ActionSprout Blog

It's now possible for supporters to complete an ActionSprout action by manually entering in their contact information, rather than authorizing the ActionSprout app. (Not everybody feels comfortable authorizing Facebook apps, even ones as trustable as ActionSprout. That's OK.)

Now, if a new supporter declines to authorize the ActionSprout app when clicking to complete an action, they'll automatically get the following alternative form:

This feature is enabled by default for all existing and new campaigns, and is configurable on an account level in the "Theme" tab. You can turn it on or off, and customize the text that is displayed to people. 

We have also added a feature to show an authentication prompt that allows you to tell people why it's ok to use ActionSprout in order to take action. 

This functionality is not enabled by default. You can turn it on and configure it on the "Theme" tab. Here's what it looks like: 

Watch the walkthrough of these new features here:

To paraphrase George Orwell, “All Facebook fans are equal. But some Facebook fans are more equal than others.” The problem is, it’s hard to find your most engaged supporters on Facebook so you can prioritize following up with the people who care most about your work. Here at ActionSprout, we just made doing that a bit easier with a new feature we just rolled out called Post Engagement Tracking.

Consider the following scenario:

What does it mean when one of your fans clicks “like” or comments on a single Facebook post? How about when someone “likes” or comments on a dozen posts in a few weeks? Are these two fans equally important to you? Can you imagine a day when you might want to reach out to the people who engage on a regular basis with an email to say thanks, or maybe invite them to do something beyond the confines of Facebook?

Today we released a new feature that allows you to track not only the engagement of people who take your ActionSprout actions, but also the engagement of people who like and comment on the initial wall posts that link to those campaigns.

Here’s how it works:

Now, when someone likes or comments on any post that links to an ActionSprout campaign, we capture this interaction and add that user to the campaign. This enables you to build up a profile of users who are engaging with your posts by liking and commenting, but are perhaps not yet taking action through your ActionSprout app. We surface this information in the ActionSprout dashboard through the recent activity stream, where there are now icons showing how a person has engaged with your campaign.

Checkbox = Completed: supporter has completed this campaign action

Speech box = Comment: supporter has commented on a post related to this campaign

Thumbs up = Like: supporter has liked a post related to this campaign

We also show post engagement data on each supporter’s profile page, which you can access by clicking on their name in the activity stream. Finally, when you export your ActionSprout data, you'll also notice that post engagement data is included so you can import it into the tools where you track your supporters’ engagement profiles.

We capture like and comment engagement regardless of whether a supporter has authorized the ActionSprout app by completing an action, but the information we capture will vary. For example, someone who has simply liked a post but never taken an action before probably won't have much more than First name and Last name and their Facebook User ID, while someone who has taken an ActionSprout action before will typically have their email address included.

We’re very excited to share this new feature with you. We think it opens up some exciting new possibilities for more effective online organizing with Facebook. There are many creative ways to use post engagement data, but to get you started, here are a few suggestions:

Use a few weeks’ worth of data to identify frequent likers/commenters and drop them a personal message (via Facebook if you don’t have their email yet) to thank them for being a champion.

Use a list of your most frequently engaged supporters as the seed list for building a Facebook lookalike audience so that you can target ads to people that Facebook thinks are similar to your most frequently engaged supporters.

Over time, once a person authorizes the ActionSprout app, export all of the data and get it into your database so you can track their entire engagement with your ActionSprout campaigns.  

Watch Drew give an overview of this new feature. 

What if every post you made on your Facebook fan page not only generated likes and shares, but also helped you collect names, email addresses, fan status, and perhaps even a donation now and then? Well, this is exactly what organizations are using ActionSprout to accomplish today.

Many organizations have learned the power of including a simple call to action footer at the end of each Facebook wall post. These often look something like this: “Click LIKE if you agree” or “SHARE to show your support.”  

Call to action footers increase share rates and train your audience to engage with your content. But these generic calls to action don’t result in very clear or meaningful actions, nor can you follow up with people who just like or share a post.

ActionSprout can help you solve this problem through a tactic we call “background campaigns.”  By including an ActionSprout background campaign as part of your call to action footer on all or most of your regular Facebook page posts, you can give your fans something to do that is more directly tied to your mission and your work--and results in more meaningful, measurable data you can use to follow up with people and boost them to higher levels of engagement.

An ActionSprout-powered call to action footer might read something like this: “LIKE honey bees? Show your support here: [ActionSprout campaign link].”

ActionSprout background campaigns give you a powerful way to continually engage people, getting contact information and generating viral activity to bring in new supporters. They support all of the engagement you are working for today, but also give your supporters something to do beyond just clicking like or share.

How to create an ActionSprout background campaign

Here’s how you can create an ActionSprout background campaign and keeping it fresh. This is simple, flexible approach that requires virtually no change to how you currently use Facebook.

For most organizations, the ideal ActionSprout background campaign will be a simple ask; one that is a small step up the engagement pyramid from like, share or comment. Often a simple “Support Our Organization,” “Plege,” “Stand With...” or “Help...” action works great. So, if you are working for the organization Save the Honey Bees you’d might create an ActionSprout campaign to “Pledge to plant flowers for the honey bees.” With that background campaign in place, you simply include the campaign link in a call to action at the end of your normal Facebook posts.

You can vary the way your call to action footer reads on a post to post basis, for example:

“LIKE honeybees? Show your support here: LINK TO CAMPAIGN”

“SHARE our love for bees? Pledge to plant flowers for the bees: LINK TO CAMPAIGN”

When a person clicks through, the background campaign might look something like this:

In addition, you’ll probably want to create a new ActionSprout background campaign with a slightly different call to action every few weeks, so that your most engaged people have something new to do and share with their friends.

Benefits of ActionSprout background campaigns

An ActionSprout background campaign has a number of benefits:

Background campaigns help train your fan base to be action takers, not just likers and sharers.

You're giving your most ardent supporters a way to do something beyond just clicking Like, which is good for deepening your relationship with them.

You'll likely boost your normal/organic engagement with content (like, share, comment) and also slowly start unlocking names and email addresses from your Facebook supporters.

When you do have a piece of content that takes off virally, you won't have to scramble to create a new ActionSprout campaign--you can just default to your background campaign for initial name capture and engagement.

You can also turn commenting on inside your ActionSprout background campaign; this is a nice way to continue engaging the people after they take action for you.

Today we released seven brand new actions for use in ActionSprout campaigns. These new actions give your even more flexible and creative ways to engage your supporters with meaningful Facebook campaigns.

Tell a/an friend, candidate, organization, person, company

Demand a/an change, plan, outcome, solution

Ask a/an person, question, company, organization, legislator

Encourage a/an person, legislator, candidate, organization, company, cause

Suggest a/an name, time, idea, response, solution, answer, caption, title

Approve of a/an bill, candidate, initiative, cause, company, organization

Disapprove of a/an bill, candidate, initiative, cause, company, organization

Today we launched a major upgrade to ActionSprout's administrative dashboard. You'll see the new look the next time you log in to create or manage a campaign. We have also rolled out new pricing plans, based on lots of feedback we've received over the past few months from our customers. 

The new ActionSprout dashboard makes it easier to set up and manage your social campaigns. It also includes some cool new features that we hope you'll love:

Real time activity status shows you how many people are viewing your campaigns right now and updates in real time as people take action. 

Campaign previews to help you see what your campaigns will look like before you publish them. 

Better documentation for all our features so you can quickly learn more about it. 

Unified campaign view lets you quickly make updates and see the status of your campaign all at once. 

All ActionSprout plans now include all our features! No matter which plan you're on, you'll now have access to our most advanced features, including online donations, Salesforce sync and email auto responders.

These changes also pave the way for some exciting new features over the next few weeks and months: more integrations with CRM and advocacy platforms, improved campaign analytics, and new configuration options. 

Our new pricing also goes into affect today. Anyone who signed up before today gets a full month free and bunch of extra action credits as our way of saying thanks for helping us perfect ActionSprout. 

Learning to create effective Call To Action posts is both an art and a science. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re creating content and deciding when and how to post ActionSprout campaigns to your Facebook page:

Campaigns Are Relay Races

Each call to action post will follow and/or be followed by another post. Your job on each post is to get as far toward your campaign goal as possible, but don’t expect past campaigns to push you over the finish line. Some campaigns will run for months with posts every other day, while other campaigns will only run for a few days with one just CTA post per day. Some will require multiple posts per day. Each campaign is different, and that’s where experimentation is necessary.

Never Stop Learning

Whatever you do, make sure to try lots of different things. There are numerous ways to post your CTAs and you should try them all to learn what works best for you and your campaign.

Some things to try:

Use the Campaign Link and post the CTA as a normal wall post on your Facebook page.

Post a photo update with the Campaign Link as your CTA.

Try paying to sponsor the story inside Facebook.

Stagger posts (days and times) and their frequency

Questions Get Attention

Starting a post with an engaging and relevant question is a great way to get your audience’s attention. Begin with a question or statement that speaks to your audience’s needs or interests. Be bold or quirky enough to get attention!

Provide Info To Get Juices Flowing

Give them info of value. But not too much. You don’t want to disclose it all! Just enough to motivate them to find out more by clicking through and taking action.

 Stay On The Positive Side Of Life

Studies have shown that inspiring and exciting your audience is far more likely to drive them to action. That said, there are times when rage and disgust can drive action as well. Use your best judgment.

 Be Brief, But Not Cryptic

Quickly get to the point, but use as much space as you need to be clear and compelling. 100 to 150 characters is a great target.

Provide Links

Each of your posts should include a very clear call to action link. Use the Campaign LInk  which looks like this: http://app.actionsprout.com/qcQMiq. Use them in call to action posts whether you create them in ActionSprout on the Post to Wall page, or directly within Facebook.

 Example of a link in a wall post message:

1. We’re setting out to help you keep your family active outdoors this Fall. Join the Fall Family Challenge by clicking: http://app.actionsprout.com/qcQMiq

2. How many miles did your breakfast travel to reach your table? Click http://app.actionsprout.com/qcQMiq and join the Fall Family Challenge to find out!

Compelling Images

Images have a major impact on the effectiveness of a CTA post, and usually result in higher engagement rates. Try updating your campaign thumbnail image each time you post. Make your images interesting and compelling. Use bright or dynamic colors that relate to the copy in your post. Post your CTA as a photo directly to your wall, with the campaign link in the message body.  

Some Tips From Corporate Campaigns

Lessons learned from Buddy Media and WooBox:

Posts made between 8 PM and 7 AM receive 20% more user engagement.

On Wednesdays, fan engagement is 8% above average.

Posting one to two times per day produces 40% higher user engagement.

Posting one to four times per week produces 71% higher user engagement.

Posts with 80 characters or less receive 66% higher engagement. Very concise posts—those between one and 40 characters—generate the highest engagement. Only 5% of all retail brand wall posts are less than 40 characters in length, and they receive 86% higher fan engagement.

Ask questions to spark dialogue. Posts with questions generate comment rates double that of other posts.

Avoid complicated wall posts. Status-only posts receive 94% higher than average engagement.

Greetings, ActionSprout fans!  With this post, we're going to start blogging about significant new code releases to ActionSprout. 

Today, we pushed an update that ships a big upgrade to our campaign tab views, including:

New javascript rendering backend, which provides a massive performance boost for all campaign views

Like Gates/Fan Gates: you can now require that people like your organization before seeing campaign content

Related actions are now displayed based on tags: full details here.

When was the last time you tried to raise money on Facebook? If you’re like most organizations, using Facebook to cultivate donors and raise meaningful amounts of money has been an elusive dream. Too often, fundraising on Facebook has meant posting a fundraising ask with a link to a donation page. A handful of early adopters added a custom tabs with Paypal forms or other cumbersome options to their fan pages for donors who didn’t want to leave Facebook to make their donations. These tactics have left everyone a bit underwhelmed. But there is a better way. ActionSprout’s donation feature re-envisions fundraising on Facebook.

Our easy and affordable app gives nonprofits ways to get more value from their Facebook efforts. The tool takes about 5 minutes to set up, and ActionSprout charges no additional fees for using it. It should come as no surprise that simply asking fans to donate with a wall post and then driving them to a website or a tab to enter their payment information has limited potential. These strategies offer almost no opportunity for organic or even paid viral reach. When was the last time you clicked LIKE on a fundraising ask from an organization that you care about? Yet seeing a friend donate, or take any action beyond Like, Share, or Comment is a pretty big vote of confidence. But few of your donors today are sharing the fact that they support you because other donation tools don’t have sharing built-in. ActionSprout is an entirely new approach that allows organizations to socially collect donation directly within Facebook. Donations are now baked into the entire ActionSprout platform. In other words, organizations can now enable donations for ANY of their ActionSprout powered one-click action campaigns. Let’s say you’re running a viral campaign to thank a group of supporters using ActionSprout. In the past, when a person clicked to take action on your ActionSprout app, several things happened:

The person authorized the ActionSprout app (providing you with his or her name and email address).

ActionSprout fired the open graph, sharing the action with the supporters friends via their news feed, ticker and Timeline.  

The person was asked to share the action with more friends using a Wall post or share dialog.

Supporting the David Suzuki Foundation’s Effort to Stop the China-Canada Trade Deal

By: Drew Bernard Several months ago, my team and I launched a new Facebook app to help nonprofit organizations leverage Facebook for advocacy, engagement, and online fundraising. ActionSprout is a social engagement utility designed to fit nicely alongside traditional online fundraising and engagement tools used by nonprofits today. ActionSprout does all of its work directly within Facebook. Once an organization installs the app to their Facebook Fan Page, they can quickly launch dozens of different one-click action campaigns and give supporters new ways to engage with their work directly from their own Facebook newsfeeds. The system is designed to suit organizations of all types and sizes. Our goal is to make the return on organizations’ investments in Facebook both measurable and positive. We do this by leveraging Facebook's scale and constantly evolving technology in order to:

Provide organizations a way to get the names and email addresses of their most active supporters

Help organizations acquire high-quality supporters (not just “Like” clickers)

Give nonprofit Facebook managers new and highly compelling tools to deepen engagement with existing supporters on Facebook, beyond Like, Share and Comment

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Amy Sample Ward invited me to write an article introducing ActionSprout. I used the opportunity to outline some of the results we saw from one of the first controlled test campaigns we ran through the system. The campaign I used as an example was a small campaign designed to help the David Suzuki Foundation reach and engage Canadian families with children at home to join their Fall Family Challenge. One of the most interesting outcomes from that campaign turned out to be the ratio of fans to non-fans who joined the campaign. Based on this simple metric, we were able to determine that for each fan who took the action, The Foundation acquired 1.8 new additional members for the campaign. You can read more about that campaign over on Amy’s Blog. The goals and target audience for that first campaign were such that the overall number of action takers was relatively small (in the hundreds, not thousands). So, when I was invited to write this guest post, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at another David Suzuki Foundation campaign that had a much larger target audience. The New Effort to Stop the China-Canada Trade Deal In late October, the David Suzuki Foundation learned that the Canadian Prime Minister was about to sign a 31-year trade deal that he had negotiated behind closed doors. The unprecedented deal was designed in such a way that it would give Chinese companies new powers over Canadian economic and environmental policy, as well as citizen’s rights to speak out about them. They also learned that the Prime Minister planned to sign the deal and put it into effect on November 1st. Within days, civic organizations across Canada began to rally opposition to the agreement. On Friday evening, October 27th, The Foundation launched a Facebook campaign to help put a stop to the deal. The tools they chose to use for the campaign included their tried-and-true Drupal- powered online petition tool, and ActionSprout. Like their first campaign, the only traffic driven to the ActionSprout side of the campaign was through two Facebook Wall posts.

For nonprofits and campaigns, Facebook’s New Open Graph functionality changes everything! (View as Google Doc)

During the first half of 2012, Facebook released a set of important changes to its Open Graph in order to better serve advertisers and app developers alike. At that time, my team and I were deep in the process of creating a tool that would help nonprofits better tap Facebook’s power to facilitate friend-to-friend fundraising. As our team slaved away, Facebook continued to tweak the Open Graph at a rapid pace. The Open Graph has and always will be a moving target, but the changes rolled out during this time are in many ways the most significant changes since Facebook first opened their platform to app developers. Once we had fully wrapped our heads around what Facebook’s new Open Graph could do, we quickly decided to broaden the scope of our work to make our app, ActionSprout, a platform that would not only support fundraising, but also help nonprofits acquire new Facebook fans and deepen engagement with supporters. By the time we finally launched ActionSprout, we had learned a tremendous amount about Facebook’s new Open Graph functionality. This article shares much of what we have learned and how we have leveraged it in the creation of ActionSprout. Nonprofit organizations have been investing in building Facebook fan bases for years, focusing primarily on growing awareness and interacting with supporters. In fact a recent study by NTEN shows that over the last 2 years organizations avg Facebook community size has grown from 2,000 fans to over 8,000. Social media managers have worked diligently to keep their fans abreast of goings on, and have deployed a whole host of creative techniques to solicit fan engagement. Yet, despite their hard work, fans have had very few ways to respond authentically or interact in meaningful ways with an organization’s work due to Facebook’s limitations, and these campaigns have very rarely lived up to their full potentials. One of the biggest limitations social media managers have learned to live within is that fans of a Facebook page have been locked away from participating in any interactions other than those for Facebook wall posts or paid ads. Organizations have not been able to acquire or use fans’ email addresses or other contact information — and to pour salt in our wounds, when organizations do post to their walls, the posts only appear in about 15 percent of fans’ news-feeds. That means for a page with 10,000 fans, only 1,500 people will ever have a fighting chance to even see a given post. That would be like sending out a bulk email and learning that it never even showed up in the inbox of 85% of the people you sent it to. This is a huge problem if an organization is running a time-sensitive campaign and wants to ensure that all supporters have a chance to see its information. Another major limitation is that fans have been able to take very few social actions on behalf of an organization beyond “liking,” commenting on or sharing a post. This is why we see organizations post updates like this one from 350.org (which is run by a very talented Social Media Manager): If this message had been sent out via email, it certainly wouldn’t have asked supporters to click “like” after hearing that the House energy bill is failing to meet expectations. Instead, it might ask them to click through and add their names to a petition or letter to Congress. But the Facebook manager at 350.org, no matter how talented, could only use the tools that were available to him or her for this campaign. Enter ActionSprout All these limitations changed the day Facebook made it possible for developers like us here at ActionSprout to provide organizations with tools that engage supporters in new ways, directly from their Facebook fan pages. To make what is possible with the new Open Graph even more real, I’ll shift gears and outline in detail what it is allowing us to do with ActionSprout. By fully leveraging the Open Graph, today, with ActionSprout, fans can do more than just “like” or comment — they can interact using all sorts of Open Graph Actions, including signing a petition or letter, planning to attend an event, joining or signing up, and pledging to vote, volunteer, support or sponsor a cause.   ActionSprout is designed to place the full power of Facebook’s Open Graph into the hands of campaign managers. ActionSprout Actions

Stop a/an… Organization, Bill, Person, Initiative, Proposition, Child, Campaign, Event

Support for a/an… Organization, Bill, Person, Initiative

Attend a/an… Rally, Event, or Party

Register for a/an… Event, Party, Conference

Register for a/an… Event, Party, Conference

Recommend a/an… Cause, Candidate, Bill, Initiative, Organization, Campaign, Proposition

Sign a/an… Petition, Letter

Sign up for a/an… Event, Newsletter, Email Alert, Rally, Party

Sponsor a/an… Person, Event, Organization

Donate to a/an… organization or a candidate

Join a/an… Person, Organization, Group, Cause

Help a/an… Animal, Person, Organization, Cause

Enter a... Content, Raffle, Drawing

Make a... Pledge, Commitment, Promise

Endorse a… bill, proposition, candidate, referendum

Get a… Report, Video, Song, Sticker, App, File, Item, Coupon, Discount, Book

Protect a… Location, Child, Person

Thank a/an… Person, Organization

Volunteer for a/an… Event, Organization, Cause, Campaign

Vote for or Vote Against a/an… Bill, Proposition, Candidate, Referendum

Thank a... Person, Organization

(Note that this list is aways being updated so sign-up to see the complete list of actions available through the system today)

This week we released 4 new action types for use in your ActionSprout Campaigns. 

Contact - Great for encouraging people to reach out and contact a representative, a company, or any other important decision maker about a particular issue. 

Save - For when something really needs saving whether that be a person, a location, a park, or a national treasure. People can add their name to saving that thing. 

Stand with - Get people to raise their hand and say they stand with an organization, a cause, or a candidate. 

Today we added the ability to manually adjust a goal based on activities that occur off your Facebook ActionSprout tab. 

For many campaigns there isn't just one place people are engaging, so we added the ability to adjust your goal status to reflect all these other channels.