An army of motivated online donors can be a truly decisive force in politics. With software designed to allow campaigns to tap the wallets of supporters both within their districts and around the country now widely available, 2016 will see a flood of online fundraising at the state and local levels.
Here's a big reason: a campaign benefits immensely if most individual donations, even the big ones, come in online rather than as paper checks. For one thing, money collected via credit cards is available instantly, allowing a candidate to take immediate advantage of an overnight surge of income.
Plus, online donation details automatically end up in a database, simplifying accounting and reporting. Physical checks present a logistical burden by contrast, since each has to be processed individually whether it's collected at a fundraising dinner or arrives in the mail.
As the Obama campaigns and others have found, online fundraising also lets you tap the vast number of politically interested people who can't donate hundreds or thousands of dollars at time but whose smaller donations can add up to a princely sum. Obama's grassroots donors tended to send relatively small amounts repeatedly, which in turn shows why a small-donor list is such a valuable resource — it's the gift that keeps on giving, quite literally.
Unlike traditional big donors who often reach their quota for a given candidate with a single check, small donors can contribute again and again, providing a financial consistency that's useful in a short campaign and priceless in a long one. And of course, once someone's made a donation, they're (literally) invested in your victory. Of course, only a percentage of the people on your email list will ever donate, so you'll need to grow your list as fast (and as large) as you can.
Small Donors In 2016
At the presidential level, in 2016 we saw several campaigns build robust small-donor lists well before the Iowa caucuses. Ben Carson and Ted Cruz on the Republican side joined Bernie Sanders on the Left in cultivating a base of potential repeat donors, which could help these candidates weather early setbacks once the voters start having their say. Naturally, though, these campaigns will only benefit IF their supporters stay motivated — too much failure could turn off the monetary spigot overnight.
So, how does online fundraising work? Essentially, giving to a candidate is just like buying a product online — aspiring donors go to a website and enter a credit card number and the necessary personal information, then click the "donate" button. Once the transaction is processed, the money passes to the campaign's bank account, either immediately as a single transfer or periodically as donations add up. Obviously, the easier this transaction is for users, the more likely they are to complete it. Pro tip: don't hide the donate button on your website.
Depending on the details of the campaign's constituent relations management/mass email system and the extent of its integration with the fundraising system, donation details may automatically populate the same database used to track supporters and volunteers. Otherwise, staff may have to download the data and integrate it into the CRM as a separate step — something that would definitely suck.
Obviously, the closer the two systems work together, the more easily a campaign can track top donors. Testing is absolutely key — successful fundraisers test which messages perform well over time, separating out when possible how they resonate with particular demographic segments or interest groups. Test, rinse, repeat — a digital fundraiser's mantra.
Successful Email Fundraising Campaigns
Regardless of what a campaign is asking supporters to do, they're likely asking it via email. As we covered earlier, email remains the most effective way to stay in consistent online contact with many people at once, despite the growth of Facebook, Twitter and other social tools — and it's the best online fundraising channel we currently have.
Of course, anyone can send an email message asking people for money, but getting the most out of a list over time takes skill, planning, good execution and testing. Let's look at some basic principles that help maximize a list's long-term performance:
- Emails should perpetuate core messages and goals of the campaign. A key idea: the three Ms of political email are messaging, mobilization and money.
- Emails must also do no harm — list managers must take care not to alienate people on the list.
- The more personal, informal and direct a message is, the better (usually). Messages may appear to come directly from the candidate, from staff, from prominent supporters or from individual campaign volunteers, depending on whose voice the campaign needs to amplify at that moment. Regardless of the apparent sender, authenticity matters.
- Make the ask clear and the action links easy to find.
- Whenever possible, appeal to the emotions of your potential donors. Charities that focus on animals and children raise a lot of money online for a reason. Hope, fear, anger — all are fair game, depending on the context.
- Targeting helps get the most out of a list. For instance, list members might receive messages with different content based on their locale, their interests, their demographics or their past pattern of actions on behalf of the campaign. A good CRM/mass email system is a targeter's friend.
- Email may start the process, but the landing page finishes it, so make sure that each message links to a donation or action page that matches the ask in the message.
- Use the email initiation sequence to start a relationship off on a good foot, sending new list members a pre-set series of messages after they sign up. The sequence might steadily "scale the ask," encouraging newbies to move up the ladder of engagement.
- Besides scaling the ask, savvy fundraisers also tailor the ask over time, for instance soliciting different amounts based on a person's donation history — a $10 donor might be asked to donate $20 the next time around, but someone who'd donated $150 might be safe to hit up for $200.
- Campaigns should also vary the ask — as discussed before, not every communication from the candidate or his surrogates should be about money. Some might deliver talking points, others strategy or context, while a few may be straightforwardly inspirational.
- When possible, staff should map out email narrative arcs in advance, with each message forming part of the stream while also able to stand on its own. But this approach shouldn't preclude seizing on emotion and the moment, such as capitalizing quickly on an opponent's mistake.
- Campaigns should also consider the "value proposition of fundraising," being careful to portray donations as doing more than just providing abstract support. To that end, campaigns often make it very clear where money is going, for instance raising funds for a particular stated task (as in this message from advocacy organization UltraViolet) such as running TV ads or supporting grassroots organizing in a defined area.
- Even if a campaign is overwhelmingly relying on email, content integration can be key, with online video and social media outreach in particular serving as a powerful adjunct to email fundraising. For instance, a particular message might ask people to watch a video and spread it via Facebook, with the video itself and the landing page on which it's hosted doing the heavy lifting of soliciting donations. Experiments conducted in the 2014 cycle seemed to validate this combined-arms approach, with Facebook advertising seeming to boost email performance for two Senate campaigns.
- Despite the best targeting, different emails activated different people at different times. No one message has to connect with every supporter or every voter — if you miss 'em this week, you might get 'em next week.
Determining How Much Is Too Much?
How many messages can a campaign send to supporters before they click the "unsubscribe" button? To find out, email communications managers can monitor statistics, since modern CRMs will track when people sign up, when they drop off, which messages they open and what kind of actions they take.
Lists turn out to have their own quirks: one could be very open to tell-a-friend or volunteer requests but not so good at giving money, while another might respond in exactly the opposite way. Each mass email you staff sends provides raw data about that campaign's specific supporters, helping to identify the kinds of appeals that work and which to avoid.
Metrics and list segmentation can even assist with message development, since campaigns can try out different ideas on relatively small groups first — presidential-level campaigns and the party committees employ these "A/B tests" routinely to pick the best subject lines before sending to a full list.
Of course, as an election or other deadline approaches, managers can get away with sending many more messages than usual, since people will understand the urgency. Don't forget to follow up after the vote, particularly if your candidate plans to run again!
Message volume became a big issue in the digital organizing field in 2014, with the Democratic party committees in particular sending an unprecedented volume of fundraising emails. Some practitioners pushed back, but committee staff were unrepentant: they said that their own data justified the high volume of outreach, as did the massive amount of money they raised. Individual campaigns should follow their example at their own risk, however, since they'll almost certainly have a harder time replacing lost donors than the committees do.
Mobile Fundraising
Cellphones are increasingly changing the fundraising equation. SMS text-to-donate is now a realistic option on the left and the right, but it might take a cycle to mature. For now, cellphone-based fundraising is likely to remain a niche, except for the practice of taking donations via Square and similar technologies at events.
The main effect mobile phones are having is on email: depending on the particulars of your list, more than half of your email recipients may open your messages on a cell phone. The problem? First, unless your email template is optimized for mobile, your messages may be hard to act on. The buttons may be too small to click, the text too hard to read, and people might have to scroll side-to-side to see the full message — a recipe for clicking "delete".
Second, donating via phone just isn't as easy as using a laptop or desktop computer. For one thing, credit card numbers can be a pain to enter into an online form. Plus, when people read their email via phone, they're often doing so while on the move or while looking up from something else. They're not sitting at a desk, typing away, and few will be excited to stop what they're doing and peck at a small screen to enter donation data.
To answer the mobile email challenge, many technology providers offer "one-click" donation programs. These store donors' credit card numbers and personal information for later use. With a one-click system, your donors can tap on the "give now" link in your email and send you money without breaking stride. Understandably, response rates for one-click systems tend to be higher, but you also have to persuade your donors to allow the system to store their info in the first place. Be sure to highlight one-click during your donation process to encourage people to opt-in the first time they give.
And of course, make sure that your email templates are mobile-friendly. Most campaign/nonprofit CRM/mass email systems offer pre-built email templates, so choose one that works well on mobile. Note: in a mobile world, simplified layouts can be a virtue — too much visual clutter can make messages hard to read.
Of course, you could try Jeb! Bush's December, 2015 approach and offer to not send your supporters emails — if they give you $25. A relief for the recipients? Probably. A move that screams confidence? Not so much.
Social Media Fundraising
Although email has proven in practice to be the most effective tool to raise money consistently, online fundraisers shouldn't ignore Facebook and Twitter. It's easy to post appeals to the campaign's social channels at the same time that they're sent over email, and even if the amounts raised aren't likely to be high, a dollar is a dollar regardless of where it comes from.
Don't be afraid to experiment! Your own list may be more responsive to social appeals than you expect, and you'll never know until you try. Look for moments when supporters are particularly excited (or particularly angry at your opponent) and give them something to do about it — like give you money.
Most campaigns are likely to find that Facebook and Twitter are more useful as engagement channels, however, keeping loyal supporters fired up and therefore primed to respond when an email or direct mail appeal arrives.
Viral Fundraising
A final aspect of online fundraising campaigns should consider is peer-to-peer fundraising, the personal donation campaigns that individual volunteers launch through a campaign's online toolkit. This technique was one significant way that Obama's winning presidential campaigns put supporters to work, alongside much other online outreach.
Supporter-driven distributed financial outreach raised a few tens of millions of dollars directly for Obama's campaigns, but perhaps more important is that it helped mine individual fundraisers' social connections for new donors. They'd then find themselves on the main campaign email list and subject to the kinds of "encouragements" described above.
Though likely less of a priority for smaller-scale campaigns, the capability to create friend-to-friend donation drives is included in many CRM/grassroots technologies and is built into tools like ActBlue. See if you can fire your people up and get them raising money on your behalf — once they've bought in, they're invested.
Adapted from “How to Use the Internet to Win in 2016: A Comprehensive Guide to Online Politics for Campaigns & Advocates.” This ebook is available at Epolitics.com and in the Amazon Store for Kindle.
Colin Delany is founder and editor of the award-winning Epolitics.com, a 15-year veteran of online politics and a perpetual skeptic. See something interesting? Send him a pitch at cpd@epolitics.com