Sending email to strangers can be a tricky job. What are the odds they’d open an email from someone they don’t even know, let alone read it?
This past Thanksgiving, the Freedom Foundation beat those odds by launching its most successful email campaign to date in the state of New York. In the days leading up to the holiday, tens of thousands of public employees from various unions received a special email with the subject line, “Thanksgiving Special for Union Employees!”
From that one email alone, we received an unprecedented number of questions, comments, concerns, outrage and, most importantly, opt-outs.
We’ve been working around the clock to introduce ourselves to thousands of New Yorkers over the past two months. So many of those public employees who had received our Thanksgiving message had already heard from us at least once, making it even more impressive to see this one email motivate hundreds of members of the Public Employees Federation (PEF) in particular to respond to us on such an unprecedented level.
How unprecedented? In fact, the Thanksgiving email resulted in so many PEF members opting out that the Freedom Foundation ended up setting a new record for the most opt-outs in a single day in New York, obliterating the previous high and getting more responses in a day than the Empire State previously had previously received in any given month.
Not only did our message prompt a record number of government workers to end their abusive relationship with PEF, it also inspired the defectors to share their horror stories about the union.
Time and again, former PEF members from across the state told us they opted out because the union didn’t do enough to earn their dues.
Moreover, a massive number of PEF members responded with questions about their membership status, proving once again that public employees in New York are hungry to learn about their First Amendment rights, and are even more excited to exercise those rights when they learn that they can.
The Thanksgiving email campaign definitely ruffled some feathers, contributing to a new monthly record for opt outs and making New York the fourth highest producer of opt outs of any state in the country. And the best part? We’re just getting started.
The holiday season is here, and Christmas cheer will be spread across New York on a level never before seen in the Excelsior State as the Freedom Foundation continues its holiday themed outreach to public employees.
