engage communications for a new era

According to the Obama campaign’s digital director, targeted sharing to friends on Facebook was the “most groundbreaking piece of technology” they developed for the 2012 campaign.

Engage is proud to announce that we’re delivering this technology to campaigns, organizations, and causes of all sizes — right now.

For this weekend’s Republican Party of Virginia convention, supporters of Pete Snyder for Lt. Governor can connect to Facebook and see which of their friends are among the 13,600 registered convention delegates. We then email them reminders about the big convention this weekend and highlight specific friends to contact — through Facebook or any way they choose.

Targeted sharing is the ideal tool for when personal contact to the right target matters. Whether you’re trying to mobilize people for a campaign or get people to out to an event, there’s nothing more influential than personal outreach from a friend.

The best part? It works even if you don’t have a predefined list of contacts for your supporters to reach out to. Using social data, we apply predictive modeling to your supporters’ friend lists to figure out who is most likely to be persuaded by your message.

Engage is proud to be driving innovation in politics and advocacy where it’s needed most — technology and data science.

(We also happen to think this is pretty cool.)

Let’s talk about what targeted sharing can do for you. I’d love to chat.

After reading our report on the Obama campaign’s digital and analytics operations, Inside the Cave, you may have thought to yourself, “That’s fascinating, but how can all this help my organization?”

To answer that question for non-profits, I teamed up with Obama for America’s Michael Slaby to produce “From Politics to Public Policy: How Campaign Lessons Can Amplify Your Work.” The paper was sponsored by the Joyce Foundation, a leading foundation based in Chicago.

During the 2012 election cycle, we worked with the Voting Information Project to develop a set of tools for election officials and voters to use on Election Day. For voters, we worked with national media outlets to provide voter information and polling place location software that provided them with all of the information they needed when heading to the polls on November 6th. For election officials, we developed a free social media monitoring platform called ElectionDesk. ElectionDesk allowed election officials to engage with voters in their districts while monitoring conversation and ensuring each and every voter was able to vote successfully.

We designed this infographic to visualize the national impact the Voting Information Project had in 2012. On Election Day more than 600 websites had embedded polling location tools. After Hurricane Sandy, the Voting Information Project partnered with Mobile Commons to send polling location information to more than 243,000 voters in the New York and New Jersey area. Our work with the Voting Information Project helped more than 25 million, nearly 1 in 5, voters in the United States and overseas find the correct information they needed to vote successfully.

Engage is thrilled to welcome the newest addition to our team, Nick Schaper, as senior vice president.

As someone who’s admired Engage’s work for years now, I couldn’t be more excited to join the team.

By now, most public affairs and communications pros have come to rely on digital and social media as critical components in nearly everything they do. After a few years, it’s easy to get the feeling that it’s always been this way. Nothing could be further from the truth, and this is one of the biggest reasons that I love what I do.

Which leads us to a very good question: what do I do? Well, I’m glad you asked.

I help people find new ways to use digital to solve problems and make a big impact. These problems usually involve politics and policy, but not always. Having led digital strategy for high profile elected officials and large national advocacy organizations over the past decade I’ve been fortunate to see a lot of what works and even more of what doesn’t. I draw on this experience in developing innovative strategies for top advocacy organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and elected officials.

We’re only beginning to realize the potential of digital in advocacy and government, and the team here at Engage is constantly searching for that next breakthrough. Traditional mediums like mail and broadcast are evolving at best, and in some cases disappearing altogether. Deciding what message/medium/tactic is most effective in the midst of such rapid change takes a special team that mixes creative thinking with a commitment to data and analytics. This is where Engage shines.

Don’t believe me? Put us to the test. Email me and let’s talk about how Engage can help you win. At the very least, we’ll likely buy you lunch and send polite follow up emails.

In our report, “Inside the Cave,” on the Obama campaign’s digital, tech, and analytics teams, we highlighted how they used optimization and A/B split testing to improve their online donation page. By conducting 240 A/B tests, Obama for America was able to increase the conversion rate on their donation page by 49%.

And while most of us don’t have access to a full-time analytics staff, A/B testing is within reach for any organization of any size. In fact, the Obama campaign used Optimizely, a web-based A/B testing platform, that you can leverage for your organization for as little as $19 per month depending on your site traffic.

What is A/B Testing?

In reference to websites, an A/B test compares two variables of an element — color, text, or placement — to determine whether or not a change in that element improves a desired outcome.

Here’s a quick guide to get started with A/B testing on your site.

Get started

Once you’ve set up your Optimizely account, you’ll need to provide your web developer or vendor with a snippet of code that will allow you to make edits to your site from Optimizely. That’s the last you’ll need to deal with code for optimizely.

Determine what you want to optimize

The key to worthwhile optimization is having a measurable outcome (like a donation) and a clearly defined goal (more donations). For organizations that are new to A/B testing, increasing email capture and donations are two of the most attainable goals for A/B testing.

Outline your experiment

Now that you know what you want to improve, identify elements on your site that you can tweak to improve the response. For example, if you’re optimizing for email signups, you could test the submit button text. Does changing “submit” on the button to “join” increase your conversion rate? Do more people donate if the button is red or blue? In order to get actionable insights from your test, you should find apples to apples comparisons.

Good A/B Test

Red Button vs Blue Button.

This test will reveal any difference button color has on conversions.

Good A/B Test

“Join” vs “Submit”.

This test will reveal how changing the text on the submit button will affect signups.

Bad A/B Test

Red “Join” button vs Blue “submit button.

After this test, you won’t be able to isolate the source of any change in performance.

Implement and run your experiment

Using Optimizely’s editor, you can easily tweak design and textual elements on your site and get the experiment up and running. The more traffic your site gets, the more data you’ll receive, and the better your A/B test will perform. You want a statistically significant outcome to ensure that the change in outcome you’re seeing is actually the result of the change in design you made.

While Optimizely will let you run multiple variations, for organizations that might not see much web traffic, it’s best to conduct one test at a time to zero in on the best design for your page.

Avoid the Frankenstein Effect

You should always make sure you test every combination before settling on a final design change. Photo A may outperform Photo B and a red background may out perform a blue background, but you cannot assume that Photo A on a red background will outperform Photo A on a blue background or even Photo B on a red background. In short, test EVERYTHING.

Next Steps

Testing shouldn’t stop at your web design. Look for other opportunities to conduct focused, measurable A/B tests. This could include testing email subject lines or online ad creative.