Choose Email Marketing Platform

[MMitsuyasu]

We need an email marketing platform to handle our automated communication strategies -- particularly with candidates, but possibly voters if we eventually launch community engagement features.

There are any number of email marketing platforms available with a variety of features and price points.

Our priorities as I understand them currently:

• Free or very low cost
• Ability include custom fields in contact profiles
• Ability to use merge tags in emails to personalize emails
• Ability to create “smart” segments to automatically trigger relevant communications at appropriate times (based on custom fields)

Some of the possibilities:

• MailChimp
• SendGrid
• Constant Contact
• Klaviyo

[MMitsuyasu]

Discussion at the Seattle St. Hack-Trick’s Day event (3/14/20)

Participants:

• David
• Margaret
• Aaron

Discussed limitations with MailChimp and SendGrid regarding segment generation and email deployment based on evolving conditions.

Aaron suggested Klaviyo (with which he is familiar).

• Seems to have better continuous conditional deployment through “flow” feature than others.
• Does have a free option, as long as number of contacts and emails are kept below certain limits
  • See Klaviyo pricing
  • Can send up to 500 emails to 250 contacts

We set up a (free) Klaviyo account to explore the options and practice

• David is “owner”
• Aaron and Margaret are both “admins”

It still needs some exploration and fine tuning, but it looks like this might work.

We’ll have to see how things go with the limitations of the free plan. As engagement increases, we may have to cull our lists from past elections and/or upgrade the plan.

[MMitsuyasu]

Klaviyo seems to be the direction to move forward with, at least for now.

We should probably make/reconfirm an official decision after some further reflection.

What do we need to explore/test/reflect upon further in order to make this decision?

[MMitsuyasu]

(Paused: waiting for information gained during 3/26/20 meeting w/ Ballotpedia - see Issue #107)

[MMitsuyasu]

@ddfridley, since we've already moved forward with Klaviyo on the La Crosse rollout, I think we've pretty much decided this.

However, it might not be a bad idea to check in and evaluate our continuing thoughts based on what we've learned from the La Crosse test.

My thoughts:

• Though our experience is admittedly limited thus far, I think it's worth continued use.
• We resolved at least the initial challenges of importing and sending, so it should be smoother next time around (this time was a lot of learning as we went).
• Though we didn't use it this time, the "flow" feature still seems promising. In my experiments thus far, I've been frustrated by the lack of an ability to identify contacts or trigger actions based on a specific length of time before the election date (e.g. it only does "ago" and "within the next," not 14 days before). But I think it's worth continuing to look for a way to do this, or even to request it of Klaviyo if it really doesn't exist (I can't imagine we'd be the only ones who'd want this option).
• The other major pending question I can think of is more in your lane, and that's whether or not we'll be able to find a good way to import data without a ton of ongoing hands-on effort. From what you've said so far, it sounds like this will probably be doable, it's just been low on the priority list thus far.

Let me know your thoughts, and if you think we can go ahead and close this issue out for now.