Email marketing best practice

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is email marketing?

  Email marketing uses email to build relationships with your audience.

  With email, you can quickly and cheaply send relevant messages to your email list and turn members of the public into Lib Dem voters, Lib Dem supporters and maybe even Lib Dem members.

  Email has extremely high reach. Almost 90% of the UK population has an active email address - and usage is strong through all age groups. 

  People who are interested in your campaign(s) can join your email list and – through email marketing – learn everything they need to know to make an informed decision about whether or not to vote for you, give you money or join the party.

  Over time, a good email campaign can turn a subscriber into a dedicated local supporter, by sending them the right content and the right message. This guide will teach you how to do it. 

  If you build your email list with your target audience – you can be sure that email marketing will become a significant benefit to your local party.

  But remember, email does not replace personal contact.  Email is most effective when used alongside phoning members and canvassing voters. Use email to continue a relationship, not start one.

• What tools can I use?

  Email Marketing covers any email sent to more than 12 people¹ or any email that could reasonably be considered marketing².

  You should only do this through a party approved Email Marketing tool (more on those below).

  You cannot use your own personal email, council emails, or any email address set up with gmail, outlook, hotmail, yahoo, btinternet, btopenworld or any other personal email service. 

  You also cannot use any email marketing tool that the party has not conducted necessary due diligence and has ensured is integrated into our systems so that we can comply with the law.

  If you’re a local, regional or state party or an elected representative, we recommend using Targeted Email, which is a paid add-on for Connect.

  Targeted Email is integrated with Connect data. Data collected on your Fleet website can be automatically added to Connect and data from Lighthouse, where your membership and fundraising information lives is synchronised with it as well, giving you the data you need in the platform.

  Some organisations can’t use Targeted Email, in particular local parties outside of Great Britain and Party Organisations and for those groups, the party recommends using a tool called Mailjet.

  It offers a simple user experience like Mailchimp, but at a much cheaper price. There isn’t an out of the box data integration like there is with Connect, so you will need to manually import data.

  Some local parties will have legacy Mailchimp accounts which they may be continuing to use - this is permitted, as long as digital@libdems.org.uk has Administrator access to your account so that we can ensure people’s data protection rights are complied with, but no new accounts are being approved.

  If you have an historic Mailchimp account that the party does not have access to, please email support@libdems.org.uk.

  This guide will cover sending emails from Targeted Email. You can also find similar instructions for Mailjet in the appendix to this guide.

• Is there Video Training for Targeted Email?

  To help you get started in Targeted Email we have created some easy to follow videos. 

  The videos series will show you how to easily create and send emails in Targeted Email using email marketing best practice. 

  We recommend that you follow the videos and guidance to help you to get the most of the tool and to ensure that your emails hit your recipients’ inboxes.

  You can find links to the video training in the appendix of this guide.

• How can I get Access to Targeted Email?

  Access to Targeted Email will be provided to Connect Managers.

  Connect Managers will be responsible for handing out permissions to other people in their party organisation who need access to the tool.

  Targeted Email is set up per party organisation in Connect and each party organisation is responsible for emailing and maintaining their own lists of subscribers.

  We must be compliant, improve consent tracking across the party and maintain healthy email lists. The simplest way to achieve this using Targeted Email is to ensure that permissions are managed and owned at a party organisation level.

  You cannot email people in other party organisations if the party organisation you are emailing from in Connect does not have consent, even if you have access to multiple party organisations in Connect. You will need to send emails from each organisation.

• How does Targeted Email work with Connect?

  Targeted Email is built on the My Campaign side of Connect. This is the destination for all of your emailable people.

  By using Targeted Email you can turn your emailable people in My Campaign from ‘subscribed to the party’ into ‘supporting the party’ as voters, activists, volunteers and members.HQ will help you do this by providing you with Email Marketing training and making sure you have the right data in My Campaign.

  Data in My Campaign

  Members and registered supporters are already in My Campaign.

  As part of the migration process we will bring all of your emailable people into My Campaign. These will be matched to My Voter records where possible.

  The integration with Fleet (new websites) will bring petition signatory data into My Campaign automatically, as well as email sign up data for your local party lists; these will be your most likely prospects! 

  Emails gathered on the doorstep into My Voters will come across to My Campaign.

  You will also have new Target Pools in My Campaign.

  We will keep improving the data in My Campaign e.g. by adding more data from Lighthouse.