Branding and Engagement Strategies for the Parties’ Big Get-Together

As the presidential primary season winds down (finally!), public attention instinctively looks ahead to the conventions.  This year, the Democrats and Republicans will stage their quadrennial spectacles back-to-back starting on August 25.  The combined two-week period offers advocates great opportunities to reach an enlarged and alert audience primed for political content.  Here’s how you can take advantage.

If there’s one thing we can count on during the conventions, it’s that the decision makers and opinion leaders who flood into the host cities will experience periods of boredom as they travel from one venue to another and wait out the less-than-compelling speeches and presentations they attend.  At times like those, they will check their Blackberries, iPhones, and other net-enabled devices.  That’s a chance to grab their attention and connect them with your activists, whom you can have ready to communicate your message.  Activists will leap at the chance to link to conventioneers, especially those unable to be there in person.

The 720 Strategies equation is 360 Degrees of Media x Web 2.0 = Maximum Influence.  We help you line up your supporters in two-way and multidirectional channels (e-mail, Facebook, mobile phones) to amplify your message as distributed through one-way channels (advertisements, campaign web site, news events).  The resulting combination impresses the very people you want to impress.  Think of it as a sort of political surround-sound.

One strategic approach we like devises a “virtual convention,” whereby people outside convention locations are tied into individuals on the scene through a series of daily activities.  In 2004, 720 Strategies worked with EMILY’s List to put on this kind of program for Democrats.  As you’d expect during a convention –and from us-- we made it fun.  We wrote a counter-convention platform.  We distributed recipes with punny titles, such as Wild Condolezza Rice.  We even made available a downloadable Dress Up Dubya Doll.

We made sure to transact serious business in the process.  EMILY’s List members were instructed and inspired to throw convention-watching parties.  Participants were tasked with five actions that carried over into the general election campaign; thus, just like the official convention, the virtual convention served as a springboard into a productive fall.  The results were positive…and this was before YouTube and Facebook existed.

This year, aided by user-generated videos and contact lists, and ideally by micro-targeting data and constituent relations management software as well, we believe a virtual convention can produce even stronger results.  The benefits could be qualitative as well as quantitative, should one of the activist messages you stimulate happen to catch fire with the convention crowd.  Remember, it doesn’t take much to increase your earned media profile in an environment with thousands of reporters assigned to the same small space.

A national political convention is one of those special occasions when the people who follow politics follow it very closely, and those who don’t nonetheless get wind of what is going on.  It is a wonderful opportunity for branding and engagement, and it all begins with the simple idea that during a convention, the influentials assembled are looking for ways not to be bored.

E-mail as a platform for mass communication has been dogged over the years by low deliverability rates. Not only does your organization have to address this deliverability hurdle, you have to entice the message recipient to open your e-mail. There isn't a magic elixer to solve all your mass e-mail needs, but there are a few tricks that can get you one step closer to having your message read. The key is message personalization.

In the fraction of a second it takes a user to scan his or her e-mail inbox, the only thing that will help prevent your message from an instantaneous delete is an intriguing subject line.

At 720 Strategies, we communicate with our clients and prospective clients via e-newsletters and have run numerous experiments to determine our own effective messaging strategies. The results of these experiments are compelling and provide empirical evidence for success of personalized messaging. Our own aggregate open rates hover around 20% and our click rate is approximately 5%. These numbers are right in line with the industry average for corporate marketing e-mails, but the pièce de résistance is the personalization click rate. Our open and click rates are uninspiring when using generics subject lines and content; however, when we personalize the recipient's subject line or content, we see 180% increase in our open rate. What really astounded our team was the 340% increase in click through as a result of personalization.

The simple conclusion we draw from these metrics is that personalization works. 

In addition to personalized communications with your supporters, follow these best practices for your e-mail campaigns:

Concise subject lines — Try to keep your subject lines to 35 characters or less. E-mail clients like Outlook and webmail providers like Gmail and Yahoo frequently truncate subject lines at approximately 35 characters. 

Delivery metric analysis — Follow your e-mail statistical trends, understand them and above all, know your recipient. If your message campaigns show a statistically significant bump in open rates on Wednesdays over all other days, then you should target that as your primary sending day. 

• Above the fold content — In a world where people can receive hundreds, it's highly likely the user won't even bother scrolling down to read your message, so it is imperative for you to catch their eye with content of interest above the fold (i.e., content that is at the top of the e-mail not requiring the user to scroll down).
  
No generic spam lists — Refrain from purchasing generic, commercially available e-mail lists. These untargeted lists are of little value to your organization because these are extremely cold contacts. People on these lists have likely unwittingly signed up to multiple lists and are not highly engaged users, or their e-mail addresses have been harvested by spam bots crawling the Web.

Building a valuable e-mail list is hard work should be done organically and intelligently from the ground up. Have a sign up form on your website and reach out to other like-minded organzations to send e-mail on your behalf to their lists, pointing their supporters to your form. We continue to learn new lessons from our personalization experiments and always communicate these findings to our clients. Does your organization need help with its e-mail messaging strategy? Contact 720 Strategies.

Does your organization have a good rep – or a bad one? There's only one way to know for sure. Follow these five steps to find out where your organization stands – virtually speaking -- and how to fix a bad rep before it costs you members, supporters, donors, or sponsors.

1. Become a Search Engine Detective.

Every good opposition researcher knows where to find dirt online – at a trusty search engine. Google or Yahoo! your organization, and see what you find. Is your own Website presented high in the search results? What else is showing up on the first page – and if it isn't your content describing your organization – whose is it? Be sure to search for the obvious problems, such as your company's name matched with an issue on which you've gotten a bad rap. To keep tabs on the state of your reputation, be sure to use a tool like Google Alerts so that you are notified when content is posted online about your organization.

2. Buttress Your Press.

Type "Hillary Clinton," "Barack Obama," or "John McCain" into your favorite search engine, and see what they have in common. Hint: It's not their politics – it's their search results. The first thing you'll notice is that the top search result (after sponsored listings) is news. Your organization is no different. Whether you're generating good or bad press – it's going to show up at the top of your search results. While you can't change bad press – you can leverage press releases as a way to highlight good news about your company. Post press releases on your Website, and be sure they can be found online. Press releases can enhance your online reputation – so be sure to use them well.

3. Flyspeck Your Wikipedia Article.

Wikipedia currently contains 2,323,764 articles on every imagineable topic, and possibly one about your own organization. According to Wikipedia, it is a conflict of interest for an organization to create its own Wikipedia article, to edit its own article, or to pay someone to do so. However, it makes common sense to monitor your article if you have one, and to encourage your unpaid supporters to either write or enhance your article – in a neutral manner using reliable source information – as necessary.

4. Talk Back.

We now live in a world of user-generated content, where all of us are online publishers and any of us can make positive or negative comments about ourselves and those around us – using text, video, or photos. In a talk-back virtual environment, we have a responsibility both to monitor what others are saying (and showing) others about us and to be responsible about what we say and do online. After you snap that photo of your work colleague doing a keg stand at the company picnic, think twice before you post it to Facebook, MySpace, or Flickr. It's just this kind of content that sets you and your company up for the online reputation hangover.

When user-generated content is posted about your company online – and especially if it's incorrect – don't be afraid to set the record straight. Remember, however, that not every blog post is worth responding to; Earl Nobody's blog does not carry the same weight as the Daily Kos. Remember these two rules when responding to user-generated content (luckily for us, they rhyme): Be polite and be right.

5. Take Control of Your Reputation.

The strategies of search engine optimization and keyword advertising (see Sean's blog post) can be extremely useful in helping you put your virtual best-foot forward. The takeaway here is simple: remember that your online reputation comes from what people say and what people FIND indexed online. Smart companies still make mistakes, face lawsuits, layoff employees, and get their reputations bruised along the way, but they know how to use their content, create new content, and apply search strategies strategically to avoid long-term pain.

Have a question about how to improve your organization's online reputation? Contact 720 Strategies' Michael Cornfield, at michael.cornfield@720strategies.com or 202/962-3955. And, download our online reputation backgrounder.

Search engine optimization and keyword advertising are the yin and yang of Web traffic generation.  According to Chinese philosophy (and Wikipedia), yin and yang are the "antitheses or mutual correlations that create a unity of opposites - or a complementary aspect of one phenomena" (such as, getting more people to your Website).

1. Yin-Yang Are Opposing.

Search engine optimization is free.  Keyword advertising costs money.  They are, in effect, opposites.  Yet, both work to get more "eyeballs" to your site and your issue.  As the name suggests, keyword ads work by displaying a sponsored text advertisement when a Web searcher enters a related keyword into a search engine.  Search engine optimization works by displaying free information about your Website, ideally at the top of a search engine when someone enters a keyword.

2. Yin-Yang Are Mutually Rooted.

SEO and keyword advertising represent the key online methods available to reach a Web searcher in the act of looking for content about your issue on a search engine.

As a paid form of advertising, keyword advertising is highly targeted.  Not only are keyword ads "contextually" targeted to the specific content of the search, they are easily geotargeted to display ads only when Web surfers from the right ZIP code, city, or state enter they keyword in the search field.  This makes keyword advertising ideal for legislative and political campaigns, where organizations or candidates wants to reach supporters in key districts or precincts.  At the American Association of Political Consultants conference in March, it was reported that the McCain campaign has included literally thousands of keywords in its keyword advertising buy.

As an "earned" form of advertising, search engine optimization can also be targeted, contextually - and to a lesser extent - geotargeted.  While it's not possible for an organization's issue only to display for people in a specific ZIP code, it is possible to optimize your site so that it is easily found by people living in key communities.

3. Yin-Yang Mutually Transform.

According to the third law, when one reaches the maximum effect of one quality (such as earned search results), it is followed by a transition toward the other quality (such as pay-per-click results using keyword advertising).  For anyone interested in maximizing traffic to their site using search, this transformation is nothing short of preservation - do as much as you can to boost your site's relevance using SEO and then do more with paid search results. 

4. Yin-Yang Mutually Wax and Wane.

If your goal is to boost Website traffic during the month by 20 percent, your desired result is constant.  The strategies you apply are dynamic; as the results of SEO increase, your need to pay for search results decreases.

How Much Yin for Yang?

On Google and on most search engines, keyword advertising is placed on a "bid per click" or "cost per click" basis.  This means, your organization pays for what it gets.  If an organization bids for its text ad to display when a user enters a search term, such as "Election 2008," it agrees it will pay 75 cents, for instance, whenever someone enters the search term and clicks on the text ad.  It's important to note that the organization doesn't pay for the ad to appear - only when someone actually clicks on the ad.  

Keyword ads can be a great way to get more exposure for your organization and issue, but like many tools they won't work well unless you know how to use them - part of this means choosing the best keywords. Popular keywords can be very expensive and may not be as successful as a less popular but more relevant phrase. For example, a healthcare campaign has decided to advertise through Google AdWords, and has to decide between two keywords. They could pay for the keyword "Medicare," a very popular keyword with a lot of competition. Alternatively, they could choose a much less popular phrase "Medicare reform." The latter keyword would most likely be the better choice because it's targeted to the issue, and for the same budget they could obtain three of four times the degree of exposure.

Determining the most cost-effective keywords and optimizing keyword advertising over the life of a campaign takes time and effort.  If you'd rather turn to a firm that specializes in getting the most from your traffic-driving budget, call on 720.  We'll use your yen to create traffic-driving Zen for you - and your Website.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been an important conversation on corporate campuses of late. No longer does America question whether companies have a role and responsibility beyond the profit margin, but to what extent corporations and their employees should have a stake in their communities, the nation and our world.  From volunteering in local communities to helping the poor to major environmental efforts (particularly when it comes to the palpable subject of climate change), CSR can be broadly defined. Some corporate chieftains want to embed the spirit of CSR into their corporate DNA. But, exactly how you do it is still perplexing many. Simply giving money away does not satisfy the requirement for some. How are "shared values" between corporations and society jointly implemented? After all, what do public relations, CSR goals and green indexes matter if it's not making an impact at the local level? What good is it to be a corporate do-gooder if you're not energizing your staff and customers around your good deeds and/or encouraging them to get involved? Well, we've felt a strong pull from our corporate clients to address these fundamental questions. And, the good news is, we have some great ideas.

First, in order to make first-rate CSR programs work we think it's important to engage your employees and customers in the process! Second, in order to do so, you need to mobilize them to take action and/or give them the time to get out of the office to participate in your program(s). Third, they and other employees and customers need to know what they've done has made a difference. That takes some form of communication!

Over the last nine years, 720 Strategies has worked with large corporations, associations, and non-profits to help their employees and customers become actively engaged in civic life and the political process. We have learned over the years how to target different segments of advocates using a variety of communications channels to learn, join, volunteer, give, communicate and vote.

What we've learned along the way is that there is a powerful connection between political activism and CSR. Can you imagine the value of having employees who not only write Congress when you ask, but also volunteer in their own community? The connection is significant! Yes, employees who are actually involved in neighborhoods and communities do make better "ambassadors" to Congress. Picture a Member of Congress coming back from recess, after being escorted by YOUR employees across neighborhoods and communicating the difference YOUR corporation has made locally. Do you think that makes a difference?

Yes, linking political activism and CSR is a powerful combination, and many or our customers see the connection as well. Is your CSR program communicating the value of your commitment?

I had the good fortune to attend this year's South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin TX. It was jam-packed, both in attendance terms, and in terms of programmed content. Here are a few of the themes readily apparent to an attendee. 

Politics

"Friend me! Vote for me! Donate Now!" was a reasonable 60 minutes about the state of the politics / technology nexus. The most amusing moment was a woefully incomplete, but funny one-minute history of political technology by the moderator. Essentially: 

• 2000: McCain raised money on the web
• 2004: Dean used the web to organize
• 2006: "Macaca"
• 2007 - 2008: Facebook / Myspace / Youtube

Social Networks

Social networks were the de facto theme of the festival. No fewer than 5 different exhibitors at the trade show portion of the event offered social network software suites, some hosted, some licensed, and there are lots of niche players in the ecosystem. "Sched.org is this year's Twitter', according to Wired, comparing a social scheduling tool to a social microblogging tool. Sched.org is a web-based scheduler, the inaugural content of which was the schedule for SXSW 2008.

Making Web Sites

There were panels and presentations on many aspects of web craft, from content management software to project managment, populated by luminaries in the fields. Flickr, CSS Zen Garden, Django, Expression Engine, script.aculo.us were represented, among others. In the aggregate, it was clear that while there is lots still to be discovered and accomplished on the web, the web as a field has put down roots, as evidenced by the thoughful presentations, healthy attendance and sponsorship by established corporate powerhouses.

Crowd sourcing

One of my favorite panels was on the idea of crowd sourcing, wherein the web can be used to organize the collective efforts of large groups.  Some abbreviated highlights:

Traditional media propagate "three lies" about the web

1. There's nothing good on the web
2. The good stuff is too hard to find
3. Money can't be made on the web

Some examples of successful crowdsourcing that refute those lies:

• Threadless made $20 Million in 2007, selling user-generated and selected T-Shirts
• Flickr "interestingness" brings good user generated content to the top, by watching user activity levels

Some examples of failure of crowdsourcing

• A Yahoo! wii games page used people's content without asking, angering users rather than encouraging them
  
• GM tahoe campaign constrained users' freedom, was "greedy", and resulted in unexpected responses. 

• Using crowdsourcing as a cost-saving measure doesn't work.
• Communities must be cultivated, respected.
• Community is grown not built.
• Give people tools they want.
• Trust users.
• Reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.
• Expect the unexpected
• Weird things will happen

That final conclusion could be extended to describe the scene at Mark Zuckerberg's keynote, where a business week reporter ran head on into the cultural divide between traditional media and web users. She was roundly heckled.

In any case, it was a fascinating show, and well worth it. To those with whom I connected, it was great to meet you, and I hope to see you next year, if not sooner.

Your Challenge:  How do you break through the clutter of emails and direct mail and Websites and deliver a compelling message to potential advocates?  How do you get them to take an action, besides hitting the “delete” key?

Direct marketers know that personalization is the antidote to keeping mail and email recipients from glazing over – but few in the advocacy space have caught on. Whether you want to boost your GOTV effort or get people to write elected officials on your bill, increasing personalization in your mail, email, and Web experience is the key to increasing your response rates – and your activist conversions.  PURLS are a device for personalizing a Web experience that can increase your direct mail and online response rates by as much as 3 times your current results.  PURLs, or personalized URLs, are database-driven Web pages that are designed specifically for an individual, down to the Website name.  

Rather than create 300,000 Websites for individual organization members, an expensive and tedious undertaking, imagine the Wisdom of PURLs: the ability to match a Web template with a back-end database to create a personalized Website on the fly for every organization member who visits.  For example, a PURL might be PamFielding.PowerofPURLS.org.  At the moment that I enter my Website address into my browser, the Web page template is merged with the information from my database record – creating a personalized online experience for me. This Webpage can contain very specific information about the site visitor, such as my name, details honed from my street address (such as the name of my local school or elected officials), photos that relate to who I am (a woman’s photo for women in the database, a man’s photo for a man), and so on.

Instead of sending dreary direct mail and email, consider using the same resources (for nearly the identical price) to send personalized mail, personalized email, and PURLs. They let you to make an immediate, personal first impression on the recipient – by demonstrating that the mail or email is about ME.

720 clients are now experiencing the Wisdom of PURLs.  You can too.

THE OPPORTUNITY:  Join us for a Webinar about the Wisdom of PURLs on March 6, at 2 pm.

Today is the 53rd day of the New Year. Congress has been back in session for 38 days, and undoubtedly you have attended almost as many fundraisers or meetings about political contributions so far this year. I know you're busy and it's easy for the PAC Annual Report to keep sliding down your list of to-dos.

If you haven't started, don't know where to start or have never done a PAC annual report - don't worry!  There is still time. My rule of thumb is your annual report should be in the hands of your donors and/or PAC eligibles absolutely no later than Tax Day. Earlier is always better, but like my Mom taught me, a late thank you note is better than no thank you note at all.  This means you have 63 days to go to get that annual report done!

Top 10 List of PAC Annual Report Content:

1. Make sure your PAC's mission statement is prominent. Don't have a mission statement? Contact 720!

2. A message from the top leader of your company or association about the role of the PAC. Be sure to include a photo!

3. Include a listing of your PAC's Leadership or Board with their photos.  On this page you should also include a description of how the Board is selected, terms of service, and responsibilties.

4. Ask your lobbyists or policy staff to help write a legislative year in review that summarizes the issues your company or organization worked on in 2007 and the outcome. Be sure to also include your legislative priorities for 2008.

5. The meat of your report is the financial summary. No green eyeshades necessary!  Here's the sections you need about finances:

a. Overall Financial: Pull the figures from your FEC year-end annual report for total contributions, disbursements, and cash on hand.

b. Disbursements: Include a listing of all candidates the PAC supported. Most organize the list by chamber and include the official's name, district and state, and party affiliation. For incumbent's you might also consider adding their committee assignment or note if they are part of Leadership. It can't hurt to include a brief description or a link to your PAC Website that describes your candidate support crieteria and decision-making process.

c. Receipts: PAC receipts - list the total and then use charts and graphs to tell a story of where the funds actually came from -- by state (color coded map), by company segment (department or other classification), by membership type, etc.

d. Recognition: There's nothing more important than recogizing your donors. If you have club levels, list your PAC members according to their donor level, and if practicable (depends on the size of your PAC), list all of your donors by inlcuding even the smallest amounts in a "supporters" category at the end of the page or section.  People love to see their name in print and to be recognized by their peers.

e. Benchmark: If you're trying to grow your PAC, consider including a page where you show a chart that compares the receipts of your PAC as compared to PACs in your industry.  By showing your PAC Members and eligibles where your PAC stands among peers, your message is reinforced about the need for additional participation and increased contribution support.

6. Throughout the report try to include pictures of your PAC members at events, in meetings with candidates, and otherwise having a good time!   Use color, charts, and photos to tell a story.

7. Remember, as PAC Manager, your job is to always be fundraising. Be sure to include information about the options or methods for contributing to the PAC (payroll deduction, online via credit card, one-time via check, PAC Match)  as well as a description of the donor club levels and "benefits".

8. Does your PAC have a schedule of events for 2008?  Include it in the annual report!

9. An obvious section, but one not to overlook, is a list of the staff contacts for your department so PAC eligibles know who to contact with questions. Do you have a Website? Other resources available exclusively to PAC members? Be sure to include those details, too.

10. Transparency and accountability are very important to PACs.  I encourage PAC managers to publish their PAC's bylaws in the appendix of the annual report. If the bylaws are lengthy or if you're trying to cut down on the number of printed pages, be sure to note that the bylaws are available on your Website and include the link, or available by contacting your office. Some people take comfort knowing there are formal guidelines and procedures that govern this political entity. You can't go wrong by making this information available.

Need help?  Contact 720 to get that PAC annual report done. Now, go work on your taxes, you have 63 days left. 

Note: This post was co-authored by Kate Kaye of ClickZ.com

Several types of online communication have enjoyed break-out moments in U.S. political campaigning and public affairs, including e-mail (Jesse Ventura 1998), fundraising (McCain 2000), blogging (the Trent Lott resignation 2001), the organization of in-person meetings (MeetUp/Howard Dean 2003), and web videos (the “Macaca” incident, 2006).  After these successes received notice, adoption of the practices behind them spread among campaigners and activists.  They became standard equipment in the online politics toolkit.

Online advertising would seem a likely candidate for this social treatment.  As Henry Copeland and Megan Mitzel of Blogads.com point out, the interactivity, accountability, iterability, and targeting capacities of online ads –not to mention their relative low cost—make them an attractive complement to campaign advertising in print, broadcast, and cable media.   Yet despite steady growth in overall online advertising, at a rate of roughly 1% additional share of total advertising spending per year since the dawn of the millennium, and steady if not comparable growth in online political advertising expenditures at the presidential level, there has been no break-out moment of social discovery and adoption.

In this essay we examine the state of the craft of online political advertising in the 2004 and (2007 phase of the) 2008 presidential campaigns.  We contend that online political advertising remains in a prehistoric era.  It exists.  It is maturing in sophistication of strategy and message.  But it lacks a killer application and good public metrics.  To borrow an image and sound from one of the most famous scenes in film history, the ape has not tossed the bone into the air to the fanfare from “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”

Read the rest of this paper online »

Download this paper in PDF format »

Digg. Del.icio.us. Desperate to figure out how to navigate the social Web? With more than 50 million people actively engaging in social networking, it's safe to say that social media has officially arrived.  The more pertinent question is -- has your organization arrived on the social Web?

In 2008, social networking is the online equivalent of a big school dance.  It's a great place for your organization to see and be seen, show your latest moves, and create a positive media buzz.  But it also takes some insight and preparation to have an impact.  After all, they don't call it social netWORKing for nothing.

I'm the first to admit it.  When I first thought about taking an issue to the social Web, I was a bit uneasy about kicking up my heals.  First, I wasn't sure which site to visit and, once I got there, what our organization was supposed to do.

Second, I didn't know how to get our supporters to actually DO something on a social networking site.

And, third, even if I got supporters to visit a social networking site, most of them wouldn't have usernames or passwords to read, vote, or do anything else to support our sponsored content.  Now what?

Luckily, we've come a long way since those first stumbling moments on the social Web's virtual dance floor.  This year, 720 Strategies is proud to bring to our clients and friends a proprietary concept (and technology) that helps organizations survive and thrive on the social Web.  It's called one-click social networking -- the technology equivalent of riding to the social networking prom in a limousine on the arm of the prom king or queen.  It makes everything easy.

Here's how it works.  One-click social networking lets you define a news article you want to promote -- for example, a positive article that appears on CNN about your issue.  You send an email to your supporters with a special link we provide to you.  With the click of a mouse, your supporter is transported to the right page on CNN where a username and password is AUTOMATICALLY generated for them on the CNN site.  They are prompted to vote FOR your article as a "recommended" article.  Within an hour, tens, hundreds, or thousands of your supporters take the same action, and suddenly, your article is now at the top of CNN's recommended articles.  We've found that as few as 60-80 votes can move your article or issue to the top of a list -- from CNN to YouTube.  The real differentiator is how quickly you can bring your people to action in the early hours after an article or a video is posted.

Now, imagine posting your own content on the social Web -- and pushing it up the popularity list. Or, taking negative content -- and voting it into oblivion.  In 2008, social networkers -- not politicians -- are the new newsmakers.  So, put on your dancing shoes and give us a call.  720 has saved a dance for you on the social Web's virtual dance floor -- and we'll floor you with some really cool new moves.