Over the last few months, one of our savviest clients, AFSCME, has adopted new ways to engage their members using voice and mobile technology, leading the labor movement in grassroots advocacy.

Check out these examples:

Web-driven voice advocacy through the “Make America Happen” Campaign

AFSCME sends emails to their list to drive constituents to web forms for congressional voice advocacy.

Make America Happen Campaign Results:

Over a two week span when the Obama Jobs and Recovery package was being debated in Congress, AFSCME sent out three standalone emails that generated approximately 1,000 calls to Congress in support of the bill. Additionally, AFSCME has been building their text messaging file by converting email subscribers into text subscribers as an optional check box in the web form. In the future, they will drive response via SMS.

Advocacy at Live Events

At their recent conferences, AFSCME asked their audience to text “happen”  69866 to make calls into Congress.

Results: They have seen response rates as high as 53% for people in the room texting in (225 person conference, 119 opt-ins) and 42% response rates on broadcast text-to-call messages sent later that day to generate calls. (119 opt-ins, 50 calls generated)

Targeting state legislators

AFSCME has also used mobile to target state legislators. This strategy gets their affiliates involved and targets legislators who get calls less frequently, which means the calls are typically more effective.

Thanks so much to Tracey Conaty, Assistant Director of Online Communications, at AFSCME for sharing the results and to our friends at the Watershed Company for all their hard work!