Politicians as email marketing role models?
Latest posts | Feed | By Mark Brownlow on November 27, 2007
Possibly. Possibly not.A recent post looked at the subject line approaches in fund-raising emails sent by candidates in the US Presidential race.
Others are putting the politicians' email practices under the microscope, too. The general tone of articles at the Washington Post and e.politics is that the campaigns are painting themselves into an email corner.
By repeatedly sending effectively the same message -- "donate now!" -- to the same people and resorting to spam-like subject lines to jump start the reader's interest, these political emails neglect the concept of the long-term email experience.
It's always tempting with email just to send out another promotional blast. But if you have a relatively limited collection of products and services, it's hard to keep interest going over longer periods.
That's where creativity comes in. And a willingness to see email as a series of interactions that build towards some desirable goal. Not just a quick sale (which gets harder and harder to repeat) but long-term loyalty and, yes, sustainable sales.
So perhaps not best to take political campaigns as a role model for how to do email ones.
As if to prove the point, Michael Whitney demonstrates how poorly many political emails rate against an email design checklist.
But check the comments to his article. The writer suggests design standards are all very well, but as a reader he needs the email to meet a whole host of other criteria based around the informational and emotional value of that email.
And that concept is food for thought for everyone. As an industry, we've built up a set of best practices that have largely proved their value. But it's the real value you offer to readers that swings the deal for them.
More on tactics and strategies | Tags: email marketing, campaign emails, email experience
[This post brought to you by Campaigner Email Marketing]
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