May 05, 2007 - BC New Democrat Party
The skinny
The BC New Democrat Party is a political group in motion. Bento Box has been instrumental in developing its online information strategy, customizing tools to reach out to the community and giving the party power to manage its message.
Getting organized
Before overhauling the BC NDP's manually managed Web site and mailing lists, Bento Box worked with the NDP communications team to understand how the staff really worked—and wanted to work.
Under fixed budget and time constraints, Bento Box produced a BC healthcare initiative site that allowed visitors to send faxes to the premier and federal government, and designed a direct marketing mailer and window-cling sticker campaign.
Information first
While we were implementing the party's Bento Daimio-powered site, the party's image—colors, logo, messaging—was in a state of transition. With this in mind, we designed the site to look clean and not distracting (but distinctively NDP), and taught staff how to customize the site with multimedia content to direct the visitor toward specific action.
Flexible content areas, targeted wayfinding indicators and multimedia asset management features allowed the party to change the focus of the site at the drop of a press release. Bento Box also provided consultation on information flow and methods of improving conversion.
Reaching out
Bento Box's integrated e-mail campaign module handled the rigorous demands of the party's mailing list, the NDP Newswire.
With a thorough understanding of the party's goals for its e-mail campaigns, we set up the module to offer:
- Reader-customizable content
- Reports and campaign targeting to the reader level
- Internal categorization for special recipients
- Automated removal of stale e-mail addresses
- Complete integration with Bento Daimio
The result
- The BC NDP was able to focus time and energy on important messages, not technology
- Bento Box's agility kept production costs low when reassessing and implementing new goals based on party feedback
Campaign 2005
Working with a social marketing firm
The BC NDP hired Now Communications to handle the party's political messaging in 2005. Now provided a Web site design they wanted "skinned" onto the the BC NDP's Bento Daimio site. Once again, the BC NDP chose Bento Box to consult on information design and site structure so the party could meet and track its goals online.
iCampaigner
Bento Daimio flexed its muscles and easily integrated the party's spec to promote grassroots activity.
Constituent-managed affiliate sites
A major challenge the BC NDP faced was coming up with a way to allow candidates in a constituency to accept donations through the party e-commerce system and manage their own local campaigns.
Daimio's site generator made this a snap. All candidates can manage their own bios, news and events calendar, as well as keep in touch with local supporters through their own sites. The sites were controlled by the party through Daimio but could be assigned any time to a constituency for independent editing.
The result
- Exponential weekly increase in site traffic from site launch to election day
- New tools widely acclaimed by activists and supporters
- Context-sensitive donations allowed the party to rally for funds based on most popular topics
- Individual candidates are now able to directly raise funds online