There is absolutely no point in sending someone a blanket
email if you are hoping to spur them into any kind of action.
This is the case whether you are hoping to convince them to
care about your cause, persuade them give a donation to your organisation or
even entice them into reading past sentence two of your email.
This is why it perplexes me that so many charities are
continuing to send MPs, a group of people who must receive rather a lot of
personalised correspondence, so many impersonal blanket emails.
At a recent Public Administration Select Committee hearing I
attended a number of MPs whinged about receiving too many of these emails.
And then Conservative MP Robert Halfon recently wrote about
the frightening level of such things in a blog post on the Guardian.
He said: “These computer generated emails are more a curse than a blessing –
and I believe do great damage”.
I’m not willing to in any way criticise charities that
campaign or lobby. Some of the most important work done on behalf of their
beneficiaries is through such activity.
But the way that some charities go about this is often lazy,
wasteful and lacks any kind of planning or strategy.
Yes, we all know it would cost more to send out personalised
emails and letters. But I firmly believe that even a little extra investment
into targeting and personalising this correspondence could yield the kind of
returns that would make it more than worthwhile.
It’s a sad fact of human nature, but as our inboxes steadily
become increasingly inundated, the only reason any of us ever take notice of a
blanket email is if we are going to benefit from it in some way.
On my work email the only reason I will make the effort to
read through such a thing is if it is giving me details of a particularly
interesting potential news story.
On my personal email this normally only ever happens if a
sample sale is being brought to my attention.
The truth is that organisations that continue to clog up my
inbox with blanket emails that have no relevance to me have become the kind of
company I would actively avoid in the future.
And with all these blanket emails it would seem that many
charities are risking having this effect on a group of people whose support
could be very useful to them.
Not only is it unlikely that such emails will ever get MPs
to support your cause, but you risk annoying them so much that when you do
eventually get your ask right, yours is possibly the last organisation they
will feel willing to support.