Welcome Email Builds Positive Relationships

When the new General Assembly begins:

New lawmakers are learning the ropes. While they have a lot on their plates, they’re open and receptive. A welcome email from your members to new lawmakers is a winning advocacy strategy.

When your new General Assembly begins, lawmakers will have lobbyists knocking on their cubicles or doors every free minute. That’s the advocacy game.

But if you and your organization make a positive impact early using online email tools, even before everything starts up, you’ll have a huge advantage.
Here’s how:

• First, contact your members and let them know what issues you expect to come up. Educate your supporters. Help them be helpful to lawmakers.

• Second, introduce your members and your organization to lawmakers using an online Email Package. If you’ve never been able to do this, now you can. The Capitol Contact online email platform lets you collect welcoming messages from your members and present them in a single Email Package. That way, you can deliver many email messages, especially to new lawmakers, in a convenient format.

• Assure lawmakers. You can use the welcome email to assure lawmakers of your positive interests and that your organization and its members look forward to coming up with good legislation.

• Encourage lawmakers to communicate with your members. Using Capitol Contact, lawmakers have an easy online, email reply tool to respond to your members’ messages. When legislators reply, their message is captured so you can see who’s interested in your issues and what they say.

• Get back to your members. You can build up great relationships with your members when you thank them for participating in your Call-to-Action welcome email. Thank them for helping you.

• Use the data. Capitol Contact collects tons of data on every online email campaign. You’ll know what your supporters wrote, and you can even select and order their messages. You’ll even know what lawmakers said in reply. This data will help you plan your future in-person and online email advocacy strategies.

Welcome Emails

A welcome email that contains many messages from your organization members to legislators makes a lot of sense. It creates a unique advantage, not to mention that new lawmakers will identify with your organization in a good way.

You create a friendly, positive relationship and build goodwill. That can come in handy if issues get difficult later. Everyone knows that in advocacy, positive relationships produce results and it's never too early to start down that path.