By Mark Traverso, President & CEO, Lighthouse-Ameribase
Our email series “A Marketer’s Guide to Email Data” has investigated email’s role in identity resolution, its potential as an added revenue stream for agencies and vendors as well as its ability to drive ROI for brands. As we wrap up our series, we delve into email’s use in political campaigns.
Political campaigns are increasingly recognizing the value of email activation as a powerful tool for engagement, fundraising, and voter turn-out. Let’s explore why political organizations, candidates and fundraising groups should prioritize email to propel their campaigns, tapping into its unique advantages and capabilities.
Digging into Email's Presidential Past: How It Dug Up Success in Past Elections
In recent years, political campaigns have increasingly turned to email activation as a central component of their strategies. This shift reflects a growing recognition of the unique benefits that email offers in engaging with supporters, mobilizing voters, and driving fundraising efforts.
One notable example is President Obama's groundbreaking use of email in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns. In 2008, it’s believed that President Obama captured over 13.7 million unique emails for his targeted list, a number that likely grew substantially in the lead-up to his 2012 re-election bid. The efficacy of email in fundraising was evident, as the majority of the $690 million raised online during Obama's campaign was driven by fundraising emails.
Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign capitalized on the power of email activation, with email playing a significant role in persuasion and fundraising efforts. In fact, 59% of respondents who reported donating to Clinton's campaign cited email as a persuasive factor.
Exploring Email’s Rising Popularity Among Voters & Campaigns
Email activation offers a multitude of compelling benefits for political campaigns. Firstly, compliance with regulations such as CAN-SPAM is paramount for maintaining trust and credibility with the audience. Notably, fundraising and political campaigns often enjoy exemptions from anti-spam regulations, providing a clear pathway for legitimate email communication. Moreover, email marketing operates on a 100% opt-in model, ensuring that recipients have voluntarily subscribed to receive campaign communications. This fosters a more receptive audience poised for engagement, laying a strong foundation for effective outreach efforts.
Furthermore, email empowers campaigns with precise control over the reach and frequency of communications. This strategic control maximizes impact without overwhelming recipients, enhancing the effectiveness of campaign messaging. Additionally, email seamlessly integrates with various marketing channels, including direct mail, SMS, digital/display, CTV, and mobile, enabling a cohesive and comprehensive campaign strategy and amplifying the overall impact of outreach efforts.
In terms of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, email activation outperforms traditional methods such as direct mail. It enables campaigns to reach a broader audience with fewer resources, optimizing the allocation of campaign resources. Moreover, the inherent nature of email significantly reduces the risk of fraudulent activity, safeguarding campaign resources and ensuring optimal utilization.
Studies consistently highlight that consumers and voters prefer email communication for its convenience, personalization, and relevance. This preference underscores the effectiveness of email as a dynamic tool for engaging and persuading voters. Additionally, the versatility of email extends to its ability to deliver various content formats, including video ads, further enhancing its impact. Emails possess a unique capability for sharing among supporters, amplifying campaign messaging, and ensuring longevity by enabling recipients to save messages for future reference.
What Campaigns Need to Whip Up for Success in 2024
To effectively leverage email activation in the 2024 Presidential election, it's crucial to begin by building or acquiring a quality email database comprising supporters, donors, volunteers, and stakeholders. Segmentation and personalization based on demographics, interests, and engagement levels ensure that content resonates with different audience segments.
As AdWeek noted in the aftermath of the 2020 election: “Early list-building (and compliant list sharing with partisan allies) will be critical in future elections. In this election campaign, Trump’s team apparently didn’t bother to set up an email funnel for those who signed up but didn’t donate, preferring instead to focus entirely on those who had already donated. This was probably an unintentional error or oversight.”
Compelling content, accompanied by clear calls to action, is essential for driving desired outcomes such as donations, volunteering, event attendance, or sharing campaign updates. Continuous testing and iteration of email campaign elements enable optimization of performance and engagement levels.
The effectiveness of email activation in political campaigns also hinges significantly on the choice of ESP and the quality of email data utilized. A case in point is the Trump campaign's experience in 2016, which serves as a cautionary tale highlighting the importance of these factors. According to email tracking firm Return Path, the inaugural fundraising email sent by the Trump campaign encountered significant hurdles. This email had a high spam rate and an alarmingly low open rate, with nearly 60% of emails failing to reach inboxes and being automatically directed to recipients’ spam folders. Return Path's analysis revealed that only 12% of recipients actually opened the email, while 6% deleted it without reading it.
This example underscores the significance of working with reputable ESPs and maintaining high-quality email data to maximize effectiveness. At Lighthouse-Ameribase, we offer our own high-volume ESP designed specifically for large-scale acquisition email and our email data typically sees a 97% deliverability rate. We've enabled previous clients to achieve an 11.55% average click-through rate.
So which candidate will prove the most effective in their campaigns in 2024? By harnessing the power of email activation effectively, political campaigns can establish meaningful connections with voters, drive engagement and spark action. With its unique advantages in reach, targeting, efficiency, and effectiveness, email remains a key channel in modern political campaigning.
To learn more about how Lighthouse-Ameribase can help you achieve your campaign goals, either get in touch or learn more about our political segments >
