Email Accounts and Email Lists
There are two types of email to think about...
Email Accounts
An email account for people to have two-way conversations with you. This is the equivalent of your personal email account, but for your group instead. You could use a gmail etc free email account or you could apply for one from XRUK e.g. groupname@extinctionrebellion.uk.
The benefits of applying for one ending in extinctionrebellion.uk are:
- if you ever lose access to it you can ask for a password reset
- you can easily share access to it between a few people
Apply for an @extinctionrebellion.uk email account here.
Email Lists
An email list is where supporters can sign up and receive updates from you. This is a way to email large groups of people all at once. You can still put a 'reply-to' address, so that individuals can reply with a questions.
Your emails should be "on message" and jargon-free, because people on your list might be interested members of the public who are not yet invovled - and maybe even a few journalists too!
Emails are more useful for internal comms: e.g. single-topic emails telling people about an event or action that is coming up, or newsletter style roundups of everything that's happened recently.
XR uses a system called "Action Network" to store your list of email subscribers and send mass emails to them. It is funded centrally, GDPR compliant and available to all local groups. You can read more in this Action Network overview.
The benefits of being part of XRUK's Action Network system are numerous and you can read more here about why to use Action Network as opposed to other systems such as Mailchimp.
Being part of this network helps you pick up more subscribers because you lists will be automatically promoted for you in a number of ways - read more here
For information and support:
- Read the Action Network for XR book
- Sign up to training with this form
- Message the Action Network Reception on Mattermost or email them at datateam@extinctionrebellion.uk