When creating an account, make sure you enter your organization name exactly as you want it to appear on your web page campaign. In other words, spell it exactly as you would on any important document and capitalize all appropriate letters. If you’ve already created an account with an incorrectly entered organization name, please email a request to support@citizenspeak.org to remove your existing account. You can then create a new account (it’s free) with the correct organization name.

Your email letter should be short. No more than a couple short paragraphs max. Long emails will turn off participants. Also, representatives may not read a long email and therefore not see the participants’ personal statements at the end.

Use correct addresses in your campaign. Using incorrect addresses for representatives (or other decision-makers) in your CitizenSpeak campaigns can damage the legitimacy of your entire campaign. You won’t be helping our mail server either.

To check email addresses, send an email from your own email program (Eudora, Outlook…) to the representative(s)/decision-maker(s) you are targeting. You can put ‘test’ in the subject line. If an email bounces back to your account, do not use it in your campaign. Remember: it may take a while before you get an error message regarding an invalid email address (up to a couple hours).

Tell your audience to “Take Action” up front. After creating your CitizenSpeak campaign, email your supporters - from your own email account - and invite them to participate in your CitizenSpeak campaign. Don’t burry the “take action” part of your email at the end. Within the first couple of lines, ask them to go to your campaign’s web page address. You can spend the rest of the email explaining to people your cause.