Ali Rahimi: Hi everyone will give it just a couple more minutes to have people join in.
Ali Rahimi: Cool. It looks like we have about half of our participants. So we can go ahead and get started.
Ali Rahimi: I just want to start off by saying that I want to let everyone know that this call is being recorded for future playback. If you do not wish to be recorded. Now is your chance to leave the call.
Ali Rahimi: And with that, I will kick it off so Hello everybody welcome to part two of our digital advocacy webinar series where we'll do a deeper dive into emails.
Ali Rahimi: My name is Ali Rahimi I'm the grassroots advocacy manager for voices for healthy kids. Joining me today's nicotine director of digital strategy at Burnett's
Ali Rahimi: Building on the first installment this training will dive into the writing and planning that goes into advocacy email will cover the parts. Every good email is made of review. Examples of strong advocacy emails and cover best practices to use when writing advocacy emails. Next slide.
Ali Rahimi: Some general housekeeping before we get started.
Ali Rahimi: I just want to reiterate that this call is being recorded and will be available early next week for playback. So again, if you do not wish to be recorded. Now is your second chance to leave the call.
Ali Rahimi: All lines are muted and questions should be placed in the chat and we will be actively monitoring the chat throughout the course of the presentation, we will also have time at the end for questions.
Ali Rahimi: Looks like
Ali Rahimi: So before we officially begin I want to throw in a quick plug for the next two parts of the webinar series.
Ali Rahimi: On September 2 we will go over how voices for Healthy Kids can boost your campaigns using our grassroots resources.
Ali Rahimi: And on September 16 will discuss the lessons learned for the advocacy. Boom. During the covert 19 pandemic registration for these events will be available via email. Following this event and please note that the next two sessions will take place in September.
Ali Rahimi: Looks like
Ali Rahimi: Cool. So with that, I will go ahead and get started. So for those of you who may have missed my initial introduction. My name is all your he mean I'm the grassroots advocacy manager for voices for healthy kids.
Ali Rahimi: My role is to help campaigns with grassroots strategies through accessing grassroots networks and providing technical assistance.
Ali Rahimi: Today I'll be providing a high level overview of the grassroots component of the power prism. If you participated in part one of this training this portion might be a bit of a review, but it will be a good chance to reinforce what you learned just a couple weeks ago.
Ali Rahimi: Looks like
Ali Rahimi: So before we do our deep dive into emails I want to touch on grassroots and writing emails. It's important to remember that these emails are going out to real people.
Ali Rahimi: And the grassroots and key contacts tool, the power prism will help you understand the important role that people play in an advocacy program which will help you write better emails to drive mission advancement.
Ali Rahimi: Next slide.
Ali Rahimi: The first thing I want to touch on is identifying grassroots advocates and the role that they play
Ali Rahimi: Grassroots advocates are the people who have a connection to elected officials because their constituents and as you know hearing from constituents is important to lawmakers
Ali Rahimi: Just a handful of letters or phone calls from grassroots advocates can make legislators take notice and act on an issue.
Ali Rahimi: Web based point and click action networks like the one you see on the right are a great way to introduce people to grassroots advocacy.
Ali Rahimi: Your organization can use online networks to help identify grassroots advocates who are willing to take offline action do phone calls letter writing and visits to decision makers and the ladder, which was probably virtual during the pandemic.
Ali Rahimi: Next slide.
Ali Rahimi: Once you've identified your grassroots advocates, it's important to know how to engage them.
Ali Rahimi: And the key to that engagement is understanding why your activists are invested in your issue.
Ali Rahimi: And understanding that, why can help you transform your advocates into leaders that you rely on to build relationships with decision makers and those leaders can in turn convey your message to the media and share their personal stories in support of your issues.
Ali Rahimi: Next slide.
Ali Rahimi: So as we talk about leaders. It's also important to know who the grass tops out gets our
Ali Rahimi: Grass tops advocates are people who are more likely to get direct information from a decision maker in this case a lawmaker
Ali Rahimi: Because they either have special expertise or position or they have a personal relationship with the decision maker.
Ali Rahimi: You can identify grass tops advocate by asking your grassroots advocates about relationships that they have with decision makers or anyone connected to the decision maker.
Ali Rahimi: You can also recruit grass tops advocates by researching the lawmakers interests and affiliation and then forming relationships with leaders in those organizations.
Ali Rahimi: And by going through this process, you might actually be surprised by the connections. Your grassroots already have two pathways of influencing your campaign.
Ali Rahimi: Looks like
Ali Rahimi: The last thing I want to cover is identifying your network. What I mean by this is that it's important to know who's in your network so that you can more effectively work and communicate with them.
Ali Rahimi: your organization's mission can be enhanced by connecting members of your network to decision makers and leaders in your community.
Ali Rahimi: And in terms of crafting strong advocacy email knowing your audience, which is your network can help you better reach them.
Ali Rahimi: The questions presented on the slide can help you identify who you know and how you can leverage those connections to reach and influence decision makers and with that I'll turn it over to Nick Dean, the director of digital strategy at furnace.
Nick Dean (Burness): Thanks Charlie. Thanks for having me today. It's nice to see you all. Hopefully some of you saw a couple weeks ago at our first section I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and we'll get started with the with the email writing portion of today.
Okay.
Nick Dean (Burness): So first, I just want to talk about our agenda for today. The first session, we did a couple weeks ago we talked about parts of a digital advocacy program. Overall, we talked tools calendars content.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then we also talked about the best practices for using those today, what we're doing is we're deep diving into one specific part of an advocacy program online, which is email.
Nick Dean (Burness): It's a really big part, it's a part that's been around for a while and it's evolving. But what I hope that will learn today.
Nick Dean (Burness): It's a little bit about how to write or edit emails for advocacy work. So there is both an art and a science. So this writing, there's some things that we've learned over time that are best practices to make emails.
Nick Dean (Burness): And help emails along the way. And there's also some things in terms of the content itself. The art of writing that I think can help.
Nick Dean (Burness): When you're drafting emails for a campaign that you're working on, or when you're reviewing emails for the campaign. Maybe you're you're helping someone along the way. Think about how they want to be talking to their constituents and getting more people to take action online.
Nick Dean (Burness): So first up, I want to start at the very base level and just dissect an email because a lot of we probably get all hundreds of emails a day.
Nick Dean (Burness): But when we start thinking about it as an advocacy tool. They're actually specific parts, especially for what we call it email marketing. So I want to talk to the parts and then I want to show an example.
Nick Dean (Burness): We've got the sender who this email is appearing to come from the subject line that you know first bite at getting someone's attention.
Nick Dean (Burness): The header image normally up at the top, something that kind of these either branded to keep consistent or the readers i a greeting.
Nick Dean (Burness): The lead. So how are we catching someone and getting them to read the rest the asks, When are we actually asking readers to do something. And what are and how reformatting that
Nick Dean (Burness): The body of the email. What's really the bulk of the email the story that we're telling and then the sign off, visualize this. I have an example from the Obama foundation
Nick Dean (Burness): And I just wanted to kind of walk through the different pieces. As you can see them here. So up top, we have a subject line and it reads the center to empower young people, colon, the center here is from Michelle Obama.
Nick Dean (Burness): The header image has the Obama foundation logo and website and kind of designed header at the top.
Nick Dean (Burness): We have a greeting, which is personalized so it says Hi Nick. So they have information about me that they're using in order to make this feel like I got an email from Michelle Obama, which is not a, not a bad feeling to have
Nick Dean (Burness): A LEAD. So that's the first sentence in your email. The thing that can either turn people on or turn people off into reading more
Nick Dean (Burness): If we keep scrolling down the first ask. So this email was talking about.
Nick Dean (Burness): what they had to say around this new center and what the Obama, President to center would be about. And so they're asking them to take a look at this video.
Nick Dean (Burness): And see, and see what they have to say about that. And then what I would call the second. So this email is the actual image of a still from the video play button to watch it. So what they're asking people to do in this is to watch this video and then share it.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then we have the sign off here from Michelle Obama. Very simple. Michelle.
Nick Dean (Burness): So these are all the parts that we have to think about when we're drafting email. So if you pull up a Word document or Google Document start drafting. Sometimes people
Nick Dean (Burness): skip all the way down to the lead, but there is a ton of decisions to be made and hat and the strategy behind creating email marketing who we're sending it from what that subject line is
Nick Dean (Burness): What it looks like how it's designed and again what the content is we're going to talk about all of these various pieces today.
Nick Dean (Burness): So what makes a great email.
Nick Dean (Burness): Well, I have four main question that if you ask when you're writing or reviewing emails can really help you decide whether or not this is a good advocacy now.
Nick Dean (Burness): The first question, as do with a moment why are you sending me this email.
Nick Dean (Burness): I think about this a lot because I work in email a lot. And I'm often wondering what value is this email bringing me that I have in my inbox. Why did the organization, consider sending it in this moment. What about right now may need to send me an email. Is there a vote coming up.
Nick Dean (Burness): Is there something that I need to do because something was just announced. Do you need me to do something because you need support to
Nick Dean (Burness): Sustain the campaign. There are variety of ways and moments, there's cultural moments, there's
Nick Dean (Burness): Moments. We know from holidays. There's campaign moments and milestone because of the way the campaign is structured and key boats are key decisions that are coming out.
Nick Dean (Burness): Knowing what that moment is and helps you answer why you're sending me this email if I, if the reader don't understand why you're sending me this email. I'm not very likely
Nick Dean (Burness): If I don't understand the moment or if you don't tell me what that moment is I'm not very likely to see why there's any urgency to me doing anything that you're asking me to do.
Nick Dean (Burness): The second question is about action. What can I do about it. So,
Nick Dean (Burness): It can sound very urgent to people working on a campaign that this hearing is happening or that
Nick Dean (Burness): This bills being considered, and that we need to we need to hear from real people. But if you can't tell me that why my voice is actually going to change anything. If you can't tell me how that action that I'm doing.
Nick Dean (Burness): Like what I can actually do about it. Then I'm going to feel a little bit lost sometimes add because emails can focus a ton on the process or a ton on the moment
Nick Dean (Burness): And not get down to the action that you need me to take. We shouldn't our readers really shouldn't be confused about the action. What they can do about it is what the email is all about. So we have to make sure that that's a, that's a priority.
Nick Dean (Burness): Our third question has to do with the theory of change. So how will taking this action help. So again,
Nick Dean (Burness): It's great that you told me what I can do. It's great that you told me why I need to do it right now that moment.
Nick Dean (Burness): But also I need to know that how this is going to help the overall theory of change how my email to a legislator today.
Nick Dean (Burness): Is going to help us with our long term goal of changing this policy and improving people's lives.
Nick Dean (Burness): So we have to always be coming back to the theory of change of the campaign and making it crystal clear and repeating over and over again.
Nick Dean (Burness): That your participation in this is going to help change something for the better. So that fear of change is really important. So when you're reading your emails, have you answered. How will taking this action help
Nick Dean (Burness): And then our fourth fourth question is urgency. Why don't have to do it right now. Can I do it next week. Can I do it tomorrow. Can I do it in a couple hours, do I really even have to do it at all.
Nick Dean (Burness): Urgency is really important, but it has to be real. So one of my biggest pet peeves is is emails with fake urgency. Sometimes there really isn't a deadline. Sometimes it really isn't.
Nick Dean (Burness): A very urgent request. And when that happens, we have to make the urgency more tied to that theory of change or more tied to the
Nick Dean (Burness): policy change we're looking for the change in people's lives. It's urgent. Because they will make people post lives easier. It's urgent. Because it will improve people's lives. It's
Nick Dean (Burness): It's urgent. Because of the health of people. It's urgent. Because of X can give urgency, not just being time bound when you don't have a time down urgency.
Nick Dean (Burness): Moment, but also urgency in the sense of, we have to do this because of X y&z reasons and it's just really important to be very careful about urgency, as I said, I think it's really we'll talk about this later authenticity and email always pays off. And so
Nick Dean (Burness): If you use false urgency, as I call it in your emails you can expect lists members to flee and you can also
Nick Dean (Burness): Expect her trust decrease. So people will start to trust your brand less over time, your emails will be open less you'll have to replace
Nick Dean (Burness): Your advocates even more. And so you really want to be thoughtful about when you use urgency, if there is a moment if there's a deadline. If it doesn't need to happen right now. Let's just make sure that's really clear to our readers.
Nick Dean (Burness): So these are for questions moment. Why are you sending me this email action. What can I do about it theory of change. How will taking these action help
Nick Dean (Burness): And urgency why right now. Do I have to take this action. If you have those four things in email you are on a really good path for a great advocates email.
Nick Dean (Burness): Knowing that what I want to do is give everyone a minute to read this draft email from colon already congressional campaign and 2017 2018 a little while ago.
Nick Dean (Burness): So I'll give everyone a couple minutes to read through this and starts on the left ends on the right.
Nick Dean (Burness): And we're also going to put in the chat. There's a Google doc with this text, if that's easier for anyone to read. You can find the link in the chat. It's accessible document to be read by yourself for screen read
Nick Dean (Burness): But I'll give everyone a few moments. And what I want you to do is to be looking for.
Nick Dean (Burness): The four things moment. Why are you sending this to me action. What can I do about it theory of change how that's help urgency why right now. So I'll give everyone a few minutes to read this first section. Everything you need is up at the top. On the left here.
Nick Dean (Burness): All right, now I want to talk through a couple of these.
Nick Dean (Burness): If you have yours written down, see if you got them right. First one around moment might be a little bit difficult.
Nick Dean (Burness): Because this is kind of an older email. But if you remember there was a whole time where
Nick Dean (Burness): The President and was making comments around football players protest kneeling in protest during the national anthem and it made some comments this email was a rapid response email around that moment.
Nick Dean (Burness): So the moment here is that the initial kneeling protests Colin already was a former football player for the Tennessee Titans.
Nick Dean (Burness): And NFL protests were just right along with who he was as a person and his personal story. And so he sent this email around this moment to kind of make it known where he stood
Nick Dean (Burness): The action. What can you do about this is to donate and that's tied to a theory of change that calling all rights theory was
Nick Dean (Burness): Our leaders are dividing us and I will unite people I need money to be elected. So you can see that here. He says, I'm running for Congress because I believe that what unites us is much more powerful than what divides us. And if you agree to donate
Nick Dean (Burness): And so this is a little bit harder for you to follow along. It doesn't as piecemeal, but I think it gives a good job of telling the story.
Nick Dean (Burness): While at the same time maintaining each of these things. And then finally, where we see the urgency is that there's a real fundraising deadline. This Saturday I believe that this was at the end of the quarter.
Nick Dean (Burness): And so it's very common for political campaigns to use end of quarter emails and deadlines as an urgency request to say
Nick Dean (Burness): You know, these numbers are going to be looked at people are going to be judging our campaign and how successful it is if we get the money and time our deadline is Saturday. So why do I have to do it right now. Well, this was sent on a Thursday or Friday only have a couple of days left
Nick Dean (Burness): So those are those four moments kind of played out in an email.
Nick Dean (Burness): Next, I want to go kind of detail. We've talked with the four questions. I can help you. Anytime you're writing an advocacy email.
Nick Dean (Burness): Now I just want to talk about some of the best practices around email writing when you're sitting down to write out because email some things that you should always consider or even if you're editing them things you can see if that if the writer, you're reviewing has passed them.
Nick Dean (Burness): Because the first thing about good emails. Is that good emails have good writing. So it's not always just about email and digital. It's very common to say, oh, digital shorter, it's different. It does have its own
Nick Dean (Burness): quirks and things you have to consider, but in general good writing is good writing
Nick Dean (Burness): So you want to be succinct. You want to be using clear and straightforward sentences throughout your emails you really don't want it to be confusing, especially because it's all fine, but in general good writing. It's clearances say
Nick Dean (Burness): You want to always be answering the four questions that we just talked about.
Nick Dean (Burness): You want obviously to have your emails be free of typos and grammatical errors and the key there is review have someone look at this. Have someone look at it again.
Nick Dean (Burness): Just make sure it's run through spell check check out for any of those titles.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then finally, there really is, I get this question a lot. Okay. Well, I wrote this email but it's only 150 words or I received this email at 1500 words.
Nick Dean (Burness): There really is no perfect length to an email. The goal is to get the point across in the most efficient and engaging way possible.
Nick Dean (Burness): Will say it's really rare that someone's going to read a 1500 word email because really where that someone's going to read a 1500 word article
Nick Dean (Burness): And so if you can say it shorter, you should, especially the email but there really is no perfect length.
Nick Dean (Burness): I know, for instance, an organization like Greenpeace, which I talked about on the last training.
Nick Dean (Burness): They have learned over time that their list wants to details. They want the nitty gritty their emails are a lot longer than, say, the email, we saw from the Obama foundation about the presidential center.
Nick Dean (Burness): So your list can also tell you, and you can learn over time what the good length of an email is for your list. But in general, the rule is if it's valuable and it's good. Right. It's probably just the right one.
Nick Dean (Burness): So getting those are good writing. The next thing I would say is that good emails are authentic your email should always sound like it comes from a real person.
Nick Dean (Burness): I'll you made a really great point about there are real people on the other side of all of our digital advocacy work.
Nick Dean (Burness): We always need to be talking to them as if we are real people, because we are it's human to human communication. It's really easy to slip into
Nick Dean (Burness): More formal mass messaging. So saying you all are the reason that we need. And all of you and blah, blah, blah. But you saw in that example you might have showed at the beginning of the training that and
Nick Dean (Burness): It was addressed just, to me, it said hi neck and then I went through.
Nick Dean (Burness): I know that Michelle Obama didn't sit down to write this email but it sounded like her. And that's really important because most of our email. Someone has sat down to write to us. So when you get a marketing email or mass email.
Nick Dean (Burness): Following a best practice of sounding real and sounding authentic can improve open rates. It can also make the person just more engaged with the content you're sending
Nick Dean (Burness): You really don't want to be in personal or overly formal so again emails are oftentimes short between each other and at work, they're also pretty personal
Nick Dean (Burness): They're not normally overly formal so it doesn't need to be like, Dear Sirs, and madams on our email list. Here's what we think about. Blah, blah, blah. It needs to be feel a little bit more personal than that it needs to feel like you're talking to me through the screen.
Nick Dean (Burness): You really want to respect your readers intelligence and time. So this is where I say creating false urgency doesn't work. People are not dumb people can see through those tactics and it's just disrespectful to your list.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then you also want to respect your readers time by not sending them every single thing that you think should be an email, unless you can answer those four questions. And there's real value in sending an email.
Nick Dean (Burness): A lot of times I see organizations fall into the trap of sending email because they said they would. And really, it's probably better to hold and send an email and you have something valuable to say
Nick Dean (Burness): Lastly, under good emails are authentic. I'd say that you really want to develop really distinct what we call center voices. So every sinner should really have a purpose and a personality.
Nick Dean (Burness): Over time, you're super supporters, as I call them, people who read all of your emails or most of malls are really big supporter organization or a campaign.
Nick Dean (Burness): They want to get to know people. They want to know, oh, this person is this and they they
Nick Dean (Burness): They care about this example is, I'm calling all rights campaign his finance share with send a bunch of
Nick Dean (Burness): Updates around finance updates, how much money was raised, how much money was to lead it what it was supporting
Nick Dean (Burness): And so you can start to think about these centers is the real people in your organization. The maybe the executive director of your organization has one voice.
Nick Dean (Burness): The head of marketing or maybe there's a head of campaigns as a different voice and
Nick Dean (Burness): Is a little more like, you know, a rallying cry, you can start to think about what those centers are and what they sound like.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then send emails from those people in those tone of voice says it's really important because we do respond well when we can feel like we know the person on the other end. And oh, this person doesn't sound exactly like the other person at this organization.
Nick Dean (Burness): I have two examples of this one. So, these two emails are from Texas Children's Hospital down in Houston, Texas and
Nick Dean (Burness): The one on the left was from their head of nursing and the one on the right is the physician in chief kind of the head of the hospital, Dr. Klein and I just want to point out a few things.
Nick Dean (Burness): On the left, in terms of center voices.
Nick Dean (Burness): Meri jaan Andre says take it from a nurse, sometimes laughter is the best medicine. That's why I'm excited about the funny Halloween cards that hundreds of people have already sent to our patients.
Nick Dean (Burness): Don't miss your chance to join in the fun send a card today. So we can print it out and give it to a patient just in time for Halloween.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then later in her email. She says anything we can do to make the hospital feel a little bit more like home.
Nick Dean (Burness): Including celebrating Halloween helps to brighten their patients spirits and distract them from their treatment.
Nick Dean (Burness): So you can tell that she has first hand experience working with patients, who's the head of nursing and she's, she's thinking about this as from a nurse.
Nick Dean (Burness): From that experience and she's, she's making a compelling ask frame that on the right we have Dr. Klein who kind of leads the whole hospital.
Nick Dean (Burness): And he starts out very differently every day, more and more children from Houston and across the state of Texas count on Texas children's for life saving treatment.
Nick Dean (Burness): So there's this 30,000 foot view of the hospital and you can you can tell he he's he's leading the hospital from that perspective.
Nick Dean (Burness): He talks about how we're heading into the busiest time of year.
Nick Dean (Burness): Patients would we will see so many patients. The flu and respiratory infections and to make sure we're able to meet our patients needs. We're kicking off our urine fundraising drive
Nick Dean (Burness): My promise and physician chief is to ensure that every child who requires complex care always as a place to go for treatment.
Nick Dean (Burness): So embedded in all of the language from Dr. Klein is this idea that he's thinking about this from as a leader at Texas Children's Hospital.
Nick Dean (Burness): And I think that's just a really good example of how we think about the tone of voice and the center personalities have different
Nick Dean (Burness): Centers how how somebody who has a background in nursing is now leading the nurses can
Nick Dean (Burness): Bring it into the room with the patient and how the head of the hospital, who's leading from that perspective can talk about kind of the 30,000 foot view.
Nick Dean (Burness): You can think of those own kind of center personalities, where people on your campaign. Maybe you send from a volunteer. I just got done doing my first volunteer shift at
Nick Dean (Burness): On this campaign, and here's what I saw. And I think it'd be great if you join me. That would be an awesome email to send as a perspective from a volunteer versus just only ever hearing from maybe the campaign's executive director or organizer.
Nick Dean (Burness): So we've talked about good emails. I've been writing. We've talked about how good emails are authentic. The last thing is that good emails. Always have a purpose. So you send your audience content.
Nick Dean (Burness): With with which they want to engage it should be something that I would be upset if I didn't hear about this as a supporter or that I will be mad that I missed out on right
Nick Dean (Burness): Your list is made up of real people busy lives. So we really have to treat them with respect and I always come back to this question of, like,
Nick Dean (Burness): What I want this in my inbox think we can all agree that our inbox is are overflowing and we're all competing for space.
Nick Dean (Burness): If you can honestly say that this is an email that you want in your inbox, because if you cared about that issue.
Nick Dean (Burness): Obviously not everyone cares about every issue, but I'm just saying if you're a supporter, would you want to get it. That's kind of the last question that I asked when I'm reviewing emails is, is this something that seems to work time and space have in our, in our supporters in boxes.
Nick Dean (Burness): Last thing is that formatting is important in email should also look good.
Nick Dean (Burness): Now I don't mean that they all have to be incredibly slick and designed. Well, but they do need to have follow some format and best practices for people to be able to understand and read them, at least at a basic level.
Nick Dean (Burness): Email formatting is super important. What we bowled how we space out paragraphs in when we use bullets.
Nick Dean (Burness): Where we're underlining and hyper linking text and how legible. That is all of that is incredibly important.
Nick Dean (Burness): And email is also part of your external brain, it should really look that way from a traffic perspective, if your brand looks like one thing and then your emails have
Nick Dean (Burness): No connection to that at all. It can be very disorienting. And also just trusting you can think maybe this is spam. I'm not going to click on this. I don't want to engage with this.
Nick Dean (Burness): An increasing number of emails are ran also on mobile phones until you really want to make sure they're all
Nick Dean (Burness): optimized for mobile.
Nick Dean (Burness): Most tools like MailChimp and constant contact, things like that have this built in. If you use a different tool, you might want to look into whether or not on your phone, your emails look and scale down to the size of the phone screen.
Nick Dean (Burness): Oftentimes when people start thinking about what their emails look like they immediately go to graphics, but I will say that I've seen over time working with dozens of programs that graphic emails don't always perform better.
Nick Dean (Burness): Almost always texts emails paid out graphics and I think there's a couple reasons for this. One is, we've a lot of email clients will make you download any graphics before you see them just as a safety feature.
Nick Dean (Burness): And the second is, we're used to getting texts emails from our co workers and our friends and our family. People are often sending us graphic emails.
Nick Dean (Burness): And so I think we just all respond, a little bit better, doesn't mean you shouldn't attempt to put graphics graphics can be really helpful and supportive, but you shouldn't make your entire email calendar graphic.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then you also don't want to afraid to get out. Don't want to be afraid to get what I call ugly, so
Nick Dean (Burness): Oftentimes you can think, oh, it doesn't look slick enough, this is too confusing. We also get a lot of automated emails and I have an example that I'm going to show here in a minute.
Nick Dean (Burness): That we format it to look more automated intentionally and it performed really well. So you really want to be just more authentic to the kind of email you're sending and it's looking at feel
Nick Dean (Burness): So looking at a couple of examples. I just want to point out some of the formatting this one on the left is from the coastal conservation and environmental group in South Carolina.
Nick Dean (Burness): Notice that they really wanted people to watch this video. And so they put it up top. It's a very clear play button and then just text. I think this is a really great style and very clean and easy for readers can understand what you want them to do.
Nick Dean (Burness): On the right, this is a wrap up again from Texas Children's Hospital during Thanksgiving, they decided they just really wanted to thank
Nick Dean (Burness): Their list supporters and I didn't want to make an ass. This is more of a stewardship send and so you'll see they use this bold.
Nick Dean (Burness): Line to say, along with our volunteer staff doctors and nurses you've made a difference in the lives of so many children in 2017
Nick Dean (Burness): And then they list. They used bullets and talk about all the ways in which their supporters of help that year and then they have these great but kind of collage of images.
Nick Dean (Burness): Along the bottom
Nick Dean (Burness): On the left here from battleground Texas, you have this really interesting call out at the top that kind of summarizes everything that they're asking later.
Nick Dean (Burness): And you've got a list you so you've got this big button to add your name and you get one clear sentence of what you want me to do.
Nick Dean (Burness): You'll see these call outs across especially political emails that the one of the top or the bottom, something that people try out to say maybe they're only going to read this box up here. And then for people who want more information are going to keep reading.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then on the right. This is one that I was talking about that was intentionally style to look automatic
Nick Dean (Burness): And it was just an update to let people know if they had donated and so it was a supporter record and let them know whether or not we had a donation on file for them and then ask them to donate. If we did
Nick Dean (Burness): Until we intentionally made this look different and make it look a little bit like the system had sent us out, because that's what we were trying to just let people know is whether or not there's a donation on
Nick Dean (Burness): Some examples of graphic emails. So on the left Jenny's ice cream. If anyone's a fan of that. I just love how visual. This is obviously that's on food so it makes a ton of sense.
Nick Dean (Burness): But it's just this is it looks almost like a website, but it's a, it's just a one email sin and the one on the right.
Nick Dean (Burness): I use this example a lot when HBO got all the Harry Potter movies because they knew exactly what they need to say, and they said it pretty quickly Harry's here stream. Now it's a button photo of Harry Potter in one sentence.
Nick Dean (Burness): That's all they need to tell people, and they did a really good job kind of keeping it pretty simple here.
Nick Dean (Burness): Great.
Nick Dean (Burness): So next I'm going to move to the review section. I've got an email that I wanted everyone to kind of look at read and then in the chat if you could tell me what you like or don't like about it. I'll just give you a couple minutes.
Nick Dean (Burness): So a couple things on this one that I just wanted to point out that I thought were done well is the subject line.
Nick Dean (Burness): My mom wouldn't do this if you saw that up here along the top just thought that was a great subject line. I think it's something that would really engage people and think
Nick Dean (Burness): Well, I wonder what his mom wouldn't do right like this sounds very interesting. Also, your students have some Tom Colicchio a pretty famous chef.
Nick Dean (Burness): I think they used formatting really well here. They tell a really interesting story a personal story about his mother, and then they have a very clear call to action here I'm joining me and calling on the Secretary of Agriculture.
Nick Dean (Burness): And so I just think they use some very basic things here. It's just text and formatting, but they were pretty thoughtful about what they did.
Nick Dean (Burness): Yeah. Kobe is saying the same thing.
Nick Dean (Burness): So here's another one this one again from the coastal conservation league. I'll give you just a couple minutes.
Nick Dean (Burness): A couple things about this one that I wanted to point out
Nick Dean (Burness): The ask is pretty buried right we've got a ton of ton of texts here. And then down here at the bottom, it says nearly 3000 Kosta conservation.
Nick Dean (Burness): Conservation League members have signed our petition thanking Governor McMaster for support, but doesn't outright say that I should sign that too.
Nick Dean (Burness): And so I think it's just a little bit buried i would i would move it up top and make it pretty clear when we think about those four questions. What we want to ask people to do
Nick Dean (Burness): The other thing I like it. So they do get to the point, and they give me some pretty
Nick Dean (Burness): Pretty big details here around 1200 local, state, and federal officials 115 minutes of realities 26 coastal communities kind of overwhelming and these stats, but in a way that I think is really interesting.
Nick Dean (Burness): And so I think what I would have done is just switched out this bold section to make this really where your eyes drawn to to where I would put that call to action again to really make sure that people understand what we're asking them to do.
Nick Dean (Burness): So one talk a little bit about the last thing around here is email tactics. Some of the things we can think about from a tactical perspective calendaring types of sense, those kinds of things. And then we'll close up for questions.
Nick Dean (Burness): So first up your calendar is a huge tactic how and when you're sending emails and what you're talking about is really important.
Nick Dean (Burness): So we you always want to create a really cohesive email calendar and think about, I kind of think about four different sense action emails stewardship emails.
Nick Dean (Burness): Report backs and rapid response. Most of those are going to make up your email calendar and action email very clear. We want people to take action.
Nick Dean (Burness): A stewardship stewardship be most a little bit like the one we saw around Texas Children's Hospital and the. Thank you.
Nick Dean (Burness): for Thanksgiving. They were just thanking people for all the work they had done as supporters of Texas Children's Hospital. What they made possible they were stewarding their list.
Nick Dean (Burness): Report backs. I think are credibly important I talked about this a little bit. The first session.
Nick Dean (Burness): But when you are working on something and someone that's participating early on. You want to make sure that you let that action taker know what happened. Sometimes it doesn't always fall in your favor.
Nick Dean (Burness): But in general, you want to make sure that you're giving report back on how that went. Some people will do report back just to the action takers.
Nick Dean (Burness): You were one of 1100 names of people who submitted their names to a petition to an X y&z cause and thank you so much. And because of that.
Nick Dean (Burness): This change has happened or thank you so much for adding your voice to this fight. It didn't go our way. But that's why we're committed to continuing this work.
Nick Dean (Burness): Lastly, around rapid response. Some things are just going to pop up. You can. You can't plan for them. They're just going to come up and then you're going to want to think about
Nick Dean (Burness): How you respond and send that email quickly. Sometimes you can capitalize on moments and you'll want to make sure that you can think about how that's
Nick Dean (Burness): How that's handled so those four really make up your email calendar and you want to make sure that you've got emails going out consistently that cut across all four of these.
Nick Dean (Burness): And last thing I want to talk about is that good emails really have creative subject lines. Another tactic here is to think about how you use subject lines as a way to get attention.
Nick Dean (Burness): To your emails. People really do decide to open your emails, based on the subject line. And so you really want to make it good.
Nick Dean (Burness): We want to keep the subject line really short catchy and relevant and in that order. Right, so
Nick Dean (Burness): It needs to be succinct because there's not a lot of space. It needs to be catchy. And I don't mean like kitschy or a cliche but catchy in that. Oh, that's interesting.
Nick Dean (Burness): I would want to open that and learn more and then relevant. It shouldn't mislead your audience. It shouldn't. It shouldn't be.
Nick Dean (Burness): An interesting subject line with a boring email or things that just don't match up. And so they should always
Nick Dean (Burness): The subject line doesn't need to be overly formal, it should be somewhat short and pithy, and it shouldn't draw attention, but it doesn't have to be. Please read this email about x, right, it needs it can have a little bit of you can have a little bit of fun with it. I guess I'd say
Nick Dean (Burness): So one question I always ask is, does anyone know what President Obama's 2012 most successful subject line was
Nick Dean (Burness): It was just, hey from Brock Obama himself. And so again. Also, don't get too nervous about having too much fun with it. Sometimes it simple head can work the series, the most money via email for the Obama campaign back in 2012
Nick Dean (Burness): The last tactic. I want to talk about is what we call a zombie things
Nick Dean (Burness): So we talked a little bit about some of the open rates of emails 15% to 20% is a pretty good average of opens. So that means that there's a whole swath of people on your list, who are not
Nick Dean (Burness): Opening and see the emails that you're sending and when you are trying to drive action that can be really critical to get as many people to see it as possible.
Nick Dean (Burness): You can use this tactical the zombie send to send an email to people who just didn't open it the first time.
Nick Dean (Burness): Maybe they missed it. Maybe they accidentally deleted it maybe it got, you know, swarmed by all the other emails in their inbox and you just want another bite at the apple
Nick Dean (Burness): Lot of email tools will allow you to do this. You can you can find out who has an open an email create that as a list and then send it with maybe a new subject line and try something new.
Nick Dean (Burness): Or the same subject line and just kind of bump it up in people's email inbox, but I use this as a tactic a lot in my recommendations with our partners.
Nick Dean (Burness): Just because I know that I missed a ton of email. I know most people miss a ton of emails, especially if their marketing.
Nick Dean (Burness): And if it's valuable content that we really want our supporters to see it's worth trying to get in front of them again. So consider using this kind of zombies and where you bring this email back to life.
Nick Dean (Burness): And the good thing is when done correctly, using the tool, it will not be sent to the party. Open that already took action. So you are not running the risk of seeming
Nick Dean (Burness): Redundant or overwhelming. People with ask them, they've already done something you want to make sure that you've added the list and that the tool is working correctly so that people who opened it, and took action on that email address are not seeing this on the center
Nick Dean (Burness): I wanted to show this as an example of a calendar, because a lot of times people think, oh, I have this one thing I want people to send
Nick Dean (Burness): Emails to legislators and that's it. But that's really not the only thing that you can do when when you have one asked you can send it four times. And so this is an example of that.
Nick Dean (Burness): Maybe you send an all text email first from the organization with little link to take the action.
Nick Dean (Burness): And then next you maybe you send a topper email from it with a note from the Executive Director
Nick Dean (Burness): And what a topper you know just says, hey, I hope you saw this email that was sent three days ago. It's really important. Please take action now you can
Nick Dean (Burness): Third zombies and that we just talked about to non openers. So again, another bite at the apple for people who haven't seen any of these emails yet and then forth right before the deadline or right, the day of the deadline.
Nick Dean (Burness): A really deadline centric email from the campaign lead saying like Tomorrow's a day or today's the day. Please take action.
Nick Dean (Burness): So that's an example of how you can stretch. You may think you have one asked for your West and you you do there is a way to make up for valuable emails that are interesting, engaging and allow your supporters to kind of get to know the organization.
Okay.
Nick Dean (Burness): That's the, that's the kind of training session section. So we were going to move to any questions.
Ali Rahimi: Yeah. Nick.
Ali Rahimi: I'll start off by saying, we had a couple of comments about Colin already email. So looking at that football example. Who was the audience the football example may not resonate with people or everyone on the list. So was it written for a specific audience.
Nick Dean (Burness): Um, I think it was, it was written for his list, I believe I've used it as an example, just for kind of using the moment action theory of change and urgency.
Nick Dean (Burness): I definitely did not men mean if any of the content didn't resonate with you were struck you in a in a in a way that was offensive. I guess I'm just seeing some of the chats there now but I just met more that they follow that structure in that format.
Ali Rahimi: Thanks.
Ali Rahimi: Yeah, we have a another question.
Ali Rahimi: About more information on zombie sense. So what platforms do zombie sends work on and do you need constant contact with them.
Nick Dean (Burness): I mean, you don't have to have constant contact. I know that it works on MailChimp.
Nick Dean (Burness): And I would just check. There's so many email tools out there, but you don't only have to have constant contact, it's a it's a common feature across email tools.
Nick Dean (Burness): You can, if for whatever reason your tool doesn't do that. What you could do is go into let's say your if your email, for instance, is to have someone send a letter to a legislator via maybe phone to action. The tool that we've talked about, you can
Nick Dean (Burness): You could, you could go into phone to action, find out who's taking the actions and remove them from your next send
Nick Dean (Burness): So that you make sure you're only emailing people who have not taken action on that campaign before. That'd be a little bit more manual. But if your tool didn't have a built in a way to know who's opened and received and clicked on emails, that's one way that you could do it.
Ali Rahimi: Next, next question is about using emojis in subject lines. Yay or nay.
Nick Dean (Burness): And I think, yeah, I love emojis. I think they're great. What I like about emojis is that if it doesn't fit with your tone. Maybe you have a pretty serious tone or serious topic. There are a lot of images that just represent symbols like arrows or charts or line graphs or
Nick Dean (Burness): Axes, and check marks and things like that. There are things that aren't as
Nick Dean (Burness): emojis kind of get a bad rap. Sometimes just being like fun and playful.
Nick Dean (Burness): But I like about a movies now as an adult out is that there's actually a lot. They're pretty serious and data driven or just symbols themselves that are more visual so I definitely think you should try it.
Nick Dean (Burness): But if you have a more playful tone or you're comfortable being more playful, then definitely use those.
Nick Dean (Burness): But also don't shy away from them. If you're on a more serious topic or you're taking a more serious tone, because there still are ways to visualize, same as using emojis. That will catch readers i a little bit better.
Ali Rahimi: And in that same vein, about, you know, making your emails visually pop. What are your thoughts on using images or buttons in the email body.
Nick Dean (Burness): I think that you definitely should try it. I think when I tried to do when I'm reviewing an email is have a little bit for everyone in a way that doesn't feel overwhelming.
Nick Dean (Burness): So for instance, maybe one sentence is hyperlink that links to the page. There's a button later. And then maybe there's a PS with another hyperlink.
Nick Dean (Burness): I think we all kind of consume emails differently.
Nick Dean (Burness): And so a button, maybe won't be inherently clickable to some people are also won't be a thing you'll click on but attack the text would and then vice versa for someone else. So I definitely think you should try it.
Nick Dean (Burness): I don't know that it's a prerequisite. Like, you don't have to just have a button every single email if it's pretty clear that you can click on it. That makes sense. But I definitely would attempt and see if it helps increase any of your rates.
Ali Rahimi: Awesome question from the chat. So some people noticed that some of the examples that you provided were ads and others for for advocacy campaigns. So what's where's the line between selling something and asking for something. How do you navigate the marketing and advocacy divide
Nick Dean (Burness): Yeah, I guess you meant the two problems. The first problem that the two emails I showed from Jenny's ice cream at HBO. I use those more. It's just like setup examples because you can make things pretty official and pretty clear, which is the button in the photo.
Nick Dean (Burness): But i don't know i think i guess i don't really understand the question that much. I would just say that, like, in general, I would try to
Nick Dean (Burness): diversify the way your emails look until you really have found more what your list likes and when you're first getting started, you may assume everyone wants graphic emails that look like ads.
Nick Dean (Burness): But actually, they respond much better just all text emails and you won't really know until you start trying different things that you're emailing and seeing how things are performing against one another.
Ali Rahimi: Cool. Another question from the chat. So when you have multiple campaigns or different types of emails going out to people in a geographic area. How do you approach that. So, for example,
Ali Rahimi: If you have a city where there's a local campaign going on in the same state where there's a campaign or federal campaign going on. How do you, you know, approach that
Nick Dean (Burness): Yeah, that's a really good question. You know, this, this goes back to what I call segmenting and list hygiene.
Nick Dean (Burness): So what's really important is that if you have a large list that you have a statewide campaign and a local campaign in that same state going at the same time, my recommendation.
Nick Dean (Burness): Would be to make sure those calendars are coordinated so for instance if there's something I'm from Austin, Texas. I'll just say if there's something happening in Austin, Texas on a local level.
Nick Dean (Burness): On your list and on in the program you work on. But then there's also a statewide thing for the state of Texas. You can't assume that I wouldn't want to be involved in both
Nick Dean (Burness): But what you can do is hope that your calendar kind of allows that so what I'm saying is, like, I wouldn't send an email on a Tuesday to the
Nick Dean (Burness): Texas list and on that same day also send it to the Austin list. I'd either try to separate those out and that's one thing you can do. Another thing you can do
Nick Dean (Burness): Is have people opt in. So you could send you could send to everyone in Austin and let them know
Nick Dean (Burness): Hey, we, we have this state right campaign going. We also have this local campaign. Let us know if you're interested in that, click here.
Nick Dean (Burness): And some of the email tools that you use will allow you to a pin tags to people's names.
Nick Dean (Burness): So that if I said I'm interested. I want to hear about this Austin campaign, you could in the back end of the system tagged me as Austin campaign.
Nick Dean (Burness): And know that I'm interested in that. And I want to hear about both of them. And so it's a little bit of coordinating your calendars. At first when you're starting to build your list and figure out who you're talking to, and prioritizing
Nick Dean (Burness): If, for instance, your organization decides the Austin campaign is really important. And let's only talk to people in Austin about that campaign for the next three months.
Nick Dean (Burness): You can also just take the list of people located in Austin and and sep tember I'd say like separate it out and and
Nick Dean (Burness): suppress them from any national or state whitelist sense until the Austin campaign is over.
Nick Dean (Burness): If you're just getting started. What you want to be looking at on like an email tool side is the segments and tagging and the form structure of how you're getting people tagged so that you know I'm Nick Dean.
Nick Dean (Burness): I live in Austin. I care about X, Y, and Z thing that's all information on my data record in the back end of like MailChimp or constant contact
Nick Dean (Burness): That then you can pull a list and say give me everyone in Austin will email them but it starts with your data, knowing who the person is where they're located what they're interested in and getting that information tagged and all done correctly.
Ali Rahimi: Well,
Ali Rahimi: Another question so
Ali Rahimi: Can you address the differences in terms of the devices that people access their emails on so that you know differences in reading emails to phone versus tablet or laptop.
Nick Dean (Burness): Yeah, so the the main difference is just right one, the size of the screen. So if email is mobile optimized, it's actually optimized for any screen size. And so when you're looking, I'm using a big desktop monitor here.
Nick Dean (Burness): When you're using that desktop monitor. If I can see everything kind of full width. But then when I'm on my phone. It's going to scrunch everything to be about, you know,
Nick Dean (Burness): This size. And so what will happen is my short paragraph on my desktop phone might actually take up half my phone screen.
Nick Dean (Burness): And so you have to my desktop. Sorry, monitor will take up half my phone screen. And so that's why we say using short sentences is pretty important because we know how many people are reading on mobile.
Nick Dean (Burness): So, largely, it's just how long you're going to have to scroll on your phone. And when you get to the action and how much you can see
Nick Dean (Burness): So if you're asked is buried at the bottom of your email, and most people are reading on their phone, it takes three or four scrolls to get there.
Nick Dean (Burness): That's one of the big reasons why we say we should move the ask higher up in the email because we actually don't trust that people are going to scroll that far before they see, what they need. What we're asking them to do.
Nick Dean (Burness): So that's one big thing. Another thing is email clients, actually. So like I Burnett's we have outlook for our work email. It requires me to download images to see them.
Nick Dean (Burness): In an email. So when organizations, send me a graphic email.
Nick Dean (Burness): Like designed email and I'm using my work email to see that I actually have to go through an extra step before I can see anything. So sometimes it's just a blank email from an organization until I press download. And so if you
Nick Dean (Burness): Saw them ton of your list. And this is something some tools will tell you turn your list is using Outlook.
Nick Dean (Burness): You might want to consider how many graphic emails, you're doing or if you send out emails a different email. It can get pretty sophisticated and down into the weeds.
Nick Dean (Burness): A lot of people will download them. You can also include an alt I would always include all image text.
Nick Dean (Burness): But you can also have people opt in to just receive non HTML emails and there's lots of different ways you can kind of help to make sure everyone's having a good experience on the on the device that they're using
Ali Rahimi: Another question that we had is that it says that we use constant contact and have a large number of signups but many people don't click on the Confirm email link. So they're not receiving our emails and you tips.
Nick Dean (Burness): Hmm.
Nick Dean (Burness): Trying to think about what I would do in that scenario.
Nick Dean (Burness): Well, one, you can
Nick Dean (Burness): You might want to put on the form that you're going to receive an email, please click right so you can think about a one or two sentence description towards the bottom where you're hitting submit like
Nick Dean (Burness): You know, submit your name and email and make sure you look for a confirmation email from us and that could help a little bit. People may think, oh, I signed up. I don't have to do anything else.
Nick Dean (Burness): That's the best tactic. I have off the cuff to try for that one.
Ali Rahimi: Cool. So the next question is that when you're talking about an email calendar. Are there certain online social media planning tools that you use, or do you just simply use a Google Calendar.
Nick Dean (Burness): I I use a Google Doc, and it's like a Google spreadsheet often and I have like the email date that we're going to send it the name of the email subject line sender.
Nick Dean (Burness): A link to the draft. I just use a Google spreadsheet for planning. You can also use a word document or a Google document or a SharePoint document any of those things.
Nick Dean (Burness): I often just write it out where I kind of see, I've done this with you all voices Ali, where we
Nick Dean (Burness): You know, we'll just say like Monday, we're sending from this person. Here's the subject line. Here's the body of the email and just put it all together as a calendar to be able to look at. I don't really use any tools for calendaring, the way that I would like for like social media.
Nick Dean (Burness): Posts, I guess.
Ali Rahimi: Thanks.
Ali Rahimi: Another question that we have is that for a lot of political campaigns. The name in the center field is often change and that can help when the name is recognizable, but usually it's it can get confusing when it's random volunteers.
Ali Rahimi: Or, you know, other unrecognizable names. So can you comment on any strategy around this.
Nick Dean (Burness): Yeah, and the political space has done a ton. And I think you have to be really. I mean, again, authenticity is pretty key here.
Nick Dean (Burness): I think if you were introducing a cinder to the list for the first time, which you theoretically would know because we've never sent an email from them before.
Nick Dean (Burness): It's important to say up front. An Introduction. Hey, I'm Nick Dean. I'm the director of digital strategy. Like, if I were to send an email from finance.
Nick Dean (Burness): Introduce me like you would if I were in a room across from you and meeting you, for the first time.
Nick Dean (Burness): You might see a decrease in open rates for new senders at the beginning because they're just like, we're not sure who this is. I'm not going to open. That's right.
Nick Dean (Burness): But there's also the reverse. Some people are like, oh, this random person is an email me, let me open this and then I'm like, oh, I didn't know that was from brunettes
Nick Dean (Burness): So it can really go both ways on your list. I will say that it's important to be honest, some people have
Nick Dean (Burness): Changed the from field to say like their own person's name to confuse them to get them to open it.
Nick Dean (Burness): Some people change the from field. And then it has nothing to do with what's in the email. I think all of that really for me and kind of my own.
Nick Dean (Burness): Theory of good email marketing the digital best practices is really an authentic and disrespectful. The People's list. And so I wouldn't recommend that
Nick Dean (Burness): But if you're sending from someone from the first time, consider doing an introduction.
Nick Dean (Burness): I also would say, consider putting the organization name and the from field. So Nick, Dean comma Burnett's
Nick Dean (Burness): Or Burnett's digital or, you know, if you can fit it because then it'll let people know. Oh, they work in progress. Right. They were trying to fit your organization name in the first subject line so that if they don't know the name they do know the organization is
Ali Rahimi: Thanks, Nick, and I'll pose. One question. It's not so much related to the content of emails, but you know it's a question I get asked often is that doesn't matter. The time of day an email a scent of the day of the week that you send an email, does that affect open rates.
Nick Dean (Burness): Yeah, it's really good question. I, I can't say that it doesn't. But I will say that, in general, a lot of research has been done in this and the general rule is, there is no perfect day or time to send an email.
Nick Dean (Burness): There are always stipulations or like, I guess I would say like qualifications that rule, for instance, let's say your list is is all teachers and you know that
Nick Dean (Burness): Maybe don't send it in July, when you know nobody's working because their teachers. And so I think it's a little bit about knowing who your list is but there isn't like an unknown date time of the week that works.
Nick Dean (Burness): I would say this goes in hand in hand with the kind of style of your emails and the design every emails to test it.
Nick Dean (Burness): You might learn that you will particular list never responds well to emails on Fridays, but you only know that because you've been over time learning that
Nick Dean (Burness): There's nothing out there that says everybody will open emails on Wednesday at noon. That's the best time to send them send them always so you want to be testing.
Ali Rahimi: Next day, so we're almost at time. So with that we'll go ahead and close it out.
Ali Rahimi: Thank you everyone for joining this training. We hope it was informative and helpful.
Ali Rahimi: I want to remind you to register for the next training session on September 2 that will go over how voices for Healthy Kids can help you support your campaigns.
Ali Rahimi: We also posted a link in the chat for an evaluation survey of this training session, and we encourage you to take the survey as we greatly appreciate your feedback. Thank you again for joining.
