PHA-Exch> HRtools Issue 7: The power of email

Tue Nov 13 17:27:10 PST 2007

From: Human Rights Tools editors at humanrightstools.org

If communicating and disseminating information is important to your
organisation, then you will probably find this newsletter very useful - its
all about using email for effective outreach.

But before, we start, we have some announcements to share:

ANNOUNCEMENTS: UNIVERSAL PERIODIC REVIEW
Which countries are coming up for review at the Human Rights Council? Well,
you will find the list here:
http://www.ishr.ch/hrm/council/upr/order_review_countries.pdf

If your organisation would like to submit information about these countries,
hurry up, the tentative deadline is 20 November. Read more here:
http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/upr/noteNGO_041007.htm

ANNOUNCEMENTS: EVENTS
If you are interested in human rights impact assessment, Human Rights Impact
is organizing its second conference, which will be held in the Netherlands
on 29 and 30 November:
http://www.humanrightsimpact.org/hria-conference/

If you are going, please let us know how it went, what you learned, what
were the most useful tools presented. We could include your report in an
upcoming newsletter.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: JOBS
Our job board is now probably the best place on the internet to find a human
rights job: employers love it and we have had some very interesting
positions announced over the past months:
http://jobs.humanrightstools.org/

We strongly advise you to subscribe to the email-alert feature, which will
send you each vacancy, the instant it is published. You can expect one email
per week. Even if you are not looking for a job, you may find something
interesting for a friend!
http://jobs.humanrightstools.org/jt/contacts/accept_invite.php

ANNOUNCEMENTS: BLOGS
Our blog page is a very popular part on our site - we now have over 50
bloggers in the community, so there are new posts every day!
http://www.humanrightstools.org/bloggers.htm

Well, we have some good news: the blogger community now has an animator in
the person of Heléne Hedberg. She introduces herself:

" I am a Swedish girl in my twenties currently studying a Human Rights
programme in Stockholm. I have been involved in some UN voluntary work
besides being part of a lot of church related projects and a mission
organization called MAF. Besides studying, I am involved in an after-school
center for mostly immigrant kids in one of the southern suburbs of Stockholm
(Varberg), which takes a lot of my time. I also run a blog under the name of
undialogue:
http://undialogue.blogspot.com

I am happy to take upon the role as an animator for this community centre
for human rights bloggers and try to develop it and give it that real
community feeling we've all been longing for. Lets make it into a joint
effort. Emails containing ideas, thoughts or reminders are more than
welcome."

Heléne can be contact at: helene at humanrightstools.org

MAIN FEATURE: THE POWER OF EMAIL

Michael Gilbert wrote the article below in 2001, but we feel that its still
just as relevant today. In fact, the best would be for you to read it now -
its short, sharp, and well written:
http://news.gilbert.org/gem

The point Gilbert makes is simple: non-profit organisations spend to much
time, money and thought on their websites, and not enough about on
developing an email strategy. He shows us that email is a much more personal
medium - most people usually read most of their emails, which are seen as
calls to action.

Besides, your visitors may never even find your website in the first place -
unless you send them there! Let them sign up for an email newsletter or
email alert system, so they can trust you to remind them to return when you
have something to share. Otherwise they may forget to come back... This is
even more important if your target audience has slow internet access, and
only goes online to check their mail.

OK, so thanks to Gilbert, we know we need an email strategy. A good place to
start is with an email newsletter. Some advice from our own experience:
1. Don't publish too often, or nobody will read you anymore. Don't feel
obliged to be regular, just write when you have something you really need to
say.
2. Put a very visible sign-up box on every single page of your website and
not only your home page - many of your visitors don't enter through the home
page.
3. Rack your brains really really hard about how to make your newsletter
useful to your readers - this will increase its chances of getting forwarded
onwards to others. Work hard on this, and get the opinion of others.
4. Consider using an informal, engaging, lively style - who wants to read
yet more politically-correct and bland institutional-speak? Give it an edge,
make it distinctive, find your style.
5. Include links back to specific pages on your website where readers can
learn more. But also link to other stuff, so as to make it even more useful
(see point 3). You are not the centre of the world ;-)
6. Ask for feedback, engage your readers. You probably won't get much, but
the few who respond will always have very something interesting to tell you.
7. Run a spell chek before sending, and always prof read.
8. Don't make your newsletters too long - not like ours!

We find that Human Rights Watch make a very effective usage of email
newsletters to keep people returning to their website: you can subscribe to
the general newsletter, but also to a multitude of specific ones depending
on your geographic or thematic interests. This helps you filter and access
the information you already need as soon as it is published - but it also
helps them make sure you keep on coming back! So why don't you do something
similar?
http://www.hrw.org/act/subscribe-mlists/subscribe.htm

But what technology to use?

Well, whatever you do, don't use your normal email client (Gmail, Outlook,
etc). We have noted that many human rights organisations still send their
mass mail using their normal email, in chunks of 100 or so. This is really
something to avoid, for four reasons:
- people can see the other persons you are writing to, which is not very
professional or considerate of their privacy
- many of the intended recipients will never receive these bulk mails
because they are intercepted by spam filters
- there is no built-in unsubscribe information, which is not proper
netiquette and can make people angry (see below)
- Its not efficient: there is no sign-up from your webpage, previous issues
are not automatically archived online, there are no RSS feeds, etc.

Instead, we recommend to use a mass mail manager which can be installed onto
your website. And we have some good news for you: the best ones are actually
completely free! The great thing with these systems is that your readers can
sign-up or unsubscribe by themselves from your website, so managing your
list is completely automatic. Technically, it becomes as easy at using
webmail.

There are two types of mass mail manager. The first: the newsletter managers
(one-to-many broadcasting) like Dadamail (free and very good, we use it) and
PHP List (also free and even betters, HREA uses this). The second: the
mailing list managers (many-to-many), like Mailman (also free and
feature-laden):
Dadamail: http://mojo.skazat.com/
PHP List: http://www.phplist.com/
http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/index.html

There are of course many other alternatives, and Idealware provide a useful
overview here:
http://www.idealware.org/articles/fgt_email_newsletter_tools.php

If you need more help in choosing the ideal mailing list of newsletter for
you, then watch this NTEN webinar (50 USD), or the accompanying slideshow
(free):
http://www.nten.org/events/webinar/2007/02/28/choosing-an-enewsletter-tool
http://www.nten.org/sites/nten/files/enews_webinar.pdf

Some will argue that a blog can also be considered as a good outreach
method, like a newsletter or mailing list, and of course they are right.
Blogs also allow you to make much more attractive layouts, and integrate
photos and videos very easily. But blogs do not allow you to broadcast like
an email newsletter... unless you install the Feedburner services, which
allows your faithful readers to sign up and get email alerts whenever you
publish something. Frankly, we are surprised that so many bloggers do not
use this free and excellent service.
http://www.feedburner.com/

And what if you don't have any email addresses to start off with? Not much
point in sending your email newsletter to.... nobody! Well, there are two
things you can do. Obviously, collect all the emails you can from
colleagues, partners, and friends. But you also can harvest email addresses
from the internet: you will be surprised how many people leave their emails
on forums, in databases, in workshop reports.

The best way is to purchase an email spider, which will suck up email
addresses from the internet according to key words that you choose, such as
"human rights uganda". We have used the following software and found it
really good: Email Spider Easy (75 USD): http://www.email-tool.com/

This brings us to the issue of ethics and netiquette. Frankly there is
nothing as annoying as being signed up for a mailing list against your will,
and having no way of being able to unsubscribe. This is spam, even if its
done for a just cause and not commercial profit.

So always to use an opt-in policy: its perfectly acceptable to send
potential new readers an invitation to subscribe to your newsletter,
especially if you have targeted them carefully. But always leave it up to
them to choose whether they want to sign up or not. Likewise, include
unsubscribe information and links in all subsequent email newsletters. All
good newsletter managers, like Dadamail, will handle this automatically, yet
another reason to use them.

.. and you want to learn more about using email for outreach, visit this
page:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/dir/4_Tech_for_Human_Rights/Using_email_for_advocacy/

What do you think? What is your experience with email outreach and advocacy?
We can publish your comments in a follow-up issue.

LAST POINTS...

We welcome and appreciate your comments and feedback - simply respond to
this email. Do you know of a resource or event which should be better known
by the human rights community? Please tell us, we can profile it in an
upcoming newsletter.

We hope your enjoyed this newsletter and found it useful:
- Please help us by forwarding this email with your friends and colleagues.
- If you have not yet subscribed, do so here:
http://www.humanrightstools.org/newsletter.htm

What's next? You'll just have to wait and see! We lots of nice stuff in the
pipeline for you, and the next issue is coming really soon.

That's all for now! Best regards and good luck in your efforts,

Daniel D'Esposito, editor
editors at humanrightstools
http://www.humanrightstools.org/

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