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Frequently Asked Questions
If you need help at any time, email [email protected].
- Who are you?
- What AI tools does BetterLetterGetter.com use?
- Doesn't this just make "fake" letters?
- What do I need to get started?
- Who can use BetterLetterGetter.com?
- We're a non-profit organization, can we get a discount?
- Do you do anything yourselves with the data provided by users who write letters?
- How does your pricing work?
- Can I get a free trial?
- Do you actually e-deliver the letters that are submitted?
- How do your integrations work?
- What information do I get about the people who submit letters?
- What happens after someone submits a letter? What do they see next?
- What analytics do you provide?
- I have concerns or a suggestion, how can I be in touch with you?
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Who are you?
Nice to meet you! We're The Third Bear. Mostly we're consultants who build, customize, and integrate software for social benefit organizations and small businesses, but we've built and bootstrapped BetterLetterGetter.com because we truly believe in it and look forward to seeing what organizations do with the tools.
Learn more on the about page.
What AI tools does BetterLetterGetter.com use?
We currently use AI21 Labs to generate content. You can view more about them here: AI21.com
Doesn't this just make "fake" letters?
No, the letters are very real. The tools guide the user through answering conversational prompts and then the AI writing assistant generates a draft letter based on their responses and the information provided by the host organization. The user then can adjust the tone and edit + rewrite everything before submitting their letter.
We believe this is a major step forward from current standard practice.
Standard letter-writing advocacy tools give the user a screen full of information and context about pending legislation or a topic in the news followed by a blank text field to stare at or, at best, a couple of canned letters to edit and submit – leading to tons of identical letters (even down to the [INSERT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE'S FIRST NAME HERE]) that don't convey the authentic passion and personal impacts that these issues have on their lives.
Many people have powerful stories to tell, but they don't feel confident about writing formal letters to important decisionmakers or public comments.
We believe that we can lower barriers to entry for advocacy with time-saving innovative technology like generative AI combined with a user experience that centers the letter-writer as an advocate and focuses on how an issue affects them and their community.
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What do I need to get started?
Register your account, confirm your email address, and complete the section that collects your organization's details. When you are ready to build a letter action, BetterLetterGetter.com will walk you through the content pieces you need to provide to complete the setup process.
Remember – the more concrete you are in the content you provide, the better framing and support you'll provide for your letter writers.
Who can use BetterLetterGetter.com?
BetterLetterGetter.com is a tool for progressive action. We believe in the power of storytelling as a way of organizing for and achieving a more just society. We reserve the right to deny service to any group entirely at our discretion.
If you have questions about your use case, please contact us at [email protected].
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We're a non-profit organization, can we get a discount?
BetterLetterGetter was actually built for social benefit organizations, and our pricing model is designed accordingly.
As a values-driven small business, we've aimed to keep prices as low as we can.
If you're a big lobbying firm or professional association, please reach out – we would love to charge you more!
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Do you do anything yourselves with the data provided by users who write letters?
No! We store and make form field submissions available to the person/organization hosting the letter, but we don't share or sell data with others and are not using user submissions to build our own mailing list.
We would only ever contact users for site-related reasons.
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How does your pricing work?
When you are ready to launch your letter action, you'll pay a flat fee for your letter to be live and collecting data. Your letter action will be live for 45 days from the date of purchase.
You can extend your purchase at any time — when your letter action's time runs out you can just renew it for another 45 days. Or if you know upfront that you'll need to run a longer campaign, you can just make extra initial purchases to add another 45 days (or more) on to the end.
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Can I get a free trial?
Yes, definitely! You can sign up for free and set up as many letters as you want, all without paying or entering any credit card information.
After you have set up a letter, we provide a "test mode" where you can experience exactly what your members will see, so that you can make sure you are satisfied with the conversational flow and the AI-generated drafts. You can then make adjustments as needed and re-test until you are ready to launch your letter action.
To prevent abuse of this feature, "test mode" letters use special URLS which are only valid for one hour before expiring, at which point they can be regenerated at a different URL if necessary. Feel free to share those temporary URL with your coworkers, though.
You will only be prompted to pay when you are ready to launch your letter action publicly.
Do you actually e-deliver the letters that are submitted?
You can download a spreadsheet at any time with all of your submissions to date, which will include the full contents of every letter written as well as the letter-writer's personal details like name, contact information, and location. You can then review those submissions and pass them on to your letter's target however you like, and/or import them into your primary CRM or advocacy toolkit.
At this time we do not have any automatic delivery features built in, but we do offer integrations (currently in beta) with advocacy tools for letter delivery.
How do your integrations work?
We currently integrate with ActionKit and Action Network. These integrations are in beta — contact us if you are interested in enabling them for your letter actions. When enabled, your submitted letters will land directly in your ActionKit or Action Network account, just as if people had taken an action on that platform. From within your ActionKit or Action Network account you can then configure automatic delivery using that platform's tools for emailing or faxing targets, using Communicating With Congress, printing PDFs for in-person delivery, and so on.
You can try out demos of our integrations here:
Next, we'll begin to explore integration possibilities with EveryAction, Quorum, and New/Mode. If there is another integration that would be useful for you, get in touch!
What information do I get about the people who submit letters?
You control what form fields you want users to fill in when submitting their completed letters.
By default your forms will ask users for a (required) first name, email address, and ZIP/postal code, as well as an (optional) last name and phone number.
You can change this at any time to require more of those fields, or to ask for less information if you don't need it. You can also optionally collect structured, geocoded full street addresses, if you are running a letter action that needs more detail about users' locations in order to get to the right target (or if you just want that info anyway).
You can also toggle "opt in" checkboxes with your own fully customizable language to collect email subscription consent and/or SMS consent for proof of opt in, if your organization needs that in order to contact your letter-writers or import them into a CRM.
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What happens after someone submits a letter? What do they see next?
After a letter has been submitted, the letter-writer will see a brief thank-you message and will then (optionally) be automatically redirected to an external URL of your choice. We encourage you to redirect your letter-writers to a donate page or share page that you've set up on your website or in your primary advocacy toolkit.
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What analytics do you provide?
At any time, you can view the total number of page views and submissions that your letter action has received.
We also provide funnel graphs to visualize conversion rates and user dropoff, which include finer-grained details to track the full user journey, including how many questions a user answered and whether they generated a draft letter, in addition to initial "page view" and final "letter submitted" stages. You can use this data to assess whether your campaign goals will benefit from shorter or longer conversations.
You can also send traffic to your letter actions with query string parameters, which will be tracked from page view through to conversion. We support all standard UTM parameters as well as the "source" and "refcode" conventions that are commonly used in advocacy toolkits.
All spreadsheet exports provide those UTM/source/refcode parameters for easy imports, analysis, and joint actions. And those parameters, if present, will be passed through to your destination redirect so that you can collate your traffic and submissions with your after-action donations, shares, & followup asks and track end-to-end performance on the marketing campaigns that you point at your letter actions.
I have concerns or a suggestion, how can I be in touch with you?
Email us anytime at [email protected]; we'd love to hear from you.
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