Sending Email

Messages to lawmakers are sent automatically by Rally Congress, but the system also allows administrators to send email messages to an account's supporters (the people who took action). An example might be a campaign update email, or a regular newsletter.

Rally Congress includes two different methods for sending these types of outbound email messages.

The first is from the platform itself, through the online administrative control panel.

The second method is a new bridge that connects your Rally Congress account to your MailChimp account. MailChimp is one of the most popular and affordable email providers in the world.

Please contact customer support at info@rallycongress.com to activate either module for your account.

Steps to Send Email Through Rally Congress

Once the email module is active on your account and the base template is set up for your organization, an "Email" option will appear in the control panel on the left-side navigation bar. You can now send messages to your existing Supporter database.

For the first step, give your email a name, a subject line that supporters will see, and designate the person and email address that this message will be "from".

Submit that form, and you will see the main administrative page for this specific email. It lays out the remaining steps needed to send the email.

The most important is "Add Message Content". This button provides a preview of your email with some default text.

Hover your mouse over different sections of the email to see them highlighted, and click to edit a section.

Clicking on a section reveals a form for editing and saving the content for that section of the email.

Once your content is set, the next step is to determine a list that will receive the message. You can send to your entire supporter database, or to subsets like a single state or people responding to one specific campaign.

At this stage you can also send test emails to the addresses of your choosing. This is important and allows you to view the email exactly as a recipient will.

Once you've tested your email and are satisfied with the content and appearance, the final step is to select "Send" to send immediately or schedule a time to have the email automatically sent in the future.