Strengths

The eCampaigning Tool is the only tool designed around best pracice. At present (Jan 2007), all known advocacy systems (except for in-house ones) don't allow a full range of e-campaigning best practice due to being constrained in the flexible and dynamic sequencing of the actions. The specific features that differentiate it are:

• End-to-end tracking capabilities - the pre-requisite of demonstrating what works, what doesn't and what is best practice
• Sequenced process with data stored at every completed step (vs at the end of the sequence as with many systems)
• Data merge in all action web pages and the thank-you and email to target and each step of the process
• Conditional content and fields at each step of the process
• Hierarchal 'Campaign Action' > 'Action Edition' structure makes it more organised to use for large multi-location organisations, coalitions and to keep things organised for smaller organisations.
• The full multi-lingual capabilities of Plone mean it can handle languages almost all others can't (including Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, etc.) in both the application interface (e.g. for Arabic speaking campaign managers) and the content and actions them self, including email (note: non-latin script email subject lines are a problem for all email systems). It also means in-context language switching whicn other systems lack.
• Pre-configured best practice action setups to choose from to save time
• Integrated with campaigning tips and connects tool users with other eCampaigning practitioners.

These are all advanced capabilities that a beginning campaigning is unlikely to use. However in the hands of an experienced campaigner they can be very effective. For the in-experienced campaigner, the pre-configured actions will allow you to use some of these best practices without having to think much about them.

Weaknesses

At present (Jan 2007), many alternatives to the eCampaigning Tool also come with political targeting built in and are integrated with a range of other essential tools such as bulk emailing management, supporter management, reporting tools, centralised profile storage, etc. the eCampaigning Tools plans to include these capabilities in the future - but will take some time to get there. In the meantime, the suggested course of action is:

• Political targeting: use a free service until it can be integrated in the eCampaigning Tool
• Bulk emailing management: use a dedicated service - like Bluestreak, MailBuild?, or a wide range of others
• Supporter Management and centralised profile management: if you have in-house systems, simply export the data from the eCampaigning Tool and import it into your in-house system. If not you could build a simple one in a spreadsheet or desktop database tool (for small organisations) or use a 'CRM' service provider like CivicSpace? on Demand, Democracy in Action, Salesforce or Zoho or open source tool like CivicSpace? or Democracy in Action
• Reporting tools can be developed using a spreadsheet or desktop database tool or - as happens in most organisations anyway - don't worry about it for now

As many large and medium sized organisations already manage their advocacy this way, using the eCampaigning Tool will simply mean adding more campaigning flexibility and using more best practices but still having to do these tasks for a non integrated system.

If you need an integrated system soon, the suggestions are:

1. Invest time and/or programmer time in working with the community to add the features you need
2. Go with an existing advocacy provider (proprietary or open source) and accept the limitations to your campaigning

Any choice made now will be limiting in some respect.

So who is it for?

Where the eCampaigning Tool as it currently stands (Jan 2007) is probably best for:

1. Coalition campaign web sites where some issues like supporter management, emailing management, etc are handles by the member organisations anyway.
2. Small, simple campaigns where free tools are used for emailing and the full power of supporter management tools, reporting tools and political targeting isn't needed
3. Highly experienced and ambitious campaigners who want the flexibility and effectiveness of the tool and accept the limitations as manageable and secondary in consideration of the larger campaigning goals.