Political action articles will loosely alternate between philosophical and concretely instructional. This article focuses on emails to peers, but most of the lessons can be extrapolated out to any outreach email. Future articles may focus on candidate outreach.
First, let’s look over an example of a good outreach email:
Hey JaneDoe!
Was great meeting you at the 50501 protest last week! I’m working with
Westchester Democrats United to organize a high-visibility trash cleanup
on February 12th, to demonstrate Dems willingness to benefit the
community wherever we can.
We are talking to some funders who might support more of these events
if we generate enough media buzz, so it’s crazy important that we pull
numbers for this one - it would be a huge help to have you. If you’re
interested, (this signup link) has all the information in it. Feel free
to share it around, and lemmy know if you have any questions!
Oh, and we’ll have pizza 😎
Hoping to see you soon!
Ryan
Context: We make clear who we are and what we are doing
Ask: We make clear exactly what we need from them: Show up to our event
Concrete next step: Click the signup link
Urgency: The most important element, and one that is often missing. People don’t want to feel like a drop in the bucket, or that they are a million steps away from a milestone. There is always a goal you will be working towards as an organizer: Building a community, Funding, Out-competing another organizing group, etc. Always highlight and focus on that next goal. In our example, we highlighted our goal of pulling in funding to scale this model.
Additional bonus elements we include are highlighting our existing connection, keeping things brief and dense, keeping the tone friendly and casual since we are talking to a peer we have some connection with, and also pizza. Pizza is always a great hook if you can swing it!
Here is a less ideal outreach email, with a few of these above elements missing. To graduate, think about which ones are missing and how you could improve this email.
Hey JohnDoe!
Sup, I'm participating in a trash cleanup event with Westchester
Democrats United to demonstrate Dems willingness to benefit the
community wherever we can. Should be fun, we are trying to get some
social media buzz going, people do like their trash cleanups.
Let me know if you want to swing by - lots of cool folks coming, should
be a good time.
Oh, and there will be NO PIZZA, you stupid #$1ing ^@#@% 😡😡😡
Hoping to see you soon!
Ryan