During the event SMEX Beirut 2011 that took place at the American University of Beirut (AUB), representatives from Greenpeace-Lebanon gave us insight on how they used various digital media tools to attract people to “set sail with them” on their Secret Mission “Blue Shield 2011” which publicly launched three weeks ago. So how did Greenpeace manage to reach out and engage interested individuals?

Since only around 30% of people on their mailing list engage in activities carried out by Greenpeace, the NGO thought carefully on how to grow the list in order to increase the total number of active members and came up with a secret mission that would turn the audience into “Agents” awaiting exclusive news and missions from Greenpeace.

Influenced by Greenpeace-Turkey, the NGO used Foursquare to attract audience to join their list. “We would go to coffee shops and restaurants or even events where we know that the people at that certain place will be interested in joining our cause (…) not to spam people with pop ups, we carefully chose locations based on audience age and interests” said Raaifa, one of the representatives that attended the event.

Additionally, Greenpeace came up with two teaser videos on Youtube which meant to give a small hint about the mission. The first video got 466 views in 3 weeks, and the second one got 854 views in 3 weeks indicated Leen Hashem, the communications officer and new media campaigner at Greenpeace.

Greenpeace is still experiencing with new media tools to see which one suits Lebanon best. Among their 2900 sign ups, 62% got to know about the mission through “referral traffic” (Traffic that is obtained from clicks on other websites or social networks) with Facebook ranked #1 on the NGO’s list of “Referral Traffic”.