i appreciate you giving us insight on what it means to be a freshly crowned pulitzer winner. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> if you missed any of the event, you can watch it in entirety at the c-span video library. >> the house and the senate both back at 2 p.m. eastern on their july 4 recess. chambersbills on both 's agendas. you can watch the house live on and -- live on c-span. -- at online

fundraising. they were part of this year's net roots nation. >> we will get started here in second. >> thank you for coming to this panel. today we will talk about online fundraising which was a big part of the last election, and i believe will be a big part of coming elections. let me introduce our panelists. with tobyrt

fallsgraff. he was the e-mail director for the obama campaign in 2012. he oversaw e-mail and messaging strategies. of 18 e- led a team mail writers. digital director and organizing for action. next, we have lauren miller. she was the digital director for the elizabeth warren senate campaign. she again used to manage senator warns online adjudication -- senator warren's online medication. -- communication. .ext up we have ilya sheyman

know, he ran for congress in illinois 10th congressional district and gardner nearly 40% of the vote. he got support from nearly 20,000 individual donors, most of which are online. have reigned in english. brandon english. in the 2010 cycle, the district raised $14 million online, and raised2012 cycle they $40 million online. they have nearly tripled the small dollar donors. i am ameliaderator,

showalter. that is where we are coming from in terms of expertise. on the panel today, we will start with a lightning round. each of our panelists is going to spend a few minutes talking -- showing some slides and talking about some key learnings from their campaign. one, they will tell you about a thrilling success, a campaign and initiative they found successful. second they will tell you about an informative failure they had read something that seemed like a good idea, do not work so well, but that they learn from. finally, we will have a broader lesson. a general takeaway they want to you to know about online fundraising. after the lightning round we

will have a discussion about some other broader topics, and then we will leave wendy of room for audience question and answer. will have a micromet will go around if you want to ask questions then. to tweet during the panel, i will try to address them. i may not be able to get to everything, but i will be checking the twitter feed. let's get started. we will start with toby. take it away. >> hi everybody. thank you emelia for moderating here. this is the first time i have met emelia. amelia. that shirt on the first light is

something i own. it is not my shirt, but some people might be familiar with we had ithat associated with our campaign. this is something we actually war. will talk about something that went well. probably the best thing was beating mitt romney. we tested a lot. sent 164 e-mail segments, and tax testing.re

send different test. what i want to present to this audience is one of the things we did really well was what not to test. what not to burden in testing. did a great contribution in helping to figure this out. we do not bother to test on nondonors. we did a lot of testing simultaneously, and found out we -- and burning a lot of capacity. all 18 of us,m, were happy to cut back on the tests we were running. we started to illuminate nondonors. eliminate nondonors.

west coast people, no offense, but if we cut them out it helped. about one million to $2 million extra for the west goes people. they were not away, so they could not help us with our tests. -- awake, so they could not help us with our tests. >> the reason we did this is because we had been highest value return on their conversion. were sending we that was not the most optimized version two then, we determined right away was a waste of our time. however, we would test in the

on donors. we made sure the message they received was the most optimized. i think the last piece is that we did not waste a lot of time hoping thing on personalizing for demographics. i saw one article that alleged we were sending different messages to seniors in florida are then those two students and ohio. if we had done that, i would bet a mutiny on my hands. better toh personalize based on past activity than on demographics. >> tell us something that did not go so well. this is something i've been been public about for a wild. spring, early summer of 2000 12, we decided we wanted to cut back on the tests, and go

with our got a little more. we decided to see how this would work. we had everybody on our team, e- mail team, and logistics team just weighing in and guess what would be the best and what would not. it is pretty embarrassing, but we were horrible. we were actually worse than chance. i want to say that monkeys would have been better at picking random versions out of a hat. >> you would think we would be able to predict, and we were terrible. prettyas actually horrible. what todd is was that we we could not replace the data with our guts. i consideredoment , and nexthange essential crisis. came down once we needed

to test more not less. i think the biggest takeaway we , the word gets thrown around a lot, but authenticity. howink we are honest about gimmicky they could be sometimes, and that was ok. use, andct lines we the ones that one, the one that they wouldhe best, be reused. that was something that you can actually go back and look to find.our inbox

the last story i will tell is that we try to cultivate voices that were human, open, and accessible where they were. normal fundraising, we have one directors the finance who was made into a lunatic. he was a good sport about it, and i think you might be an ambassador someday. from himsend e-mails moley with three!. exclaimation points. send e-mails from those who were really staying up all

night working to meet the goals. we would pass along the pressure, but having some fun while we did. the last e-mail we sent was november 2. it was the last fundraising e- mail, and the subject mind -- ore was goodbye toby, goodbye inbox if we did not have your first name. sentimental, i cannot believe this is the last fundraiser, we will not be sending you e-mails anymore. people would do twitter and posted it on facebook that this was really sad. they were actually sad that they were getting the last fundraising e-mail from the obama campaign. me, and after i had stopped tearing up a little bit, i realized that what we had done

was become an actual human being. that is what the big strength of , not just the president's voice, but our other staff voices. >> next we have lauren miller. i want to give her a special shout out because she was a last-minute addition to the paddle. -- panel. she wants to talk to us about the elizabeth warren campaign. >> i probably do not have as great of stats to give, but i do want to talk a lot about what made so special last year. compared to the other people on the stage, the dollar amounts seem a whole lot's mall or when you're talking about the presidential campaign or others.

or a senate level campaign we really rewrote history. the elizabeth warren campaign as a whole raised $42 billion. -- $42 million. i think it is safe that i can tell you over $20 million of it came online. the donations were $50 or less. really great numbers when it comes to a campaign. towere lucky to be able raise it. a lot of people say how did it thatn, and i always say elizabeth warren makes it rain money. , holdingen next to her the bucket, and trying to

collect as much as humanly possible. there are certainly things that you see in your inbox every end , that the deadline is that we need to raise $100,000 i this date. they work for everyone, which is why you get so many of them. they worked for elizabeth, and they work for every other campaign. what made her so special? million? her rates $20 i think the thing that we were able to accomplish was to let elizabeth be elizabeth. be able to hear her voice as much as humanly possible. trainings on e- mail. i have these tips should -- for -- write really

good enough. never send an e-mail with an action. eat --not want the only link in your e-mail to be the other side -- unsu bscribe button. we sent a lot of really long e- mails on the campaign. mey's team would always send an e-mail after i said mine to them, and they would ask you to work, to send that really long e-mail. and it did. we sent to different kinds of long e-mails. -- somejust low personal stories about elizabeth, and the other was policy things.

very pop and style e- ed style e-mails. mails thatlong e- talked about her variances on the campaign, and others talking about a cake she made for her mom. discounting the democratic convention which is its own story, the single highest performing e-mail that we had during the campaign was an e- mail that we sent with the subject line i am sorry. this e-mail was really long, and you will see that there was no link except for a donation button at the very bottom. i would love to take credit for this e-mail, but in fact senator warren hadte the -- e

rodent -- written the e-mail herself. at the movies you was talking to her about how he was working two jobs to put himself through college, and it was a really inspiring story. at the end of their conversation he said i just wanted to tell you i give five dollars to your campaign every seeing girl month, i am a recurring donor. she looked at him and realize he was just going off the nightshade -- nightshade, and said he should give the money. in he said no this is about all of us. she was so moved that she felt the need to write this e-mail. and talk about how sorry she was that we sent e-mails with donation buttons and a lot of

different stories. she wrote this draft, and we sat on it for a while. we did not know what to do, it acknowledged the fact we ask for a lot of money, so we sat on it for a while. it right after she wrote it, and then it came ,o be the end of the quarter and we had this e-mail and we thought we should just test it. we can see how it works. toby says don't run tests on doners.onors -- non- people, ifto a few they unsubscribe, it was ok as they were not donating anyway. say a good donating e-mail

would raise $100,000. mail justt out the e- to our segment of nondonors unless, and within the first 20 minutes we had already raised $50,000. we couldn't believe what was happening, and so obviously we sent the e-mail to the rest of the list dream this was not even the opera to time to be sending that e-mail. we said that at 5:00 p.m. on a friday night. that is a bad time to be sending an e-mail. we just decided to do it. this e-mail that just tell the story of not wanting to send a bazillion fundraising e-mails end up raising over $430,000. i would love to take credit for, but it was all senator warren. unique having that were to me in comparison to the out,

campaign -- to the obama dailygn is that i have access to the senator and all that we post online. she reads everything that goes out, she cares enough to put in the effort and time to make sure that the program is really authentic. i think that many senate campaigns have about three or four conference -- firms that write everything that goes out there. i really wanted as much as possible for the voice of elizabeth to really be the voice of elizabeth. when i came on the campaign i insisted on two things, that i was firstly on the executive staff, so i can sit in on everything, but also secondly to spend as much time as evenly

possible on the road with elizabeth. the two people will always in the car with her on it it it -- at any given event was me and her campaign director. i know her voice inside and out, whatever she might say, and so the content we were producing was really her voice, and what she really said. it is truly what she said. people love what it said, and that is why they signed up. i will go fast through the rest of this, because i'm going to long. a failure? there was a time when we're sending really long e-mails, and i was watching dinner with george clooney, i thought maybe it would work for me.

a fundraiser coming up and we are in a unique position in that it had been affleck, and other actors from boston. there is a little hitch in that the fundraiser being -- was being held in los angeles, but it was that jj abrams movie studio. law's -- theis the most amazing thing. a trip to hang out with the boston boys, i would put in all the effort to put the contact together. test it, ween assumed it would perform amazingly, so we broadcasted it out. the e-mail did ok. it raised $31,000. warren's i'm sorry e-

mail was so much more. buy our dinner date was a by our standards it was a failure. we cap promoting it, because once you are all in on a contest, you have to keep going. it was not going to perform as well as any other e-mail, so we did not push it. contests, dothese not just think about how was the staffng, but also time to vet the people who win these contests. make sure they are not crazy, that it is random, but that you crazy person in the room with all these people.

>> does this mean that elizabeth warren gets to star in jj abrams next movie? >> i would hope so. believe thatd not they had one, and after we had bailedrything up, they because they do not believe it. the second person had health problems, and we finally found the third window -- winner. it took a huge amount of time. if we had just stuck to what was working, to just getting sweet messages from elizabeth, it would then have been better. a broader can't -- message that i took away was that i loved the ability to work on a campaign that was so involved in the digital.

we had been budget to be able to run ads, to do the acquisition that was needed. if i had to do it all over again, i would have invested and three or-- five times more money. that is a gamble that a lot of campaigns are willing to do. savingns are all about their money till the end so they can run tv ads. her of the money came from online support. -- as you run the program, is to have those key moments that you will take advantage up. listize of your e-mail directly correlates to how big those home run moments will be.

the month of september for us was the most amazing we could possibly have. we are fortunate to have the senator speaking at the democratic convention. win herher when her -- primary, and then we had the end of month fundraising. raised a lot more my e-mail list had been greater than it was. we ranuisition adds that had eight 6 to 1 roi. if i had anything to do over it, i would have fought to increase the budget early on.

we would have raised a lot more and it was nice for elizabeth, and we could have raised a lot more. any campaign would benefit from thoughts. >> investing in your digital staff is always good grade -- is always good. .et's move to ilya >> i cannot think of a picture, so i i just brought one of my cat. there he is. i want to give you the perspective of the candidate who is fortunate to have a lot of small donors. our fundraising looks quite a bit different the rest of the year than it does between september and november and on election-year. there are moments when things are really hot and it is have --

obvious it is doing well. after the tragedy in newtown response overwhelming to gun violence. we knew we could do well fundraising on up program that had top rarity for our members. priority for our members. we very quickly came to the realization that we had no idea and no ability in the staff to predict what kind of fundraiser would do well. we would constantly try to guess, and we were always off the mark. the other towns we had was that we did not want to burn all of our e-mail lists. our approach up until this last cycle was that we would send the first round to under 50,000

people. -- 150,000 people. that would be about one percent to two percent of our e-mail list. just based on testing, which was acceptable to sometimes, but we might be burning a lot of our folks. we're also were less inclined to risks.sks rate -- we do not want to send something without would do poorly. we looked at what is the sort of smallest sample of folks we could send funding to to be able to predict whether or not the fundraising within the ballpark. in the ballpark if it could generate over 150,000. we realized that a 15,000

sample, 1/5 of what we have said before, we could tell within a range of whether the fundraiser was basically a flop, in the ballpark, or a success. we radically reduced our sample size. we built a tool, which we lovingly called the "p rojectorator", because no one howw how to work it gave -- it worked. in the work, we would move on to the next one. we created a whole testing mechanism. we would send it to 15,000, and if we found it in the ballpark 150,000. it up to

to go tobout 24 hours the whole cycle. it meant we could try more approaches on financing, which was huge. -- it meant that we could take a risk. was thatd thing we did we radically decentralized our fundraising rating. writing. manyd not want to send so e-mails. i became a lower cost and a lower risk for us to have more people trying their hand at it. theound more diamonds in rough. we are able to look at a campaign that we were spending -- of our time on, and discovered that there was something we could break down. just a few weeks ago we were

running about six or seven campaigns simultaneously. some energye was corps, but historically we would lookell, student loans bigger, we should not try because of my not succeed. it aody would say i gave shot, and it was the only test that was across the line, and we were able to do kick up today the later. strictlyly able to take that risk because we were able to reduce the cost of testing and radically empower our staff. approaches, even breaking the rules once in a while, and you will find a diamond in the rest very we need to set up systems to get the best chance to find those winning fundraisers.

starting in 2000 -- 2011, we started something for online petitions. people could start a petition whenever they wanted, they could send it to a few folks to get signers, and we would continue to send it more broadly. those folks could organized hundreds, thousands, or millions of members on a subject. we thought it was transformative, so we decided to break sort of a rule that we had all raise -- we had always thought to be true about to rely on infrastructure. we have this really incredible tool, can you give us $10 to run

it. we said let's do it again. for multiple weeks, we were trying approach after approach. i've been there with other organizations in the past where fundraisingr time for infrastructure failed. world, canchange the you help us by giving us five dollars, that approach failed. responses were if it's a really cool ball and your tool, why do you need money? volunteer tool, why do you need money? good point.

lots of members were trying to hold their county boards accountable campaign after campaign. layer on an additional package to. that sounded-mail like a campaign e-mail. there are a lot of campaigns around the world doing these things, k support that? it let us authentically fund raise, and was a medical lesson for us to learn. to campaign for specific things, not just the infrastructure they don't understand is biden. -- behind it. one of the other frequently mocked things on online programs is the three dollars to support

this campaign. important really urgent fundraising deadline, this candidate need your three dollars. it sounds ridiculous. people do not think it made sense. the candidate started to understand that if you got a thousand three dollar contributions, that with $3000. if you aggregated these things together, it was cool. it was an important lesson, one that was really important. forhat is all i canada does candidate does for his fundraising, he is missing out on a majority of the money. we did about 100 house parties throughout the district were --

where people would pitch in about $20 each because they were excited about it. -- a lot of in folks who pitched in, literally give us three dollars. we had thousands of pages, because we recorded every contribution for transparency. was tot step what -- shop. large finance we had a whole host of finance interns, and we had volunteers whose job it was to do the groundwork of actually matching those funds up with their fcc history. that not just for the folks who started out pitching in $500 or 1000, but for every single donor gave to our campaign. what we rapidly found was that both cbs three dollars whose daughter history was to

give us $25,000. it was significantly more than they gave the first time, and so without it was -- we wanted to know if it was something different. we tried calling some of these folks. i did not know to ask back, so anyou get three dollars for e-mail to my you do not know if so youow your name and don't know where the pitch is going to go. i would call up and say this is who i am, this is what is going the rest ofinvest

the donations you would normally do, and they would say sure. what they would find is there were a whole host of candidates who are gotten those three dollar or five dollar contributions, but it seems like they had never gotten be other 2497. special thatething i had said, it was particular to these races. the people who had already invested because they progressive -- launched to these progressive organizations just wanted a phone call. they were already invested. ofre is a whole host progressive candidates running around the country who are doing the right things.

they're doing donor meetings, having events and the district, doing all the hard works. evente leaving the portion of the many they could raise on the table because they were sort of on the front and -- front end. if you're working on a campaign to any of small donors, get a real research shop that does the groundwork and follows the money. those who have invested before are a low hanging fruit who could be tapped to invest again. you,meone is endorsing oftentimes it is is better to have them do the three dollar ask and the five dollar ask. if it gets more donors in the door, and you can run a more powerful campaign, it truly

works. once those folks are in the door, you have the connection, and it is a really easy task, and you can build a powerful donor program from that. brandonfinally have english to give his thoughts. fundraisingonline comes from e-mails and is a pretty simple ask, people come -- understand where you're coming from. in day after paul ryan goes front of the republican convention and makes up stuff for an hour, and people want to throw there were most of the tv, it is easy to send out an e-mail saying help us to build our

campaign to beat them. out the money back and watching it fall down. the other months of the year, it is finding the other ways to engage your list. when does money back at moments bucket-- your money moments happen, you need be ready to go, but you need to keep all the other things going. one of the good things from this last cycle was if you have these for threeing out dollars every couple of days, he gets old, so add in free things. everyone loves free stuff. turn -- 2010he 20

midterm elections, with all of otheramacare and problems, people wanted to go out and say they were proud of it. obamacareis i heart sticker. in $25ly we said chip and you can get this sticker. somebody on our staff said what if we give it away free, and to cover thele costs on the backend. i was not a fan, because if we give everything away for free, we don't get money, i want to go to my boss and explain it. it was a huge step. thousandsgiving away

of these stickers, and we saw them everywhere. after we gave away that free sticker, they would indeed contribute on the backend, and that paid for the cost of those stickers. i think we all have the same ideas, you have this great idea, and then it totally bonds. you have to stop promoted and pick the winner. we had an event where a congresswoman called the winner to- contest let them know they had one, and they hung up on the promise woman because they did not believe her. hung up on they

congresswoman because they did not believe her. that the free giveaway raise more money than just asking for money in an e-mail. the most important part of that was that once people did sign up, we asked them to ward it to their friends, and make sure they got their free sticker. that was a great way to build our list from people who were engaged and committed to our cause. >> and what is your failure, and general takeaway? cycle, we the 2010 would write one e-mail, send it out, and that would be progress. into 2012, we got into testing.

we would send out for e-mails, each e-mail would have a different text, and each unit would have a different subject line. it saying e-mail a has this stat, and e-mail being has this. we should put them together. it was totally not true. the subject line was kind of what gets people into the mood of what they are thinking of when they open the e-mail. rate,t has a better open depending on how the subject line works with the flow of that e-mail, it can be entirely different. different to give two e-mail texts and e-mail subject line coming you need four different versions. a this was an e-

mail we did from peter pelosi about paycheck fairness. mail 101 best practices will tell you that to get people to opening upcoming need to keep it serious. you. you don't want to give away too much up front. people want to know what today is, and will click through, and it turns out that even though people opened it, it was almost double on the sign your name e- mail. they came into the melt knowing what it was about, what they were asking to do, what actions to take. >> final lesson? >> to reiterate what everyone has said. i think we all have that moment

where we wrote that e-mail that we does thought was the most inspiring, amazing, key piece of oratory that had ever been written on the internet. that people want read it and , and feelto tears compelled to dump all of their money into our campaign. they descended out, and it bombs. then you send it out, and it wants. -- bombs. the list will ultimately tell you what works. you can get caught up in all of the best practices of what an e- mail is supposed alert -- isn't supposed to look like, but at the end of the day you need to look at the bottom line results, and need to follow those results to up with the best answer.

>> we have about 20 minutes them ask we will let questions. we will leave 15 court -- minutes for audience questions. how much of this can apply at the smaller local places? the local races? campaigns -- what can they do to apply these findings? >> i would say that even if you have the millions of people on e-mail lists, you can always test something. if you have enough traffic overtime to your site, you can test a donor page, or different

languages. testing where your can is super important. superre you can is important. warrenhe elizabeth campaign, i was basically a one- person staff. i would say in addition to what to test and not necessarily having to run side-by-side, cutting your list in half, and seeing what works on future test so you can get some statistical significance. person in charge of e-mail and social media, and your online trios and whatever it may be, the vast the geordie be raisedney will through enough fundraising. your boss may be asking why those tweets have not gone out, but you need to push back about the e-mail. >> we have been talking a lot

fundraising, do you think that social media can ever be a major source of fundraising, and what do you think would have to happen to make that true? it is not there yet, is the short answer. i think we have all fallen into that trap of hoping. e-mail works now, but twitter might be the new thing, facebook might be the new thing. those are all important tools, and should be part of your program, especially to get those e-mail addresses onto your lists. media,ed a ton of social and for every person that signed up we urged them to share that with all her friends -- they are friends. friends. e-mail allows you to have a longer conversation with

somebody then we generally get out of facebook or twitter. it is tough to make that last. >> are there questions and the audience -- in the audience? >> i was quite curious, of those 152,and the two segments -- what were the different variables assigns the subject besides the subject line that you were testing? messageast majority was -- tests and subject barriers trade -- barriers.

the other things we would test would be the layout of the e- mail. -- weld occasionally test were always testing the ask amount grade -- amount. amelia, usedeam, to call it the secret sauce. tweak e-mails, do all of this message testing to check the drafts and the subject line. we found that people across demographic groups preferred the same messaging, which was cool. but, we could even get more lists by just adding small

tweaks for certain behavioral groups. people who donated very recently, we get added extra sentence thanking them for their recent donation, and asking if they could dig deeper and donate again. senses addedhe some risk, but you did not have to write completely different drafts for everybody. get a good message that works, and you can make little tweaks on it. >> we called it buttering. you take the toast of your e- mail, and you butter it differently for every segment. >> tactical question. we are here in silicon valley, so did any of you find any technology to be more compelling?

>> what are your favorites, panel? , we found that we saw an whenase in our fundraising we went from the basic contribution form when we went over to add blue. -- would make a five dollar donation, they would get a pop-up that said thank you, how about making one every month, and they would click on it. us, and it would store their credit card cap.mation in the technology.

this huge sort of mountain of information that is already saved, so that when people click through, they can submit instead of re- submitting all the information. >> we work with a company called we also walk dogs. us because wefor like to do custom attaching of a bunch of variables. the downside is that we do not have the benefit of a lot of lessons. the plus side for us is that we get the luxury of trying rebuilding things from the bottom up. we like that, it works really

well. >> we actually hadthey built a . customized a lot of our tolls, i mean. , i think a lot of them were there for us to you let. fortunately for them. disclosure, i work for blue state digital before i went to the other. the one campaign certainly left jetblue, it was great considering the fundraising we did with affiliated groups who helps to raise money. we did use the state for our general donation funds for our own. to slightly more specifically address your wetjen, i would say the vast majority of campaigns use only a couple of different vendors when it comes to online funds being separated.

udc blows -- blue states, salsa, and nation builder. i think the vast majority of the reason for that is not that there are not great mailers out there, not that there are not great crm's, salesforce type systems that can manage donor history possibly better than these other solutions, but the integration with the rest of the campaign, the integration with the field program, with your call time history, with everything else is just so important. when campaigns have such limited resources, trying to either build a custom api solution to make those work together is just not realistic. so you really are limited to those companies that have put the written thus far. >> before we get to the next question, on the obama campaign for operating hours donate pages, we would use optimism to

make tweaks that way. since finishing with the obama , and learning with people in the industry, i've heard almost nothing negative about optimize, which everybody has something to say about every single platform. i have been really surprised and impressed that optimize have such a fan base. that is something that is useful for campaigns. next question. ppensn you speak to what ha when your candidate or your campaign is sending out petitions? i stand against sexual violence, whatever. >> i would not suggest fundraising around your candidate. >> what success or failures have you had turning that population of e-mail from in a -- from an

e-mail petition into donors? membershipmoveon's came on petition, whether it was the iraq war, working for healthcare for public option, or , student loans, our biggest break out with the campaign by a man named robert .pplebaum for debt relief a lot of the work we do, when it comes to election time, they understand the connection between issues and elections. they're organizing their communities when it comes to election time. part of our theory of tame -- changes to elect candidates who stand for those issues. as long as that of a story told in our e-mails and an authentic way, the fact that our strongest fundraising continues to be, with the exception of the moments, between september and

november when people are excited about candidates. what we do with he can -- with the candidate, you will really see an e-mail that we do not see connected with an issue that moveon members care about. we find that transition make sense. some folks are just issue base. but they are engaged in politics, and we tell the whole story of campaigns organizing and issue work fitting into a regular cycle. >> one thing i would add is after they sign that petition, they land on the donate page. one thing we found, 2010, probably, 2009, was that we would occasionally send fundraisers. the sign on ask takes you to a donate page, we would occasionally raise more, quite often raise more than a straight donate ask. who just signed on said yeah, hell, yeah, i like obama

care. they are the most likely, the most engaged to pull out there critic art and donate. >> that applies to things, i mean, when we had people signed barack's birthday card. that was one of our most successful e-mails of 2011, even though it was not technically a fundraising e- mail. it is not the same as a petition, but the people are signing their name, and while law -- oila. next question. >> i heard people talk about giveaways, contests, raffles, being pretty spectacular failures with the exception of the obama care sticker, which i have, by the way. does anybody have any experience with enticing

prospective donors with something that has been successful? whether it is a giveaway or anything like that. were i give you this, or you're injured into this. >> i do not know what you are thinking about your >> we actually did this. we had many not successful contest, and i will not name our matt damon. i think one of the things that , as long ass that it was really cool. maybe that is not cool to matt damon. [laughter] >> we're never getting invited to hollywood. >> i'm really sorry. >> matt damon did a call to undecided women voters that was

amazing. matt, we love you. are really ai company. we would giveaway things quite a. bit.ite a bumper stickers all the time. one of the things we had a lot car magnets.th was >> car magnets, you might see them on cars or around things, they're actually in terms of the per-unit cost are only slightly slightly more expensive than a bumper sticker. but i think people thought of them as a sort of cooler. it seemed like a higher value. so i think that that is probably what made it more successful. >> people use it all over the place. cu -- including getting people to save their payment information. sign up for quick donate, and we will send you a free card magnet. >> you on the other side of the room. >> actually, let me add one thing. the other thing to think about

is what is your goal. we have a lot of success with sticker giveaways and getting , give to get a sticker one dollar or two dollars to help fund it, and get their address. over the long-term, we now have a whole are both folks who are more committed to the organization, and we now have their complete contact information that we can use rail -- use for a whole bunch of things. that will pay significant fundraising dividends, even though that one specific e-mail, maybe we just broke in on a sticker. think about it longer-term and longitudinally as well. >> what is the future question? what percentage of your total income now comes online, and what you think it will be next year? -- ithink it very skewed varies hugely. we have a few campaigns where it was around half coming in online. maybe even a little more. i've also heard of plenty of

campaigns that are still funded -- a much smaller proportion online. sometimes it also depends, if it is not a federal campaign, sometimes it depends on the fund-raising roles in a raiseular state, can you huge amounts off-line at high dollar fundraisers versus not. i think the percentage might change, but my guess is that the strength of online fundraising is going to increase dramatically. i think it is just becoming more of the way that people donate and people are getting used to it, even the people who are willing to donate $5,000 here it we had plenty of online donations for a thousand dollars. people just sort of doing things that way more and more. what you think? >> i agree that it definitely depends on the campaign -- with the campaign-finance rules are. 7% ahe dccc, we were

couple of cycles ago, and now about a third. we expect that to grow. >> i think at moveon, we are are 95% or 100%. moveon asible to send check, but very few people do it. on the campaign site,, the one warning i have is it is hard to parse numbers when campaign is reporting. what they do is when they have an event, which is a high dollar house party, and people are giving to -- $2500, they will have them submit their contribution within online form. look at the number of donors, the average attribution. don't just take the top line number 30 >> we have about a minute and a half left. once the final question? wants the final question you g? designthat 70 advice on elements like font size, graphics, and also the number of links.

so have a sunday but that donate link embedded in e-mail or stick with one button at the very end? >> toby, i know you know about these questions. >> the short answer i would say is that it changed. there was no right answer every time. we did find there was a certain font size that was the best one to go with. we went with it. it was bigger than we expected, but it was not the hugest. >> i think it is 14 or something. >> yeah, it'd change. in terms of the overall style, cleaner tended to be better. maybe it is because in the industry, people went further and further toward heavily formatted e-mails. our e-mail tended to be very plain. as we moved forward and tested out different element, it was a multi-case that keeping it simple did the best. or making it ugly, we also did

ugly yellow highlighting for a while. that also lost its novelty. >> i agree that ugly works. i within a one of of our big pieces with e-mails, definitely test keeping your text bigger. and how your tax works on mobile. more and more people are looking the a mobile on their cell phones. through theire mobile phone. if you have a giant header on top of him and your text is teeny tiny, people have to zoom in and scroll to look at it, it is not going going to work. so definitely making sure that your text works for mobile. bigger is usually better. big,e also a big fan of giant juicy words. >> your superstar was on my team on the obama campaign and did some really great work optimizing our quick donate e- mail to look great on mobile. we could even see over the course of the 18 months of the

campaign just how much the traffic increase as a percentage mobile versus nonmobile. so it is very clear that that is a direction things are going. you need to really start paying attention to how your e-mails look on mobile. that is all the time we have for this panel, but thank you also much for coming. thank you so much to the panelists. [applause] and go online and raise the money. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> we will have more from the netroots national congress with a look at the progressive agenda here on season. after that, former hewlett- packard ceo will talk about the state of entrepreneurship and innovation in u.s. business. in egypt with the topic of discussion on many of the sunday talk shows today after

conflicting reports yesterday leadernstitution party had been appointed the country's interim prime minister. the interim president's office says talks are still going -- ongoing. commiserations continued today in the treats of cairo with both supporters and opponents of ousted president mohamed morsi. quick one of the points that would make in this book is -- did it make any difference any direct popular election? we come down a side that yes it did make a difference. the senators began to act like house members, which is not something every senator wants to hear. were out,hat they scavenging for votes, they actually had to go out and deal with the people as opposed to if you have got a state legislature, and let's say there are 26 numbers of your state senate, all you need is 14 votes, and you can easily pay

, in and they did, indeed some case pay off senators. paying off their mortgages in a couple of notorious cases. to buy the election. >> more with historian richard baker tonight at 8:00 on c- span's q and a. no man needs a strong partner, an honest partner more ,han the american president sheltered and cocooned as he is and what harry truman called the great white prison. i concluded after five years and hundreds of interviews, that those presidents with brave spouses willing to speak sometimes hard truths that others are unwilling to speak to the big guy. those presidents have a distinct advantage. let me give you an example. to cut nixon been able through her husband's paranoia, watergate might have been avoided.

but pat has long since given up on her husband to the time they reached the white house. they were leading virtually separate lights, as you will see --my per trail of this lives as you'll see in my portrayal of the status of presidential couples. , do not give my husband advice pat would say, because he does not need it. is there a man or woman alive who does not need advice from the person who knows him or her lefbest? >> the arthur talks about first ladies and how they helped shape american history. monday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span. >> more now from the netroots nation annual conference in san jose, california. discussion on the progress iive agenda. jealousanel are been and jeff merkley. this is about one hour and 20 minutes.