Post-election Email: Both Candidates Drop the Ball

November 7th, 2008

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.

 

Categories: Branding, Email Marketing, Non Profit Fundraising, Online Marketing Tags: , , , , ,



  1. J Durant
    June 17th, 2009 at 14:00 | #1

    I received my email from Obama early Wednesday morning:

    Barack Obama
    reply-to info@barackobama.com
    to J Durant
    date Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 1:08 AM
    subject How this happened
    mailed-by bounce.bluestatedigital.com

    J —

    I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.

    We just made history.

    And I don’t want you to forget how we did it.

    You made history every single day during this campaign — every day you knocked on doors, made a donation, or talked to your family, friends, and neighbors about why you believe it’s time for change.

    I want to thank all of you who gave your time, talent, and passion to this campaign.

    We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.

    But I want to be very clear about one thing…

    All of this happened because of you.

    Thank you,

    Barack

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