According to recent estimates from eMarketer, approximately 75% of 12- to 17-year-olds in the U.S. own a smartphone. Another survey by Flagship Research puts the number at 87% for 14- to 18-year-olds.
It should come as no surprise that in this digital age, youth are spending an average of nine hours in front of a screen each day. This means mobile is a critical platform for engaging and activating young people to take action on important issues. That’s why we, a nonprofit public health organization dedicated to making tobacco use a thing of the past, turned to mobile to help inform teens about the dangers of tobacco and provide them the tools to fight back against Big Tobacco.
Here are a few key lessons and takeaways you can use in your own nonprofit mobile campaigns, as well:
Connect with your target audience. Understanding the demographics and habits of your target audience is key. If, like us, your message is geared toward a younger audience, leverage the power of mobile, email marketing and social media platforms. For example, our foundation tapped into a messaging platform to let a major U.S. drugstore chain know that tobacco products have no place in their stores and that selling cigarettes is not in the best interests of their customers. The messaging platform, along with email marketing and social media, helped us and a partnership organization put together a petition that collected over 5,300 youth signatures and engaged more than 67,000 young people to encourage pharmacies to remove tobacco products from shelves.
Know and own your message. It is important for the message you send to resonate with your audience. In our case, we learned that shaming doesn’t resonate and that we need to encourage non-smokers to inspire their peers. We relied on our research team to determine what language and messages would best inspire action and used that to develop our messaging and calls to action. From there, we used a three-pronged message to help spread the word about the petition. Once users completed the petition, they received a message encouraging them to pass it along to friends. To encourage completion of the petition, we sent inspiring messages highlighting how many peers had already participated.
Choose your channels. While teens are on mobile a lot, you still need to optimize your engagement. With today’s powerful smartphones, you can access just about anything in the palm of your hand. So we had to be smart about what method we used to really get their attention. We used SMS as a key way to stay connected with the teens who have taken steps to become “finishers” and be the generation that ends smoking, and also to give others the tools to take action. Compared to the other platforms, SMS drove 55% of participation -- more than email, social properties and coalition partners combined.
Repeat. While defining your audience, fine-tuning your message, and choosing a delivery method are important steps, you can’t simply send out your campaign once and call it a success. The cadence of messages and content of sequential messaging is just as important to your mobile marketing strategy. In our case, the ability to send sequential messages to different groups of engaged activists really pushed the line against the aforementioned drugstore chain -- first, piquing interest about a broad issue, then distributing a petition where they could take action and, finally, connecting them with social media resources for the final push.
Using mobile is a smart approach to connecting with youth, but always make sure to follow best practices such as sharing thought-out messages and continuing to share the message on other platforms, like social media or email.
