techPresident - Grading the Campaign's Email Campaigns - Comments

Interesting, I've already

der74hva3 — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:07:53 -0400

Interesting, I've already seen this in some forum. If I find the link, i'll put it here.

Derek Hval

der74hva3 — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:22:21 -0500

Derek Hval

Email Standards Project

Luigi Montanez — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:21:23 -0500

Back to the technical side of things, the Email Standards Project has just launched, which is an effort to get the same HTML email rendered consistently across all the major email clients. One would think that simply following up-to-date (X)HTML and CSS specs would get the job done, but sadly many email client vendors choose to ignore those, with Outlook 2007 being the most egregious case (but Apple's .Mac webmail and Gmail aren't too hot either).

Email Standards Project

Ron Paul's e-mail work

scottfrost — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 18:50:13 -0500

While Ron Paul's e-mail quality came in with a mediocre rating of three, there is no doubt that the Paul campaign's e-mails are quite effective. Because the Paul campaign is so refreshingly transparent with its fundraising reporting, we can see that fundraising spikes dramatically on days when Ron Paul e-mails are sent out. Maybe you have given them some hints for improvement here, but all it took for the Ron Paul campaign to raise more money than Mike Huckabee raised with the November 20th Huckabee money bomb that had been planned for weeks, was to send out a very simple e-mail asking for donations. I'm not sure it makes sense to spend more time or energy than is necessary to get the response that you desire.

Zephyr makes some good points, but if the recipients of the e-mail already know about the candidate and are already enthusiastic, like Ron Paul's supporters clearly are, I'm not sure that it takes much to get them to respond. A simple text e-mail saying nothing more than "Please send money now" would probably be enough to cause Ron Paul's fundraising to spike dramatically.

Correction

bhschenker — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 15:15:52 -0500

Very interesting article and thanks for the comparison. There’s a small correction to be made to the spreadsheet. The chart says Dodd only send emails as HTML. We send emails both as HTML and Plain Text here at Dodd for President.

Brett Schenker
Full Disclosure: I proudly work for Chris Dodd for President

You're right on

Michael Whitney — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 19:03:28 -0500

I at first resisted "grading," but felt there was too much information to handle without some sort of summation - hence the grading. You're right, it's not the best way to frame this, particularly since there isn't a right way or a wrong way for some of these criteria. But most of this is from a technical standpoint, anyway.

I was really pretty shocked at the complete and utter lack of substance in the campaign emails. The campaigns seem to exist in an insular universe where their candidate is Numero Uno, and by the way, can you give $25, $50, or even $2300?

Your matrix would be fascinating to see, assuming that at least a couple of the campaigns would make the cut, so to speak. Unfortunately, I'd be hard pressed to say any candidate definitely passes your test.

Michael, This is a

Zephyr Teachout — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 17:52:18 -0500

Michael,

This is a fascinating chart and analysis, thank you.

I do, however, resist the overall framework of "grading." When you grade something, you indicate what is important; an A is good, a D is bad. I think what you have done is incredibly useful for citizens trying to understand what campaigns are doing to engage us. But when we--citizens--grade, we should grade on what we hope for from politicians (this is something I'm struggling with in a post below). i would really love to see emails graded on these terms:

Does it (email) inform me of the candidates positions on current events?
Does it compare the candidate to other candidates?
When it asks questions, is there a means of meaningful response?
Does it provide important biographical information?
Does it provide important information about the candidates record?
Is the information accurate?
Does the rhetoric move me?
Does the email have artistic flair or interesting content?

These are mini-media machines, and I do not expect them to be non-partisan; however, like other media, I expect them to be interesting, funny, and above all informative. If not, they all get an F from me...

Grading the Campaign's Email Campaigns

Michael Whitney — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:37:56 -0500

Email messages are the hallmark of online communications. Forgetting about Facebook applications and video mashups, email is the one tried and true avenue to communicate with constituents or customers. But if your inbox is as cluttered as mine, you know that it can take a lot to open an email from a presidential candidate who in all likelihood is asking you for money. So how close attention do the campaigns pay to making it easy to read their emails? TechPresident has already extensively covered the campaigns' use of email, from Hillary's handwritten notes to stripped-down, BlackBerry-style messages from the candidates. I took a closer look at the mechanics of each campaign's email program and graded their performance based on accepted standards of email marketing. See who makes the grade after the jump.