Back before the midterm frenzy kicked in, I had the pleasure of joining NGP VAN‘s Craig Grella for an hour-long talk about digital list-building. Just about every campaign or advocacy organization needs to build a supporter list, whether it’s to solicit donations, to generate messages to Congress or to fill volunteer shifts.
Too many campaigns buy and sell email lists, which often leads to spam complaints and other issues that make it difficult for ANY of a sender’s message to reach the inbox. If no one sees your fundraising appeals, how much good did that purchased list do you after all? Bought lists can also run afoul of the mass-email platforms’ terms of service, not to mention the real ethical concerns involved with flogging supporters’ data on the open market.
Fortunately, campaigns and advocacy organization have an array of possibilities before them when they want to build lists ethically, effectively and sustainable. And from joint actions to digital ads, Craig and I covered a slew of them in depth in our discussion. Check it out below, also note the links to related resources I gathered before the call. Drop me a line with questions or to follow up on any of the tactics and techniques we explored.
– cpd