Newsletters and emails
Even though most participants don’t read newsletters, most active participants do. Usually, newsletters result in a clear increase in activity. Many experts recommend weekly newsletters that include information about recurring topics (eg, ideas that have been submitted during the week or news from community members). We’ve developed a preference for sending really concise emails (about a paragraph long) containing only one main message, about twice a week.
Here are some tips on writing this correspondence:
Use your name, rather than the challenge title, in the “from” field because it’s less likely to be ignored or filtered out of someone’s inbox.
Add an image for all announcements, reminders and stage alerts.
Keep each emails short – participants will not read more than a paragraph.
Don't add too many asks in one email (we recommend a maximum of two).
Send out short summaries of new ideas that have been added to the platform, as participants will not keep logging on unless triggered to do so.
Regular communication
Blogs are a great way to give participants something new to engage with during and between challenges. If you have time to create a blog schedule, try and have one blog a week (they don’t have to be long).
Some useful blog themes are:
Member focus: this blog would feature an idea-submitter, a short explanation about what inspired their idea, why they find the online process useful and how people can support them. This helps you showcase good examples and also encourage people who haven't submitted their idea yet to get moving.
Challenge-theme focus: this blog would share interesting information and news about the challenge theme and what problem participants are trying to find solutions for.
Debate focus: this blog would raise a topical debate around the challenge theme and invite participants to take part.
Inspiring stories: similar to the member focus blog, but without the need to feature members, this would focus on any inspiring projects or start-ups tackling the challenge theme.
Fun focus: it can all get a bit serious sometimes, so if you can add a fun version of any of the above blogs, that tends to be a good “Friday” blog.
Remember to add an image to all blogs, because they’ll get more attention this way, both on your platform and on social-media sites. Keep blogs short – no more than three paragraphs (under 500 words) – and, at the end of every blog, link back to the challenge space: either to an idea that aligns with the theme, or the idea-submission page or homepage. You could mention the blogs in newsletters rather than sending alerts for each post, in order to limit the number of emails participants receive from you to a maximum of two a week.
Final boost
The total number of participants will largely depend on the number of people who vote towards the end of a challenge – these participants will be part of the community for the next challenge. Therefore, it's important to boost participation levels during the last few days. If voting ends on a Friday, say, it works well to send out a reminder on the Tuesday, and then a "final chance to vote" reminder on the Thursday. In some cases, it makes sense to set a goal, such as "at least 20 votes per proposal" (if there are currently only 10).
Frequently used messages
There are certain messages you’ll send out regularly: for example, reminders about voting, submission closing dates and suggested ways of taking part.
Some of these can be saved as templates so that you can edit and re-send them quickly. We have some examples you can use here:
