Sometimes, your Member will ask to contact all of the other MPs to inform them about campaigns, or invite them to meetings. At the time of writing, there is not a single email distribution list which will allow you to do this, and so you will need to obtain an up-to-date list of MPs.
There is a publicly-available list of MPs and their basic contact details on the UK Parliament website here: https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/freedom-of-information/information-we-already-publish/house-of-commons-publication-scheme/members-and-members-staff/parliamentary-contact-details-for-mps/ This list is updated every three months.
It is also possible to view and download up-to-date comprehensive contact details for MPs and Peers from Dods People, accessible via the House of Commons Library. You can download a complete list, or select MPs by party, by country, or by constituency regions. Please note that this is only available to those who have a parliamentary network account and is not in the free public domain. https://commonslibrary.koha-ptfs.co.uk/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=185072
There are two main ways of emailing all of the MPs:
- Blind copy the MPs into a single email (you will have to send them in two batches as there is a maximum sending limit per email)
- e-mail merge them
Blind Copy Method
If you choose to blind copy MPs into a single email, then you will not be able to personalise it to the recipient, everyone will get the same thing. Don’t ever just paste the email address into the CC field, as if anyone replies to the message, then every MP will get a copy of the reply, and this will soon become very irritating for all the others on the list.
e-mail Merge Method
If you do an e-mail merge, then you can personalise it to each Member, e.g. ‘Dear Jane’, and each email will be sent separately instead of as a batch.
To create an e-mail merge, first of all you need to download the spreadsheet with the recipient contact details in it.
Open Microsoft Word and click on the ‘Mailings’ menu option.
Click on the ‘Select Recipients’ button and choose ‘Use an existing list’.
Navigate to where you have saved the list and then select it.
You will then be able to select the merge fields. The one you are most likely to need is the salutation, and so you type ‘Dear ‘ at the top of your Word doc and then click the ‘Insert Merge Fields’ button. Choose whether you wish to address them by their first name, or by title and surname, etc. and select the relevant merge fields. Once you have done this, compose the rest of your message including, if you wish, your MP’s digital signature.
If the email is coming from your MP, then you will have to carry out this process from your MP’s account.
Top Tip: go to Outlook and put it into offline mode. Seriously, just do it; it might just save you a lot of bother later on. Go to the send/receive tab and click the ‘work offline’ button.
Once Outlook is offline, go back to your Word doc and click ‘Finish and Merge’ and choose the option to send by email. It will start merging and sending immediately – wait whilst it does it, it will take a few minutes.
Now go over to Outlook again and you will see the merged emails in the outbox. Go and have a look at a few of them and check that the merged names at the top of your emails do actually match the email address you’re sending it to. You don’t need to check every single one, just check a couple at random. If they are wrong, you can delete them all from the outbox and go back and check your spreadsheet, and do the merge again. This is why you take it offline – because if it’s wrong, then it hasn’t actually sent them out. If you don’t take it offline and you make a mistake, then it’s tough – they’ve gone, and because they are sent as separate emails, you can’t just do a message recall – unless you want to do it one at a time for 650 separate emails.
Once you are happy that they are correct, you can put Outlook back into online mode again, and they will start to send immediately.
Another Top Tip: Do not ask for delivery or read receipts for these emails, or you will regret it. It’s bad enough that you will get each MP’s automated responses without adding several hundred system-generated receipts too.
