Email is easy and can reach a wide range of residents. If you have email lists available to you for outreach, you can send invitations through your city or organization’s email.
Before doing so, we suggest you consider where these email lists came from. We recommend against using email lists that users have not voluntarily opted into, or have opted into for completely different reasons (not related to providing feedback or receiving updates/news); sending emails to unreceptive audiences can lead to higher instances of recipients marking as spam, and may negatively impact both the survey effort and your organization’s reputation with the community. Additionally, if a list hasn’t been used recently, it may incur high bounce rates and not be very effective.
With those caveats in mind, here are some options to consider:
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Inventory all your email lists from different departments (communications, utilities, libraries, housing, recreation centers and programs, etc.).
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Check in with non-governmental partners who may be willing to send invitations to their email lists (sports leagues, arts groups, other affinity groups, Chambers of Commerce, service leagues, neighborhood associations, religious groups, etc.).
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Ask other public agencies to spread the word (school and other special districts).
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Think about how to reach residents with diverse backgrounds and broad interests.
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If your jurisdiction regularly sends out an email newsletter, share the news there. You can include a link to more information on your website, link to the Polco survey/poll itself, or even embed Polco questions on a MailChimp post (if you use it).
Check out our email templates available to use as a starting point. Edit and customize as needed to accurately convey your survey’s goals and importance to the intended audience of your email.