Even the best copy won't deliver the results you expect if:
👉 your message doesn't reach the right people, ready to take action

👉 you don't constantly work on increasing engagement

That's why your organization should constantly acquire new leads and test their quality. See if they're willing to do more than just sign a petition. 

More engaged people = a greater chance they'll take action when you (and the animals) need it most.

That's exactly how it worked for us.  We gathered people, learned their level of engagement, and my job was to use this information to plan an effective email campaign. And the stakes were high – a ban on fur farming in Poland, the world's second-largest fur producer.

This deep dive is focused on October 2025, the most intense month of the fur ban campaign (and the one I was responsible for when it comes to email planning). 

You can check the whole timeline and details about mobilization in Ola Bujalska's deep dive on engagement building here. 

🎯 The opportunity

Parliament session scheduled for 15-17 October 2025 - an unique chance to ban fur farming in Poland.

⚡ The challenge

• 2 weeks to create maximum political pressure

• 154,000 people in our database with varying engagement levels

• Second-largest fur producer globally = massive change for millions of animals

📧 Our weapon: Strategic email mobilization

Initial goals:

• 🥅 Main goal: 17,000 emails sent to MPs

• 🎯 Target outcome: 3,400 engaged supporters taking action via czasdzialania.pl

• 📈 Pressure pattern: Build up leading to the vote

💡 The key idea: Writing to politicians is a tool to help animals.

The goal of the emails is to make people write to politicians but:

• avoid getting into legislative process details 

• avoid putting focus on politicians (and emotions they provoke - anger etc) 

• focus on showing how this CTA helps animals 

• focus on emotions (by writing about animals, not politicians) 

• focus on giving people the sense of agency 

Main tactics:

1. Segmentation

• Identification and segmentation of the audience based on their previous engagement levels (e.g., email opens, clicks, past participation).

• Tailoring messages to different segments to ensure relevance and increase the likelihood of action.

Why? The most engaged people give us a bigger probability of taking action again so we need to “save” them for the most crucial moments.

2. Pressure dosing - the peak moment is coming! That’s why we need to keep the pressure on politicians going. Before the PEAK, we need people to write to politicians regularly so they will see it’s not a one-time action. As we get closer to the vote, we need the pressure to grow and reach the PEAK. 

1st week - warmup and steady pressure 

2nd week - growing pressure, building up the momentum leading to PEAK

3. Engaging narrative

• Importance of the crucial moment (this is the moment you fought for so hard)  

• Time pressure (the vote will take place on Friday, only X days left to the big day) 

• Social proof (X people already sent emails to politicians, politicians got X messages) 

• Clear call to action - czasdzialania.pl 

• Urgency (politicians will vote soon, time to send your message is now) 

• Fear of lost opportunity (if you don’t take action now, this chance for animals may be lost forever) 

The Engagement Pyramid

🔥 Tier 1: Power Users (3,253 people)

• Who: People who previously wrote to members of Special Commission via misjadlazwierzat.pl

• Strategy: Reserved for critical moments

• Communication: Recognition as the most engaged people 

• Peak role: Maximum impact in final 48 hours

💪 Tier 2: Warm leads (82,000 people)

• Who: Signed petition to ban fur farming but didn't take write-to action 

• Strategy: Intense emotional engagement

• Communication: Clear single CTA - write to MPs

• Peak role: Building momentum in week 2

🌱 Tier 3: The rest of our database (69,000 people)

• Who: All other subscribers

• Strategy: Awareness building and initial activation

• Communication: Educational content with soft CTAs

• Peak role: Creating baseline pressure in week 1

We had several people write the email content. To make their task easier and allow them to better tailor the message to maximize its potential to motivate the recipient to take action, I introduced a few guidelines during the planning phase.

1️⃣ The first was the target group, based on the previously established engagement pyramid. This allowed us to know how much context the recipient needed.

2️⃣ The second: one or two sentences about what the content of the email should be about. So, key moments, the most important updates, but also storytelling suggestions.
3️⃣ Third: the influence techique. We knew the messaging would be built on urgency, but I also wanted to add storytelling elements so the stories would really resonate with people.

I also planned reminders to people who visited the website but did not take action as a push for them to go back and send the messages. 

The main goal for the newsletter strategy was to get 17 000 emails sent by 3400 supporters. We did not meet this goal, but the estimates were quite close: 3063 supporters and 16687 emails sent. But most importantly, throughout the campaign, politicians frequently stated that the messages flooding their inboxes were impossible to ignore. Indeed, on the day of the Sejm vote, 339 MPs voted in favor of banning fur farming in Poland, with only 78 votes agains it.