Are you on Bluesky?

The migration from Twitter to Bluesky continues - it now has about 27 million users and is continuing to grow. It saw a huge increase in new members after the November 2024 US Election.

Has your organisation set up a Bluesky account? If you're on the platform, a few useful resources:

• The Campaigning Forum (ECF) community have a Google Sheet created by member Robin Paoli, that collects handles of digital campaigners you may want to follow
   
• Paul de Gregorio of Rally created this handy starter pack of campaigners to follow
   
• Have you used starter packs yourself? They're a nice way to build engagement and grow your presence.
   
• BlueSky has a nifty 'labelling' feature, where you can categorise other accounts. Kind of similar to lists on Twitter.
  • Like this labeller created by Ian Goggin, which gathers all the MPs on Bluesky in the UK by party: https://bsky.app/profile/parties.mplabeller.uk
     
• And finally - Digital Charity Lab is on Bluesky. If you're there too, say hi :)

 

Email of the Month: Sunny Days from the Sesame Workshop

'Engagement' emails are such an important part of your email programme. We know that if charities only ever send ask emails, they become like that friend who only ever gets in touch when they want a favour. And while newsletters have their place, an engagement email that warmly thanks your subscribers is one of the best ways to build your relationship, and make them feel appreciated.

Sesame Workshop, the non-profit that produces the beloved, iconic TV show Sesame Street, has one of the best engagement series I've ever seen. I genuinely get a warm glow whenever one of these emails arrives in my inbox. Who doesn't want to take time out of their day to spend a few minutes with Cookie Monster? Not me.

The series is called 'Sunny Days', and it's so simple and lovely. Every Monday, they send a 'weekly dose of nostalgia and sunshine', sharing a short video clip from Sesame Street's archive. In the spirit of Sesame Street, the clips can be hilarious, moving, cute, chaotic, or all of the above.

Sometimes they line them up with events in a really lovely way: St Patrick's Day fell on a Monday this year and they sent out a clip of Kermit the Frog singing 'It's Not Easy Being Green' 💚 🇮🇪.

The emails don't just evoke nostalgia, they're also a powerful weekly reminder of the work and values of Sesame Workshop - decades of educating little children, teaching them about letters, numbers, words, emotions and values in the most light-hearted, loveable way. And donation calls to action are placed in various touchpoints in these emails, to nudge readers towards donating.

What kind of engagement emails could your organisation be sending? Obviously Sesame Workshop is a pretty unique organisation: there's not many non-profits that were such a huge part of so many childhoods, going all the way back to the 1970s, and reaching all over the world. Most of us don't have Sesame Workshop's bank of content. But we definitely have our own stories that we can tell, our case studies and impact stories. Maybe not one a week, but we could definitely be reaching out to our subscribers more often, saying 'Look, you made this possible. Thank you'.