At Richir Outreach, we build websites for various organizations, including political campaigns. A task involved in political campaigning might be to send email blasts, or eBlasts for various outreach purposes, fundraising, trying to recruit volunteers, etc. Eblasts are a useful and effective marketing tool for an organization desiring communication with their entire contact database or just a large group of people. NGP has a great reputation on the market for creating products that are useful to political campaigns, specifically their email blast software. Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how one would deliver an eBlast assuming an account is created, with a contact list.

1. Login to NGP at https://www2.myngp.com/
2. Click on Send Emails & Fundraise-this is located on the right view of front page.
3. Click on Create and Send an email message-this is a link on the left side of the screen.
4. Click to create a NEW email.
   - existing saved emails will be on right side in yellow under name saved under.
5. Broadcast Email window pops up- give it a name. The name is for internal purposes, when the email is sent, the email name will not be visible to readers/recipients
6. Step 1: Set up > Create Your Message
7. Fill out fields accordingly.
8. Sender - is who you are sending it from (organization name, politician name and so on.
9. Remember to include the subject line.
10. Add Your Email Content.
11. In HTML Version, Press enter a few times then copy and paste or just type in the content for the email.
12. Make sure everything is aligned and spaced out to your preferences.
13. Leave the {Disclaimer} {Organization Address} in the brackets alone, those will be filled out when personalized fields are merged.
14. To add a hyperlink in -(there is a button in the text editor options that does this), the link just has to be pasted in the Plain Text Version.
15. Click Personalize by Inserting a Merge Field.
16. Click First Name, and put something like "Friend" or "Neighbor" - it will default to this name, if there is no first name in the system.
17. When done with filling out the content fields and putting the hyperlink in HTML version and URL in Plaintext version click Continue.
18. Step 2: Recipients, click General.
19. Step 3: Review and Set Delivery Options.
20. Start by sending a sample email, to make sure everything looks right and the links work.
21. Then, make sure everything is present, because this is where you can get flagged down for something such as no subject line.
22. Check to agree to terms and services and send email or send email at scheduled time.
23. Sending a Sample- just click send a sample, and add the email addresses you would like to send the sample to.

See Also

http://www.ngpvan.com/blog/emails-new-reality