How to Boost Advocacy Efforts: “Reply YES.”

“Reply to Donate” has been a staple in online fundraising for years. The core idea is to leverage a user’s existing information to reduce the friction involved in converting them to a donor. In the case of a fundraising send, “reply to donate” would be in the form of a text message with standard fundraising language and the option to reply with an amount to donate. The end-user’s account would be charged the dollar amount in the message based upon the saved user data and history.

It got us thinking: Why can’t advocates simply reply “yes” to make their voice heard on the issues they care about most?

TL:DR

We deployed three separate “Reply Yes” text messages to different audiences, asking users to send a letter to their representatives in Washington, D.C. We compared the results against a standard text message with a link to our advocacy tool.

“Reply yes” out-performed our key measured metrics of success by more than double the benchmark.

KPIs

APS (Advocates per 1k sends), and LPS (Letters per 1k sends)

Results

We applied the “Reply to Donate” concept to our letter generation campaigns via text messaging, hoping to reduce the friction point in trying to convert the lead into sending another letter.

Results

We sent three separate “Reply Yes” messages to segments of our housefile list.

These sends amassed 929 advocates, 970 letters, APS of 45 and an average LPS of 46.

By comparison our benchmark APS previously was 20 and LPS was 23 more than doubling both measured metrics of success. Our APS increased by 125% and LPS by 100%.

We reduced the friction for users and more than doubled our APS and LPS.
CampaignAPSLPS
“Reply Yes”4546
2022 Benchmark2023
Percent Increase125%100%

Why It Matters

This test proves that using “Reply Yes” can increase letter-generation output by an average of 125% by utilizing an already-active house file and removing the friction at the point of conversion. We should continue to use this tactic to generate letters from our housefile.