By Anna Lermer, Digital Strategist
How can you leverage data to run more impactful campaigns?
It’s more important than ever that unions campaign to win better public services and good jobs for all. Whether it’s voting in elections, advocating for more funding for public services, or protecting the right to strike – running strategic and effective advocacy campaigns is essential.
If your union has any kind of digital presence, you probably collect a lot of data – but its potential can be wasted when you don’t invest in using it. You can’t manage or evaluate a campaign if you don’t have clear goals or a way to measure your impact.
Leveraging your data can help you make an impact. You will be able to:
- Shape campaign goals, strategies and tactics with member insights.
- Respond to what’s working with live dashboards.
- Evaluate your impact so your campaigns can improve in the future.
Shape campaign goals, strategies and tactics with member insights
Before starting a campaign, it’s critical to set goals and identify the strategies and tactics that will support those goals. The SMART framework can help you define those goals.
A campaign without clear objectives and audiences is bound to fail. Unfortunately, it’s also very common.
Understanding the members – where they live, what sector they work in, and what they care about most – can help you answer key questions to inform your campaign. Some questions you may want to ask are:
- Where do you have the most potential to influence elections and policy decisions?
- Where should you invest effort to organize?
- What do the members care about, and what will move them to action?
- What kind of issues and actions have you taken on campaigns before?
- Who has volunteered in the past? Who is ready and eager to lead?
Respond to what’s working with live dashboards.

Once your strategy and plan are set and you’ve launched your campaign, monitoring progress toward your goals is essential. Without ongoing monitoring, it’s easy to miss opportunities to invest time in what’s working and pivot strategy and tactics if you’re not seeing results.
Live campaign dashboards can give you these real-time insights to help you get the most out of your campaign. If you notice that a particular region or sector is finding success, you can invite them to share their approach with others. Or, if you’re not seeing progress toward your goal, you can dig into what’s not working and pivot your strategy.
Evaluate your impact
Once your campaign wraps up, the last step should always be to report on the results. While this step may not feel like a priority at the moment – it’s a key to your future success.
By taking a moment to evaluate what you accomplished, what didn’t go well, and what you would do differently next time, you gain valuable insights to bring with you into the next campaign. The Rainbow Framework provides comprehensive resources to evaluate your campaign comprehensively.