Thanks for the thoughtful analysis Bill. It’s good to see you back in the blogging saddle. We no doubt have work to do to catch up to ActBlue but I’m glad to see that we’re all, collectively, working to give them a run for their money.

I appreciate the good work of Rightroots and Big Red Tent. The guys behind those operations have some great ideas and impressive initiative. It is my hope that there’s room at the table for all three of these operations to help push and pull the GOP to the modern world.

Three points I’d like to add with regard to Slatecard and then I’ll address your direct points:

1. Take Control Candidate Portal

As you correctly noted, we have been honored that several candidates are using Slatecard exclusively to transact their online donations. In fact, organically, we now have eight candidates seeking Federal office doing so.

And with the launch of our candidate portal, Take Control, we expect many more as campaigns realize the benefits of using Slatecard over a political or commercial third-party vendor. Those benefits include superior technology, a smarter aggregation of real-time data, and a cost-effective pricing structure (no set-up, monthly, or per transaction fees — flat 4.5% of donation). We’re hopefully appealing to the commonsense side of the decision-making process.

As you may know as a reader of our blog, the Take Control candidate portal (Version 1.0) gives campaigns real-time access to donor information which can be downloaded as a text or excel file and the ability to update their Slatecard directory profile. (And don’t blame us for that 120-word bio that we found on their website or Wikipedia entry — campaigns have the ability to control every single word on it — and someone from Fred’s campaign should do so!)

With regard to the socnet icons linking to the profiles - I think that’s pretty easy to figure out for users. Or at least once they do figure it out, they’ll understand what the entire “Connect,” section is for. However, using the URL instead of the Home icon isn’t such a bad idea.

But the point I’m trying to make here is that we have always given campaigns a way to update their profile, but we’re still going to do our best to fill in the gaps in the meantime. With over 420 candidates - it’s a long process.

2. Transparency in Processing

Transparency, openness, and honesty are guiding principles at Slatecard. That is why we are committed to being honest with the candidates that use us and the Slatecard community about what fees (flat 4.5%) are taken out of the credit card donation for processing and why that’s necessary.

3. “Snacktivism” and the Ticker

The third innovation which could increase activism is the notion of “Snacktivism,” the combination of “Snack” “Activism.” Because every action on Slatecard is registered in The Ticker, a stream of all action on the site and personalized for each Slatecard and candidate, we’re letting activists play the role of a voyeur. The activists can see who is popular on the site and read the messages that other candidates are sending to the candidates through the issue badges. By so doing, people can poke around the site freely, partaking in snack activism.

I’ll be open with you. Since you’re not privy to a more accurate portrait of our website analytics, here’s the executive summary from our launch on October 8 to December 2.

• 15,603 Visits
• 66,065 Pageviews
• 4.23 Pages/Visit
• 47.34% Bounce Rate
• 00:03:38 Avg. Time on Site
• 64.74% % New Visits

Innovations, like the Ticker, have led to some impressive early website stats. In fact, those metrics I’m proudest of include our decent bounce rate (which is the sexiest web metric ever), our ridiculously high pages/visit and nearly four minute average time spent on the site. These are clear indicators that while we still have some work to do, we’re heading in the right direction with our community.

Remember — not a single dollar has been spent on advertising. This is all organic. Friends are telling friends. Bloggers are alerting their readers about Slatecard. The influentials are paying attention. Collectively, we’re starting to get it.

But to be sure, we have work to do.

You’ve noted some good advice in your blog post and we take advice seriously. A few answers and thoughts with regard to your direct points:

• We ask for your phone number in case there is a problem with your donation. This information is also collected and passed along to the campaign in case they need to follow-up.
• We’re working on search. It’s not a switch that we can simply flip but we’re getting to it. It’ll be there in the near future.
• Re: Issue badges. Each issue badge is weighted with the dollar amount and number of individuals which have given that badge. As you look at a candidate’s profile, the issue badges read left to right with respect to their “value” by the community. This data is accessible by the campaign. Obviously, as has always been the plan, once we have more issue data for all candidates, we’ll launch our issue search function to find candidates who receive the issue badges that you care about.
• Net Neutrality is an important, non-partisan issue. So far, only the “Supports Net Neutrality” badge has been given out to Republican candidates. As our community recommends, we’ll continue to add more Long Tail issues as we progress.
• You make a good point about the “Defeat Radical Islam” badge. I sought outside advice from several bloggers I trust on the issue and that was the recommendation. It’s very difficult to visualize but I’m open to suggestions for swapping it out. We had another idea of using an AK-47 to represent it holding up the Islam flag. Thoughts?

Thank you for noting our early success. As of today, we’ve raised $77,083.35 from 520 donations for Republican candidates and committees.

But we’ll never rest on our laurels. We’ve got some neat things cooking in the oven that I need to tend to.

Revolution,

David All
http://slatecard.com