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Errr.. Hello? Top Subject Line… EVER?

Aug 25 2008

No this is not a study about what the top use of word choices are in email marketing and subject lines. What this is about is Day Two of the Obama/Biden Campaign and their email marketing Suckiness. Did Biden’s team take over at 9pm PST on Friday and take the internet away from Team Obama? 

So first they missed the alert that they would control all the information stemming on the VP choice. FAIL. Now they are sending an email From “Joe Biden” (Note from info@barackobama.com so much for best practices) with the first time subject line of “Hello”. Weak, yes. Powerful, no. Expected, not at all. How about Introducing the next VP of the United States, Joe Biden OR from Barack with “Meet Joe Biden” if you want to keep it relevant and short. 

I don’t know if I am over thinking this but with the 206 emails I have got (yes you do the math on email frequency) since opting in to the Barack Obama campaign June 27th, 2007… this might be the weakest outreach. Right after the one yesterday telling me I could now get a car magnet for the campaign. I hate to sound jaded, really I do, but the voice in email of this campaign and the outreach is going south. They need to tighten up the reigns and head towards the finish line in a blaze of glory driving the vote, not the stickers, hats, t-shirts etc of the Barack-economy. 

And I have to end on this note… “Goodbye”. 


Published in Behavioral Marketing, Best Practices, E-Mail Marketing, Worst Of Email, eMail Marketing Optimization

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5 Responses

  1. 1
    Maddy says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Did he break up with Barry and Joe?

    After 206 emails in just under two months, no one could blame you. Apparently the team hasn’t learned that sometimes less is more. After that many email messages begging you for a donation, I’m sure you’re over it. However a well-crafted weekly (or even daily – 206- seriously?)message might have been better received.

    When I saw the first email from Joe Biden I thought “That’s the best you can do? Hello?” I agree. Weak. And a blown opportunity.
    —

    It is starting to feel like pan handling. Hey, can you spare $5.00 in every email.

    How about “Hello, can I have $5.00?”


  2. 2
    John says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 11:25 am

    I think I would have instantly flagged “Hello” as spam and moved on. It’s really not uncommon for me to get spam mail that looks exactly like that (usually from some hot chick, but Bidens not to shabby).

    Good eye even catching that.
    ——-

    At least you think it is from a hot chick. If you mean hot as in “eastern european or asian”. Correct. If you mean chick as in “man with hairy legs that wants your credit card” you are right on the money there as well.


  3. 3
    Charles says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 1:58 pm

    Nice post Dylan. I actually took the time to forward it to the Obama camp in order to get their act together.

    —–

    Thanks Charles. Let’s help them right this ship.


  4. 4
    Ryan Buchanan says:
    August 25th, 2008 at 10:40 pm

    Dylan – let’s continue the dialog of trading comments on the famous eROIdays.com blog.

    http://eroidays.com/2008/08/25/obama-email-intelligence-email-intelligence/


  5. 5
    DJ Waldow says:
    August 26th, 2008 at 8:00 pm

    Dylan –

    Not sure why you are surprised by this. Politicians have historically sucked at email.

    Who is in charge of their email marketing? Are they paying an ESP to manage their email marketing? Probably not. I’d guess they are using an in-house solution and have a part-time intern sending out their campaigns.

    What really surprises me is that you have not pitched eROI on them…

    dj
    ——-

    I actually know that quite a few ISPs tried to pitch some of the campaigns early on. I was involved in one of the past candidates talks, and I am not sure what they did. The people that are running the online movement for Obama in this case is an organization called BlueStates. They are from the old Dean Team I believe and are doing a great job.

    I am not sure if they went the way of an ESP and might have bought an in house software solution to use on their own servers. So they have an agency and I am sure that they have some staffers dedicated to email and online marketing as it has been driving the campaign.

    Maybe they are just in need of caffeine as over 200 emails since June of 07 they might need a nap. Only a few more months left to go.

    On another note I have a problem with political and government emails. In many cases they exploit the loop holes in can spam compliance by not adding an unsub or sending emails to anyone that they can get email addresses for. Here is an article on just that issue of political can spam compliance.

    We had a local political client in Portland that during the campaign, their comp REQUESTED their opt in list to use as it fell under the public domain rules in government. So in essence the other party could request and email to their list. It sucked. So many people were pissed and mad that they were getting emails from a candidate that they did not opt in to nor support.

    And to top that off someone on their team is still using that list to send other political messages to and making it tough to get off the list. I have even gone as far as to out this to the press in order to stop this.

    Politics are intriguing but often dirty.