Another useful bit of information from the Salsa Community Conference: according to ActionSprout’s Drew Bernard, groups that are running “Tell Congress to Reopen the Government” actions through his company’s service are seeing ridiculously high response rates, on the order of 30%. If you’re not familiar with it, ActionSprout clients use the service to embed actions on Facebook, so that someone can jump on a “Tell Congress” or other action w/o having to leave Facebook’s walled garden.
30% is crazy, in a world where a good EMAIL response rate is 10-15%, and Drew suggests that groups and campaigns that AREN’T running actions related to the government shutdown are missing a real opportunity to grow their following. Also note that people who take an ActionSprout action typically end up on an organization’s email list, and with a response rate like 30%, these groups are likely to be significantly growing their lists with new people who are seeing them for the first time via this Facebook action.
ActionSprout’s blog has more detail and some sample client actions, but here’s the basic takeaway: if you want to activate your list, run a “Tell Congress…” action about the government shutdown. Next, get it on Facebook — even without an ActionSprout widget, it’s likely to get a much better response than usual. So if you haven’t already, it’s a pro move to get on that right away.
– cpd