The magic of the post-action share step

📣 What is the Share Step in Proca campaign widgets?

The share step is a built-in part of the digital action journey that Proca campaign widgets support.

Typically a supporter lands on the share step after they complete the main action (e.g., signing a petition or submitting a consultation response). At this point, the share step encourages the supporter to amplify the campaign by sharing it with others. This helps increase visibility and reach, and builds supporter affinity.

Proca widgets support a multi-step engagement model – we make it very easy to “daisy-chain” steps. This helps campaign creators take advantage of the supporter’s attention and motivation.

🌊 The action flow

The step-by-step flow usually includes:

1. Main action — e.g. signing a petition or sending a message to target,
2. Share step — an invitation to spread/amplify the campaign,
3. Optional donation step — if fundraising is included in the campaign.

The share step is the second stage, where the focus shifts from action to amplification.

🪂 The landing page

You can also use the share step directly as a landing page, when the primary action you want the supporter to take is to share the campaign with their network. You can use it for:

1. Landing page after double opt-in from an email – when your new supporter confirms their opt-in via email (that’s only one of many opt-in collection options Proca offers!), you can send them directly to the action’s share step with an ask to help amplify the campaign.
2. Landing page for share kickers – in specific moments of escalation in your campaign, e.g. before a petition delivery or another deadline, it might make sense to ask former action-takers to re-share the campaign, to help it grow. In such cases your email links would take your supporters directly to the share ask.

💡 What the Share Step Does

The share step is the golden standard in today’s digital campaigning world. Here’s what makes the Proca share step effective:

✅ Amplifies campaign impact

The share step helps the campaign message reach more people, taking advantage of social proof and network effects. Each shared post or message can bring in more supporters and give the campaign more momentum. The content you put around the share step can explain why sharing matters to your campaign’s theory of change, and encourage the supporters to take this extra step.

✅ Builds supporter engagement & affinity

Sharing a campaign changes the game: a passive supporter becomes an active promoter of your message. Testing shows that people tend to trust digital content more when it’s shared by those in their direct network. 

A well-designed share action is a win-win for the campaign, and the supporter. Supporters who are more involved feel more responsibility for the campaign’s ultimate success, so are more likely to return for action, or deepen their engagement (e.g. become donors or volunteers).

As a rough benchmark: a 20% share rate is considered good, and anything above that signals a highly engaged supporter base.

🧠 Technical features supporting the share step

The share step in Proca isn’t just a generic “share this” prompt. It’s designed to give campaigners control, insight, and room to test, and make sharing easy and attractive to supporters.

⚙️ Configurable share messages (with variants)

Campaigners can define the default share message (the familiar “I just signed…”) and create multiple variants of that text. These variants are used across all share channels that support text, including WhatsApp, email, Bluesky, and others. 

This makes it possible to:

• test different framings or calls to action,
• adapt tone to different platforms,
• avoid repetitive shares – the variants make them look more organic.

Share buttons with your pre-configured message and tracked links can also easily be embedded in your post-action thank you email to supporters who take action on your campaign.

It’s a small detail that has a big impact on how authentic and effective shares feel. The Proca share step can be powered in the backend by our Snowflake Engine – a message-mixing tool which allows you to offer your supporters a random selection from among multiple variants of the same message.

🔍 Automatic tracking with UTM parameters

Proca automatically includes UTM tracking parameters to every share link, so campaigners can clearly see where shares are coming from and how they perform. Tracking links differentiate between the different platforms or ways of sharing.

This means you can:

• distinguish organic shares from other traffic,
• understand which channels your supporters actually use, and which bring new signatures, and use that knowledge to keep optimising,
• measure supporter engagement beyond the initial action.

📱 Native mobile sharing (where most sharing actually happens)

On mobile devices, the share button integrates directly with the native Android and iOS share menus. This allows supporters to share via Signal, Instagram, WhatsApp, or whatever app they personally use – without Proca trying to guess or limit their options.

This matters because, in practice, most sharing happens via native mobile share tools, not bespoke social buttons. Proca leans into that reality instead of fighting it.

📩 Robust email sharing (even on desktop)

Sharing by email sounds simple, but in practice it’s one of the most fragile actions on the web. Desktop email clients (especially Outlook) often break standard mailto: links. And it’s important to get it right, because – surprisingly – it’s still popular with supporters.

Proca works around this by: detecting common setups (including Gmail users), routing people to a more reliable email-sharing flow, and even changing the email icon to Gmail when appropriate.

The result: fewer broken clicks, less supporter frustration, and higher share completion rates. It’s another small detail that makes the Proca share step special.

🖼️ Share previews are controlled by the organisation’s CMS

The title, description, and image shown when a link is shared on social platforms are not hard-coded in the Proca widget. Instead, they are set via metadata on the campaign’s own landing page where the Proca widget is embedded, in the organisation’s CMS (content management system, such as WordPress or Drupal).

This is intentional. It means that:

• organisations keep full control over how their campaign appears when shared,
• previews can match existing branding (colours, icons, logos etc),
• campaign pages remain the single source of truth.

In other words, Proca handles the action flow but the landing page stays fully in the hands of the campaigner.

You can learn more about how Metadata works and how to create a great share link preview in this blog.

🌐 The landing page is yours by design

More broadly, the share step always points back to a landing page owned and managed by the campaigning organisation. Proca doesn’t impose templates, branding, or layouts.

That flexibility lets organisations:

• integrate campaigns seamlessly into their existing sites,
• maintain trust and brand consistency,
• optimise landing pages for the main campaign goal, be it conversion or storytelling.