You’ve set up your nation, you’ve imported your people, you’re pumped for the next step. What now? How to engage the people in your database? This blog post will shed light on how to best look after your people, how to best contact them, and how to manage the relationships within your nation.
The European context is different to any other. Different data protection laws, different cultural norms, and a different relationship with ‘the internet’ overall means that communication strategies that work in, say, the USA, could easily fall on deaf ears on the other side of the Atlantic. For example, Europeans tend to be more pessimistic with spending post-recession, Brits are 5 times less likely to proclaim they’re self-confident, and internet anonymity is preferred throughout the continent rather than sharing your details online (which then leads to phenomena such as lower online subscription rates to deals/causes/petitions etc). Given these key consumer (and generally cultural) differences, digital campaigning efforts need to be tailored to the specific context.
This blog post is structured along key points which are necessary to consider when engaging with a European audience. The use of paths, filters, lists, and tags is essential to ensure the people in your database can be effectively organised and seamlessly synchronised with your workflow, but this blogpost aims to provide further strategic tips both from the theoretical perspective and how to make them come alive in NationBuilder. The list is by no means exhaustive (and if you have more ideas feel free to leave a comment), but hopes to get the creativity flowing when it comes to structuring your digital campaign in Europe.
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Make sure to carefully demarcate important interpersonal relationships to streamline future communication
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Theory: This is particularly important in the European context. Political parties are a lot more closely-knit that across the Atlantic and the ‘degree of separation’ of most politicians in the respective European countries is exponentially closer than in the USA. Therefore, a situation where a local influential figure is, for example, related to the local political representative is not only statistically more likely to occur, but is also very important to map in the NationBuilder database.
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Practice: In your database, one can filter for ‘high worth’ individuals (in terms of social capital, as described by Bourdieu) and target them in one-off emails which you can send directly from the profile (see screenshot below).While this seems like a large amount of effort to exert in contacting a handful people, it can yield amazing results in terms of being able to access new networks and influence them through cultivating 1:1 relationships. Especially when paired with the synchronisation with social media (and high worth individuals there) which is powered by NationBuilder Match, you can target social media influencers in your database to help you organically grow your organisation. So for example, let's say that the local MP's cousin happens to be a well-followed Tweeter. You can record this relationship in the database, link up the two profiles, and because NationBuilder Match would have already synced the Twitter handle of the cousin to her profile, you can direct message her to say 'Hello old bean, I can see you're fantastically popular on Twitter, would you terribly mind retweeting one of our posts' (or something along those lines...). Cultivating that 1:1 relationship is much more efficient than contacting 20 people with 50 Twitter followers each - and the ability of NationBuilder to record such level of detail and context means you can have quality over quantity, which is especially important in the more close-knit social circles in Europe.
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Make sure to include Support level where you can in case of a political campaign
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Theory: While politics are likely to be tribalistic anywhere you go in the world, Europe is very different to the USA. While the Support Level is important to demarcate in a profile for a US candidate as well as a European one, politics in Europe can be a lot more fluid and unpredictable, meaning that indicating the Support Level of your voters is a key tool. In the US, there are two main parties, whereas in the United Kingdom (for example), there are currently 12 political parties in Parliament. Therefore collecting data around this as meticulously as possible is imperative.
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Practice: You can collect an array of data with NationBuilder third party apps or via a simple batch update, where you can assign support levels or political parties, as well as easily record support level recorded on doorsteps while canvassing. However, make sure that your Support Level is indicated on a scale of 1-5 (with 1 being strongest supporter and 5 being weakest) when importing your data. Europeans often record Support Levels the other way round, and this can cause havoc in imported data files.
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Ensure tagging of people according to if they donated or refused to do so
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Theory: It is of absolute essence to make sure one carefully denotes individuals who have either already donated money or have refused to do so. A failure to acknowledge those who have already given money means they could feel their donation went unregistered - which is likely to deter them from donating again. Equally, a failure to respect an individual refused to donate (due to lack of interest or inability to give a financial gift) could seriously harm the reputation of the campaign. On top of these 'basic rules of donating', Europe (and countries within it) have their own 'fundraising etiquette'. As VisualDNA reported, Americans are much more likely to eventually be convinced by repeated emotional pleas for donations, whereas Brits, for example, are not likely to respond if they have not the first time around (if a Brit doesn't want to give money, that's more or less that, whereas an American is likely to eventually be persuaded - and your fundraising campaign needs to be adapted to that). That being said, Brits are much more likely to give money to charity ‘spontaneously’ in public transport or on the street, whereas in France for example, charity efforts are a lot more institutionalised through media or politics (you will rarely see people with charity buckets in the streets of Paris whereas there is one on every corner in London) These different approaches towards fundraising mean that, donation data has to be detailed, and donating efforts have to be diversified, even between different European countries.
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Practice: You can tag people both automatically or manually based on the actions people take on your website (for example make donations) which helps down the line in filtering for these people and immediately seeing their key characteristics when clicking on their profile. Furthermore, you can enter further description in the ‘notes’ section of a profile for more detail, as well as log contacts (screenshot below) if one-on-one fundraising efforts have been made (such as through phonebanking). This level of detail and careful tagging ensures people can be siloed according to their donation history, meaning fundraising efforts can become more streamlined.
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Carefully demarcate in the Notes section or via tags which languages people speak and whether they are accessible in English
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Theory: There are 23 officially recognised languages within the EU, but in actuality there are around 61 indigenous regional and minority languages across the continent. Therefore, English cannot be assumed as a golden ticket across the entirety of your database.
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Practice: A very useful tag to implement with users is the language they speak, and whether they are fully proficient in English. If they are not, it is certainly worth creating a filter for those people and emailing them in their preferred language, if there are resources for such level of detail.
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When reaching out to constituents in the UK, it’s good to filter by local wards
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Theory: While reaching out from central HQ is effective, people like to be included in local efforts. In USA, the funding laws are different to the United Kingdom, for example, where local representatives are entitled to privately-funded campaigns, whereas in the United Kingdom this would be illegal. Therefore, with more ‘limited’ local resources, it’s imperative to get directly in touch from a local councillor or parliamentary representative in order to feel they are not simply getting a ‘bulk’ email, but also to save money on printing leaflets. While bulk emails are sometimes necessary, such as ahead of a big nation-wide election, targeted email blasts (based on specific filters and tags) are a great way to target regional populations.
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Practice: You can do this by creating regional newsletters, giving people the option to subscribe to them, which means people can feel a lot more locally engaged and feel they have the power to pick and choose what they receive: ie to subscribe to the regional newsletter but unsubscribe from the national one. The feeling of individual power of being able to filter what information you receive is an incredibly powerful tool for digital campaigning. You can do this by simply filtering according to auto-districting criteria in your database, and then email-blasting these regional lists in order to gain regional targeted support. Below is a screenshot of the available Districts that are automatically populated from a primary address in the United Kingdom, although autodisctricting has now been enabled in France as well.
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As mentioned above, these are only a number of examples of how to specifically target a European audience. In order to find out more live, join one of our European Live Demos! And keep your eyes peeled for more blogs here…
