How to Email Congress and Make It Count

Congress is inundated with tens of millions of emails and letters each year. In some years, more than 50 million Americans have sent an email to Congress, according to a 2021 Congressional Management Foundation study. That presents an extreme challenge to legislators and staff who want to read and respond to every piece of correspondence.

Tracking constituent sentiment is a vital task for congressional offices, and constituent service is even more so. Both depend on corresponding with constituents, but the sheer volume makes it difficult even in a well-staffed office. Reading, routing and replying takes a great deal of time.

This volume is also a major barrier for public affairs teams, which are competing against scores of other interests for a sliver of staff time. If your email does not stand out, it will be difficult to maintain a conversation over policy and have your ideas heard.

Academic researchers Beth Long and Jessica Pugel at Pennsylvania State University’s Research-to-Policy Collaboration Center studied email preferences among policymakers and what makes them more likely to open and click. Based on their findings, here are some research-backed tips to keep in mind in every step of crafting emails to legislators and staff, including strategies to select who to email, best practices for writing, and tips to evaluate performance.

Target Your Contact List

You want to send an email, but first, you need to decide who to send it to and how you’re going to send your message. Use these best practices for deciding who to send your emails to.

1. Choose Recipients Relevant to Your Policy Objective

To boost your email open and click rates, be sure to tailor your recipient list to only include relevant officials and staffers. Target recipients according to which committees they serve on or members who are the most vocal on key issues. Quorum’s power search capabilities make finding all relevant officials easy, meaning you won’t miss any important recipients.

“We upload recipients and their group conditions as a custom field to Quorum, instead of having to type in each name individually into the recipient box,” Pugel said. “This is a huge time-saver for us and it makes mistakes way less likely.”

2. Automate Bulk Email Personalization

Sending multiple emails and copying and pasting the body for each message is a hassle. Instead, use a mail merge to ensure your message is delivered to the correct recipients without wasting time and by avoiding the risk of spam filters. Personalize your mail merges with names and titles, and use a conversational tone so it does not read like a cold, impersonal email blast. Quorum allows users to personalize emails with several different fields, like district or state, staff names, or even custom data like how many facilities you have in a given legislator’s district.

Strategically Craft Your Message

When you decide you need to send an email to members of Congress and their staff, keep these research-based best practices in mind when writing your message in order to increase performance.

3. Write Transparent Subject Lines

The subject line is the first thing an email recipient sees, making it crucial to strike the right tone in order to draw readers into opening your message. Long and Pugel tested different subject-line strategies to find which components generate higher open and click rates.

First, Long and Pugel tested two subject lines that mentioned science—one containing the phrase “evidence-based” and one containing the word “science”—against a control line that used the word “regarding.” They found that, although the science-based subject lines were opened slightly less, the link to their research product was clicked 50 percent more in the emails with science-based subject lines.

This suggests policymakers prefer to know what to expect before opening an email. If a legislator receives a general email with a subject line that starts with the word “regarding,” they don’t know what to expect and therefore may feel duped or surprised by clicking into a message to find a science-based fact sheet. But when the science frame is transparent in the subject line, they know what they’re getting and are more likely to click on the link.

They then tested “clickbait” subject lines against those that were more natural and straightforward. In this test, they found the most natural-sounding, non-clickbait subject lines were the most effective, with higher open and click rates. From these findings, it appears that policymakers and staffers have been so inundated with email using clickbait tactics that they’ve learned to spot them and they are no longer influenced.

Overall, the research suggests you’ll get higher open, click, and response rates by making your subject line transparent and straightforward.

4. Keep Your Message Short Unless It’s Personal

When testing different email lengths and open rates, Long and Pugel’s research found that shorter emails—those 500 words or less—resulted in nearly 100 more clicks compared to the longer emails they sent. Instead of including endless paragraphs of information, summarize your key points in a sentence or two and include a link to a more detailed document explaining your position or issue for further reading.

The exception to this rule is if the email contains personal stories. Policymakers prefer to hear from constituents directly to get a firsthand understanding of policy impact, and these can be longer. Strategically use constituent stories in your emails to make your issues more personal and relevant to legislators. Personal emails received 7 times more clicks than newsletter-style emails.