Like you, I have a lot of email accounts which I use in different ways.

To name three, I have a work account, a personal address (davidall05 (at) gmail (dot) com), and what I consider a quasi-junk email box.

I'm not as naive about email as I once was so I build in my own obstacles and roadblocks to prevent filling my inbox with time-wasters. For example, I never sign-up for anything online (except bills) using my personal account because it's a sacred account that I want to keep for life. I bet you're the same way.

Every now and then - about once or twice a month - I check in with my junk account. It's always loaded with the same thing:

• spam emails regarding the next great medical accomplishment,

• a note (or three) explaining how I can earn at least part of $27M USD from a diamond rebel in Africa if I simply provide them with my banking account information,

• retail newsletters with hot shopping coupons and information, and now,

• political notes from Presidential candidates (or their surrogates).

I usually never click on any of them. And sometimes, I click on them just to find out how to unsubscribe. (That's probably not the desired action they were looking for when they decided to interrupt me.)

Why?

Because they're garbage. They are notes written for the masses. They've never added value to my life. They're the opposite of remarkable. And clicking on them only confirms this notion. That's why I signed up on the online form using a semi-bogus email account in the first place.

The truth is that you're not connecting with me. Not even in the slightest. And though you have my email address which you can add to your list, it'll never be a valuable asset. I'll never...ever...care...about you (unless you change).

Too often, campaigns focus on answering the wrong question, "How do we obtain thousands of email addresses for likely supporters?" Instead, they should be focusing on, "How do we build several email lists of people that actually read our content and care about what we're saying (and then take the desired course of action)?"

Answering the former question, getting the list, is easy. You can simply buy a list from a number of different data vendors or from another campaign. If you need help with acquisition, just ask. I'll help.

But achieving the latter takes something special. To do so, you need to be special. You need to find a way for me to want to read what you're writing. If you do so, I won't be able to resist giving you my "real" email address. In short, I'll be giving you permission to connect with me - but remember, the relationship remains on my terms.

Here are five pointers to help you get beyond my junk email inbox by improving our permission-based relationship:

1. Write your own copy (not the marketing "gurus" in the basement) and be honest with me. If you're a campaign manager, I don't expect five emails a week, but one quick paragraph updating me on the internals of the campaign would suffice. If you're a communications guy, don't send me your press releases, but if you land a good story worth sharing, send me the link and tell me how it relates to your messaging strategy. Tell me something you're not telling everyone else. And don't worry about asking me to forward it to five friends or contribute. That's not the point.

2. Make me feel important. Find a way to isolate me from the 250K other people that you're emailing. There's no better use of your time than actually spending a little time organizing your email distribution list. Start by auditing your own email inbox and add those people to a list of allies and friends. Then start looking through your list and break it up regionally. If I'm a County Chairman in Iowa, I should be getting special notes from your Iowa team on the ground. But I probably don't care about what you're doing in New Hampshire.

3. Stop sending me graphics - write in plain text. Trust me, I'll never be impressed by how glossy and shiny your email looks. Write the email like you would to your friends - using the same email client you always use. And you'll have better luck getting past my email spam filters if you drop the graphics all together (and yes, even the graphic you use to track email read rates).

4. Connect with me on my terms. Integrate an RSS platform like feedburner so that I can choose to receive your notes via email or through my feedreader. Or even better, start a private facebook group and connect with me that way. I may even join the discussion.

5. Use email sparingly. It goes against everything that campaigns do to act, well, normal. For example, when I worked on Mike Bouchard's campaign for Senate, the campaign manager's instinctual urge (and all of us on the campaign) was to blast out four or five emails a day. But by carpet-bombing your email list, people will inevitably start to ignore what you're saying.

Seth Godin offers a smart piece of advice, "save your email for things you really and truly want to say."

These days, I send out about one email every other week tailored for different contacts and I'm constantly clicking the delete button as opposed to the send button on emails I write. As you might expect, I have a massive amount of contacts on my list, but I've only had one person ask to be removed (which I did promptly). And you know what, it actually hurt me to delete him from the list. I thought about the content and realized that I was interrupting that person with content that didn't matter to him. (I've since re-tooled my approach entirely to help prevent this from happening again.)

More porridge for Patrick Ruffini

Rudy Giuliani's eGuy, Patrick Ruffini, does a pretty good job of communicating with folks in the Republican politics + tech sphere. His emails are short ("Above the Outlook Preview Pane" as I like to say), and they usually have information that you won't find anywhere else. He keeps it simple and he never asks for anything in return. He's simply communicating and adding his voice to the ongoing discussion. The reward for the campaign is that his content ends up all over the place.

I'll scoop a helping of porridge for Patrick as an effective eCommunicator. Patrick is a professional interrupter with a very good understanding of the modern world.

But that's just one person, with one agenda, working on one campaign, communicating with one relatively small cluster of people.

Patrick could build on his success by demanding that other members of the team start doing a similar note to those folks who populate their world. For example, the finance guy or gal could keep us updated with internal figures (before they're public), and help build buzz for the campaign. Same thing for the political team. Patrick could further help the team by blasting out the different types of email lists that exist to his list.

Variety is the spice of life and I'd probably sign-up for a few (or mention it on my blog to let my readers connect with the campaign on their terms).

And I'd probably even sign-up for a few of the Democratic campaign emails. I would realize that reading those emails would actually be a total waste of my time which could be spent editing another video message to Republican politicians or building another online community for Modern Republicans to connect. But I couldn't resist. Keeping me focused on them would be a good thing for Democrats.

Conclusion

The problem with campaigns is that they're too focused on top-shelf indicators like the total number of people they have on the email address list, instead of understanding why they only have a 5-6 percent open rate for their emails (and people unsubscribing at every opportunity).

It's not that having a massive email list isn't precious or helpful. It is.

In fact, a big email list can be quite extraordinary when you need massive online action quickly (like to rate/comment/share YouTube videos, digg items, etc.). (Think about the power of having 300K people connected in a facebook group that you could send a message with a YouTube video link...The video would go viral by simply pressing "send.")

But politicians are missing out on other great opportunities to communicate and connect with me (on my terms). And I'm even asking for the connection. Will they ever get it?

(Ed Note: For other great tips on writing persuasive and effective emails, check out this somewhat dated blog entry from Campaign Monitor. It's still true today. And for smart marketing tips, read this old post by Seth Godin.)

If you like this post, add my feed to your reader (or even sign-up for email blasts). I'll never, ever spam you or abuse our relationship. Promise.