An effective digital campaign involves building workflows and the infrastructure to support them. For example, when a supporter signs up on your campaign website, you want to add them to your email list, after that you’ll send them emails asking them to donate, and once they’ve donated you’ll want to thank them for their donation.
Each part of that journey is a unique workflow that your campaign should repeat thousands of times before election day. And that’s just one aspect of your digital campaign. Your campaign should have dozens of similar workflows – conversion funnels – built into each online activity.
Smart campaigns invest time on the front end to automate as many of their conversion funnels as possible to reap more benefits later on. Here are some areas where your campaign can get started with marketing automation
Forms
When a supporter completes a form on your website, don’t just let that data languish waiting to be exported from some silo. Instantly send that data to you or a team member to act on it if needed. Someone signs up as a volunteer? Get them scheduled to help within 24 hours. New donor? Send them a quick text thanking them. A random question via the contact form? Answer it.
Personalized responses to otherwise impersonal forms are an easy method of “surprising and delighting” your supporters. By automating notifications, you’ll be able to respond quickly.
Triggered Emails
Every form submission should trigger a confirmation email acknowledging the supporter’s action. Not only does this increase their confidence in your campaign and improve their experience, the interaction helps build up your sender reputation.
Scheduled Emails
Scheduling marketing emails enables you to send them at the time that’s best for your supporters, not you. Plan out your emails for the week and schedule them to send at specified times.
A weekday morning is a great time to send a fundraising email and scheduling it beforehand ensures you don’t miss out on this important window.
Social Media Scheduling
To be effective at social media, you need to post a lot – 3-5 times per day on Facebook and 7-10 times per day on Twitter. Scheduling your posts is the best way to achieve this volume and space it out.
Abandoned Cart Emails
Campaigns using WinRed can easily set up emails to supporters who leave before completing a donation (i.e. “abandoning” their “cart”). They likely were distracted in the middle of their contribution and this automated email will bring them back.
Mechanics of Automation
To make automation work, you’ll need to select marketing software that offers integrations with other software. Commonly used platforms like Mailchimp (for email) and WordPress (for websites) are reliable choices.
Zapier is another indispensable tool that connects almost any two apps together with no coding experience necessary.
Automating your online campaign will increase the overall impact of your efforts by working when you’re not and engaging your supporters at the exact moment they express interest in your campaign.