Salesforce advocacy software can be a powerful tool for your nonprofit to build momentum around a key issue, mobilize existing supporters, expand your mailing list, and raise money. This is true even if your organization isn’t primarily engaged in advocacy.
But what do you need to know before investing in Salesforce advocacy software? Here are 11 key questions you should answer before making a buying decision.
{loadposition blog-ad-general}1. What Salesforce advocacy apps are included in a given software solution - and which does your nonprofit need?
Online advocacy takes different forms. The two primary types of advocacy apps are online petitions and online actions. The former allows visitors to sign their name in support of a given statement. The latter allows visitors to contact a decision maker or makers with personalized messages to encourage action. A Salesforce advocacy app provider may offer one or the other - or both, as Soapbox Engage does.
Online petition campaigns are generally much simpler and quicker for an organization to launch and manage than online action campaigns. If your organization is new to online advocacy or views advocacy efforts as primarily supporting other goals, this could be all you need.
Online action campaigns are more involved as you are coordinating messages from your supporters to key decision makers. They are often used by organizations for whom advocacy is a central part of their mission. If that's you and you’re considering a Salesforce advocacy actions app, you’ll want to know who your key targets will be - federal, state or local officials? custom targets? - and confirm that a given provider supports contacting them.
2. Does the Salesforce advocacy software integrate with Salesforce in real-time?
Online advocacy campaigns provide a powerful way to connect with and mobilize people around a specific cause that moves them. The campaigns are an opportunity to enter into a two-way dialogue with these concerned individuals, providing you a ready-made channel for consistent follow up to share the progress of the campaign, relevant topical news, additional activities they can engage in, and the opportunity to donate.
Ensuring that a Salesforce advocacy app sends data to Salesforce in real-time, properly associating it with individual’s Contact records, elevates your campaigns with a dynamism that has profound possibilities for your nonprofit and its mission. Real-time integration allows you to effectively segment supporters based on a 360 degree view of their relationship with your organization, providing the personal approach to follow up communications that is timely and moves them along with ladder of engagement. Email follow up with a brand new supporter who just signed their first petition can be quite different than follow up with a long-time, recurring donor who has supported many of your campaigns. Having supporter data update Salesforce in real-time offers that opportunity.
3. Will you be charged for access to the supporter data collected through the Salesforce advocacy app?
Some online advocacy app providers charge for you to have access to the name, email address and other contact information for individuals supporting your campaign. Other app providers, like Soapbox, do not. We feel strongly that your supporter data should be just that - yours. You’ll want to clarify with a potential Salesforce advocacy app provider if they charge for access to your supporter data. Even a modest amount per supporter can add up quickly with a successful campaign.
4. Do the Salesforce advocacy apps route data following Salesforce and Nonprofit Success Pack standards?
It is one thing for an app to say it integrates with Salesforce. It is another to do so in a way that ensures your supporter data winds up where and in what form Salesforce and the Nonprofit Success Pack specifically expect it to. You’ll want to confirm that supporter data can effectively match with existing Contacts. Or, if it is a new supporter, that a household account is created for their new Contact record, if you’re using the Household Account model in the NPSP. You’ll also want to ensure that the app uses standard objects like Campaigns for tracking online actions visitors take rather than a collection of custom objects that don't work in close concert with Salesforce's core data model.
5. Does the method of saving supporter data to Salesforce by the advocacy apps facilitate efficient email list building?
Online advocacy campaigns can achieve massive success in attracting new supporters and building mailing lists. You'll want to make sure that the Salesforce advocacy software you're considering allows for supporters to easily sign up for your mailing list - and that the way that data is saved to Salesforce allows for automated addition to that mailing list.
6. Is the Salesforce advocacy software part of a larger suite that includes an online donations app?
Did you know that someone signing an online petition is 1.92 times more likely to donate to a similar cause after signing? That was the finding of researchers Yu-Hao Lee and Gary Hsieh in their study Does Slacktivism Hurt Activism?: The Effects of Moral Balancing and Consistency in Online Activism. It all has to do with a psychological principle called consistency and it stresses the value of including a fundraising aspect to your online advocacy campaigns.
To aid in that combined advocacy-fundraising effort, find out if your potential Salesforce advocacy software provider also has an online Salesforce donation app solution. If so, does it integrate with Salesforce in a real-time and with the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack.
7. Is it easy and efficient to create an online petition with the Salesforce advocacy software?
Whether you're using a petition as a long-term engagement strategy or as a timely way to quickly respond to the news of the day, the creation of an online Salesforce petition form should be easy and efficient. It should require no coding skills and take far less time than the crafting of the petition text itself and the creation of the accompanying image.
8. Does the Salesforce petition app allow for custom questions you can easily add?
In many cases, just getting the basic contact information from online petition signers will be sufficient. In others, you may have a couple of critical custom questions you’ll want to add to the petition form to capture more details about the supporter or their decision to sign. Make sure that you can add these to your petition and do so easily without significant technical know-how or coding chops.
9. Is the Salesforce advocacy software mobile-friendly?
You’ll want to make sure that the Salesforce advocacy software you’re considering is mobile-friendly. While this is important for most any online experience, it is particularly critical for advocacy tools.
Online advocacy apps with their soft touch, quick, and easy calls to action translate into simple steps supporters can take from their smartphone while on the go. Standing in line at the grocery store, waiting for the metro, walking into work, hanging out on the couch - these all become locations where people viewing your petition or action form on a smartphone should be able to easily thumb in their signature and get on your mailing list.
10. Does the Salesforce advocacy software use the U.S. House of Representatives Communicating with Congress service?
The U.S. House of Representatives launched a new service dubbed Communicating with Congress in recent years. This new service has replaced more inelegant approaches that advocacy apps needed to use to send messages to U.S. Representatives in the past.
If you plan to target the U.S. House with an online action, make sure that any Salesforce advocacy software provider is an approved advocacy vendor for the House and that their app uses the Communicating with Congress service.
11. Is the primary relationship for the supporter with your nonprofit - or the Salesforce advocacy app provider?
You want to ensure that the primary relationship for the supporter is with your organization and that the Salesforce advocacy software provider doesn't insert itself between you and your supporters. The difference can be expressed in multiple ways and has significant implications for your advocacy campaigns and long-term relationship with your supporters.
You want to make sure that it is your brand that is front and center. The online advocacy forms should have your logo and your colors. They should not be dominated by the software provider's branding. Furthermore, your supporter data shouldn't be co-opted by the software provider for their own marketing purposes, as is done with some well-known services.
Your relationship with your supporters should be just that: yours.
Want to learn more?
Check out the following links for a deeper dive into Salesforce advocacy software:
- Soapbox Engage Petitions app
- Soapbox Engage Actions app
- Salesforce AppExchange listing for the Soapbox Engage Petitions app
- KnowWho provides up-to-date contact information for Federal and State elected officials directly in your Salesforce instance
- Soapbox Success Story: A powerful petition to promote equal access to tech: Global Fund for Women used Soapbox Engage to rally more than 20,000 people for women and girls
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