The "Email Someone" tool is a custom addition to the Social Democrat theme. It allows site visitors to send an email that's been customized by your campaign to someone of your choosing. You also are able to capture those users who have sent an email.
To set this custom page up, you first need a Petition page type. Once you have created one / chosen an already existing one, go into the "Templates" section of the page, and delete everything in the code editor. Replace with:
{% include "email_rep" %}
Press Save.
That's it for coding. Now, onto customizing your page:
Under the Page's Settings, you can customize the page as you wish, just note that the Headline will become the subject of the email.
Under the Page's Petition Settings, in the Basics section, the "What to call a signature?*" field should contain the email of the person you want emails to be sent to. This will be the "To" field in the email. The rest of the settings will function as the normal petition page and you should customize them for database management and user-flow purposes.
Under the Page's Petition Settings, the Intro will be the first thing users read. Here's your opportunity to encourage your users to send the email!
The Content will be the body of the email. Please note that this content should only be paragraphs and basic punctuation (so, no bullet lists or special characters like "em" dashes). It should also be as short as possible. The reason for is three-fold:
1) Because we are using the "mailto" web tool, only plain text can be sent by email clients (like Gmail, Outlook and Apple's Mail). Each of these email clients handle the information from a mailto link differently. On some, everything will show up fine, while other don't recognize paragraphs. We have no way of controlling which email client opens up the email once "Send Email" is clicked; this is set by the individual who owns the device! So, please use simple, short text. You can put in links (like https://www.google.com) though!
2) For email campaigns, it's always a good idea to send short emails that get your message across. Readers don't have the time to read through long emails, and there's a greater chance they'll lose interest the longer the email is.
3) You should encourage your users who are sending these email to customize them! Emails, especially those sent to government officials, will more likely be read if they are actually written by a concerned citizen, rather than a generic message from a digital campaign.