Action Tips

Writing Effective Email Alerts
Email with a clear call to action
July 03, 2001

Author: TechRocks

Email Alert: An email with one clear call to action, like emailing a representative.

Email alerts or e-newsletters?

An email alert is not an e-newsletter. Many of us create weekly or monthly emails that include updates about our program work, news about the issues we work on, and calls to action – what our constituents can do about it all. Including an action item in an e-newsletter is a great way to remind your constituents that they can effect change. However, the e-newsletter format is not the most effective format for generating political action. When it is critical that your constituents respond to your action item, send an email action alert, a separate email with one clear call to action. Many organizations have experienced much higher response rates for email alerts than calls to action that are buried in a newsletter.

What goes in an email alert?

* Tell a timely, compelling story. Connect your alert to the recipients’ lives. Let them know how your issue affects their families and their communities. Make it clear why you
are sending the alert today instead of 3 weeks from now or next year.

* Speak in a conversational tone. Use everyday language. Draft the alert as if you are sending an e-mail to your brother, your sister or a good friend – someone whom you know well, but who doesn’t know your issue well, if at all.

* Personalize your message. Start off with a personal greeting. Ideally, alerts are addressed to individual recipients. If you can’t create personalized salutations, at least say hello.

* Ask for one clear action. No doubt there are at least six important things that everyone should do right now to support your cause. Pick one.

* Get to the point right away. Let recipients know what action you are encouraging them to take – and how to take it – within the first one or two sentences of the message. State the problem and its solution. A concise overview of the situation will help readers understand the importance of your alert. Instead of including loads of details in your message, direct recipients to your web site where more information is easily available.

* Urgency. Let recipients know the issue is time sensitive. Taking the action, right now, will move things faster.

* Empower the recipients. Give readers a sense that their actions will actually make a difference.

* Encourage recipients to forward the alert widely. With your encouragement, your alert can reach people well beyond your network of colleagues and organizational members.

* Structure the text to be easily read. Include spaces between paragraphs. Keep paragraphs to 1-3 short sentences. Short line breaks are important so that email programs don’t wrap your text into an unreadable mess.

* Keep it brief. Edit your text. Then edit it again.

* Include the basics.
1. Explain who you are and how readers can contact you.
2. Include your organization's web site address.
3. Clearly mark the message’s beginning and end.
4. Include the date.
5. Include http:// when listing URLS, that way they will appear as hyperlinks, not
just text.

*Follow up. Thank activists. Promptly thank the people that respond to your alert. Update activists. Let your mailing list know what happened in the weeks following the alert.