Online Social Marketing The EDF Experience

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         Online Social Marketing
                 The EDF Experience
                              Sam Parry
               Director Online Membership and Activism
                     sparry@edf.org | www.edf.org
                             June 13, 2008
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             About EDF Online
   • How many of you have email lists?
   • How many of you do online advocacy?
   • How many of you do online fundraising?
   • How many have 450,000 emails or more?
   • How many are environmental groups?
   • How many have experimented with online
     social networking?
   • How many of you are Red Sox fans?
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             Why are we here?
 Challenges to online direct response marketing:

     •More email competition
     •Lower open rates
     •Lower click rates
     •Lower response rates

     •Need to keep up with emerging trends
     •Need to find new audiences
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                   What is it?

        Web 2.0              The Living Web

    The Hypernet         The Active Web

                The Read/Write Web

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        It comes in many forms




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            What does it mean?
     From this:




      To this:



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       Another way to think of it:
     From this:



     To this:




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                   Why Bother?
“Twenty years from now we will look
  back at this period of the early twenty-
  first century as a critical turning point
  in economic and social history…
“To innovate and succeed, the new mass
  collaboration must become part of
  every leader’s playbook and lexicon.
  Learning how to cocreate with a
  shifting set of self-organized partners
  is becoming an essential skill, as
  important as budgeting, R&D, and
  planning.”

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             When I read that…
             I thought, “Oh SH*T!”

                   “Oh SHOOT!”


        Rule #1: Don’t panic!


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     While we’re not panicking…
      What should we do?

          Here are a few campaigns we’ve
          launched using some of these tools.




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     Your endangered species story




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     Endangered species results
   • We expected a few stories, but received scores and
     posted 30 of the best. Here’s an example:
  Imagine standing in the benchlands
  around Meeteetsee, Wyoming, all alone in
  the dead of night holding a spotlight in one
  hand and binoculars in the other while
  your hands are shaking with such extreme
  excitement at your first-ever sighting of
  an endangered black-footed ferret that
  the ferret appeared to be dancing in the
  lightbeam! Of course, it wasn't. It was my
  shaking hands that made it appear so.
  Awesome species. Unforgettable
  experience. Long live the ESA!

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   Declaration of New Patriotism




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        New Patriotism Results
   • Expected couple hundred comments.
   • Received 3,000 over three drafts.
   • Incorporated comments into final drafts.
   • Got picked up in other blogs.
   • Used campaign to run full page ad in Roll
     Call targeting Congress.
   • Raised money online for the print ad.
   • Led to a direct mail prospecting package.
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              The Green Room




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           Green Room Results
   • 250 comments from donors encouraging
     others to make a year end gift to EDF.
   • 69 comments sharing stories on who is an
     environmental hero.
   • 97 glowing comments on our Earth Day
     video.
   • Readers have started commenting on each
     other’s comments and swapping stories,
     views, data, etc.

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                  Other Tools
    Blog badge
                      Facebook pages and causes

  Digg, Delicious, and other social media

          Rate this page
                              Surveys
   Conference calls

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                   How to Start
  • First, get your own feet wet. If you haven’t already,
    play with some of these tools yourself to see how
    they work.
  • Start small. For example, set up a blog page for a
    discreet need and start a test conversation with your
    listmembers.
  • Make sure your first effort fits as a piece of a larger
    campaign. This way, you’re not relying on the new
    tactic to carry the day.
  • Survey your list before you start to get a feel for
    what social networking tools they’re using already.

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                 Final Thoughts
   • Remember Rule #1 – Don’t panic.
   • Start small and see how it goes.
   • Dedicate a staff person to be on point for managing
     online social networking. Preferable to have a coding
     expert help with templates and layout.
   • Think of ways to integrate these efforts into other
     marketing channels like ads and direct mail.
   • Test – if something doesn’t work, it’s not a crisis.
     Just move on to the next idea.
   • Survey your listmembers to help measure reaction
     to these efforts.
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