Commentary

The Real Presidential Debate: What's Up With Candidates' Email Campaigns?

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.

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  • 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 goto 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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