The "official" presidential debates may have pundits arguing until November about the winner; however, a second debate has been raging for months. This debate is over the correct way to use email communications in a political campaign Both parties have embraced email as a communication strategy, but it seems they are abysmally poor at executing based on today's best practices. Neither presidential candidate has effectively mastered email communication; in some cases, they are using it illegally.
Here are a few observations from the political email process that provide a great checklist to review your organization's programs.
Inconsistent "from" addresses. Emails from Barack, John, Joe and Sarah are easily identifiable in a busy inbox. However, when messages show up from Jonie T. (McCain's campaign) and Jeremy B. (Obama's campaign), names I don't recognize, they are easily overlooked. Candidates' names are their brand. Ensuring consistent recognizable names in the "from address" will have a dramatic impact on open rates and whether the message gets read.
Targeting. Candidates are doing little beyond their initial sign-up page to gather additional data to target their message. Their approach is to send a broadcast message to their entire list, even if the message is targeted at a small group. I recently received an email from the Obama campaign directed to people living in the state of Ohio (I live in Illinois).
Over-mailing. Both camps consistently send multiple messages on a single day (and in the case of McCain, the same message twice in one day). Messaging does not seem to be well-controlled at the campaign level. Many organizations face this same issue. Different divisions send out messages with no organizational email communication policy in place. From each division's perspective, there is no issue; however, from the recipient's perspective, it is inbox abuse.
Do what I say, not what I do. The same politicians who brought us CAN-SPAM have decided it does not apply to them. The recent FTC ruling on the unsubscribe process is clear: an email recipient "cannot be required to pay a fee, provide information other than his or her email address and opt-out preferences, or take any steps other than sending a reply email message or visiting a single internet web page to opt-out of receiving future email from a sender."
The biggest violator of this policy is the Democratic party. To unsubscribe from their emails, you must go to a Web page that sends a specific numeric code to you via email. You must enter that email code in the browser form on the page that sends you the email with the code. Unfortunately, the code can take hours to arrive in your inbox, and if you have left the page or closed your browser, you cannot unsubscribe. This is a CAN-SPAM violation.
Not to be outdone, the McCain camp requires a reason for unsubscribing, ranging from "I'm still a McCain supporter, I just don't want to receive email" to "I'm no longer a McCain supporter."
Building a relationship. The bottom line in politics seems to be that no one really wants to build a relationship; they just want your vote. It seems to me, though, that both parties would want to use email to build and strengthen relationships, which is the medium's strongest capability. None of the candidates take advantage of the power of the welcome message after the sign-up -- even though this is a tremendous opportunity to use the initial landing page and the welcome email to strengthen their message. In fact, the Obama campaign went so far on some of the opt-in forms to take me to a secondary page for a donation that requests extensive, detailed information. Without making a donation, I was unable to leave the form, but I was opted-in even without making a contribution.
Win or lose, both campaigns have built a valuable asset in their email list. The winning candidate should take his list to the White House, and use it as an ongoing communication tool to further his agenda and help move the country in the direction he's promised. The loser might consider continuing the dialogue and strengthening the relationship for the next time around.
Will this happen? My guess is, probably not. Politics is a short-term game and if I really understood it, I'd be running for office rather than writing about email.
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You're reading my mind and preaching to the choir with your posting. I'd like to extend the message beyond the campaign to marketers in general.
To your point about building relationship, the outreach is an opportunistic grab to reach as many people within a short window without licking the stamps. If I were conducting these “waves,� I would ask a simple question on each one to build rapport as well as capture the data.
I do like the suggestions as to making calls, get involved on a local level and register to vote. Those were productive messages to me.
Whoever wins, I would like to know what they will do with all this data mining. A virtual town hall to test ideas would be useful. At least, I might believe that my voice was heard. It would be interesting to see tallies of the ideas submitted by the supporters.
Generalized to regular marketing, I am amazed at the amount of data sent out. Everyone’s an expert and I will perish if I don’t read the latest newsletter or listen to the podcast! In fact, it’s a sales pitch to by product and services.
How about a friendly reminder that new material is available at the site with a live link? As a coach, my clients encourage me to send an ezine. My content is my silent salesperson. I like people to self-select by visiting my site. They will call if interested.
My favorite feedback is if someone can use my content for a project or their ezine. I’m happy to share. All I’ve asked for is an attribution or link to my site.
Relationship is when involved parties gain from the third entity of the relationship; it’s larger than the participants.
In this instance there is a clear issue with email management. According to Email Analyst by Email Data Source the month of September saw 270 email messages come out of the Obama camp – sent from 18 different domains – and of those messages 95 came from the Obama camp specifically – equivalent to three messages per day. Conversely, the McCain camp launched 146 messages from 17 different sending domains – 90 of which came directly from the JohnMccain.com domain – again averaging nearly 3 campaigns per day. In both cases multiple messages were sent to recipients – sometimes duplicate messages – originating from different party organizations.
While the targeting (or lack thereof) tactics seem pretty similar in nature, it is the content that really seems to vary. Of the 270 Obama messages that launched, 85% of them included some reference or call to donate versus only 7% of the McCain messages.
If the CAN-SPAM Act did apply, it would likely be in violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. The Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled that Virginia's state email law was in violation of the First Amendment because it did not exclude political and religious speech.
So, while the campaigns should follow CAN-SPAM as best practices and to avoid irritating recipients, they are unlikely to be under a legal obligation to do so.