Steve Daigneault wrote a very insightful post at Frogloop about the new email strategy he put in place for Amnesty International. This generous article is worth a thorough read.
The first thing Steve put into place was an allotment of emails for specific purposes. He had learned from M+R that a smaller volume actually increases the response rate and so he reduced the number of emails Amnesty is sending its stakeholders.
But this is for me the real take-away lesson:
The gist is that email really is only effective when you can clearly articulate a crisis, an opportunity (crisitunity), and a theory of change (how taking action now will resolve the crisitunity).
I repeat myself, but this is the lesson: your stakeholders really have a stake in the outcome of your work.
- Show them the opportunity to solve a crisis,
- ask them to do one thing and then
- explain what that will accomplish.
In this large organization, Steve now uses reactive emails much more than proactive emails.
Based on this model, I am now proposing that 80% of all our email be reactive, and 20% proactive. I’m not setting specific allotments but telling campaigns and programs that if they can show me a great crisitunity and theory of change, we’ll send it to the full list.
On a different note, Allison Fine rightly points out that email is the killer app for those over 30, such as myself.
It reminded me of a story from about a year ago. I was walking down the street with a friend and his twelve year old son. My friend had just bought his son a smartphone so he could stay in touch with his friends after they moved across the country.
“Did you set up your Yahoo IM account?” my friend asked his son.
“Yes dad.”
“Did you set up your email account?”
“Dad, people hardly use email anymore.”
We looked at each stunned. People hardly use email anymore? That is how we communicate with everybody. People, he said, people. No just, us kids, young people, no! People hardly use email anymore.
Yet, I wonder what will happen when these kids turn thirty and have actual money they can give. I would guess that by that time they will be on email and find SMS insufficient.
But even more old fashioned than email is the phone and Allison rightly reminds us of the importance of the phone connection. In the end, nothing beats the human voice.
