I see e-campaigning analysis and benchmarking as essential to highly effective  e-campaigning. Unfortunately it tends to be the most neglected area by most organisations and campaign.  The 2009 eCampaigning Benchmarking Study is the first of what is intended to be an annual review of e-campaigning performance.

The 2009 eCampaigning Review

The 2009 eCampaigning Review has three independent parts:

1. A data analysis of emailing and e-action performance benchmarks
   
2. A survey on e-campaigning practices (by Jess Day sponsored by Advocacy Online)
3. An e-action review (by Jess Day sponsored by Advocacy Online)

The results will be published as an anonymous and aggregated assessment of e-campaigning performance and practices. No individual organisation will be identifiable in the public report. Private reports (extra) will only identify that of the commissioning organisation.

It is free to participate in the 2009 eCampaigning Review. If you want your organisation to be included in the e-action data analysis, you need to provide your data in the required format (Advocacy Online is doing this for their clients). If you can't, then you can contract someone who can (including FairSay). If you want a private analysis of your specific data, that will cost extra.

Benefits of Participating

1. Get eCampaigning analysis senior managers and campaigners understand (resulting in more leadership and support for eCampaigning activities)
2. Compare your performance with best, worst and middle performance (resulting in knowing where you are effective and where you need improvement)
3. See what impact specific improvements could have (resulting in knowledge of where to start improving and how to evaluate it)

The Focus

• eCampaigning
• UK, Canada and International organisations (with other countries possible if there is sufficient interest)
• Written so Senior Managers understand it and what they can do
• Designed around common e-campaigning goals, priorities and objectives
• Actionable: you will be able to make specific, measurable improvements

Part A: Campaigning Email and eAction Data Analysis

Analysis will be grouped into four areas:

• Participation
• Recruitment
• Retention
• Development

Each area will include:

• Key indicators
• Year-on-year comparison
• Supporter crossover
• Geographic breakdown
• Forecasts and scenarios

Grouped by:

 Geographic coverage

• Theme
• Action Type
• Organisation Size

Part B: Survey of e-campaigning practice

A short online survey will be available online from 7 July until 7 August, looking at e-campaigning in practice: what organisations are doing, and how they do it. The survey will help to build a detailed picture of where organisations are putting their resources and how practice is developing in the sector.

If you fill in the survey, you will get a copy of the final report by email on publication. You will also be helping make sure we develop as full and accurate a picture as possible. The results will be presented as aggregate data: it will not be possible to identify individual organisations.

NB: you can take part in this survey, even if your organisation is not providing data for the data analysis section.

Part C: E-action analysis

An external, qualitative review will look at a range of e-actions, assessing them against a range of best practice criteria. The results will be presented as aggregate data, with selected case studies. The analysis will look at a range of organisations, including all taking part in the survey and data analysis sections. You do not need to do anything to be included in this part of the study.

Why an eCampaigning Review?

1. To know what is good performance vs poor performance
2. To help you improve your own in-house reporting
3. To provide the statistics to make good decisions
4. To forecast e-campainging results
5. To communicate the value or potential of e-campaigning to others

While the US study provides a good starting point for understanding average performance in the sector, my own private analysis and benchmarking work (since 2001) means the report will be similar to the US study in a few ways while differing in some important ways:

1. Differentiate top, middle and bottom performance (vs average)
2. Goal oriented (vs. process or medium oriented)
3. Include recommendations
4. In parallel with a qualitative analysis

Expertise

The FairSay 'strapline' of 'making campaigning count' is more than simple statement, it conveys the essence of what FairSay does: ensure all services are grounded in evidence on effective e-campaigning.

My work has meant I know how effective many organisations e-campaigning has been. But confidentiality has meant that it couldn't be shared.  The partnership with Advocacy Online means that a large number of organisations' e-campaigning can be aggregated and compared with relatively little effort from a participating organisations.

I have been doing eCampaigning analysis and benchmarking since 2001. During this time I have analysed or benchmarked various facets of eCampaigning for many organisations and campaigns, including Oxfam GB, WWF International, NSPCC, Rethink, Greenpeace International, Make Poverty History UK, GCAP. With the exception of Make Poverty History UK, it has all been private - and for Make Poverty History UK, no supporter data was provided to analyse. This means I know how various organisations have performed but have been unable to share it publicly.

Jess Day will be carrying out the e-campaigning practice survey and the e-action analysis. She has over ten years’ experience of communications and campaigning work in the non-profit sector, with a particular background in e-campaigning.

Privacy and Security

All data will contain no personal supporter information. This will be achieved by:

1. Email addresses converted into a non-reversible code (aka hash)
2. No name and address information will be collected or stored
3. Only postal-code or longitude and latitude will stored to allow for geographic based analysis (e.g. constituency)
4. No individual organisation or campaign will be identifiable
   

Getting More Out of It

The basic benchmarking will be anonymous and aggregated to preserve the performance of all individual organisations. This also means that all participating organisations will not know from the report how they performed either.  While this is not ideal for learning and improvement, it is necessary since this is a public study. But there are ways to get the individual performance for your organisations:

1. Conduct your own in-house analysis using the same methodology as the benchmarking report. This will likely take a trained data analyst 5-15 days and some aspects of the analysis would not be possible
2. Hire FairSay to produce a specific report for your organisation or campaign. The three main options are:
1. Extended (£1,000): Same analysis specifically for your organisation with top 3 recommendations
2. Expanded (£2,500): Extended analysis plus custom analysis in 3 areas of your choice and recommendations in all areas
3. Comprehensive (£5,000): Extensive analysis plus:
   • Add manual analysis of impact and reach
   • Qualitative eCampaigning Review
   • Qualitative benchmarking against seven other organisations using publicly available information
   • A presentation and discussion of the results (in-person in Southern England otherwise remotely)
   UK VAT (15%) will be added for UK-based organisations. This pricing is only valid until the launch of the 2009 eCampaigning Benchmarks.
   

What Participating in the Data Analysis Means

To make the data analysis possible, all participating organisations must agree that:

1. Advocacy Online clients authorise Advocacy Online to export the anonymous data and provide it to FairSay
2. Non Advocacy Online clients either provide the data (in-house or via a contractor) in the required format or contract someone (e.g. FairSay) to convert it to that format
3. The data to be stored in a benchmarking database
4. That FairSay can analyse it
5. Anonymous and aggregated results to be published in printed and interactive formats
6. Data to be retained by FairSay for future year-on-year benchmarking analysis

How To Participate

1. Email me (duane@fairsay.com) and contact Advocacy Online if you use their tools
2. I'll confirm what you what and start the process of getting the data and/or survey to complete

Timeline

1. July: confirm participants and get data
2. Early Aug: Last call for participants and data
3. Mid-Late Sept: Public and private analysis conducted
4. 13 Oct: public results launched at Advocacy Online User Conference and report sent by email to organisations taking part in the survey
   
5. Late Oct: public results publicly available