techPresident - John McCain Abuses Email - Comments

No, Images Are Consistently Blocked

Michael Whitney — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 08:32:56 -0500

Spaminess is not a factor in blocking images. For many email programs, including Gmail, Live Mail, Outlook, and AOL, the default is to not display images. 30% of people don't even realize there's supposed to be an image there.

http://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/archives/2007/02/current_conditions_...

Additionally, in a study by M&R Strategic Services, images have no effect on the performance of an email campagn - they might as well not be there.

http://mrss.com/news/Do_Images_Help_Or_Hurt.pdf

Freedomfighter, none of the factors you described actually affect image effectiveness or email deliverability.

So, the McCain campaign is sloppy and ignorant about how to run an effective email campaign. They do not have it together and don't understand how to engage people online.

People are more email saavy then you think......

Freedomfighter — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:03:43 -0500

Joshua,
I understand what your talking about but email programs have changed drastically and people are more saavy about email than other computer programming.

Most image blocking only happens if the email is determined to be spam. Spam settings usually judge an email by length, text used, and attachments used. By including a lot of text, the email is far less likely to be seen as spam and arrive in the inbox where the graphic would display.

In addition, I think the Democrats are going to have a hard time beating McCain because he is well known due to vast media coverage which means he really does not need a lot of money to win.

Consider the latest controversy, does it help or hurt? Those who remember the Monica scandal will be bored by it. Republicans, even the conservatives, will come to McCain's defense. How can you beat that with money or emails?

30% don't see images

Michael Whitney — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:53:02 -0500

At the very least, a third of everyone who opens an email won't even know there's an image, because that's the default for their email program.

Email is about text. The text should clearly make the point.

John McCain Abuses Email

Joshua Levy — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:58:06 -0500

Remember the Email Wars of 2007, when Chris Dodd would send an email designed to look like it was quickly tapped out on a BlackBerry, and Barack Obama would do the same (plagiarist!) two days later? Then Bill Richardson would forward a message from his staffer as if he was sending pictures of cats around the office; Obama would return fire by having one of his supporters send us an email in his stead; and Dodd remained the king by sending yet more stripped-down emails featuring impressive brevity and lack of HTML formatting. Those were the days.