Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Volunteers Emailing Company Members, A Good Thing?

Posted by claire.ball on 2/12/2013 at 6:18 AM ET 500 Points
Hi is anyone having the same issue or knows of a solution to my problem? I work for a member based company we have a great network of volunteers, but our volunteers want the ability to email ''their'' groups of members. This poses problems for us sharing out personal data to individuals not on a employee contract (Data protection). Surely there is some system developed that allows them to email a wide group of people without seeing the addresses? They mainly want to email updates as they independently host meetings. We have so many groups now it would be impossible for us to manage this internally. Can anyone help?
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 2/12/2013 at 8:06 AM Accepted
    It's important that someone in your organization is ultimately responsible for the frequency and content of your emails. Otherwise you have the potential for inconsistent or improper messaging. My suggestion: have the volunteers (regularly) submit a "message to <i>their</i> members", and have the CMO (or whatever the title is), fit their message into an approved format, validate the message, and maintain the confidentiality of the contact information.

    If the sole purpose of these contacts is to setup a meeting, then pick a system (Meetup, Doodle, Google Calendar, Facebook) to manage this specific form of communication.
  • Posted on 2/12/2013 at 8:36 AM Accepted
    Someone in management (the CMO, as Jay suggests?) needs to "own" the member list and take responsibility for all communication with them. You do NOT want volunteers spamming your members, no matter how well intentioned they might be.
  • Posted by Moriarty on 2/12/2013 at 8:42 AM Accepted
    Might it not be better to set up an online forum where all volunteers can gather?

    That way you can keep the email blasts under your control.
  • Posted by Gary Bloomer on 2/13/2013 at 6:44 PM Accepted
    Volunteers need to understand, by having it spelled out from the beginning, that this is the way it's going to be. It sounds to me that you need a "Come to Jesus!" message: that e-mails will be sent by staff only. No exceptions.
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