I have been signed up for Barack Obama and John McCain’s email messages for well over a year. And my fellow Americans (sorry, I couldn’t resist, ‘Mac’ fans), I was let down by what I did NOT see on Wednesday or Thursday.
Neither candidate had sent out an email to their subscriber list since the election results were in thanking them for their support. Obama’s Internet strategy has been pretty brilliant, so this glaring blind spot in ‘customer care’ was nearly shocking from his camp.
I first recognized this yesterday, a day after Election Tuesday. At that time, I was willing to cut campaign managers David Axelrod and Rick Davis some slack. A Tuesday night or Wednesday morning email would have been best. But they and their teams had to be unbelievably tired and distracted. The last thing they were probably thinking about was another email send.
But I thought: They really should be sending a ‘Thank You’ message on Thursday…any point after that would be kind of an embarrassment. I mean, both campaigns wisely used email to gather support. Whether it was donations, volunteering, soliciting help with phone banks, etc., each candidate was acquiring the resources of hard-working people via those messages.
By not sending their lists ‘Thank Yous’ in a timely fashion, they sent an altogether different kind of message: “We don’t need you anymore.”
That’s unfortunate for both the Democratic and Republican brands. While the bad marketing on both parties’ watch will not matter in 2012, why take the risk of turning off your best supporters? It makes zero sense.
Especially when you consider that both camps constantly sent emails this year. Several a week.
One more. That’s all they had left to do.
