If you ever run a Mail To Target campaign, this will be a familiar fear: what if the target just sends ALL of supporters’ messages directly to spam? Or worse: you get blacklisted and lose the ability to send any emails for a time? 😱
It’s a valid concern: it’s definitely happened before. You work hard on your campaign strategy, you develop all content, you jump through all the hoops to get it signed off, you get your supporters engaged and clicking… then you learn that your campaign target’s assistant set up an inbox filter. All your work, all the thousands or tens of thousands emails sent, for nothing?
We could debate the effectiveness of Mail to Target campaigns any day (and we have! 🫡). We could shake our heads at the politicians who aren’t willing to listen to citizens, while also nodding in understanding: it’s no fun to be flooded with thousands of identical messages.
Campaigners have tried different ways around this issue. Sometimes, they ask supporters to write their own message to target – from scratch, or using simple talking points. But this carries a risk: what if the message is inappropriate, or not aligned with the campaign goal? What if the organisation behind the campaign gets associated with the wrong kind of message?
The team behind Proca know digital campaigning intimately. And we created a solution. Introducing: the Snowflake Engine ❄️
What is the Snowflake Engine?
- The Snowflake Engine is a message-mixing system used in the backend of the mail-to-target (MTT) campaigns on Proca. It also works with our post-action share step, and other message-to-target type of actions, e.g. on X/Twitter.
- In traditional mail-to-target campaigns, the user is given a pre-written message template to send to the campaign target. With the Snowflake Engine, instead of sending the same exact text to every decision-maker, the tool randomly selects different versions of each paragraph to create unique messages for each supporter.
- This approach reduces the chances that messages are flagged as spam and increases the likelihood they are delivered and engaged with positively.
- The name “Snowflake Engine” ❄️ refers to snowflakes being known for being unique, with each one different from the other. Our tool can be used to make as many different versions of your campaign message as you can think of – and more.
Why does it matter for messages to target to be different?
- Spam filters often flag large batches of identical emails and uncooperative campaign targets have been known to filter and ignore bulk messages from citizens. The Snowflake Engine creates variation that looks more organic and authentic. It adds more variety and flavour to the classic mail-to-target email with demands.
- By mixing different paragraph versions, campaigns can tailor messaging subtly across supporters without manual crafting of dozens of full different emails, and without leaving the work to create the message to the supporter.
- This helps campaigns avoid technical pitfalls and improves the chance that decision-makers actually receive and read the messages, without damaging conversion rates by raising the barrier to participation for the supporter.
- The Snowflake Engine gives campaigns greater deliverability and effectiveness by combating filters and robotic pattern detection.
- It lets supporters feel like their message is genuinely their own, even within a coordinated campaign action and even when using templated or pre-written text fragments.
- For coalition campaigns with many partners and audiences, the Snowflake Engine can help tailor messages for diverse linguistic and cultural contexts without heavy manual workload. For example, instead of referring to “fish” in your email, your Italian audience can see “Mediterranean tuna”, while Scandinavian supporters talk to their representatives about “herring”.
- For large campaigns with a long list of related but separate demands, the Snowflake Engine allows your users to send a message about one specific topic at a time, the way a real person would contact their representative (rather than writing about a long list of policy asks).
- The ability to customise and vary the message helps coalition campaigns avoid the “demands list of doom” – the phenomenon (dreaded by campaigners) of adding more and more highly-localised or issue-specific demands to an ever growing shared list. Thanks to the Snowflake Engine, organisations can keep the core demand short and sweet, and add variation in the message content they send to their specific local campaign target.
How does it work in practice?
- A classic digital advocacy email follows a specific pattern well known to most campaigners. Campaign creators can take advantage of the Snowflake Engine by preparing multiple versions of each paragraph for the mail-to-target message that their supporters are then asked to send. It is up to you how many paragraphs your message has.
- The Snowflake Engine “feeds” on these alternatives and builds every supporter’s message by choosing one version of each part at random.
- For example, you might provide eight versions of the first paragraph and five of each subsequent part, giving the engine many combinations to stitch together.
- Proca supports the use of messages written 100% by human campaigners. We can also integrate the Engine with AI, using it to generate alternative versions of each of the paragraphs of the message to target. Every AI generated piece of text needs to be validated by a human user before becoming part of the campaign set up, which ensures that your text stays on message and removes risks of losing message coherence.
- The end result is hundreds or thousands of unique emails — all conveying the same core request, but phrased differently.
- For an example of a practical, step-by-step guide to setting up the message variants using Proca, have a look at this post.