Use Those Phones

It’s Thursday… so it’s time for Three Things!

As we head into the second half of 2009 and budget season for many of our clients, we’re working more than ever on devising, testing, evaluating, and ultimately implementing options for cost-effectively mobilizing advocates.

While email alerts can take you part of the way, odds are you have a hefty portion of your list that doesn’t respond to your email alerts. Moreover, you probably need to generate more than just online actions – you need higher-touch outreach to the Hill or other decision-makers. So, this week we’re focused on Three Things about incorporating phone outreach into your advocacy outreach:

1. Test small. There are dozens of options for reaching out to your list on the phones, from live patch-through calls to robo-response dials. Which provides the best return on your investment will depend on who’s on your list, what issue you’re trying to activate them on, and what you need them to do. Pick a targeted district or two and test as many of the options as could be a good fit for your campaign. Define your measurement metrics and your goals before you test so you learn as much as possible from the exercise. Phone programs have the advantages of functioning at a small scale, with short turnaround time and relatively little set-up requirements – wring as much value out of those advantages as possible by testing extensively before committing to a course on a larger scale.

2. Feel free to stray. Don’t feel the need to be faithful to one type of phone program or another. It’s possible that for some asks you need the persuasion skills of highly trained phone center staff to ensure that your advocates know the issue and are prepared to act. For other asks or issues you might have already done so much education of your advocates that a quick reminder or offer to patch-through might be all you need. Know your options and implement the right program for the right issue, ask, and audience, knowing that what’s “right” might vary dramatically.

3. Use a phone program to build capacity, so you need to do it less frequently in the future. Phone programs can be highly effective for mobilizing advocates, but they can also be used to identify and recruit high-level advocates that you can then cultivate and mobilize using in-house resources. For example, consider a phone program to invite active advocates to a telephone town hall, detailing the ways they can be more involved and perhaps with a good guest speaker updating them on the state of play on the issues they care about. As with email, think about the ways you might be able to use your phone outreach budget to build lasting advocacy capacity, as opposed to one-off mobilization.

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