Why email the people whose questions were chosen for a voting round? It’s a great way to signal that you view your question-askers as partners and collaborators. When you’re collaborating with someone, good communication is key. So be sure to explain the process, how long the voting round will last, and what will happen once you pick a winner.

Emailing your voting round contestants isn’t just courteous and collaborative. It also gets them excited, oftentimes inspiring them to spread the voting round to their networks (social networks and otherwise) which in turn becomes awesome marketing for your organization! We’ve seen this happen a lot. It’s great.

When folks submit a question through Hearken, they're required to leave an email address as well. So it's easy to shoot them an email when you add their question to a voting round. We recommend letting them know their questions were chosen right as you make their voting round live, so the moment they open their email from you they can translate that excitement into spreading the word and getting their friends to vote.

Click on voting rounds in your EMS and select your voting round. Scroll down to the questions section and click the email question askers button. 

It will automatically open your email client and put the question askers' emails in the "to" field. (You may want to put the email addresses in the BCC field so the question askers can't see each other's emails.) You can also get the email addresses if you click on the question, and scroll down to the question asker details section.

In your email, let them know what to expect (where they can vote, how long the voting round will last, what will happen if they win or lose) and encourage them to spread the word! Make sure you give them your organization's Twitter handle or link to the Facebook page so they can tag you in however they decide to spread the news. You can even craft a Tweet for them to cut and paste.

Note: If you have questions about their question and need to get clarity about what they were asking before putting it into a voting round, reach out to them before making the round live to have that conversation and clarification. Be careful to frame the conversation appropriately in case after your conversation with them, you're not as psyched about putting their question up for a vote. You can say something like "We wanted to get some more background information about your question so we can better understand what information you're looking for."  

Here's an email template you can crib for your own use.

Dear [NAME], I’m writing with some good news and to ask for a bit more information. Good news first: the question you submitted to [NAME OF ORGANIZATION OR PROJECT] was chosen by our staff for a voting round! To jog your memory, you asked [QUESTION]. What does this mean?This means the public will have [X AMOUNT OF TIME] to vote on which question they’d most like [YOUR NEWS ORG] to investigate, and we’ll answer the winning question. Important: You can vote, and we encourage you to spread the word to your friends, family and social networks to vote, too! Here’s where you can vote and send others to vote, too: [LINK TO PLACE(s) WHERE VOTING EMBED IS POSTED] We’ll be back in touch in [X AMOUNT OF TIME] to let you know how the voting went. If you win, we’d love to reach out and learn more about you and what prompted the question to include in our final story. Here comes the more information part: please reply to this email with the best phone number(s) to reach you during the workweek. We’ll give you a call if your question wins.Meantime, you can keep up with [YOUR NEWS ORG OR PROJECT] via Facebook [LINK] and Twitter [LINK] [add other properties if you have them]. If you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to email us back. Thanks again for submitting your question, and best of luck on the vote! Best, [NAME OF REAL PERSON SENDING EMAIL] [NAME OF ORGANIZATION / CONTACT INFO] 

It's valuable for engagement to alert your audience of the outcome of the voting round. This can be broken up in different parts: 

This is the fun part! Once there's a clear winner of the voting round, reach out to the winning question asker and begin reporting! Learn how to work with your question asker.

It's just as valuable for engagement to keep in touch with the question askers who didn’t win a voting round as the one who did. Emailing to let them know the voting results is a great way to keep your participants engaged and show them that you continue to value their input and collaboration. Below, here’s an email template you can adapt for your organization or series for inspiration!

Dear [NAME],Thank you so much for submitting your question to [YOUR NEWS ORG OR PROJECT]!Your question came in [x] place with [x%] of the votes! The question that won was [X] [IF STORY ALREADY IS PUBLISHED, LINK TO IT]All hope is not lost though! We may still answer your question down the line or put it up for a vote again.[IF BEFORE QUESTION IS PUBLISHED] Now, we’ll begin investigating the winning question, and we’ll post the answer to [YOUR WEBSITE].Please submit your other burning questions! [LINK TO LANDING PAGE]Thanks so much for participating!Best,[NAME OF REAL PERSON SENDING EMAIL][NAME OF ORGANIZATION / CONTACT INFO]

One great thing about voting rounds is that you already know there's an audience waiting for this information. You can choose to make a public announcement of the voting round outcome on your website, on social media, in a newsletter, or alerting voters only. 

Voters are able to leave their email address if they'd like to be alerted if their chosen question gets answered. To let them know, you'll need to export the voter emails. We also think it's nice to email all voters to let them know the outcome of a round.  Learn how to export emails.

This can happen. A question-asker may have purposefully or accidentally given contact information that's incorrect, or they're on vacation in Barbados for two months and not checking mail. We recommend you make best efforts to get in touch, whether that's Googling to try to find another way to contact him / her or waiting a day or two and trying again if you get no response. However, you don't need to wait for a question-asker to respond before launching a voting round. 

If their question wins, reach out again and see if you can get in touch.