Emailing Volunteers

Do you know if your email message is being read by your volunteers? You subject line or return email address could be the problem. Before you send that email to your volunteers, make sure you check the words that you're using in your subject line, and make sure to use a return email address that the volunteer will recognize.

A recent Email Sender and Provider Coalition (ESPC) study showed that 80 percent of respondents decide whether to click on the "Report Spam" or "Junk" button without opening the actual message, and that 73 percent based that decision on the "From" name while 69 percent based the decision on the subject line.

You should aim for 35 characters in your subject line (and spaces do count as characters), and anything over 55 characters will get cut off by your volunteer's email system.

You would hate for your message, or you as a sender to be labeled as "spam" so take a few seconds to check the return email address and subject line before you hit "send".