Choosing your messages

When crafting and choosing your messages, it’s important to make them both effective and tailored to your audience. How to best do that? 

First, incorporate the characteristics of an effective message and keep it focused, meaningful, personal, direct and clear. Second, get to know your audience by understanding who they are, how important climate change is to them and how they view the issue of climate change and land conservation.  

Surveying your supporters and testing message effectiveness 

Surveys are an effective way to source information from your current and potential constituents and gain a pulse check of your communications, messaging and organizational brand awareness. Surveys will also help your team evaluate how different messages are received by your different audience profile groups.   

An organization-wide survey should be circulated at least once per year. Determine, as a team, what data and analytics are valuable for your organization to track and collect from year to year. Free and low-cost resources are available including Google Forms, Survey Monkey and others. 

• Always request demographic data (including age, ZIP code, racial identity) to build a more robust audience profile for your organization or to increase knowledge through your philanthropy database.
• Research best practice recommendations for demographic data collection before crafting your survey. Industry standards change often.
• Offer a survey incentive that’s motivating and meaningful to your audience. This will increase completion rate and email sharing.
• Always request email and contact information. Surveys are a great way to encourage opting into your email list for longer-term engagement.
• Keep the survey duration below 10-15 minutes. The shorter the survey, the higher your completion rate.

Check out this example survey that was utilized by a local land trust to specifically test climate messaging that would resonate with their current supporters. The survey was circulated via email and social media and was made available on their website.  

Characteristics of an effective message

Before considering any guidance on communication, remember that the first step to developing effective messaging on any topic is to identify who specifically you are trying to reach — the target audience — and what specifically you want them to do in response — the desired outcome. An effective message has the following characteristics: 

• Single-minded and focused: Convey just one idea at a time.
• Meaningful: Connect with your audience by conveying your organization’s values.
• Personal: Make the case for local conservation success. For example, focus on your impact on wildlife habitat as a starting point to get your team comfortable with this new approach.
• Direct: Be straightforward.
• Clear: Write in simple, non-technical language. Do not rely heavily on science-driven language. 

You can find five research-based recommendations to help you communicate more effectively about climate change and what it may look like in practice.

Incorporating climate messaging into communication channels

If your organization is at the beginning stages of building comfort levels or making the case for incorporating climate change in your mission, consider sharing covert and overt messages related to climate in your communications channels. Be sure to collect performance data to determine which messages garner the desired result for your organization and supporters.  

Digital media provides a range of opportunities to test messages and collect performance data with segmented audience groups. With a methodical, stepwise approach, your team can identify the specific messages that resonate with your current or intended audience with authenticity and success.  

Start with subtle message placements or developing mini-stories or campaigns. Don’t overwhelm your audience with a full-blown takeover of climate messaging. It might  discourage future support. Introduce climate messages to your constituents in organic ways and with increased frequency over time.  

• Identify messaging themes that are relevant to your core mission and work. A few standard message themes may include clean water, wildlife and habitat, extreme weather and natural disasters, carbon sequestration, personal impact. 
• Work with board champions, program and philanthropy staff to develop a messaging slate so there’s buy-in and understanding from multiple members of your organization.  
• Test your messages through digital surveys, organic and paid social media or earned media to see what messages perform best in your local region or with your core supporters. 
• Record the data collected from website analytics, social media insights and survey responses. Evaluate the results with your team. 
• Select the top performing messages or message themes and create a talking points/messaging document to share with staff, volunteers and board. The messaging document maintains consistency and helps everyone incorporate climate change and resilience into their vocabulary and work. 

Find this example of a talking points document with recommended messages to be utilized by a local land trust in an urban community. This organization divided their messaging targets into current and future audience groups for increased success and a personalized approach to their core supporters.