Remove "from line" in advocacy emails?

Patrick North

I am interested in how to remove the "from line" in Advicacy alerts that are sent to ligislators. I do not want the organization name to be inlcuded. I would like only the names of the constituent sending the email to be in the "from line" of the alert. Thank you.

Sara Hoffman

Hi Patrick -



That is not possible.

Here's an excerpt from documentation I wrote several years ago (when I worked at Convio) that was co-authored by the Advocacy Product Manager at the time.

Convio requires the Organization Name field to be populated in action alerts so that we can consistently deliver email to targets. While this may be disconcerting at first, this transparency is one of the top requests that congressional offices have of advocacy software providers like Convio, and ultimately it’s to everyone’s benefit that the product functions this way.



Here is the good news: the Organization Name can be adjusted for individual campaigns, to allow you more flexibility.

I've attached the documentation - it has a broken link to the old Convio Community for a Feature Summary Document. I couldn't quite find the post in the new BB framework. But it was part of a bug fix from Luminate Online Winter 2011 release update 6.5.



The best-in-class legislative email deliverability is on the line if this functionality didn't exist.



Cheers,

Sara

Zachary Tomanelli 2

To say it's not possible is not technically true. It certainly is possible as other advocacy software I've worked with delivers the email from the constituents address with the sender as just the software domain - so in this case it would just be something like bounce@convio.com or bounce@blackbaud.com - no mention of the organization.



Now this may or may not effect deliverability. I'm not sure. But when you say it's not possible - what you mean is Convio/Blackbaud has decided to value deliverability over appearances. Personally I think this is foolish. It doesn't matter if your constituents emails are getting through to the legislator, if they are arriving in the legislator's inbox with a blaring declaration that it came via your organization. The unfortunate fact is that a great many lawmakers take these types of emails as less genuine. They see them as some astroturf effort, even if that's really not the case.



I have a a thread on this over at the ideas portal - that I'm hoping will catch the attention of whoever the Luminate powers that be are that determine this functionality. So if you're also fustrated by this, please go give it vote:



https://luminateonline.ideas.aha.io/ideas/LUM-I-229



As I stated over there: I imagine many organizations would sacrifice deliverability for appearances. As the emails are currently sent - they're borderline useless for advocacy purposes.

Zachary Tomanelli 2

I'll also add that this line from your documentation is extremely troubling, if it's indicative of the philosophy of convio/blackbaud:



While this may be disconcerting at first, this transparency is one of the top requests that congressional offices have of advocacy software providers like Convio



This shows a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of how this type of advocacy generally works. Of course that is one of the top requests of congressional offices. They want to know if requests are originating from a call to action from a specific group - (unfortunately in many cases so they can ignore or take them less seriously than they would if they believed it was coming directly from a constitutent). Convio/blackbaud shouldn't be concerning itself with the top requests of congressional offices. It should be concerning itself with the top requests of its clients.

Sally Heaven

Hi all - if the advocacy communications from constituents aren't delivered to the elected officials, then it doesn't matter what the format is, because the elected officials will not see them.



That's why Luminate Online has made our email delivery service, including the emails sent by constituents via Advocacy, compliant with DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMARC This ensures that emails don't get blocked or sent to the spam folder and future-proofs the service as the state legislatures and county and municipal elected officials implement DMARC on their receiving servers. Part of DMARC is noting that the email was sent via a service like Luminate Online, and this is the same for listserv software, for example. DMARC is used by both the receiving domain/ESP and the sending domain to authenticate the message.



As far as Congress goes, for over a decade there has been what's been described as an "arms race" with providers like Blackbaud working to ensure that constituent messages get delivered to the Hill, and congressional IT offices putting up barriers to automated submissions by bots and non-constituents. The unfortunate side effect of these barriers is that it has blocked some legitimate constituent electronic submissions.



Some years ago the Congressional Management Foundation initiated the Communicating With Congress project (of which Blackbaud was a founding sponsor) to ensure that legitimate constituent communications are delivered. Part of what Congress wanted was to know if the constituent was sending a message via or in partnership with a nonprofit organization. This will help them more efficiently recognize and record the constituent's position on a pending bill as for or against, and will help them better reflect the input they're receiving from constituents.



A huge benefit of the Communicating with Congress initiative is better deliverability. Congressional offices that use webforms, which can have barriers to submission, are also subject to load-based performance degradation when many constituents are attempting to submit to webforms at the same time during a widespread issue (such as when there is a new Supreme Court Justice nomination, for example).



Of the 143 (of 435) Representatives that are live on the Communicating With Congress protocol/software, deliverability to those targets is at 98-99% which is amazing and unprecedented for Congress. The House tells us that they aim to have all 435 members live on CWC by the end of 2015, and afterward, the Senate will follow.



What that means for clients that use Luminate Online to help their members send letters to Congress is that sooner than we think, nearly all of the messages will make it through to the elected officials. That's pretty awesome and something to look forward to.

Zachary Tomanelli 2

That's all wonderful - but doesn't at all address any of my broader points. I recognize and have stated multiple times that this is done for deliverability reasons. What you or anyone else from convio has yet to address is the notion that deliverability is not the be all, end all. Touting a number of 99% deliverability is not impressive if everyone of those emails comes across looking like this in the from line:



Organization name <actions@organization.org>; on behalf of; constitutent name <actions@organization.org>



For comparison - this is how Blue State Digital's email delivery looks:



Constituent Name <constituentemail@gmail.com> via bounce.bluestatedigital.com



There is no mention of the organization name. And also, the BSD delivery did not end up my spam folder. Now granted, I may not have the same robust filters as the U.S. congress.

But that's why I ask - what effect would switching to this type of delivery system have on deliverability? Is it significant? Is it minimal?



If switching to this drops deliverability to 90% - I'd prefer that. If it dropped it to 70% I'd prefer that! If it drops to 50%, then I'd probably stick with the higher deliverability. But as it currently stands, your proclomations of 99% deliverability are pretty hollow, without any comparison.



And if this line was suppose to be comforting - it was quite the opposite:

Part of what Congress wanted was to know if the constituent was sending a message via or in partnership with a nonprofit organization. This will help them more efficiently recognize and record the constituent's position on a pending bill as for or against, and will help them better reflect the input they're receiving from constituents.

This is exactly my point! This is just a fancy way of saying Congress wants to be able to compartmentalize these communications so they can ignore them or take them less seriously - or even worse, if congress members see that the messages come from an organization they actively oppose, they may even take the messages negatively. If James Inhofe's staff gets a ton of messages delivered from 350.org on behalf of constitutents - I don't think they're going to give those too much weight.



It doesn't comfort me to know that Blackbaud is working dilligently with Congress to figure out the best way to get their clients communications ignored.

Sally Heaven

When it comes to deliverability, once the entire Congress has implemented the Communicating With Congress standards, the question of deliverability via a software provider like Luminate Online and all other software products like it that want to deliver citizen communication to the Hill, the difference will be between zero 0% and 98-99%. Any piece of software that wants to facilitate delivery of constituent communcation in this way will have to comply with the standards.



The question of how an email delivered via Luminate Online looks in the inbox varies based on the Email Service Provider. Gmail displays things one way, and other ESPs display them differently. It depends on the email system the legislator is using - Exchange, Gmail, any MSN systems, etc. But for the message to arrive if the recipient's ESP uses DMARC, as many of the major ESPs do, then the message itself has to be DMARC-compliant.



If the messages don't make it there, it really doesn't matter how they look. That's why deliverability is important. I would also challenge your notion that members of Congress decide to ignore citizen communications if they're associated with the name of a group. These are citizen communications, and it's Congress' job to read and response to constiutent opinions. They also value communications because the purpose of Congress is to reflect the values of their constituents. (Whether all of them actually do that is another story - but that's why we have elections.)



I encourage you to check out the Congressional Management Foundation's report on Perceptions of Citizen Advocacy on Capitol Hill: http://www.congressfoundation.org/projects/communicating-with-congress/perceptions-of-citizen-advocacy-on-capitol-hill

Jeff Frew

That's all well and good with reference to Congress, but this seems like a disservice to organizations who use the Advocacy tool to interact at the state level, especially in the smaller states where the only person reading their emails is the legislator, due to them having no staff. While I recognize that Luminate works on the Federal level, the functionality on the State level is just as, if not vitally more important, given the tendency of slow movement on nearly all issues in the current Congressional culture.



What would you propose for organizations based at the state level?

Sally Heaven

Some state legislators who read their own email use personal email addresses such as gmail or yahoo, which require DMARC authentication to send and deliver the emails properly. As well, if the state legislature's IT department manages the email, they can and do implement DMARC requirements for reciving email. Not all of them do right now, but it's an ever-increasing number - and it's because of spammers. Not nonprofits, but illegitimate non-solicited commerical e-mail.



As well, once Congress has implemented and demonstrated how well the new standards work, I fully expect state legislatures to start implementing a similar communication set of standards and it is probably that they will choose one that is proven, up and running. I would not be surprised in a couple of years to learn that larger states like California, New York, etc. have implemented the new system that Congress is using, as a matter of fact.

Zachary Tomanelli 2

I have to wonder if you closely read the link you cited - because it effectively proves my point. Lawmakers and their staff highly value constituent communications when they believe the communication came directly from the constituent - but they value them less so when they percieve those communications as being part of a coordinated grassroots advocacy campaign. Even a majority of those surveyed believed form messages sent via advocacy campaigns were sent without the knowledge of the constituent!

Grassroots Advocacy Campaigns – Staff are Conflicted. The congressional staff we surveyed have conflicting views and attitudes about the value of grassroots advocacy campaigns. More than one-third of congressional staff (35%) agreed that advocacy campaigns are good for democracy (25% disagreed). Most staff (90%) agreed – and more than 60% strongly agreed – that responding to constituent communications is a high priority in their offices. But, more than half of the staffers surveyed (53%) agreed that most advocacy campaigns of identical form messages are sent without constituents' knowledge or approval

And to that point - even if you encourage your consituents to use the tool to write personalized messages, instead of form messages (which we typically do) - when the email comes from the organization, I have no doubt that a great many lawmakers percieve those messages as form messages anyway.



Lastly - to your point about deliverability once congress has implemented CWC becoming a choice between 99% and 0%. It's good to know that once Blackbaud has finished undermining their clients at the behest of Congress, to help implement this system - all online advocacy organizations will have no choice but to deliver less effective emails. Awesome!



That snark aside (and I do apologize, but I find this situation pretty frustrating) - I have a serious question. Because I don't fully understand the technology behind DMARC, so I would really like to know if you could explain it better. Is there really a difference between the two examples I gave, i.e. the current Blackbaud delivery and the Blue State example. In the case of Blue State, it would seem to me they're not spoofing the email address. It's being delivered from the Blue State domain - hence the "via bounce.bluestatedigital.com"



Is it really not possible to deliver these emails in accordance with DMARC, but do it in a more discrete manner? Is including the organization name really necessary? What is to stop blackbaud from just delivering it from Jonn Doe <email@email.com> via bounce.convio.com?



I don't mean that rhetorically - if you could explain the difference, I'd genuinely like to know.

Sally Heaven

Yes, I've read the report thoroughly. The survey was conducted in 2010 and is a snapshot of the attitude toward constituent communications five years ago. A large part of the reason that congressional staffers felt that way at the time - that maybe the communication was not sent with the constituent's consent - was that they had no way to verify that messages sent via software providers were indeed legitimate. That was one of the key reasons behind including the organization's name in the new standards, and why Congress wanted some other standards included as well.



Congress and their staffers who handle mail want this. It will help them better manage and respond to incoming communications, and will help them provide better information and services to their constitutents. They will accept the communications this way. It paves the way for a much higher level of trust from Congress that messages that your members send are legitimate. And it will improve the democratic dialogue.



As for DMARC, the way that the incoming messages are displayed is up to the Email Service Provider. Gmail exposes a lot of the information, some other ESPs do not. The same message would look one way when read by Gmail, and a different way when read by another email client.



I can't speak to how or what Blue State Digital does, since I don't know the particulars of their software.



As for what's happening technically with DMARC, it's required by the sender (i.e. Luminate Online) and by various recipient email providers. Since I don't know all the technical specifics, I'll ask a colleague to respond as well with more detail.

Zachary Tomanelli 2

Thank you. I would really like to understand the technical details better - because while I understand that different ESP's display information differently - I've tested Luminate against the BSD example across a variety of clients and in every case, the BSD version is more discrete.



As to your point about this method improving the democratic dialogue, we're just not going to agree there and that's ok. That's just a philosophical difference. I simply don't believe that an email asking a congressperson to get tough on big banks coming from "The Other 98% on behalf Joe Schmoe" is going to be taken in the same light as one that appears to come directly from Joe Schmoe.



I also find it strange that you'd continually reference "what Congress wants" and "what Congress prefers". Congress isn't your clients. That'd be akin to me opening a bar and grill, and telling a customer who wants a hamburger, "sorry we don't want sell hamburgers. We consulted with McDonalds and they said they'd really prefer if the other restaurants in the area don't sell hamburgers."



It's an imperfect analogy, because I recognize that you need to at least work with congress to make sure a.) the emails get there and b.) the advocacy software is effective. But it's disconcerting that there seems to be a lot of deference to what makes congress lives easier and not a lot of recognition of what the clients want. Just seems a little backwards to me.

Sally Heaven

Okay, I've asked for a technical guru to respond about the DMARC details.



As far as what our clients want - I think the majority of our advocacy clients want their constituents' messages to be delivered reliably to the elected officials, and not blocked by spam filters or torturous webforms that fail if the load gets too high.



As far as what Congress wants, it's what they agreed to in order to remove all of the barriers to deliver that currently exist, and these standards are open to every single advocacy provider out there to comply with. We can disagree between ourselves about whether including the name of the organization is a bad thing. But hey, if you don't want your organization's name identified, the good news is that you can edit it on a per-alert basis. Check out Sara Hoffman's post about how to do that earlier in this thread.

Andrew Wilcox

Zachary Tomanelli:

To say it's not possible is not technically true. It certainly is possible as other advocacy software I've worked with delivers the email from the constituents address with the sender as just the software domain - so in this case it would just be something like bounce@convio.com or bounce@blackbaud.com - no mention of the organization.



Now this may or may not effect deliverability. I'm not sure. But when you say it's not possible - what you mean is Convio/Blackbaud has decided to value deliverability over appearances. Personally I think this is foolish. It doesn't matter if your constituents emails are getting through to the legislator, if they are arriving in the legislator's inbox with a blaring declaration that it came via your organization. The unfortunate fact is that a great many lawmakers take these types of emails as less genuine. They see them as some astroturf effort, even if that's really not the case.



I have a a thread on this over at the ideas portal - that I'm hoping will catch the attention of whoever the Luminate powers that be are that determine this functionality. So if you're also fustrated by this, please go give it vote:



https://luminateonline.ideas.aha.io/ideas/LUM-I-229



As I stated over there: I imagine many organizations would sacrifice deliverability for appearances. As the emails are currently sent - they're borderline useless for advocacy purposes.

HI Zachary,



Allow me to provide some clarification on exactly why these changes were made, why the emails are currently configured as they are, and what impact it will have on campaigns.



First, as has been pointed out previously in this thread, Blackbaud as an advocacy vendor must keep in mind both the needs of our clients as well as the requests from targets (Congress or otherwise). Maintaining a positive relationship in both regards is in the best interest of everyone and allows us to maintain an open dialogue on how we can best deliver constituent messages to intended representatives. As such, "Organization" is a required field on all email alerts sent to targets but it can be configured (along with the email domain/address in the sender fields) by clients within their site settings. Sara has been kind enough to post that documentation here so I won't rehash that topic, but if there are any questions please also feel free to contact our support team.



Second, the DMARC changes implemented in Luminate Online were made in reponse to last year's policy change by Yahoo! which resulted in all email messages originating from other vendors that utilized an @yahoo.com email address in the "from" field to not be delivered (further information is outlined in the following Knowledgebase article). This change meant that, at the time, any constituent with a Yahoo! address that submitted a dispatch would have failed to any target implementing DMARC. As outlined in the article, Luminate Online is now configured to no longer utilize the constituent address in the "from" field but it will still be associated to the "reply-to" field. This will ensure the best chance at successful delivery, provide clients a way to modify the settings or appearance of the messages, and will allow the target to reply directly to the constituent rather than the organization. Additionally, should Gmail, Hotmail, or any other major email provider follow suite with Yahoo! (implenting a strict "reject" policy for any message with their domain in the "from" field that did not orginate from their service) Luminate Online is now configured to absorb that change and there will be no anticipated impact to clients or deliverability. As you've pointed out, there are other advocacy platforms that have decided not to adopt these changes and while I cannot speak to their deliverability rates I can say that the impact that this will have on ALL email vendors is widely documented.



Lastly, you are correct that our primary focus for Luminate Advocacy is ensuring said deliverability. The consensus from the majority of clients I have had an opportunity to speak with is that delivering a message from a constituent to its intended target(s) is of the utmost importance. Making the above changes ensures the best opportunity for success for email message delivery (note: the changes outlined have no impact on webform deliverability). We also understand that the appearance of the message is just as important for some clients, which is why these settings are customizable within certain bounds (the only thing that is no longer possible would be making the email message appear like it is coming from the constituent's email domain when it is not).



As the Luminate Advocacy Product Manager I would be happy to discuss this further with you or any of our clients. Feel free to message me directly! Thanks!

Zachary Tomanelli 2

Thanks for the reply. This is probably the best response to this question I've seen yet - as you are the first person to point me to the knowledgebase article regarding the Yahoo change. I'll send you some more specific questions directly, as I do have some - but if I'm understanding you correctly, the BSD From Line example I gave:



Constituent Name <constituentemail@gmail.com> via bounce.bluestatedigital.com



Had that example originated from a Yahoo address, it would not have been delivered? That is, if the recieving ESP uses DMARC protocol?

Andrew Wilcox

That is correct, had the email header been configured with the constituent's email address (with an @yahoo.com domain) in the "from" field the resulting authentication on the receiving end (using DMARC protocols) would result in a bounce. Hope that helps!