9 Things to Look for When Purchasing an Advocacy Platform

1. Look for more than basic form email sending

Form email sending has been around since the early 2000s. While form emails aren't always ineffective, legislative office email programs have adapted to the influx of volume and no longer treat identical emails with the same nuisance and attention as they did five or even two years ago. CMSs bulk categorize templated emails into a single bucket to reduce staff attention on mass email campaigns.

Building in up to 20 or 30 rotating messages into the campaign makes emails more likely to be opened, read, and categorized individually. In one campaign, AdvocacyAI compared 30,000 form emails to 600 rotating messages sent to the same recipient. Those messages were 227% more likely to be opened.

Question:

• How many variations of emails can I build into a campaign form for my advocates to send?

2. Find a useful supporter database

Are you using advocacy for one-and-done rapid-response campaigns where participants will never be contacted or organized again? In that case, feel free to skip this recommendation. But if you are hoping to take advantage of membership, community, or supporters that have signed onto your organization in the future, it’s essential for you to know who these people are, where they live, how often they engage with you, which ones are most engaged, etc. etc.

Questions:

• Can I automatically segment and categorize my advocates within the platform by district, legislator, activity history, tags or custom fields? WITHOUT exporting.
• Does your platform provide a map of where my advocates are taking action?
  Can I easily identify and communicate with my top advocates?

3. Ensure there are multiple ways to engage your audience

Email sending and calling congress are the bare minimum for advocacy tools. But if everything is rapid response or direct legislator contact campaigns -  how are you keeping advocates engaged and motivated to be a part of your mission year-round? Advocates will leave your list or stop opening content if they feel like you're only asking them to do things for you. Actions for and about them and what they care about– surveys, polls, written and video story collection, virtual and in-person events – all in one tool.

4. Analytics on which legislative staff are seeing your campaign

Platforms should be able to tell you if legislators are actually opening up your supporters' emails. While difficult at the federal level given their complex email managers, state-level email open rates are a non-negotiable.

Questions:

• Does your platform measure which legislators are actually seeing my emails? Can I see which lawmakers are opening my emails by individual office and district within the platform?
• What is the full list of actions that I can recruit for and view analytics for in the platform?

5. Built-in and personalized automated email workflows

Every advocacy tool should have action alerts so you can tell your people what needs to be done and when. But communicating with them en masse is no longer an option unless you want to watch engagement slowly drop over time. Teams with full-time data and email teams have the capacity to ensure audiences receive individual attention for different goals, like high-dollar donors, low-engagement activists, key relationships, and issue-specific supporters. However, most teams rely on email workflows to bridge this gap and maintain this level of engagement.

Question:

• Does your email tool have automations and journeys?

6. Email and CRM Integrations or Custom Data Support

Advocacy tools are literally the source of your organization’s power and influence. If you’re using other email or donor tools, it’s essential that these systems can communicate with each other. How that integration works is up to your organization. 

Question:

• Can your platform integrate with my email provider or donor management platform? If not, can you help me set it up?

7. Ad and Acquisition integration

If you’re acquiring supporters for your cause, chances are, you’re using social media and paid advertising. If you’re running ads through Facebook and Instagram, your advocacy provider should help make sure you’re set up to integrate so those sign-ups move directly into your tool and everywhere else you need to measure impact by source. If you’re runnings ads through influencers, video, display – your platform should allow you to easily generate multiple links to use for a single campaign, that can help you determine where people came from. This is the only way to optimize your spend, determine what works, and spend money where it matters. 

Questions:

• Can I integrate with Meta native lead ads and Meta conversion pixels?
• Does your landing page builder support multiple URLs for a single campaign to measure source?
• Can I easily measure UTM code source for advocates within the platform?

8. Personalization – everywhere and automatically

This buzzword can sure mean a lot of things. Ultimately, it means – does your tool facilitate campaigns that allow advocates to tell their story, share it easily, and give you the data and automations you need to do your job too.

Question:

• Does your platform provide data automatically on my advocates when I upload them (demographics, vote history, party, district, lawmakers, and issue-support), or do I have to collect all data manually?

9. Customer Service that’s actually there for you

When you’re starting with any new platform, you need support. A team of professionals ready to help your organization onboard and execute effective campaigns. That means documentation and guidance not only on how to get started but also on how to be a super user!

Question:

• What does your customer support look like, and what resources
  are available to users?