Obama Campaign Needs New E-Mail Strategy
Mar 11th, 2007 by Greg Bulmash
Interested in the Obama presidential campaign I signed up for a membership on the web site. But when I started getting e-mails from them, I was shocked at how lacking in net-savvy their communications team is.
My e-mail client shows the e-mail address of the sender only when there's no name associated with it. So when I got an e-mail with the subject of "Cynicism" and the sender "David Plouffe", I was this close to marking it as spam. It looked, from the outside, like if I opened it up, I'd just be told about some amazing new penny stock that was about to explode.
But since it had cleared my spam filters, I decided to take a quick look just to make sure. Imagine my surprise when I found that it was from the Obama campaign and was about combatting cynicism.
I immediately sent off a note to the campaign's feedback address saying that Mr. Plouffe needed to take his name off the e-mails and either have them be from info@barackobama.com or from a name like "Obama Campaign 2008," not from an individual staffer. Second, they needed to change the subject line to something like "Obama 2008: Combatting Cynicism" rather than using the single word. This would help their mails look less like spam and more like official communications from the campaign. This would lower the number of people who deleted them unread or reported them as spam, and increase their "open rate" (the percentage of recipients actually opening the mail).
Well, I got a form autoresponse saying that they appreciated my e-mail, but due to the volume of mail, they couldn't answer each mail individually, etc...
A week later, another e-mail with a generic subject line arrived in my mailbox from David Plouffe. Once again, I almost deleted it, and had I not remembered Plouffe's name from the first time, I would have.
It's important in this day and age that presidential candidates have people running their online communications who "get it". They're not only good letter writers, but they understand the economics of e-mail, grasping such terms as "deliverability" and "open rates". And when you're the "youth" candidate like Obama, this is doubly important, since more of your constituency is online and spam-wary.
Furthermore, they have to "get" branding. Sending out e-mails from "David Plouffe" instead of from the "Obama Campaign" is neither leveraging or reinforcing the Obama brand. It's branding David Plouffe, which only benefits Mr. Plouffe. So when I see that, I find it additionally irritating, because they're throwing away multiple opportunities for better branding and better communication for the candidate.
It's apparent that David Plouffe doesn't "get it" and Obama needs to get him educated or get him replaced with someone who does.
Like Mr. Obama, my son is of mixed race, and while my primary reasons for supporting Mr. Obama are his dynamism and ideas, it doesn't hurt that President Obama would be a great proof of the American Dream for my son, a proof that anything's possible for any child, not just white ones with Christian daddies.
So when I see the campaign doing stupid things, I'm going to call them on it... because I want them to get better. Isn't that why we criticize our government in the first place?
I must respecfully disagree that the Obama campaign would be best served by removing David Pouffle's name from the message. I do agree that a better subject, like 'Obama Campaign Newsletter: Combatting Cynicism" would help.
All too often, campaigns and politicians seem like machines, running along without concern for individual humans. By attaching a human name, the Obama campaign increases the likelihood of us believing there is a real human at the other end. Obviously, the feedback/reply address should go to the campaign at large, or some fluff address like 'campaign-feedback@obama.org', but having a real human sign a letter increases the chance that it will be believed.
Scott
"I must respecfully disagree that the Obama campaign would be best served by removing David Pouffle’s name from the message. "
Perhaps I misphrased myself. My concern for the open rate was not about him signing the e-mail, but having his name show up as the sender in my e-mail program, especially when I had no idea who he is. His name can be in the text, but Obama's name should be in the headers. It just reinforces the legitimacy of the mail.
Still, while having him sign it does add a personal touch, is that more or less powerful than Obama signing it? Let's face it. If Plouffe wrote it in Obama's voice and had Obama sign it, who would know that it wasn't Obama's?
It would be interesting to take two similar groups, give them the same letter, but sign Plouffe to it for one group and Obama to it for another, and see which group has the more positive response.
Greg
Have you tried to call his campaign to try and register your concern with a real human? I think he has a great chance at the nomination, if he gets the right people to help him.
Chuck
I haven't tried to call yet, but this is another aspect of "getting it" that they need to pay attention to. Via Google, you can set up an alert for Google to e-mail you every time they spot Obama's name in a blog. Then a staffer can look at it and either answer it or at least be aware of it.
Interestingly enough, RentACoder.com does this. If you look at my post "How NOT To Get Hired", the first comment, coming just a few hours later, is from a RentACoder rep. An older post where I wrote about RentACoder... he was posting a response as well within a day or two.
I'd like to see if Obama has people monitoring the "blogosphere" like that. It's not difficult in terms of technology, though it does require some man hours to be invested. If I don't have some sort of comment from the campaign in the comments within a week, I will call or find some other way of starting a meaningful dialogue.