• by David Goetzl  @dgoetzl, December 8, 2008

The head of the Barack Obama campaign's email marketing efforts, Stephen Geer, says the single most lucrative day in fundraising in American politics was the day after Gov. Sarah Palin's vice presidential acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

“She made a huge tactical mistake by going on the attack against community organizers,” Geer said.

Not only had Obama been an organizer early in his career, but his campaign had largely been built around the concept that volunteers should sign up and become community organizers themselves. So in a morning-after fundraising-appeal email, the Obama campaign sought to frame Palin's disdain for community organizers as an attack on each and every Obama volunteer.

“It played directly into a narrative that we’d spent more than a year building with our email list,” Geer said of Palin's attack, which was "that regular people were community organizers and they had a stake in the campaign."

The email seeking donations met with a mass response.

Geer said he could not release the exact amount raised on that day, but assured that it was not small change. For the campaign overall, Obama raised $500 million online.