Many organizations fail to take advantage of their data from email campaigns. Too often those who are in charge of these campaigns only look at each of their email’s statistics in isolation if at all and in doing so waste an opportunity to improve their email tactics by looking at their output as a whole.

Most of the major mass email tools provide important statistics for every email that is sent out. Unfortunately many of these tools fall short of providing easy ways to look at data over time the way that web analytics software (ie. Google Analytics) does.

I suggest using a spreadsheet to keep track of the results of each email blast. Below is a sample spreadsheet (click for larger view):

This particular spreadsheet contains the following data:

• Date - The date that the email was sent.
• ID - This is an internal reference name for the mailing.
• Type - What category of email was it? Action alert, fundraising ask, event invitation, etc.
• Action - What action do you want the recipients of the email to take? Sign an online petition, RSVP for an event, donate, write a letter to an elected official or newspaper, etc.
• Subject Line - The actual subject line from the email blast.
• From - The text used for who the email is from. It may be just a person’s name, a name and then the organization, etc.
• Universe Parameters - What was the targeting for the blast? Full list, distance from zip code, previous donors, county, etc.
• Number of Recipients - The size of the blast universe.
• Day of Week - The day of the week the blast was sent: Sun.–Sat.
• Time of Day - The time that the email blast was sent. I prefer to use 24-hour military over the 12-hour clock.
• Open Rate (24) - The open rate after 24 hours. The time frame can be whatever you prefer, but it is important to choose a time and stick with it in order to accurately compare blasts.
• Click Rate (24) - The clickthrough rate after 24 hours. What percentage of people clicked your action links?
• Action Rate (24) - The percentage of recipients that took the desired action.
• Unsubscribe Rate (24) - The percentage of unsubcribes from the email link.
• New Sign-Ups (24) - The number of new email subscriptions within 24 hours. Your mailing service may or may not track new subscriptions from forwards, etc., but you can measure list growth during that period generally to see if there are spikes in sign-ups following certain actions.

Your spreadsheet can include any fields for data that you are able to track on each email. For example, you may want a field to enter what issue an action alert covers.

As you send more mailings and input more data you will be able to use it to see the strengths and weakness of your email program and use it to improve. For example, you may find that mailings sent on Fridays have a much lower open rate than Wednesdays, or that the response is higher when the mailing comes from a different name.

If you do a lot of fundraising mailings, you may also want to create a second sheet that includes total dollars raised, number of donations, and average donation amount.

In addition to the spreadsheet, it is a good idea to keep a copy of every email that is sent out in an organized folder. If you are serious about improving your email results, I would include a page with each email with some statistics and notes. For example, the information that was put into the spreadsheet as well as more specific information particular to that email: comparative clickthrough rates for each link and/or clickable graphic, unsubscribe comments, etc.

Finally, with your compiled data you should be able to come up with some good A/B tests to further improve your data about your email campaign and increase the response rates on future mailings.

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On Saturday the Young Democrats of Arizona’s leaders of working and young professional chapters met in Phoenix to discuss recruitment, street teams, and best practices.

The discussion began on street teams for both advocacy and collecting vote pledges, specifically brainstorming locations:

• Bars, coffee shops, and local hangouts
• Sports events
• Cultural events
• Concerts
• City, community, and county events

Street teams are an example of peer-to-peer organizing, so you should look for places where young people live or hang out. In Maricopa County there are bar districts, ASU games, county events, First Fridays in Phoenix, and tons of concerts and local events.

Stan Williams, Executive Vice President of YDAZ, talked about how to engage with young people at these places. It is important to be friendly and talk to people as you would if you were hanging out there yourself. You can’t wait for people to come up to you, you have to go talk to them. Another important tip is to make sure that the action you want them to take, whether it is signing a vote pledge or a petition, is as easy as possible.

The other big topic discussed was recruiting and maintaining membership of a young professionals chapter. In Arizona members from these chapters tend to either be alumni of university chapters or brand new to the organization.

One of the big draws of a young professionals organization is that it is an opportunity to meet new people and friends. Once a person has graduated from high school or college it is no longer as easy to find people that are close in age with similar interests. A lot of people that have never been involved before are looking to find new people.

Young professionals groups should be somewhat consistent. Members tend to have busy schedules, so it is helpful to know that meetings are always on the second Thursday of the month at 7 or whatever the time and frequency may be. The way for someone to find out when a meeting or event is should also be consistent. If the group has a web page, the meetings should be posted. If an email or Facebook message goes out about each meeting, you can’t forget to send one a certain month. If you do, people may think that the meeting isn’t happening.

Finally, it is important that the group’s officers and members are inclusive. Being overly cliquish can turn potential members off, and talking above their heads using political lingo can make them feel that they don’t belong or are too behind the curve. Young professionals are going to vary greatly in how much they are going to put in to an organization, and a person who is only able to come to some social events should not be looked down on. Many of those people will eventually do more if your organization does a good job being inclusive and creating events that people want to attend.

Every area and young professionals organization is different. Share your ideas and experiences with street teams and young professionals in the comments.

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One of the big criticisms of Google Wave is that people don’t see how they can use it for anything productive. My post yesterday on 60 Free Online Tools for Organizing was based on a crowdsourcing effort with Colin Curtis and Sarah Burris using Wave, and I wanted to give a brief description of how it worked.

The first thing I did was create a Wave, start of the list, and add a comment to it explaining what I wanted to do. I added Colin and Sarah to the Wave and from there were started dumping all of our potential resources onto that first post.

Once we had a pretty big list, I created a comment below it to organize resources into categories with the links to each tool. This functioned as the main outline to the post combined with our notes from the first list.

Throughout the process we used the comment functionality to explain why certain resources should or should not be included, as well as anything else pertaining to the post.

Since it seemed to work so well, I created a tag called “Post Ideas” that I now use for Waves discussing potential posts. I can filter my inbox to only show these, which provides a good resource for posting in the future.

And that’s how we did it. Wave allowed us to combine the document collaboration of Google Docs with an easy to follow thread of discussion that drove the development of the post. While it worked extremely well with only a couple of people involved, it is possible that a large number of collaborators could make the process bulkier and harder to follow.

Have you used Google Wave effectively as a productivity tool? Did you try it out after reading this post? Share your experiences in the comments.

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At the Young Democrats of America Fall Conference in Orlando last month attendees had the chance to break off into discussion circles for various topics. One of these topics was free online tools.

Using Google Wave, Colin Curtis, Sarah Burris, and I came up with this list of free online tools that are useful for organizing, communications, and productivity with political organizations in mind.

Free website/blog hosting/software

WordPress – WordPress is currently the most popular blogging platform around today. With a huge library of free themes and plugins, it is easy to customize to your own specific needs. Free site hosting is available from wordpress.com, but you are required to have .wordpress.com in your domain name and there are limits to customization and the types of things you may embed. You can host your own installation of WordPress with the free software from wordpress.org (which is what I do for KevinBondelli.com), and be able to use your own domain name with no limits to customization or content, but you will need to pay for site hosting from another company.

Tumblr – Tumblr was originally created for what used to be called micro-blogging before Twitter redefined it by 140 characters. Today Tumblr is a full-featured free hosting platform with a built-in network of other users. For an example of an A-list site on Tumblr, check out Gary Vaynerchuk. Tumblr has many customization options, is extremely easy to use, has a bookmarklet for sharing, and best of all allows you to use your own domain name without any additional cost.

Blogger – Blogger, which is now owned by Google, is another popular free service for hosting blogs and websites. I used Blogger for my first blog (if you don’t count LiveJournal) years ago and it has improved quite a bit since then. Similar to wordpress.com, hosted sites have .blogspot.com in the url. Since it is a Google service, it integrates very well with other Google tools. Some big sites that use Blogger are Google’s blog (obviously) and PostSecret.

TypePad – TypePad isn’t as popular as it once was, but still provides a good free hosting service. Site urls include .typepad.com in the name. TypePad has added a number of social networking features to the service (check out Zachary Quinto’s site for an example) and offers additional services, such as using your own domain name and full site control for a monthly fee.

Ning – Ning is more a free hosted social network than it is a traditional website. I have mixed feelings about the service. I used it a few years ago for the YDA Southwest Region with only lackluster results (It has since been abandoned). I’ve talked about my issues with creating your own social network before, and some of those arguments hold for Ning as well. However, there are some groups who are able to use the service effectively. The YDA Women’s Caucus has done a pretty good job with it.

Drupal, Joomla, and MovableType – Behind WordPress, these three pieces of free software are the most popular content management systems for self-hosted sites and blogs (Future Majority is built on Drupal).

Online Video

YouTube – The service that everybody already knows about. Has the benefit of being the first place people go to look for online videos as well as a strong user community.

Viddler – My personal favorite. I like Viddler because it allows you to include your own branding in the video player (check out a video from my profile for an example).

Vimeo – Vimeo’s big thing is video quality and high-definition. They offer a ton of additional features for an annual fee, including player customization.

Seesmic – The original Twitter for video. Seesmic has a strong online community with threaded video discussions and the ability to embed entire discussions onto a website. They have great support and a ton of tools to make the service even more useful.

12 Seconds – If Seesmic is the original Twitter for Video, 12 Seconds is the most similar: swap 140 characters for 12 seconds of video. Unlike Seesmic, where there is not a strict limit to video length, you only have 12 seconds per video.

Ustream – Ustream allows you to live broadcast video online and gives viewers the ability to chat alongside. It is perfect for conferences, question and answer sessions, as well as interviews.

TubeMogul – TubeMogul allows you to upload videos to a number of platforms concurrently, as well as providing detailed analytics. Horizontal segmentation is important, and not just across different media but also across different platforms within a media type, and TubeMogul makes it easy for online video.

Qik – Qik lets you share live video taken from your mobile phone. Think of it as a mobile Ustream.

CNN iReport – This may seem outside the box, but not uploading videos to CNN iReport is a missed opportunity. Both Sarah and I have had our videos played on CNN (Sarah multiple times) after uploading them. For example, students in the University of California system could definitely get traction by posting videos of the tuition protests, statements from students who may have to leave school, etc.

For a huge list of online video resources, check out Mashable’s Video Toolbox.

Productivity

Google Calendar – Not only can you keep track of your own schedule with Google Calendar, but you can share and coordinate with your friends, create event calendars for your organization and publish them, as well as embed them onto websites.

Evernote – Evernote is a combination online/offline note-taking tool. With a desktop application, browser plugins and bookmarklets, and iPhone application (opens iTunes), and the ability to access your notes anywhere, Evernote is a great tool for keeping your thoughts and organizational notes in order. The free service will be sufficient for most users, but there is a robust premium version available for an annual fee.

Bubbl.us – Bubbl.us is a collaborative mind-mapping tool that allows multiple users to work on outlines, charts, and more. One of the best features is the ability to embed your mind-maps onto a website.

Google Wave – As invites are becoming easier to find, more people are on the Google Wave preview. While most people are still figuring out how to use it and what it should be used for, it has the potential to be a strong collaboration tool. As I mentioned earlier, we used Google Wave to come up with the tools for this post.

HassleMe – If you are the type of person that needs to be reminded of things often, HassleMe is probably a good tool for you. You are able to set up the service to periodically remind you to do things via email. While it is not so great for strict deadlines since they send their emails at “semi-unpredictable intervals,” it is good for other recurring tasks with rough deadlines. For example, if there is a general info email account for your organization that you are always forgetting to check, you can have HassleMe email you a reminder every couple of days.

Online Storage and File Sharing/Management

Scribd – My personal favorite file sharing service. I use it primarily for my paper length work or manuals, but you can post any PDF, Word, PowerPoint and Excel file. You can embed the documents onto websites, people can rate and comment on them, and you can link your account to Facebook and Twitter. You can also choose to allow people to download your files, making it a great way to post organizing manuals, bylaws, etc.

Dropbox – Dropbox enables you to create a virtual shared drive in the cloud. Files in your dropbox are available online and will also sync with selected users that also have the desktop application. It also features an excellent iPhone application (opens iTunes) that lets you view your files from your phone. The service is free for up to 2 GB of storage, and monthly premium options are available for 50 GB or 100 GB.

SlideShare – SlideShare was originally designed for sharing and embedding PowerPoint presentations, but now also works with PDF and Word documents. The embeddable presentation player is excellent and it is easy to post your presentations to websites and social networks. Check out an example of the White House using SlideShare.

Issuu – Issuu is a file sharing service that focuses primarily on online editions of magazines and reports. The interface of the player gives your document the feel of a magazine, with the viewer able to flip through the pages. There is also a premium version available.

Keep and Share – Keep and Share lets you share documents and photos, provides an online calendar, to do list, and address book, as well as discussion boards. The main negative of Keep and Share is that it is extremely ad heavy, and we are talking ugly Adsense all over the place.

Zamzar – Zamzar is an online file conversion tool. You can change the file formats of image, document, music, and video files without downloading desktop software and a ton of codecs.

4shared – 4shared is another file sharing tool with 10 GB of free storage. It functions as an online virtual drive and offers premium options for additional space and bandwidth.

RSS, Tracking, and Dashboard Tools

Google Reader – Probably the best RSS feed reader available. Adding new feeds is extremely easy, and the ability to organize, tag, share, like, and comment on stories sets it above other readers.

Netvibes – Netvibes allows you to create a home page dashboard. For example, if you are a statewide Young Democrats chapter, you can have a box with the RSS feeds of your local chapters’ websites, your organization’s Facebook activity, Google and Twitter search results for your chapter, etc. It enables you to get a birds-eye view of what is happening online in your organization as well as what other people are saying about you.

Google Alerts – It is important to know when people are mentioning you or your organization online. Google Alerts email you when certain keywords are mentioned or sites are linked.

Topikality – Topikality is similar to Google Alerts but with easier targeting and a back-end. It will also suggest articles based on your preferences, serving also as a discovery engine.

SocialMedian – I was an early Alpha tester for SocialMedian back at the start of 2008, and the service has really come a long way since then. You can become a part of different topical news networks, clip stories to share or read later, and subscribe to people to be your “newsmakers.” I head up the news networks for Technology in Politics, Democratic Party, and Youth in Politics. You can create your own news network, choose the sources that you want to populate it, and clip stories to the network as you see them.

Check out Mashable’s RSS Toolbox.

VOIP/Phone

Skype – Skype is a great tool for people to talk for free within the United States via their internet connection. Skype has built-in conferencing functionality and many people use it to record podcasts when not all the participants are in the same place.

Google Voice – While Google Voice is more of an individual tool, I see opportunities to use it for an organization. An example would be to set up a Google Voice number for the organization. You could have the number forward to multiple different people’s mobile or home phones.

Website Tools

Google Analytics – Google Analytics is the most popular web analytics tool available. It provides detailed information about the visitors to your website, allows you to set and track goals, and will give you the information you need to improve.

Woopra – Woopra is a live web analytics tool that enables you to see your site traffic in real time. Woopra has a WordPress plugin and a desktop AIR application, allows you to chat with site visitors, and see how many visitors are on your site at any given time. Woopra is free up to a certain number of pageviews.

Feedburner – Feedburner, now owned by Google, is the best RSS feed tool for site owners. Upon setting up an account you use your Feedburner link instead of your standard RSS feed link for your site, enabling you to track the number of subscribers, what they click, and how they accessed your feed. Feedburner also allows people to subscribe to your site’s feed via email.

Disqus – Disqus is a popular blog commenting system that operates in the cloud as opposed to natively on your web server. The good thing about this is that Disqus users do not need to create a separate account to comment on your site. The bad thing is that you technically don’t have your comments on your server. Disqus allows for threaded comments, comment rating, and video comments.

Photos

Flickr – Flickr is the biggest player in the online photo business. There have been a lot of great tools built from the Flickr API that let you embed photo slideshows from your photostream and other applications. There is a limit to the number of photos you can have in your stream with a free account, but the pro account is available for a ridiculously low annual fee.

PhotoBucket – The strongest alternative to Flickr. It has similar features but a weaker community.

Check out Mashable’s photography toolbox for a lot of resources.

Online Office Tools

Google Docs – Google Docs offers word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and form tools. It is by far the most popular collaborative online document tool available. The form tool is especially useful in creating surveys, collecting sign-ups, and signatures for online petitions.

Adobe Buzzword – The best thing about Adobe Buzzword, now a full Acrobat productivity suite, is that it is pretty. It features a word processor, presentations, tables, PDF export, and with ConnectNow an online meeting function (though the free version only allows 2 additional people in the meeting).

Social Networking

Facebook – Pretty much everyone knows what Facebook is, so in lieu of a description I am going to include a couple of links to posts about how to use it as an organization.

• Facebook’s Phonebook Feature
• Facebook Group Membership Building
• Facebook Page Best Practices
• Increasing Membership of the YDA Facebook Page

MySpace – MySpace might not be the king of the hill like it once was, and trust me I sure hate it, but it is still the best place online to reach out to non-college youth.

LinkedIn – Ever since LinkedIn added more social functions to what was originally just an online resume, there have been more opportunities for organizing with it. You can create groups and discussions as well as answer people’s questions, which builds up your profile as well as your organization’s.

FriendFeed – Friendfeed is a life-streaming social network that has yet to really hit the mainstream. Friendfeed allows you to consolidate your online presence from multiple sites into a single stream, where other users can like, comment on, and share your content. I created an account a while back for the Young Democrats of America.

Microblogging

Twitter – While Twitter is also a social network, I primarily view it as a microblogging platform (though the name microblogging kind of sucks). Here are some resources I put together in the past about Twitter.

• Using Twitter for Your Organization
• Creating Pre-Populated Twitter Links

Twitter Search – While it is now technically a part of Twitter, Twitter Search is important enough to be included on its own. You can use it to see what people are saying about your organization or issues in real time, as well as subscribe to RSS feeds of searches. For example, I had subscribed to the RSS feeds for “YDA” and “Young Democrat,” and on occasion someone would ask a question about how to find their local chapter. Since I was tracking the search I was able to respond and direct people to the right place.

Twitterfeed – Twitterfeed lets you automatically tweet your recent blog posts as they are published using its RSS feed.

act.ly – act.ly is a Twitter petition tool that lets users ‘sign’ the petition by retweeting.

Ping.fm – Post to nearly all of your accounts at the same time. Works with mobile phones as well.

Plurk, identi.ca, and Jaiku – While none of these platforms have anywhere near the userbase of Twitter, they do have dedicated followings. By using the previously mentioned Ping.fm you can hit these networks as well.

URL Shorteners

bit.ly – bit.ly is one of the most popular shorteners right now because of its integration into Tweetdeck and the fact that you can get statistics on your links to see how often they were clicked.

TinyURL – The original. Allows custom URLs which is extremely convenient.

Podcasting –

PodBean – PodBean is a free podcast hosting tool with a good feature set. I used to use this when I had my brief 2 episode podcast, but when I tried to log back in to my account today it said it was locked. I guess use it at your own risk.

PodOmatic – PodOmatic is a very full-featured podcast hosting tool, though the paid version is significantly better.

For a ton of podcasting resources check out Mashable’s Podcasting Toolbox.

Though this list may seem long it is nowhere near comprehensive. That’s where you come in. Is there a free online tool that you love that we didn’t include on the list? Is there one on the list that you absolutely hate? Share in the comments!

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This post was from 2007 but it’s relevant once again. Also, check out the YDA Welcome Guide for College and University Chapters.

It’s that time of the year again when college chapters are looking to recruit new members from the influx of wide-eyed freshmen joining their campuses. Here are are a few ideas for new member recruitment that have been used effectively by chapters in the past.

1. Have a presence at your university’s club/involvement fair.

Most schools have a fair with clubs and activities for incoming freshman, and this is a great place to find new members. I was actually recruited by the ASU Young Democrats 7 years ago at such a fair. A lot of incoming students come from Democratic families or were interested in politics in high school, but they don’t know how to get involved now that they are in college. Have a presence and let them know that the Young Democrats is right for them.

2. Help freshman move into their dorms.

This works especially well if your chapter has t-shirts that identify you as a member of the Young Democrats. Everyone needs help moving in, and you will be the first new people the student meets in their college career. Have fliers that you hand out to the students you help with your meeting time and place and you will surely see some of them again.

3. On-Campus Tabling.

Some schools are better about this than others. The ASU Young Democrats reserve a table on one of the most popular areas of campus and have a constant presence every day. This is a tactic that can be used not just at the start of the year but throughout the entire semester. The table will have information about the organization, meetings, events, etc. It is also a good way to register students to vote.

Those are only three ideas for the start of a new semester. If anyone has experience with different techniques please leave a comment and share them here with other chapters.

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As members of the largest bloc of uninsured Americans, Young Democrats believe quality, affordable Health Care to be a fundamental human right. In our communities and alongside friends, family, coworkers, classmates and neighbors, we will fight to enact farsighted health care reform.

The YDA Ensure You’re Insured Youth Organizing Kit will help you and your Young Democrats chapter organize in support of the health care reform we need.

YDA Ensure You’re Insured Manual

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I have been spending a lot of time working with Facebook Pages recently, and I wanted to share some best practices that I have picked up.

Status Updates

Status updates are the bread and butter of Facebook Pages. They are your primary source of communication and through likes and comments the primary source of interaction by your fans. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your updates:

• Update Frequently – But not too frequently. You want to find that happy medium where your fans are engaged but not turned off. Your updates will appear in your fans’ home feeds, so you should provide content that will be of interest to them. You want your page to be active, since it in turn reflects on the activity of your organization, but you don’t want to appear spammy.
• Be Personal – When I post an update to the Young Democrats of America page, I include my name before the update. People prefer to know with whom they are communicating, and unless you identify yourself in your update it will feel impersonal.
• Ask Questions, Encourage Interaction – Your Facebook Page shouldn’t be a one-way communications tool. Fans have the opportunity to communicate with you and with each other. Asking questions encourages your fans to comment on your updates, which elicits a feeling of participation as well as boosting the exposure of your page (updates that receive a lot of interaction appear on the homepage sidebar). It also provides you with an opportunity to learn more about your fans.
  

• Share – You shouldn’t solely post updates based on your own content. If you see a news article that would be interesting and relevant to your fans, share it. If an allied organization is doing something impressive, let your fans know.
• Promote and Recognize Members/Chapters – If one of your members or chapters is doing something interesting, received press coverage, or wrote a great article, share it with your fans. People like to know what other members and chapters are doing, and your members/chapters that you mention will appreciate the recognition.
• Don’t Update Using Twitter – While Facebook Page status updates and tweets seem like similar media, there are differences between the two, and using a one-size-fits-all approach will not be as effective. Though you may end up sending the same update to both sometimes, it should be a case-by-case decision.

Content

Status updates aren’t your only communications tool on your page. Here are some tips for other types of content:

• Blog Syndication – If your organization has a blog or website with an RSS feed you should import the posts into your page using Facebook notes. This will increase the reach of your blog content and help drive your fans to your website.
• Multimedia – You can share photos and videos on your Facebook page, and often this content generates the most response from fans. Post multimedia content from events, rallies, campaign videos and photo galleries, etc.
• Help Fans Connect to You – You should make it easy for your fans to connect to you on different platforms through your page. Occasionally share your website, Twitter account, YouTube or Flickr accounts, etc. You want your fans to be as engaged in your organization as possible.

Insights

Insights is the built-in analytics tool for your Facebook page. It is important to keep track of the statistics of your page and fans in order to chart your progress in growth and engagement.

Through Insights you can see how many new fans you have added each day compared to the number of fans that have removed themselves, which is a good way to measure whether you are posting too frequently or not enough. You can also see how engaged your fans are with your content.

Another useful feature is the ability to look at the demographic of your fan base by age, gender, and location.

Conclusions

Your Facebook Page can be an extremely useful communications and engagement tool if used effectively. Hopefully these tips will help you improve your results. If you have any of your own best practices for Facebook Pages, please share them in the comments.

P.S. I still need your support in the DFA Netroots Nation Scholarship Competition, so if you could send a vote my way I would appreciate it.

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A little less than a month ago we decided to make a concerted effort to increase the number of fans for the Young Democrats of America Facebook page. I want to talk about how we were able to add almost 1,000 new fans during this period.

First, we had the advantage of having a Facebook group with just under 5,000 members. Previously, these members had never been sent a message asking them to become fans of the page. Rob Dolin sent a message out to the group asking them to join and then posted about YDA’s online presence on the YDA blog. This was the first big momentum boost of the effort.

Second, we used Twitter and our Facebook statuses to promote the page. This combined with the new members joining from the group solicitation made the page rank fairly high on people’s home feeds, which brought in new members.

Third, I began to actively put content on the page. Since status updates from pages show up in home feeds, it helps bring traffic to the page. I used status updates that I thought would elicit the best responses in terms of likes and comments, which would help increase their reach.

I decided that I wanted to try out using Facebook ads to help build membership. I created an ad and targeted it to users between the ages of 18 and 35 who live in the U.S. and identify with the Democratic Party. I chose to buy ads on a Cost Per 1,000 Impressions (CPM) rather than a Cost Per Click (CPC) since I preferred the visibility (the ads have the YDA site url) and because I thought the targeting was strong enough. I set a max bid of $.25 CPM with a daily budget of $2 (this was my own money, so I really couldn’t break the bank.) I ran the ads on-and-off for a week and ended up with 49 clicks, and it seemed that most of the clicks converted into membership based on the growth numbers. While it may seem like I spent $13 for 49 new members, it will actually be more than that. With each new member comes the opportunity to reach their networks, so there is a good potential for a butterfly effect.

While the initial boost seems to have come from the group solicitation, the steady growth afterward seems to indicate that the other membership building tactics have been successful, especially when compared to the stagnancy in membership during the four months before the effort began.

What are your thoughts on building up the membership of a Facebook page? Share in the comments, and don’t forget to become a fan of the Young Democrats of America.

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Proposed Charter for the Greater Boston Chapter of the Massachusetts Young Democrats

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Law & Government Business & Law governance democrats

Kevin Gilnack from the Massachusetts Young Democrats is using Scribd to share and get feedback on the proposed charter for the Greater Boston Young Democrats.

I have been a fan of Scribd for a long time and this is a good example of how it can be used by Young Democrats chapters to foster transparency and collaboration within their organizations.

Chapters can use Scribd to share best practices guides, promotional materials, print-at-home flyers, fundraising packets, and more.

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Cross-posted on Future Majority.

Following the success of Obama for America’s low-dollar fundraising effort many organizations are looking to replicate the strategy for their own campaigns. This post will look at some strategies you can use based on a current fundraising campaign I am working on: the Young Democrats Working for America raising money for YDA.

Our campaign is based on raising $25 donations for the Young Democrats of America through ActBlue.

One of our most successful techniques in promoting the ActBlue page has been encouraging supporters to share the link to the donation page using Twitter and Facebook status updates. We noticed a bit of a viral effect once the practice started to catch on, resulting in Twitter re-tweets and Facebook friends changing their statuses even without formally being asked to do so. Once a number of people changed their statuses we started to get a lot of saturation on Facebook’s news feeds, which helped build more buzz.

Another successful practice on Facebook was posting the donation page to our profiles. This was another technique that had a viral effect. Once people saw that 12 or so of their friends had posted the link in their news feed they were more likely to join in and do the same.

Group administrators were also able to send messages to their groups asking for donations to YDA.

Once the initial buzz was gaining steam on Facebook and donations started coming in, the ActBlue page gained in popularity and became the hottest page on the site, building exposure for our effort even further.

We were also able to use the ActBlue goal thermometer to post the page on supporters’ websites and blogs.

After the wholesale buzz creation was underway, the strategy changed to include online peer-to-peer asks. No matter how successful a buzz campaign is, a personal ask to someone you know is the most effective way to get a donation.

This is where Facebook messages, e-mails, and instant messages come into play. The key is to come up with the names of people you think might be able to make a small donation or at least spread the word about the campaign. Once you have your contact list you use the previous mentioned tools to reach out to them and make the ask. Some of those people may even be willing to become bundlers for you and reach out to their own network for small donations.

While this post is intended to talk about the online methods for low-dollar fundraising, it is important to note that they should be combined with phone and in-person contacts as well.

Have you had success using online methods to raise money through low-dollar contributions? Share your experiences in the comments.

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