• by Jess Nelson , January 7, 2016

AOL email subscribers represent an overabundance of donating power in the 2016 presidential election, according to new data from marketing technology company Fluent. 

Although AOL email users have an average market share of less than 5% on a presidential candidate’s email list, AOL.com email accounts represent over 10% of total unique donations and over 20% of all dollars donated.

In contrast, Gmail, which represents over 50% of an average presidential email list, only generates 36% of total unique donations and 13% of all dollars donated.

Yahoo performs slightly better for political marketers, and represents a quarter of a candidate’s email list, 20% of total unique donations and 15% of all dollars donated.

The data was derived from two months of performance marketing data of new email list subscribers generated by Fluent on behalf of multiple Presidential campaigns from both parties.

So does this mean AOL users respond better to email marketing?

It's far more likely that AOL email users are members of an older generation and more likely to be politically active, both in terms of campaign participation and donations.

A 2013 study by MailChimp placed the median age of AOL.com email users at 43, the second-highest age group of any ISP address. A 2011 Hunch study placed 72% of Gmail users under the age of 34, while only 42% of AOL users were in the same age classification.

Over 70% of email-driven donations come from Americans ages 50 or older, according to Fluent’s study.

“Older people are proportionately out-donating younger people from a scale perspective, but political campaigns still need more than just what the older population is bringing,” says Jordan Cohen, chief marketing officer at Fluent.

Citing the success of micro-donations, Cohen does not recommend that marketers simply target AOL email users. He does admit, however, that Fluent pays close attention to AOL addresses and are more likely to send them politically charged advertisements.

“As soon as we see AOL we know it’ll be gold to the campaigns,” says Cohen. 

It seems that email marketing might be something that voters in both parties actually agree on, since Democrats and Republicans have similar levels of interest in email updates from current presidential candidates.

Democrats are slightly more active, with 23.6% of respondents admitting they had signed up to receive email updates from a presidential candidate, while 19.8% of Republicans said the same.

President Obama’s 2012 campaign used email marketing with great success and generated an estimated $500 million in donations.