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Targeted Email: How does it work?

14 Jul 2022

Targeted Email: How does it work?

Targeted Email is our new email tool that is integrated with the MyCampaign side of Connect. 

This means campaigners will have all of their campaigning data available to make sure that your emails reach the right people and help you get the results you need, for fundraising and elections.

Changes to MyCampaign

That means who you have in MyCampaign will expand - from just members, supporters and volunteers to everyone you can email.

As part of this project, we’re looking at what improvements we can make to that side of the database to make sure it holds the most accurate and useful information from a campaigning perspective. 

We have already made some improvements to MyCampaign by fixing the membership sync from Lighthouse. 

The feedback we’ve received from local parties who have taken the additional steps to reconcile their data between Lighthouse and Connect has been really positive. We are strongly encouraging any local parties who haven’t taken the steps to reconcile their data yet to do this now.  

Guidance on what to do can be found here.

As part of Fleet, we are also developing some software which will automatically update MyCampaign when a user signs up to a form on the website e.g. when they sign a petition.

Once the Targeted Email tool is switched on, MyCampaign will also be used to record email subscription status and preferences.

We will continue to make improvements to the data available in MyCampaign so that we can deliver more value from Connect and the Targeted Email tool.

Getting access

When your local, regional or state party moves to Targeted Email we will grant access to your Connect Manager.

Connect Managers will then be responsible for providing access to other users in their organisation.

This will also be how user access is managed in the long term, with HQ giving Connect Managers access and those managers then being responsible for giving out additional access.

Targeted Email subscription status

Email addresses in My Campaign will have a subscription status which defines if they are emailable or not.

When you look at a person’s record in My Campaign you will see their email addresses and whether those email addresses have a status of subscribed, not subscribed or unsubscribed.

The subscription status is unique to each party organisation; another local party may be able to see the record but would not be able to email them unless they have their own consent.

Here’s what those statuses mean:

Subscribed: You can email them

Not Subscribed: We have an email for the user, but you don’t have permission to email them from your party organisation.

Unsubscribed: You can’t email them.

Targeted Email preferences

We know how important it is to local parties to have the email preferences of their members and supporters accurately recorded and respected. 

We want to provide as much granularity and flexibility as we can but we also need some degree of consistency in order for the system to work. 

We need to be able to accurately track who is subscribed to what list and we also need to give the people we email the ability to manage their own preferences. If we don’t do this well as a party then we face the risk of significant fines from the ICO. 

Email preferences are called ‘email interests’ in My Campaign. When you look at a person’s record in My Campaign you will be able to see the subscription status of their email address as well as their ‘email interests’ e.g. ‘Email Interest: Local News’, or ‘Email Interest: Campaigning News’.

Preferences indicate what kind of content those subscribers should receive. 

The Local News is intended to be used for people who have signed up for local Focuses and Councillor newsletters.

Campaigning News is intended to be used for everything else - so emails about action days, event invites or national news.

Targeted Email - how are preferences assigned?

When we migrate party organisations over to Targeted Email we will run through a mapping process to help you match your tags and preferences from your current email tool (Nationbuilder, Mailchimp or Prater Raines) as best we can to the system we will use in My Campaign.

There’ll also be settings when creating a form on Fleet that will give you control over email preferences, interests and sharing. We’ll be covering that in more depth in another deep dive on forms.There’ll also be settings when creating a form on Fleet that will give you control over email preferences, interests and sharing. We’ll be covering that in more depth in another deep dive on forms.

Targeted Email + Saved searches

We will set up every Local, Regional or State Party using targeted email with four standard Saved Searches in My Campaign which they can use for their most common emailable groups. 

These will be:

Members - which contains all of your members from Lighthouse who are opted in to emails.

Members & Registered Supporters - which contains all of your members + registered supporters from Lighthouse who are opted into emails.

All emailable people who are interested in local news - which contains everyone that you can email who has a local news interest.

All emailable people who are interested in Campaigning news -which contains everyone that you can email who has a campaigning news interest.

These Saved Searches have been designed to provide users with easy ways to email people who they need to email regularly..  

We’ll also be creating guidance on how to create other common lists that are less standard - like a Ward Email list, an Activist email list or a Fundraising email list.

When you create an email in Targeted Email, all you need to do is select the Saved Search you want to send your email to e.g. “[Local Party Name] Emailable Members ”. 

For some local parties, theseSaved Searches may be all they need. 

For more advanced parties or for parties with other use cases, Connect Managers can create additional Saved Searches and share them across their party. 

Targeted Email and Email Creation

The tool has a drag-and-drop editor which should make email creation much easier than Nationbuilder. 

We have also created a number of  templates which you can use at launch if you don’t want to create your own.

These templates cover most common use cases and are set up with the party’s colours and optimal font sizes for accessibility.

We’ll be releasing guidance on how to create your own templates in-line with the party’s style guide and you’ll be able to adapt the existing templates as well.

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