
What the Obama Emails teach us about Email Marketing - hemancuso
http://www.klaviyo.com/blog/2012/11/14/free-what-obama-emails-teach-us-email-marketing/
======
danso
First of all, it is hard to take seriously any analysis that leads with a word
cloud.

Two...as someone pointed out, this really isn't marketing. These are emails to
the kind of people who would sign up for campaign emails, I.e. the candidate's
supporters. So there really isn't much today about which approach is more
successful in an apolitical contest because for one thing, you aren't
correcting for demographics of the supporter base. Romney's approach could
have been far more successful in terms of open-rate, but garnered lower
donations because of his's base's spending habits.

And of course, this is all moot without knowing the actual open rates for any
of these emails

~~~
r00fus
> Two...as someone pointed out, this really isn't marketing. These are emails
> to the kind of people who would sign up for campaign emails, I.e. the
> candidate's supporters.

Are you serious? This is a great case exhibiting what email marketing does
best - repeat business - keeping your customer base aware of (and buying) your
products/services, and discussing it with others.

That aside, Obama's emails were a call to action (fed the grassroots
operations that led to his smashing victory in many swing states), while
Romney's were more about inspiring the recipient about the candidate - which
given the many gaffes commited by Romney, seem like a rearguard action.

Shorter: Obama wanted you to get others to vote. Romney wanted you to vote.

------
adjwilli
I agree with a lot of this analysis, but one things stuck out: "Marketing will
become better – and harder to resist." While I don't doubt that marketing will
become better, I do think we'll develop ways of filtering it out just as we
have with "banner blindness", SPAM filtering and DVR-skipping commercials.
Maybe the people who continually bug their friends about some cause, campaign
or product will tend to lose those friends too. It wasn't uncommon to hear
people say they're unfriending people on Facebook during the last election for
political posts. I know I personally tried hard to resist posting political
comments on social networks to maintain peace and tranquility from amateur
campaigners.

~~~
efsavage
I think our ability to resist marketing decreases marginally with each
marginal increase in quality. At a certain point it does become useful, and we
don't want to resist. Telling me about a product I really do want and/or need
and can afford, that I ultimately buy, is not the type of marketing we will
learn to resist. To a certain extent we even seek it out (Twitter followers,
catalog subscriptions, etc.)

------
crusso
Ugh. A little bit of me just died realizing that politicians are going to get
even more aggressive about their marketing after the success of Obama's
campaign tactics. They'll use it as a template moving forward.

Since they're the ones writing the anti-spam and anti-robo-call laws, we'll
have absolutely no protection from their pursuit of marketing their messages
to us.

The really sad thing is that back around 2007, Obama promised an open campaign
that would use public funding - signaling that he was a different kind of
candidate who didn't want the corruption of money to taint his campaign.
Rather than leading the way on the high ground, the whole process is being
dragged rather deeply through the mud.

~~~
hooande
Obama's use of public funding is rather historic. In his first election, he
raised more money in small increments from individual donors than any other
candidate before him. That's regular people paying $10 or $20 each instead of
Citizens United or "Swiftboat Veterans For Truth" putting hundreds of millions
behind candidates.

Do we want to have "secret donors" investing billions dollars to get the
government to suit their business interests? Or do we want to get spammed
daily by politicians asking for money? The first route cedes control to
businesses, assuming that what they want will be good for most people. The
second involves direct participation and a small amount of suffering from
individual citizens, but puts the financial aspect of politics more into the
hands of the people. This is a question that's more fundamental to the concept
of democracy than it may seem.

~~~
oinksoft
The trouble with the micro-payments (micro, campaign-funding-wise) is that
they are not vetted in the same way that larger payments are. Pardon my
ignorance, but would it not be trivial for a foreign entity to take advantage
of this and create a great many small payments from disparate sources (prepaid
credit cards and such)? I understand there was some minor hand-wringing over
this prospect in the most recent US presidential election.

~~~
johnrgrace
Or they could become a major investor in a company which has "free speach
rights" and just write one big check. I expect in 2016 some country is going
to decide that they should just spend a few hundred million dollars to get the
foreign policy they want.

~~~
illuminate
Right, I find that a more likely end, if it's not already being employed.

------
jff
The Romney word cloud was clearly election-based. To look at Obama's, you'd
think it was a collection from a Groupon mailing list or something. Same goes
for the subject line analysis: Obama's subject lines have the same qualities
as spam subjects.

And it worked.

------
jrockway
Was the marketing successful? Popular-vote wise, it seems like most Americans
just flipped a coin and voted heads for Obama and tails for Romney. Hardly a
success, if you ask me.

~~~
marmot1101
The GOTV campaign by Obama was considered very successful. His opponents even
said as much.

------
alexshye
The difference in email strategies is very interesting.

However, this article assumes that the outcome of the election proves that one
strategy is better than another. Is this true? If true, how much better is it?
People vote for candidates and email campaigns are one part of the whole
campaign machine. I'm not saying that the article is wrong, but it is hard to
draw conclusions from it without knowing more information.

