Using Email to Promote Events & Activities

For many volunteers, using email is an effective way to promote events and activities to members and fellow volunteers. However, using email requires certain disciplines and responsibilities. In particular: -

  • It is really important that your fund of email addresses is accurate and up to date - Head Office can help keep your list up to date by providing periodic membership reports. Click here to view the membership data page on the website.

  • If you issue a regular message or newsletter by email, members should always be given the option to stop receiving these messages and, if such a request is received, you should revise your mailing list straight away.

  • Keep the messages relatively short. If you have several bits of information to share, include the key points and then supply contact details or links to where the member can find out more. Always discourage the email from being printed unless absolutely necessary.

  • It is never good practice to bombard members with lots and lots of promotional emails. This reduces the chances of them being read and of you gaining greater interest and participation. Try to keep the frequency such that they don't become an irritation and actually work against what you are trying to achieve.

Most importantly ...

  • When emailing many members at once, always put your email address in the 'To' box and all the other recipients' addresses in the 'Bcc' box. There are two very important reasons for this: -

1. It is very unlikely that you will have the permission of each member to share their email address with all the other members involved in the message. CSSC takes data handling and data security seriously and volunteers must not divulge data to third parties without explicit consent.

2. If all the email addresses go in the 'To' box and anyone inadvertently hits 'Reply All', all of the addressees will receive their response. This has the potential to generate huge volumes of unnecessary email traffic and can easily irritate both members and employers.