Engage Your List

An email's open rate refers to how many people view a particular message (you can read about how it's typically calculated here).   Open rate for emails from political campaigns range between 18-40%.

Generally, you'll want to keep emails short (5 to 7 paragraphs) with very clear calls to action (e.g. bolded lines, stand alone underlined linked sentences, graphic link on the side).

 


 

In the email, give a clear reason to get involved or give money, and give them an update on what the campaign has been up to, showing them that you're serious about winning.

Remember, the emails your campaign sends out are public communications.  Don't send something that you wouldn't' want to see on the front page of the New York Times.

Here are a couple ideas for email appeals:

 

You want to be sure that you're not using words that can be flagged by spam filters.  Most mailer programs will help you do this, but here's a list of potential trigger words.

Keep the "from" email address consistent across all communications to your lists.  The name assigned to that email address may change, but the sender's email remains the same.

 


 

For example,  campaign manager may send out a fundraising appeal, while the candidate announces a new education initiative, but all the emails are sent from citizens@thompsonformayor.com.  Doing this makes it easy for a subscriber to just add that email address to their address book, keeping your email out of the junk folder.

Fundraising emails

One of my favorite fundraising campaigns from the primaries was the Clinton campaign's "MyPA" campaign.

It had all of the elements of a successful fundraising ask:

 

The campaign took this to the next level, inviting donors to "decide just how your contributions will help us win Pennsylvania."  The links pointed to a page where donors could visually track progress towards the dollar goal for television ads, door hangers, yard signs, and vans.

 

The campaign was going to spend that money in Pennsylvania, regardless of how many contributions were sent in.  But by framing the appeal this way, donors had a stake in the outcome of the primary, and this personal investment likely lead to repeat donations.

Setting goals, even modest ones like $1,000 in one week, and challenging your list to meet them is a great way of replicating this success.  Provide a visual, such as a thermometer, to let allow supporters to track their collective effort.

Because the click-through rate (meaning the number of people who click on an embedded link) for a fundraising email is usually around 1%, it's important that your email also relay something to the 99% of folks who open the email and move on.

Segment, segment, segment!

Depending on your email program, you may be able to create list segments, or sub-sets of your main list.  Segments can be as broad as "non-donors" and as targeted as "over-50 white females, who've donated over $30 in the last three months."

How targeted you get will depend on the campaign's needs, what data your collecting, and the email program you're using.

For most campaigns, simply being able to segment out donors and particular constituencies is enough.  You can easily incorporate segments into your emails, allowing for more specific messaging and better fundraising asks: