Keep your signatories up to date
An update is a short message from you to everyone who signed: what has happened, and what comes next. Signatories are notified by email automatically, the update stays on the petition page for new visitors to read, and you can see how many people read it.
How to publish an update
- Open your petition and choose Publish an update in the petition menu.
- Write a title and the text. You can add images, videos and links, and a cover image for the update.
- Answer Notify the signatories of this update by email? It is set to Yes.
- Answer Allow comments? if you want signatories to be able to reply publicly.
- Choose Publish. The emails go out on their own.
If your petition has more than one language version, a Language menu appears so the update reaches the right signatories in the right language.
An assistant for the writing
The update form has the same AI help as the petition itself: "Help me write" turns your news into a clear update, "Improve with AI" refines what you wrote, and "Suggest a title" proposes a title once there is text.
Before publishing you can also choose "Analyse update with AI". It is advisory, not a gate: it points out anything that may break our community guidelines and suggests ways to make the update stronger.
Where the update appears
The latest updates are shown on the petition page itself, and all of them on the petition's own updates page. That matters for people who arrive at the petition months after it started: the updates are the proof that the campaign is alive.
If a decision-maker answers your petition, the response appears in the same list of updates, and you can add your own comment under it.
See how the update did
Each update has a Statistics link that shows how many notification messages were sent, how many were delivered, and how many signatories opened the update from the link in the email. For recent updates you also get a breakdown of where the readers came from: the email notification, the petition page, the updates tab, a search engine, social media or another website.
The same page lists the signatories we did not email and why, for example because they declined update emails or their address has bounced.
A concrete example
A petition to keep a village school open reaches 800 signatures. The author publishes an update the day the council sets the date of the vote: two paragraphs, the date, and one ask, "share this with two people before Thursday". The notification brings several hundred signatories back to the petition, and the sharing shows up the next day in the statistics as a fresh wave of signatures.
Limits worth knowing
- Notifications only reach signatories who agreed to receive email about the petition and whose address is confirmed.
- To protect the addresses of signatories who never open our mail, we skip a signatory when an unread notification was already sent to them in the last 7 days.
- Updates are checked against our community guidelines before they are published.
- Publishing an update is a right of its own, so you can let a co-manager write updates without giving them access to the signature list.
Questions and answers
Do the signatories get an email about every update?
You choose for each update. The question "Notify the signatories of this update by email?" is set to Yes by default, and you can set it to No for a small note that does not deserve an email.
Does the email contain the whole update?
No. The email tells the signatory that there is a new update and links to it. The update itself, with its images and links, is read on the petition's updates page.
Who does not get the email?
Anyone who answered no to "Email me when there is an update about this petition", anyone who signed without an email address or never confirmed it, and addresses that have bounced or reported us as spam. Signatories can also stop the notifications from a link in the email.
Can signatories reply?
Each update has an "Allow comments?" setting, set to Yes by default, so signatories can comment under it. Private messages to you arrive in the petition's inbox instead.
How often should I publish updates?
About once a week while things are moving, about once a month in a quiet phase, and immediately when something important happens.