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Creating a Contact Your Lawmakers button
Creating a Contact Your Lawmakers button

Make it easy for your community to contact elected officials on important issues.

Updated today

About the Contact Your Lawmakers button

πŸ“Œ Note: This button is only available on ActionButton Paid, Plus, or Enterprise plans. Visit the ActionButton pricing page or NationBuilder pricing page for more information.

The Contact Your Lawmakers button gives your audience the ability to send a pre-written email or tweet or find phone numbers for their lawmakers. This functionality is currently only available for audiences in the Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Animated gif of a Contact Your Rep(s) button

Setting up your button

After clicking Create New and selecting your button type (Single Action or Sequenced Actions), choose the Contact Your Lawmakers action and click Next. Learn more about creating a new button. You'll be brought to the Action Details screen where you can configure your Contact Your Lawmakers action and see a preview of your button.

Country

Country is required, and your location is selected by default. The options are the Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and United States. The country you select will determine which lawmakers can be contacted, and who will be able to use your button. People whose addresses are outside of the selected country will see a message that they're not eligible to complete the action since they're not located in your selected country.

Recipients

The Recipients field is required, and the available options are determined by the country you've selected above (e.g., if you select United Kingdom, the recipients options are UK MPs, Scotland MSPs, Wales MSs, and Northern Ireland MLAs)

These are the recipient options for each country.

Australia

Canada

United Kingdom

United States

New Zealand

  • Federal Senators

  • Federal MPs

  • State MLCs

  • State MPs or Territory MLAs

  • MPs

  • MLAs, MPPs, MNAs, and MHPs

  • MPs

  • Scottish MSPs

  • Welsh MSs

  • Northern Irish MLAs

  • Senators

  • Representatives

  • State Representatives

  • State Senators

  • Governors

  • MPs

Title and Description

The Title field is required, and once entered, will appear in the preview, as will Description. You can clickin the top right corner of these fields to add text styling and smart fields, which populate with information appropriate to the person using the button.

Email, Call, and Post on X

The checkboxes next to Email, Call, and Post on X are checked by default for most recipients. These checkboxes control the channels through which people can contact their lawmakers with your button. Unchecking them will remove the associated buttons from the preview.

Topic (only certain recipients)

Topic will appear as a dropdown menu if you select US Senators or US Representatives as your recipients. This field is required, as US Senators and Representatives use it to categorize the messages they receive.

Email Subject and Body

Email Subject only appears when Email is checked above, and is used to create a template for your audience to use when contacting their lawmakers. It is required. What you enter here as well as in Email Body will appear in the contact form preview. Your audience will be able to edit this before sending. You can clickto add smart fields, which populate with information appropriate to the person using the button. You can also leave Email Body empty if you want your audience to craft a personal message.

The Contact Form with prefilled email subject and body text.

Post on X

Post on X only appears when Post on X is checked above. The text you enter will pre-fill the Post on X field when a person clicks the button.

Once all required fields have been filled in, click Next. You can now share your button with your community!


How lawmakers receive messages

Messages sent via Contact Your Lawmakers buttons look like they are coming directly from constituents. The "from" name is set to be the constituent's name, and when a lawmaker replies to the email, the email is sent directly to the constituent.

The footer of emails to lawmakers includes the postal code of the sender so lawmakers can verify that they are actually a constituent.

πŸ“Œ Note: ActionButton maintains a delivery rate of over 95% to lawmaker inboxes, so you can be confident your supporters' messages are reaching their lawmakers.

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