Day 4: Grow Your Email List With Online Petitions
For Day 4 of the Email Growth Challenge I'm bringing you a tactic that can grow your email list by the hundreds if not thousands in just a few days or weeks.
➡️ Publishing an online petition.
To teach you how to do it—I'm passing the mic to the expert on this growth strategy, Josh Nelson of Civic Shout.
Take it away, Josh!
🛠️ Setting up your Online Petition
My favorite email growth tactic is launching online petitions.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Identify a timely, compelling petition topic that is squarely in your organization’s wheelhouse. Advocacy petitions are ideal, but you can also use pledge-style or “sign if you agree” petitions that aren’t intended to influence a decisionmaker directly.
Step 2: Draft a petition. Typically, all you need is a photo, short headline, and 2-4 paragraphs of descriptive text explaining the issue and making the case that it’s important.
Step 3: Publish the petition. Tools like Action Network, EveryAction and Civic Shout make this easy. You can also publish it directly on your website as a web form. Make sure it includes a clear opt-in disclaimer so people know that signing the petition will add them to your email list.
Step 4: Promote your petition. Use social media, your existing email community, text messaging or advertisements to get people to sign your petition and join your email list.
💡 Why it works
Online petitions work because an issue or values-based petition is far more compelling to most people than a sign-up form or survey.
In almost all cases, people will click petition links and complete the form at much higher rates than other web forms. Petitions can also achieve significant organic growth, since many people like to share them with friends, colleagues, or family members after signing.
📊 Results
Josh and his team at Civic Shout have helped hundreds of organizations acquire tens of millions of opt-in supporters using petitions.
Those tens of millions of supporters have gone on to donate tens of millions of dollars, attend thousands of in-person events and take millions of advocacy actions to support nonprofits’ work.
In Josh's experience, online petitions are the easiest way to get a large group of people to raise their hands and say “yes, I care about this specific issue and want to hear more from a nonprofit working on the issue.”
🧰 Tools Needed
All you’ll need is some way to host the petition online, either on your website or an external platform. External options include Action Network and EveryAction.
If you want an option that allows you to pay to promote your petition to like-minded nonprofit donors, Civic Shout is a great option.
🗣️ Last thought
So far this week, we've talked a lot about setting up systems so that you can grow your nonprofit's newsletter 24/7 + trying something out-side-the-box like a Spotify playlist.
All are awesome strategies that will likely you dozens of new subscribers week-to-week.
Online petitions have the power to attract hundreds if not thousands of new subscribers in a week. Totally differently ballgame and one worth trying!
If you want a little bit more, the Civic Shout Newsletter is one I personally subscribe to and read every week. It's packed with tips on all aspects of running nonprofit email programs, including list growth, fundraising and advocacy.
See you back tomorrow for Day 5!