Build your email campaign

Be clear about the objectives. Your email campaign should be a tactic that is used within a larger advocacy strategy. You will obviously be using other tactics and your email campaign should fit seemlessly into the strategy and have a clear desired outcome. Consider other forms of communication, such as phone calls and postal letters, and assure that email is the right tool for reaching your target.

Know your audience
Consider who will receive the email when you compose it. Be compelling, use langauge your audience will respond to, and keep it clear and concise. Make sure you clearly state what you would like the recipient to do as a result of receiving the email.

Partner with other organisations that already have a strong reputation. It will increase the chances of people reading and acting on your email.

Have a follow-up plan
Know what you will do if they do respond and what you will do to follow-up if they don't. Make sure that you state how you want follow-up contact to happen and when. Always record how many emails you send out and how many responses you receive. Over time this will help you get a measure of what does and doesn’t work.

Prepare it to be forwarded
It is very easy for a recipient to forward an email to someone else. Make sure that your email contains background information and ways for new people to get involved.

we should be putting in examples related to keeping your constituency upt to date and involved or working with partner organisations – this is more likely to have impact in todays world of everybody receiving an email.

[have covered this above / next section but haven't found examples yet - LIBBY]