Sending emails to lawmakers and decisionmakers is still the most popular type of grassroots advocacy. This article shows how to easily launch your email action.
Read about the other action types and how to launch them here.
Most actions in AdvocacyAI will take 3 main steps to create.
- Action Details and Target Selection: The name and description of your action and, if applicable, selecting your targets.
- Content Creation: This can include content for emails, letters, call scripts, socials, survey questions, or staff emails.
- Widget Design and Settings: The branding and text of your widget, address verifications, custom fields, redirects, and more.
🚀 Let’s Create an Email Action
Log into your AdvocacyAI account and navigate to the Actions tab. Click on the Create button and select the “New Email” action type.
Complete these 3 steps to set up an email action:
🎯 Setup and Targets
Let’s set up the basic details of your email action, how emails will behave once advocates engage, and who the targets will be.
Set Action Details
- Name: This will be the name of your action.
Since the name can be public facing, we recommend that you name it something you are comfortable with the public seeing.
- Internal Description: Describes the action for your internal team.
- Ada Drafted Content: When turned on, Ada will help you draft content based on the information you provide. This option can be enabled or disabled at any time by toggling the switch on or off.
Information for AI: Provide context for Ada about what the action is for, your goals, and any other information that will make the content draft more relevant for your organization and advocates.
- Start Date: The date when your action will start.
- End Date: An action can be ongoing or end at a specified date.
Tip: If your action is time dependent (for example, it will end after a vote on a piece of legislation) we encourage you to set an end date so advocates cannot engage with the action after it is no longer relevant. Advocates can still be directed to sign a petition if they find the link after the date has passed.
Customize Data Options and Set Tags
- Enable VoterMatch: VoterMatch matches advocate information with the voter file and other demographic data.
When VoterMatch is enabled, Address is a required field for advocates. Read more about how VoterMatch affects Address Collection here.
- Set Action Tags: The selected tags will be added to any advocate that engages with this action. Tags can be managed in the in Advocates section.
Set Action Details: How can these settings be helpful?
- Always Send to Specific Targets: Flagged targets will get a copy of every email that is sent, even if the advocate is not in their district. This maximizes the visibility of your campaign for certain targets and emphasizes the volume of actions taken.
- Collect Non-Target Emails: Increase the volume of emails collected by allowing advocates to take action even if they are not in the districts of the targets you’ve selected for your action. These emails are held until you choose to release them. We recommend always keeping this on because:
- Users outside of our target districts may find your campaign and want to take action. More engagement is always helpful, even if their lawmaker isn’t a target.
- You can avoid sending multiple calls for engagement if you know this action will be relevant for multiple targets at different times (for example, if your action is related to a piece of legislation that you know will start in the House and then move to the Senate).
- Hold All Emails: Helps you deliver a large volume of emails at times when critical mass is important (the day before or day of a vote, for example). You can run this action for weeks or months, and deliver the emails all at once instead of delivering them slowly over the course of the action.
- Enable SmartSend: Helps you avoid the delivery of an action when no one will be in office to receive them (e.g. if an advocate takes action at 10pm). We recommend always having this setting on.
- Enable Unique Emails: Personalizes the content and increases the chance that emails are perceived as unique by the target receiving them. These emails will be held until you approve them.
Selecting Targets
- Filtering Targets: Select at least one state, chamber, or party to start targeting representatives (you can also choose multiple options at once).
- Target Selection: Select all targets or click on individual targets to add them to this action. Your selected targets will appear on the right, so you can verify who will be contacted.
- Saved Target Selections: You can save a particular selection if you know you will target them for other actions in the future by clicking on the “Save Selection” button and naming your group.
Once you have chosen your targets, click on the “Save Action & View Emails” button to continue.
✍️ Write and Save Emails
Drafting the Content
- Generate Email (🤖 Ada Drafted Content): if Ada drafted content is enabled, you can get content suggestions from our AI based on the information you provide.
- Personas: The profile of the person sending the email. You can select from our default options or create your own personas.
- Recipient: The profile of the person receiving the email, whether they are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent.
Writing Email Variations
At times, you may want more than a one-size-fits-all approach to contacting legislators. With AdvocacyAI, you can create as many email variations as you need and we’ll show the advocate the best email for them to encourage them to take action. Our selection is based on the persona and demographic data of the advocate sending the email. If you create emails with multiple “Send to” profiles, the email they are shown also depends on the party of their lawmaker.
Active Email Variations will be shown below the draft content section, where you can click on them to read, edit, or archive the variations. Each variations shows you how many advocates have been shown this email, the conversion rate of the email, and how many copies of that email have been sent to legislators.
Once you save your email variations, click on “Finalize Campaign” to design your widget.
🎨 Widget Design and Settings
The following options let you customize the look and feel of the widget, the data you can collect from the advocate, follow up actions, and more! Read more about each section below:
Call to Action
Customize the text, colors, and buttons of your main call to action widget.
Thank You Page
Customize the thank you message after the advocate takes action.
Congressional Topic:
These topics let Congress know what the email is about and is required for the email to be sent to Congressional CMS systems. It is only required at the Federal level.
Fallback Petition Copy
If an advocate cannot be matched with a target, they will be encouraged to sign a petition instead. If they do, they will get added to your advocate list.
Customize Widget Settings and Options
The options below give you the option to ask the advocate for more data, give them flexibility on editing the content, displaying a goal for your action, or include an opt in.
Advanced Settings: Encourage advocates to share more about themselves if they want to, or require them to provide certain details. Make Prefix, Company, Title, or Phone number optional or required. Learn how to set it up by opening this toggle.
- (Optional) Switch the “Business Information” toggle on if you want to collect that information. You can find this in the Customize Your main Call to Action section.
- At the top of the page, click the Settings icon next to the Save and View Action buttons.
- Toggle the required field on or off, depending on your preference.
- Select “Save Settings” to save your progress.
Prefix is required by default and cannot be made optional if your Action targets federal lawmakers.
- Email Editable?: When an advocate edits an email, this email will be held for your review and will not be sent until it is approved.
- Action Points: When the advocate takes action, they will receive the amount of points specified. This can be used to measure how much engagement an advocate has had with your organization.
- Collect Address: A form that allows you to collect addresses from advocates.
- Verify Address?: As the advocate types their address, the Google API will show them verified addresses to choose from.
- Manual Address Entry?: Disables address search and lets the advocate type their address in manually.
- If VoterMatch is disabled: You have the option to collect the advocate’s Zip Code only.
- If VoterMatch is enabled: Address collection is required and cannot be turned off.
Tip: Enabling or disabling VoterMatch on your Action affects address collection in the following ways:
- Collect Business Information: Adds a Company and Title field for the advocate to fill out.
- Add Custom Fields: Select up to 2 of your existing custom fields to ask the advocate as part of this form. Custom Fields can be added and managed in the Advocates section.
- Opt-In Checkbox?: Include a custom opt in checkbox for the form. You can fully customize the text and include hyperlinks.
- Display Action Goal: To increase engagement, you can choose to display a target goal of actions. You can also customize the starting number if you do not wish to start from 0
Follow Up Actions
Follow Up Actions
Chain multiple actions together. After completing this action, advocates will be shown or redirected to additional actions.
How to Set Them Up
- Adding Follow Up Actions: Click the “Add Follow Up Action” button. In the pop up that appears, begin typing and select the action you want to chain. Confirm with the “Add” button.
- Customizing Follow Up Settings: Click the settings icon to choose how follow up actions appear and exactly who they are shown to. You can edit:
- Display Mode: Controls whether the next Action appears on the current Action Thank You Page, or if the advocate is redirected to the new Action immediately.
- Conditions: Controls which advocates are shown the follow up action, depending on their engagement. Choose between All Advocates, First Action Only, or High Engagement Only.
- A/B Test: Based on the condition you set above, this setting lets you set a percentage of eligible advocates who will be shown the follow up action.
If you chose “Redirect Immediately”, you can also auto-submit the form for the advocate so they don’t have to re-enter their name, email, and address.
- Changing or Removing a Follow Up Action: Click the “change” icon to replace the follow up Action with a different one, or select the trash icon to remove the current Action.
Add URL redirect?
Redirect the advocate to an external site after they take an action.
Customize the Advocate Experience
- One-Step Action: The advocate can preview the email in the first page of the widget, below the Name, Email, and Address form.
- Confirm Email: Will send the advocate an email verification email before they can take action.
- Single Action Only?: Ensures the advocate can only take action once.
- Kiosk Mode: After an advocate takes action, the form will not save the advocate’s information using website cookies. Ideal if you are displaying an Action in a booth or table for multiple people to engage with.
Once you are done, you can click on the “Save & View Action Page” button to launch your Action!
👋 Need More Help?
We're always here for you. Reach out at help@advocacyai.com, and we’ll get you back on track.