Emails are a great way to get your information out to your supporters and friends but particularly in the light of the new GDPR legislation that came into place on 25th May 2018, there are some things to consider before sending out emails.
Protecting your contacts’ email addresses
The first and most important thing to remember is that whilst you might have someone’s email address, they may not want it shared with anyone else on your contact list. With this in mind, never put all the email addresses in the ‘to’ field when sending an email to everyone in your email list. It is very bad practice and as of 25th May 2018 could get you a hefty fine if you are doing it on behalf of an organisation, however small. If you need to send an email to several people use the BCC option on your email account, which will mean no one can see the email address of the other people who you have sent it to.
Send when relevant
If you are sending information emails, try to send as few as possible. If you’re sending out dates for people to get involved, ask yourself if a social media post might be more appropriate. Try to avoiding send more than one per week, and if you miss something out in that email, don’t send another, instead share the missed info on social media, or the next week’s email. Overloading your contacts with emails might lead to them not opening the email – by keeping them scarce and interesting your contacts are more likely to pay attention.
Managing your contacts list
Once you start to get a number of people needing regular updating, it’s probably time for a marketing tool – we use MailChimp which has good support for GDPR compliance. You will need to get people to sign up to that newsletter which MailChimp can help with. You must not add people because you think they might be interested as GDPR legislation states clearly that newsletters must be subscribed to. Once you have people subscribing, the great thing about using MailChimp is that it securely stores all your information, meaning you don’t need to keep lots of addresses of your supporters in your contacts lists.
When sending out emails through MailChimp or other services, ensure the content is interesting and as with social media, think about what campaigns and which other organisations or businesses you might like to support through your emails.
You can find out more about GDPR here
