Email

Although it has been around for decades now and is perhaps considered to be not as trendy as other means of communication, email is still an important from of communication within clubs. It is used:

• to send out news and details of social events, often as an email attachment.
• to manage team selection.
• for sending bulk emails to members, supporters and sponsors. Services such as MailChimp can be used to manage this. Cricket Australia also provides an email service via MyCricket that can also handle bulk emails and also send notices such as weather notifications. They also have an SMS option that can be managed online.
• Some clubs set up email forms on their 'Contact Us' page for potential new members to fill in, or to receive general enquiries. When a user clicks the 'submit' button, an email is sent to a club representative.

However, clubs can also face some problems with the use of email:

• they don't use it because they feel that they getter a better response on other platforms, such as on social media.
• they are not convinced that their list of email addresses is up to date.

Tips for email use

• considering having generic email addresses, such as secretary@clubname.org rather than advertising individual's email addresses. These should be probably be set up to be forwarded to the individual's email address. This will mean that the generic email address does not have to be separately monitored. Additionally, it is easy to pass on the address to someone else when a club volunteer leaves a role or goes on holiday.
• make sure that emails are being monitored regularly and responded to in a timely manner. It may be difficult and time consuming to identify 'real' emails amongst spam, but there is little point in having an email address if it is not going to be monitored.