So, how to decide which
mass email tool or provider is best for your group?
Not exact matches
Despite a list of competitors that's growing every day — think:
mass emails, online chats and such digital videoconferencing
tools as Skype and Google Hangouts — the old - fashioned conference call doesn't appear to be declining at all in popularity.
MySpace can definitely be used for recruitment and as a
mass communications
tool, particularly if you're trying to reach younger voters who have moved away from the casual use of
email, but most advice I've seen about using social network sites for political advocacy stresses the importance of moving MySpace friends onto normal advocacy lists as soon as possible.
Despite the much - discussed problems that have arisen lately with
email advocacy,
mass messages and
email newsletters are still a critical
tool for most campaigns and organizations.
I don't want to denigrate
email advocacy as a
tool, since I definitely think it has some good uses, but
mass unedited messages are just about the least effective way for your activists to let their views be known to a Congress that already gets 300 million
emails per year.
It's just that along the way, a few new
tools came along like online databases, services for
mass emailing and online advocacy, donation and membership software, field organizing and walk list software, online voter databases, mapping
tools, phone apps, the blogosphere and the rise of crowd sourcing.
These
tools allow you to put a form on your website to capture
email addresses, send
mass mailouts easily and automate your communications via «autoresponders».
In practice,
mass emailings may be the easiest type to deal with, as CRM and mailing
tools are available to manage the process and track permissions.