Email Is Dead: Bots Are In

We’re kidding. But we tried using a Facebook Messenger bot to fight TrumpCare and… it worked.

Wide Eye
Wide Eye
Jul 28, 2017 · 6 min read

With a Trump White House and GOP majorities in Congress, there has never been a greater need for holding elected officials in D.C. accountable to their constituents. For the resistance movement to succeed in blocking an unchecked Republican agenda, the progressive community must find new and creative ways to engage their supporters.

We’re proud to have partnered with New York-based product designer Elliott Golden and Stand Up America (SUA), a grassroots community working to fight back against the Trump agenda, to meet this challenge head on with Civic Shout.

Civic Shout is a chat service built atop the trusted and engaging Facebook Messenger platform that allows organizations to interact directly with supporters. The white-labeled platform ensures supporters are confident in interacting with a product from an organization they already know and trust. And since there’s no need to download an additional app or create an account, supporters maintain momentum that leads to action.

In just four weeks, SUA empowered over one hundred thousand followers to send a fax to their United States Senator in opposition to Trumpcare, added tens of thousands of emails to their list, and created new relationships with their audience built on personalized experiences.

The Challenge: Saving Healthcare

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, its repeal has been the top political priority of GOP leaders in each house of Congress. In 2017, Republicans finally had their chance — until a groundswell of national outcry made things complicated. Using digital organizing tools, Facebook live videos, online trainings, and a flood of phone calls and emails, millions of ordinary Americans made clear to members of Congress and the media just how much an ACA repeal would cost them.

After a spectacle of pulled votes and party infighting, Speaker Paul Ryan and Leader Mitch McConnell began a new strategy to force Trumpcare through: secrecy. After a revised bill was rapidly forced through the House with limited media coverage and feed details, Senate passage under the cover of darkness seemed inevitable.

The Solution: A new kind of engagement

As a leading resistance organization, the team at SUA knew Americans couldn’t afford to be caught off guard again. Stopping Trumpcare meant getting longtime activists and the millions of newly engaged Americans involved, even without townhalls and constant media coverage. With an online audience of over 1 million people, they were looking for a new way to cut through the noise and make it happen.

Since February, we’ve been working with Elliott to meet this growing need. We wanted to challenge the norm of formulaic engagement with a new experience. We wanted to make audiences feel they’re empowered to be making a real difference in a tangible way.

In the Summer of 2017, we partnered with SUA to make this new user experience for digital engagement a reality with Civic Shout.

The Process: How It Works

After the campaign was set up using Civic Shout, SUA used a mix of emails, digital ads, and organic social campaigns to disseminate the campaign link: act.standupamerica.com/fax

When a supporter clicks on the link, they’re led to SUA’s branded Civic Shout Facebook Messenger bot and sent an introductory message to start the workflow.

After providing an email and zip code to look up their Senators, users are then given the option to send a pre-populated fax, or type a custom message directly in Messenger to share more about their personal story and experience.

Once the process is complete, SUA followers were thanked by none other than President Obama.

They then received a confirmation that their fax was delivered, followed by a prompt to share the campaign or make a contribution.

The Results

Using the Facebook-based platform, SUA’s followers were able to send over 100,000 faxes in four weeks to Republican Senators from their state. Over 71,000 of those faxes included custom message, many of which included deeply personal testimony and powerful messages about why they oppose Trumpcare.

Performance

Using Civic Shout also provided SUA with a unique opportunity to integrate their 1-million-strong Facebook audience into their email list. A whopping 70% of users who clicked the initial link provided their email address and 61% of users SUA’s Civic Shout messenger bot completed the entire one minute process.

User Experience

Civic Shout provides users with a unique new way to get engaged with progressive politics and advocacy. Instead of being sent to a static petition on an off-site domain, Civic Shout provides a familiar, trustworthy setting and personalized experience to supporters on an interface already used by over 2 billion people worldwide. In place of boring form fields, members and supporters can have an experience that feels like a normal conversation on Facebook, with instant feedback for each step of the process.

Civic Shout gives organizations the opportunity to create a meaningful, personalized relationships with each user based on an emotionally-satisfying and easy experience. As a result, SUA received resoundingly positive feedback from its followers, with hundreds commenting on the ease and effectiveness of the experience.

The Analysis

In the current political atmosphere, Americans are looking for new ways to be heard. They want to be part of a greater movement right now, while also witnessing tangible results from their actions. Civic Shout shows good UX design and new technology can play a role in making those experiences possible, providing a fresh and easy platform to engage members and supporters with visible and impactful campaigns.

After the success of SUA’s first Civic Shout campaign, we’re excited to see more bot technology tested on other campaigns and leveraged as a new way to engage members, building trust between organizations and their supporters. By using smart user experience design and creating a familiar and personalized workflow, we’re excited to see what Civic Shout can do next.

The Next Step

Elliot and the team at Wide Eye Creative are actively looking for new organization partners to help us push the boundaries of what Civic Shout is capable of. Want to work with us? Send an email to hello@wideeyecreative.com with the subject line “Civic Shout Partnership.”

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