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.

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.

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