The UK Digital Benchmarks Study is now live. And judging by the feedback we’ve seen, it’s been well received and is already helping digital teams around the sector set their priorities and look for improvements they can make. We’re thrilled because this was the key reason for us to partner with M+R Strategies and bring their brilliant benchmarking study to a UK audience.
We’re focused on digital mobilisation, which means we’re constantly operating at the intersection of communications, campaigns and fundraising teams, helping our clients develop the strategies to successfully engage the public at scale and offering them a range of things to do, whether that’s time, money or voice.
So we’re delighted to bring you a campaigning / organising perspective on the UK Digital Benchmarks Study from Tom Baker. We love Tom for many reasons, not least his incredible and insightful blog, The Thoughtful Campaigner, where he writes about his observations of advocacy trends in the UK and beyond. Tom is Director of Campaigns and Organising at Save the Children UK, and has previously worked at Bond (the UK network for organisations working in international development), Tearfund and Christian Aid.
Over to Tom...
I love a good geeky campaign dataset – I’ve been known to lose hours of time pouring over a random set of findings on how to do deep canvassing, a report on how to optimise your emails, or a study on how different candidates use fonts in electoral communications.
For years, the US M+R Benchmark report has been one of those reports that I’ve also lost hours to, as although it’s only based on US data, it’s always given a fascinating insight into the digital performance of a whole range of organisations.
So when Rally and M+R announced that they were going to be doing a UK version of the Benchmark report, I was excited, and I’ve been looking forward to the results which were released last week. Based on the results from 55 different UK charities and organisations, it’s a fascinating study, and certainly one you can lose hours to.
Looking at it as a campaigner there are a bunch of things that I’m taking away from it about the state of campaigning - to note the study defines advocacy message as ‘An email or SMS message that asks recipients to sign an online petition, send an email to a decision-maker, or take a similar online action’ and I’m using the word advocacy in this post – although I think what we’re talking about are campaign emails.
In the last 12 months, there was a massive decline in the number of advocacy emails sent to supporters - down 48% which is a huge drop (for context at the same time, we saw a 32% increase in newsletters) and I’m really intrigued by what’s behind it.
I’ve got a number of theories and perhaps we’ll have to wait until 2022 to get an answer. Could it be a blip caused by a very unusual 12 months due to COVID, which has required organisations to either a) reprioritise fundraising mailings (up 72%), or b) use the furlough scheme on their campaigns team for periods of time – if so we’ll see that number turns around in 2022.
But it could also point to a longer term trend, as charities are moving away from mass low-level actions (like emailing your MP or signing a petition), which work well on email, and are investing in offline actions through more of an organising approach. That’s a journey we’ve been making at Save the Children which I’ve written about more here – but even if that’s the case, it's important we think about how we invite supporters to move up the pyramid of engagement etc.
Secondly, it struck me just how few advocacy emails we’re sending – the ‘average’ charity supporter in the UK would have got just 3 campaigning emails from the average charity in the last 12 months – that’s compared to 12 in the US. Dig into the data a little more and that figure is likely driven by the high numbers of advocacy emails (35) you’ll be getting if you’re on the list of rights organisations like Amnesty, Scope or Refuge.
So it suggests that a significant chunk of those participating in the survey aren’t sending any campaign asks - I think that’s a missed opportunity for so many organisations.
Primarily because I’m convinced that campaigning is a vital part of how any organisation will achieve its mission by challenging the causes of the issues it is working on (and something that the Charity Commission explicitly says can be in line with your charitable purpose). And with the wave of activism we’ve seen across the last 12 to 24 months, it’s something I think supporters are increasingly expecting to see from organisations.
Secondly because there are lots of examples of how including campaigning in your supporter journey or experience can actually improve it. And the survey again provides evidence that including campaigning doesn’t affect overall list growth/performance – indeed the average response rate for advocacy email was 5.9%, compared to the average response rate for fundraising email which was 0.63%. Simply put, used effectively, campaigning can be a brilliant part of your supporters’ participation with your mission.
There is so much more than that in the data – including a stark reminder about how little reach any organic social content has – so I’d encourage everyone to lose a few hours in it, and see what it gets you thinking for your organisation.
A big thank you to Tom for sharing his perspectives.
If you want to dive into the data you can find it all by hitting that BIG button below!
Main Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash