How to Conduct an Advocacy Email Audit to Boost Campaign Performance

There’s a science to advocacy email campaigns. Often, formatting that looks pretty or content written by “gut feeling” is later proven ineffective in driving the engagement an organization needs to win a legislative campaign or build its grassroots.

An email audit goes beyond how your emails look to gain a thorough understanding of what’s most important – how your emails perform. Let’s walk through a process that has helped successful organizations improve their advocacy campaigns and drive stronger engagement from advocates.

Step 1: Track and Record the Performance of Each Advocacy Email You Sent

In an ideal world, you’ve been tracking the performance of your emails in a spreadsheet, or with an advocacy campaign solution like VoterVoice, since the beginning of the year — an essential tool for understanding and improving your email program.

An effective tracking system should go beyond recording open, clickthrough, and unsubscribe rates. Add key metrics and content fields like the subject line, the requested action, and the percentage of people who completed that action. And don’t forget to include any A/B testing results.

Your well-maintained tracking chart will allow you to detect trends and adjust your campaigns in real time, optimizing nearly every aspect of your email program.

Step 2: Conduct Three Critical Analyses

You built your tracking process. Now it’s time to dig in with three critical analyses that will uncover the real drivers of your program’s performance.

1. Performance Data Analysis

Begin by identifying the highest- and lowest-performing emails and filtering your messages by issue, ask, and other factors. Your goal is to uncover trends, both good and bad. These are easy functions for even the newest Excel users (Need step-by-step instructions? Here you go: Sort and Filter).

Open Rates 

Was there a particular subject line style that resulted in higher open rates? Different styles could include urgency, humor, or intrigue. Did using first name or local personalization make an impact?

Clickthrough Rates 

If you see a spike in a particular email, go back to that content and see what you did differently. Factors might include varied email length, using an image, or sharing a personal story.

Action Rates 

Was there one policy issue that drove more actions than others? This could mean your volunteers are more interested in certain aspects of your work. And how did people respond to your requested actions? Depending on the age of your advocates, they might enjoy making phone calls and hate tweeting, or vice versa if you have a younger demographic.

When comparing messages, you must consider the action you asked advocates to take. Emails with low-barrier actions, like signing a petition or sending a message to their lawmaker, will always have higher clickthrough and action rates than those asking people to call or tweet at their lawmaker.

Also, keep in mind to whom you sent the email. Messages sent to your full list will have lower action rates than a more segmented list of previous action-takers or higher-level advocates.

2. Messaging Analysis

The way you explain an issue to advocates can have an enormous impact on performance. We find that clearly stating the “street-level impact” of your issue – how the bill impacts an individual – will drive the greatest response.

For example, rather than explaining complex Medicare pricing structures, focus on the outcome of your legislation: “This bill will cut prescription drug costs, saving seniors thousands of dollars each year.” That is a result your advocates can relate to and will drive their interest in taking action.

Beyond the issue description, the tone of your messaging can have a big impact. Identify if you used different approaches like urgency, the threat of losing a benefit, or celebrating a victory.

3. Landing Page Analysis

An email is only as successful as the action page the message directs advocates to. Take a fresh look at your landing pages through your advocates’ eyes — what barriers might prevent them from completing an action? Did you ask for unnecessary personal information or clutter the page with distracting content and links?

Also, look closely at the difference between your clickthrough and action rates for each message. It’s natural for there to be a drop-off between the two, but identify any correlations that are far outside the average.

Step 3: Leverage Your Observations When Building Your Advocacy Email Strategy

The insights from your email audit will only be valuable if you put them into action. Share your findings with your broader team; not only will this help build support for changes to your email practices, but it might also surface additional perspectives from colleagues. 

Don’t be surprised if your analyses lead you to question the performance of certain aspects of your email. This is a good thing. Create an A/B testing plan to answer those questions and optimize your future messages. You can test different types of subject lines, issue descriptions, the use of images, and so much more.

The email tracking system you developed in Step 1 will be essential as you create future campaigns. Tap into it regularly to remind yourself which subject lines worked best, the ideal pacing for your emails, and particular actions your advocates didn’t complete.

Your tracking chart and analyses will be invaluable as you develop future campaigns, helping you craft more compelling messages and drive stronger engagement from your advocates. And remember, this isn’t a one-time exercise. The most successful advocacy teams conduct regular audits to continuously refine and improve their approach.

Brian Rubenstein, president of Rubenstein Impact Group, helps nonprofit organizations build powerful grassroots programs by increasing volunteer engagement in advocacy campaigns and developing sustainable offline volunteer programs. You can follow him on LinkedIn or contact him via email to receive an awesome email tracking chart template.