Success as a cause of failure

So after a fair few travels across Europe, the Middle East and back again, here I am in India pondering what’s gone wrong in the meantime and the cause and effect of large dead email lists. Was it murder, and did we do it, or was it collective suicide on a grand scale.

Earlier in the year faced with yet another restructuring, I penned some thoughts about 7 likely environments that would make a step change in list size possible. Mainly to demonstrate to myself, that the office wasn’t doing any of these things, are rather than give folk the space to think about how to deliver on extravagant demands – was burying every creative digitally minded person under a ton of meetings, projects and random red herrings.

So big list growth makes on look sexy in the digital world, and the madness around the Ice bucket challenge will likely inspire management to breath down people’s neck to say well why can’t you do that. Go on make it go viral, I want the fundraising leads. But then I got to thinking perhaps that step change isn’t always a good thing? Maybe it’s the cause of the list death that is of current concern.

Clever, viral ideas reach lots of new people fast, and presumably most of them don’t know what they’re signing up for, and so they are more likely to get irritated by email campaigns faster than say someone who finds the organisation through organic means. Then as open & click rates drop, we change our behaviour, and our style of asks and writing, to maximise the response of a community of people who are desperately trying to disengage.

The idea of being able to design intelligent supporter journeys or activist pathways for these folk appeals but with competing demand, bureaucracy and the usual madness this is never as feasible as one might like. But perhaps there is a strong argument that the success of a big growth period, is not the cause of the growth - I.e. icy buckets but what you do afterwards.

Maybe the extra 1 million + sign ups need to be treated as probationary supporters, i.e. we need to embrace the arrogance of demanding that they prove themselves to us further, before we allow them inside. Go on demonstrate that you actually give a shit, before we let you onto our email campaigning list, do something that demonstrates you know something about the issue, or at least you’re interested enough to learn and then we’ll reward you be inviting you to campaign with us.

I’m not proud I’d love to have the big hit, but before I do I’d like to have a plan as to how to purge the list before the zombies take over. Perhaps a pathway that looks like this;

• Ask them why? Why did you share to grow your fish, sign up, empty the bucket etc
• Give them an easy way to turn viral activism into ‘concrete’ action – and then look to separate out the super activists really quickly.
• Follow up with 2-3 fun asks for the folk affected with the zombie virus, and aggressively tele fundraise off the list during this period. Get them to donate because we invite them to do things they enjoy, or like to boast about to their friends. This could be an asy one off micro donations
• Cultivate those that donate, plan an activist pathway that educates (I usually hate that word) and helps them grow to the point that they understood why they did the dance thing, or whatever it took to get the Star Wars T-shirt
• Bury those that don’t, there’s better places to invest ones energy.

Bottom line don't assume that because they did the viral thing, that they know anything about the organisation, the issue, or that they give a shit - but maybe give them the chance....

I reckon this might find into my opportunistic clever things to do when there’s a crisis / opportunity with a addictive web ask already built, and online to offline ask or pack, and lots of shareable content. I just need a theme and a job that gives me the budget to do it.