Savvy organizers build goodwill by serving the needs of their community. Helplines use the same approach to build contact lists.
Choose "PULL" over "PUSH" marketing. Push marketing involves pushing your message to audiences with paid advertising or outbound calls. Pull marketing involves naturally drawing people interested in your offering with helpful content.
How does this apply to activism and campaigns? Consider (for instance) workers fed up with being underpaid at Amazon. How do you reach them? And in the process collect details about them while providing information that would help them get organized to demand fair wages.
How can organizers provide information AND build contact lists at the same? And do this quickly, with little funds and no technical skills. And in a form that's easy to share online and through printed flyers? Create automated HelpLines to specifically target different groups with the issues that matter to them, in their language.
How Helplines work
A Helpline uses gated content that viewers can only access after exchanging their information. It adapts traditional email marketing with customized landing pages to collect leads into a form that activists with no programming skills and little budget can use.
In this hypothetical Helpline example, we took the issue of Amazon workers being exploited. "UN decries Amazon, Walmart, DoorDash for ‘shameful’ wages and union-busting. Human rights expert says US companies trap workers in poverty, forcing them to rely on food stamps and Medicaid" - The Guardian
This was used to create a Helpline that offered details on working conditions at Amazon and organizing activity underway. It asks respondents for their name and email before providing them answers and links to more information. Why not just provide them the links to answers directly? The Helpline collects information BEFORE providing them the information they want which helps build your contact list. Helplines can also be used to conduct surveys and provide digital coupons to respondents.
Micro Target your outreach campaign
HelpLines can be set up quickly with the specific needs of your target audience in mind. They start working immediately, asking questions and building your contact list. The contact list includes answers to your questions, along with a timestamp on when it was answered and the topic they responded to. HelpLines can be set up in different languages and can be set up to ask up to ten questions. HelpLines collect information before providing the requested information making them a very cost-effective way of building contact lists.
HelpLines.Tips was created by DemLabs and is currently free to use while it is in beta.
Pull vs. Push Marketing
"Push marketing is a broader, sort of shotgun approach that means making your products, services, or brand as visible as possible in order to get the best results you can – but for a cost. Push marketing is that it also usually involves spending money. Pull marketing involves naturally accruing traffic. The reasoning here is to create high-value content suited for your target audiences and letting them come to you. Pull marketing simply means being aware of the fact that there are already users actively seeking out information that you offer and making it easier for them to find it, and making it easier for them." - Radd Interactive
"Marketers like gated content as a tactic because high-quality content can be a compelling lead magnet. Meaning users are so eager to access it that they’re willing to share their contact information and agree to hearing from the company in the future. 17% of marketers and business owners said gated content was their top-performing content in our 2023 State of Content Marketing Report." - Semrush
TakeAway: Build contact lists by serving the needs of the people you are trying to reach. HelpLines.Tips makes it easy and affordable to do.
Deepak
DemLabs
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