Growing your list

Beyond your party members, you should be asking for email addresses regularly - particularly from the people you hope will vote for your candidate on election day.

People who we have an email for and who we communicate with regularly are more likely to turn out and vote (and vote for us) than people we have an email for, but don’t communicate with regularly.

This is exactly the same principle behind doing regular Focus leaflets. All we’re doing is digitising that process.

How do you grow your email list? 

You can ask for an email address any time you communicate with voters. You’ll need an appropriate Fair Processing notice - see below.

Petitions

The best way that we have found to grow an email list is to use petitions. People sign a campaign, and sign up to a mailing list because they are interested in what happens next, and email is a great way to keep them up to date - so long as you actually do it. Don’t just lump them in with your local news list, give them a separate tag and contact them frequently about the petition they signed. When a campaign has come to an end, either because you achieved what you wanted, or it is no longer a pressing issue locally, you can add these people to your wider mailing list as they may be interested in campaigns you are running. 

You can find more information about how to set up a Lib Dem petition page on Fleet here: 

Canvassing

Asking for an email address so that the team can keep you informed of local issues is a great way to grow your list - keep these people in the “Local News” section, until they do something that indicates they’re a Lib Dem (like saying they’ll vote for us) and then consider adding them to the Lib Dem updates list as well. 

In a leaflet

Getting an email address means you have more than one way of reaching a voter. You can set it up with a Freepost response if you have it - but it may be easier for all involved to simply point people at the signup page on your website (see below).

Surveys

A survey is a great way to ask for an email address. People are more likely to give you data when they feel they’re getting something out of it, so phrase it along the lines of “keeping them up to date with your campaign!” Just make sure to follow through and keep them up to date on that campaign.  

On social media

Don’t ask for email addresses directly over social media - this contravenes data protection policy. Instead, you can point people to the signup page on your website and collect emails there - which saves you having to input them yourself.

On your local party website

Your local party website is a powerful tool for email collection. Have a signup form for the sake of keeping people up to date on your main page, and then be sure to collect emails for online campaigns you are running. 

Sign up forms

Having an email address can make it much easier to get in contact with volunteers, event attendees or the like. Make sure you tell them why you’re collecting their email address, and follow all data protection guidance (see below). 

Opt-in & sign up forms

Whenever we ask for an email address, whether that's on the doorstep, on a petition, or on your local party website, we need to make sure that the individual gives clear consent to receiving emails for a specific purpose.  

You must also include a Fair Processing Notice (FPN) every time you are gathering personal data. 

This is done automatically for you when you use forms on Fleet, but if you are collecting on Typeform or Paper, you must remember to do this.

The FPN guides individuals to our full privacy policy where they can learn more about how we use data. The FPN can be given verbally or in writing. You can find the most up to date language to use for this here. 

You must be clear with your signups about what emails they will get if they opt in to your email and you must respect people’s preferences. 

If you don’t, the individual has the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and there may be legal implications for the party.

For example, if someone signs up for a list that promises they’ll get local news and updates, and the first email they receive is a fundraising email, they’ll probably get annoyed pretty quickly.

You should be building up a relationship based on good local news, then ask for a donation close to election time.