Donald Trump’s subscriber complaint rate nearly tripled overnight after the release of lewd audiotapes, according to new research from Return Path.
The email and data solutions provider analyzed emails from the company’s Consumer Network of over 2.5 million consumers to evaluate the affect of recent Trump revelations on his
campaign’s email marketing metrics.
Return Path provides an interactive online tool, Email for
President, which tracks and displays key insights from both Trump and Hillary Clinton’s email marketing campaigns.
Trump’s subscriber complaint rate -- emails marked as spam --
increased from 1.75% on Friday to 4.3% on Saturday after the release of the audiotapes.
The Republican nominee’s complaint rate remained high over the next week, hitting 3.4% on the day
of the second debate and 3.8% on Tuesday, October 11.
“The tape scandal could be causing the increase in complaints as people use the ‘report spam’ button to
unsubscribe from Trump’s emails,” says Tom Sather, senior director of research at Return Path. “Other factors that could have caused this include subscribers receiving more email and
experiencing email fatigue, or a new list injection that wasn’t opted in.”
Trump has seen significant leaps in his email subscriber list, which Sather says could point to
Trump’s campaign using list rental or list purchase services to grow its email list. Trump’s email list has grown 147% since August and jumped up 60% overnight during the last week of
September, according to Return Path’s analysis.
“White list rental or purchases could be the culprit for the high complaint rates, Trump’s complaint rate was under 1% until
the tape scandal and debate,” says Sather. He notes that Clinton’s email marketing saw no spam complaints during this period.
Since its peak at the end of September,
Trump’s email list has shrunk 8% as a possible result of subscribers marking his emails as spam and unsubscribing.
Conversely, Clinton has maintained a relatively stable list size,
suggesting that she is not acquiring new subscribers from the Trump scandal and her recent debate performances. She has maintained a much higher email engagement rate among overlapping audiences,
however, suggesting that she may have the upper hand among undecided voters.
Some 6% of email subscribers subscribe to both candidate’s email marketing campaigns, but for that
overlapping audience Clinton has an open rate 44% higher than Trump.
Clinton also maintains a slight lead in email engagement overall, with an average open rate of 17% compared to
Trump’s 16%.