Our development team has rolled out frequent updates to the CRM platform this year based on client feedback, and you can keep track of these updates in the “What We’ve Been Doing” sidebar of eManager. We’ve rolled out another very exciting update to all CRM accounts. Now, when logging in any kind of correspondence (phone call, email, letter, walk-in meeting) you will be able to upload attachments. This will be particularly useful for:

1. Paper letters/postcards
2. Constituent faxes
3. Letter enclosures

Rather than having to keep track of those paper records or manually entering in the content of a letter, you can scan them, attach them, and recycle! This will save you time and energy when you need to log anything in and also prevents you from having to pass around pieces of paper along with mail assignments. Now your office can spend less time logging in mail and more time responding. Try it out the next time you log a piece of correspondence–your interns will thank you!

If you have feedback for our platform, hop into our chat room and let us know!  As a result of the feedback we’ve received, we have made a number of updates to the platform including last week’s addition of the contact form auto-response email message.

He recently blogged about a class he’d like to teach:

It would be a writing course. Every assignment would be delivered in five versions: A three page version, a one page version, a three paragraph version, a one paragraph version, and a one sentence version.

This aligns closely with a topic I’ve been discussing with many clients lately: how to best respond to constituent inquiries across different mediums. Many of our clients are now experimenting with email versions of form responses that are significantly different from their long-form letter bretheren. Based on typical email habits, these responses are much shorter and to the point than a typical legislative letter.

Of course, with greater adoption of social media, the question is now how to revise these responses to as few as 140 characters!

How does your office handle these challenges? What systems have you put in place for official responses on Facebook and Twitter? What do you think about having multiple versions of your form responses: three page, one page, three paragraph, one paragraph and one sentence?

We wanted to find out. So, together with Adfero Group and some of our clients on the Hill, we began compiling a monthly survey of the top issues Congress hears about from citizens.

We call it the Congressional Conversation Index (CCI). We’re eager to see how these issues change over time, and we think it will be an interesting gauge of citizen interest – both for the public and for Congress.

Want to see what the top issues are so far? Check out the press release, here.

A big thanks to the Members of Congress who have agreed to participate. We’d love to get more offices involved, so please contact us if you’d like to contribute to this ongoing project.

We are stuck in a paradigm where individual constituents submit an online form to their congressmen detailing their concerns, and then wait for an e-mail response that is likely prepared by a congressional staffer.

The world has moved forward beyond this model, and so should Congress.

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Here’s an except about fan mail that got me thinking:

Somehow, Armstrong has managed to work into his schedule enough downtime to answer thousands of letters from kids with cancer and leukemia, in a personal, non-form-letter way. “These days I’ve been doing these video messages,” Armstrong told me. “I’ll sit there with a little camera and record a minute-long video and just give a shout-out to them and e-mail it. They love it. They keep it forever, show it to their family and friends.”

I know of some clients who have implemented a “Mail Bag” feature on their web site and others include videos on their legislative issue pages, but if someone is doing video responses to constituent mail, please let me know.

Now, it certainly isn’t practical for each and every message, but it would be a lot more interesting than a form letter.

The report examines the trend of increased constituent email to Hill offices, the role of advocacy campaigns and the systems and procedures in place to manage it all in your offices. The report does an excellent job of identifying the “stakeholders” involved, namely you in Congressional offices, your constituents, issue advocacy organizations, vendors that provide software for advocacy and vendors the provide software for constituent mail management.

The reality of the situation is that staffers have a very hard time keeping up with all the mail coming in…and that’s not going to change anytime soon. The CMF recently extended their public comment period until July 28th, so take a moment today or next week to:

1. Download and read the report (PDF)
2. Take the CMF Survey to register your feedback

Kudos to the dedicated team at the CMF who have been the leaders for years in examining these issues, bringing the relevant parties together and moderating the discussion.