A technique I have taught hundreds of campaigners over the years, and that first got acquainted with on the 2012 Obama campaign.

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Targeting is a good thing 

Digital targeting has perhaps become a dirty word for some people over the last few years, and I totally disagree with this sentiment. Targeting is a good thing for you and your recipients, if it is based on consent and meeting people where they are at. 

Smart campaigners know that people’s time is limited, and so is their cognitive capacity to take in information. Being selective helps you create a muscle memory, so when your supporters see an email from you, they know it is relevant to them (and they will engage with it). If you don’t do this, the risk is that at worst they will unsubscribe, and you can no longer contact them via email about anything. 

There is never a time where one email fits all. For example, if you do a big policy announcement, you should target different calls to action at new supporters, supporters and members such as fill in survey, join to become a member, donate and peer-to-peer recruitment. 

This is your call to action - have one in every email

Speaking of calls to action, they are the bread and butter of all campaigns. We’re constantly asking people to share their views, vote, sign a petition, give up time to volunteer or donate. It is how we build on our relationship with our supporters over time, and if you’re simply in send mode how do you know that your audience is with you? 

While you should always have a call to action or an ask, you should avoid what is called choice overload in the behavioural science world. It’s where someone is offered so much information and choices that they do not have the cognitive capacity to take it all in, and make a choice, so they switch off. To avoid this, include one call to action per email. Next time, I will talk about instances where two options are appropriate, but for emails the rule of thumb is one. It makes it easy for the recipient to decide either yes or no to the option presented. 

I talk about the ladder of engagement all the time. Essentially, the ladder is all about how different people are at different levels of engagement with some observing, following, participating and leading (we’ll talk much more about this in the future). Your calls to action are all about getting people to the next level, and different calls of actions suit different people depending on how engaged they are. It’s a little bit like gaming levels, where you have something for beginners, intermediate and advanced players. If you start people off playing in advance mode but it’s too hard, then that can put them off completely, and if it is too easy, it may feel a bit pointless.

Your calls to action should be based on previous engagement with your audience, and you should be mindful of what you ask of people. For example, constantly asking people for the same thing like becoming a member or donating is bad practice. 

2.6 million reasons to test, test and test

It might have been eight years ago, but there is still a lot to learn from President Obama’s digital campaign in 2012. As reported by Bloomberg, the campaign conducted extensive A/B testing on subject lines, senders, messaging, formatting and even the right amount of money to ask for. One of the most successful subject lines that were the result of extensive testing was “I will be outspent”, it was tested together with 17 other variants, and the difference between the worst and best performing subject line – a cool $2.6 million. While you are unlikely to have the resources to do it to the same scale, testing really can make a huge difference to your overall impact. 

Before you press send, it’s also worth running a couple additional tests. Run it though a free online email tester such as mail-tester.com, as it’s easy to use and will flag any glaring problems. Also make sure you check how your email appears through the most common internet service providers – create Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, Outlook etc. accounts and send yourself copies there. When you read the test email check both desktop and mobile performance, and open the links in an incognito window (when copying and pasting links things can easily go wrong).

This might be a half decent subject line

Conventional wisdom suggests that 7-8 words is the perfect length for a subject line. It is audience dependent though, so A/B testing is always a welcome way to test this against your own audience. Similarly, fun fact, you might be surprised to find that emojis can help you improve your open rates if used well and not. 

Personalising the subject line is another key tactic that gets people opening your emails. Doing so gives the impression that it’s a one-to-one email rather than an email to thousands of people. Technology makes this easy to do at scale, and despite knowing this is a tactic I still open every email that has my name in the subject line. Why? To me, it is an indication of good email sending practice, and that the sender has made an effort to at the very least tailor parts of the content to me. 

Speaking of the sender, you might be wondering who the right sender is of your emails? I found that sending from a real person is often more powerful and gets better engagement rates (such as Line from Lines to Take). It’s also a creative idea to think of the different voices within your campaign or organization, it doesn’t always have to come from one person.

Words matter.

The most commonly used words in campaign email can make your emails seem more spammy to internet service providers. As covered in my last blog, they use a number of different indicators to predict how desirable your content is. 

You’re not going to like what comes next - most of the words used by campaigns are actually considered spammy and can hurt your email deliverability. Words referring to money, used to create urgency or referring to winners get penalised. There are quite a lot of guides out there referencing words to avoid, so I strongly recommend searching through those to avoid the most frequent offenders. Remember that there are so many things that go into your email reputation, so you might get away with using “Act now” or “Click here” frequently but if you use 10 spammy words in one email then it can be problematic. 

Another factor to consider, as you create your emails is the image versus text ratio. I’ve seen beautiful graphic emails produced by great designers and email marketers, unfortunately, these masterpieces often have the opposite effect on your email deliverability.  

All spam filters are different but generally follow the 80/20 ratio rule for your text/image ratio.

If most of your content is a single graphic, then you can benefit from adding text to the footer of your email—unsubscribe link (which should always be there), a physical address, and permission reminder.

Key takeaways

This was the second blog post on campaign emails. In case, you were multitasking while reading then these are the key takeaways:

1. Personalise content and don’t be afraid to target different content to get the highest engagement. You can’t, and shouldn’t try, to be everything to everyone with every email. 

2. You’re not in this alone. Make it easy for your audience to help you by always offering them the opportunity to become more involved through your calls to action. The key is to include one ask per email, any more and you risk overloading them with choices resulting in less rather than more engagement.

3. Test whenever you get the chance - be it subject line, sender, content and calls to action. The small things matter and conventional wisdom change.

4. Some of the most commonly used words by campaigns can actually damage your overall sending reputation, so check known spam word lists before sending. 

Sign up to receive future posts, in which I will cover key things such as:

• The power of the hard ask

• Key organising principles all campaigners should know about

• How to tactically use petition campaigns

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Last year Twilio, one of the world’s leading cloud communications companies, published a white paper looking at US presidential candidates’ email sending practices. The shocking result: only 3.8% of messages ended up in recipients’ inboxes, and a mindblowing 21% ended up in the spam folder. 

Campaigns are becoming increasingly reliant on online communication because it is quick, cheap, easy to measure and if done well, highly effective. While U.S. political campaign sending practices have always been different to what I have experienced elsewhere, that doesn’t mean all other campaigns have nailed this. 

In this blog post we will cover:

• Email deliverability and reputation

• The (un)importance of list size, and sunsetting

• Understanding key email metrics

In the next blog post, I will cover how you can improve the effectiveness of your email campaigns with simple tactics.

This blog post is especially for:

• Campaigners who want to be more impactful with their email campaigns

• Senior leaders who need to understand what questions to ask their teams

What is an email deliverability and why should I care?

Ending up in the spam folder or promotions tab is not the worst thing that can happen to your campaign emails. There is a worse fate that is hard to track without the right tools-  essentially if you have a dire sending reputation your emails might not even get delivered to your intended audience. 

Internet service providers (ISPs) like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, BT Internet etc. regulate the sending of emails, and based on educated guesses they will filter your emails into the recipient’s inbox, spam/junk folder, promotions tab or choose not to deliver your message at all. 

Email deliverability is really made up of a number of components and based on your domain and IP address reputation, sending practices and engagement rates. The historical performance of your emails will be used to predict further sending practices. 

What is good sending practices?

In the next blog post, I’ll be talking about some of the practical things you can do to improve engagement overall. The next three points are more structural.

Authentication

ISPs look at your emails to also determine the authenticity and legitimacy of your email to prevent fraud, spoofing and phishing scams. Authentication tells ISPs that you are who you say you are and that you have the right to send emails from your domain. Without going into unnecessary detail, you absolutely need to make sure your domain is authenticated.

List warm-up

If you’re sending from a new domain or IP address, you need to warm-up your list if you have a lot of emails on it. Start by sending roughly 100 emails on Day One to your most engaged supporters, and then continue to double each day. I have found surveys are great for this type of program, as it isn’t time-sensitive and it’s a pretty easy ask of your supporters. People love sharing their views. 

Sending frequency

Be mindful of how often you send emails - too often or not often enough can both be problematic. You want to be sending something at least every two weeks, otherwise, your reputation could suffer, and weekly is preferable if it is relevant to the individual.  Never, ever send more than one email per day - unless we’re talking about edge cases such as the day of a general election, or a thank you email after an answer to a call to action. 

Sunsetting

“I have a 10K/100K/1M email list, isn’t that fantastic?” Maybe, but I actually care very little about the size of your email list. I care about how, and how recently, your list has engaged with your email communication. 

ISPs penalise you for continuously emailing people who have not opened or engaged with your emails within a set time period. For some, it’s 3 months and for others, it’s 6 months. By continuing to email these people you are hurting your reputation, and at worse, it could stop you from actually landing in the inboxes of people who want to hear from you at this very moment, and who are ready to join, volunteer, or donate.

It might be your urge is to push back because of the resources it has taken you to grow your list. To that, I pose a simple question - why do you still want to keep them on your list when it is actually harming you? Is it a vanity exercise, and if so, it’s actually likely holding you back from even more impressive results. 

If you have permission to do so - find another avenue of communicating with them on social, by text or sending direct mail to win them back. Sending them more emails is going to be ineffective, instead, opt them out of future email communications (known as sunsetting). The first time you do this, it’s quite likely to be approximate ⅓ of your list. It’s scary but totally normal and good for your long-term email health. 

What are good metrics for email engagement?

Instead of tracking for the total number of people or emails sent, you should be looking at the following six indicators - open rates, click rates, conversions, bounces, unsubscribes and spam reports.

Open rate

This is quite simply the number of people who open your emails and read them. Campaign Monitor publishes this really useful resource for benchmarking by industry and day of the week, and the UK numbers for non-profit it is 25% and for the government it is 30%. In my experience, most political campaigns in the EU are on average more aligned to the government figure than the non-profit one. Worth noting this is the average, rather than good.

Click rates

Click rates are generally between 2.6% for non-profit and 6% for government, in my experience an acceptable click rate is around 2-3%. Because this type of engagement counts towards your overall email reputation, I’d generally suggest always to have a call to action in your email that you can measure. 

Conversions

Based on your call to action, how many people convert from reading your email to taking the action? This is important to track to see if your content is effective.  

Bounces

You have soft and hard bounces. A soft bounce is when an email could not temporarily be delivered, e.g. because an inbox is full, email is too large etc. A hard bounce is when an email cannot be delivered permanently because the address does not exist or you have been permanently blocked by a firewall. 

Anything higher than 2% bounce rate should start to send alarm bells ringing, and you should investigate in more detail. A high bounce rate of 5-10%+ is normally an indicator that you have upset the ISP gods, and someone has throttled your email (thet have temporarily stopped your email from being delivered in its current form, I often see this when people have not warmed up their list or forgotten to authenticate their domain) or blacklisted your IP address (happens when a domain/ISP receive a set number spam reports tied to your IP address). 

Unsubscribe

Seeing people go is always sad but as mentioned above sometimes it’s time to say goodbye. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe themselves from email communication, offer them the options to receive fewer emails or only hear about specific topics and explain the reason why you want to continue to communicate with them (e.g. free versus paying 60p for a post stamp etc.). If you make it hard for people to unsubscribe, they’re likely to mark you as spam instead and that is detrimental to your reputation. Again, here I’d recommend looking at your own average over time and pick up on any spikes. 

Spam

There are different types of spam reports. Individuals can mark your email as spam if they think it is, but there are also spam traps out there. 

• Pure spam traps were never real email addresses to begin with. Instead, they are placed in places where people and robots harvesting emails without consent can find them. They normally end up on bulk mailing lists for sale. 

• Recycled email traps are old, repurposed email addresses. They were collected legitimately once upon a time, but after a significant number of hard bounces, they get repurposed. This is an indication to ISPs that you do not clean your email list over time, and having a sunsetting policy can help you hit this type of addresses in the future.

• Data quality traps are emails with domain names that are very similar to well-known ISPs, but they contain typos e.g. gnail.com, hotnail.com etc. This essentially is an indication that you have no quality control in place for your data. If you do big imports, especially of data that was collected offline, read through the data to spot obvious mistakes. Similarly, use Microsoft Excel and conditional formatting to spot simple errors. 

This was the first post on campaign emails. In case, you were multitasking while reading then these are the key takeaways:

• Email deliverability is an incredibly serious issue for any campaign. If done well, you can cheaply and quickly get your own message across without having to rely on others. If done poorly, you can end up not being able to communicate with the people who actually want to hear from you. 

• The number of email addresses you have on your list really doesn’t matter if those people are not opening and engaging with your content. You do not want to send emails to people who haven’t opened anything from you in the last six months. To this end, you should be sending emails at least every two weeks but ideally every week. 

• Rather than looking at total emails sent, make sure you understand key email metrics and that you look at them after every email sent. Investigate if there are any outliers.

Sign up to receive my next post on campaign emails, in which I will cover key things such as:

• Why testing is crucial to the success of your campaign (especially for fundraising)

• Why targeting is a good thing for you (and your recipients)

• How to write good subject lines to get those emails opened

• How to use impactful content and effective calls to action to drive engagement

Subscribe now