“Tips for 2019 Elections Political Campaign Email Marketing” Almost every political campaign uses email at some point or another to communicate with voters. Given how ubiquitous it is and its potential to affect an election outcome, it is always surprised at how badly political campaign email marketing is done. In this piece, we will take a look at the topic and give you the tips you need to make your outbox your best weapon.

Email Advantages in 2019 Elections Campaign

It’s easy

Once you get set up it’s as easy to send 10,000 emails as it is to send 10.

It’s flexible

You can send almost anything by email. Images, links, embedded videos, and call-to-action buttons can all be sent and emails can be styled with a variety of template designs.

It’s effective

Despite its detractor’s, email does work. Open rates of 1 in 4 or 1 in 10 might sound unimpressive but if you are sending thousands of emails, that is still a huge number of people that are getting direct communication from you. It is also far easier to track open rates and click rates than on social media so you have an effective analytics stream.

Measuring Email Open Rates: Tracking  Email Matrices

• Open rate:- If less than 10% of delivered emails are being opened (you will see these metrics as standard in most email blast software by the way) then you are doing something wrong. 25-50% open rate is very respectable.
• Click rate:- If you have links embedded in your email to click (again this is tracked as standard) then you should be aiming for circa 3% or higher click-through rate (CTA).
• Unsubscribe rate:- This is a really important metric. If more than 5% of emails delivered result in people unsubscribing from the email list then you have an issue. Either you are sending the incorrect material to them or you did not get correct permission from them to be sending emails.

Researching Email Marketing for Political Campaign

Political campaign email marketing is like research science. You do not get it perfect the first time, it is through trial and error and lots of testing that you find what types of emails work for which voter segments.
A great way to get out ahead with this is to do some competitor research in the beginning. Sign up for newsletters from your competitors (discreetly) or from similar industries to see what types of emails they send.

Things to note might be-

• Email subject lines – which would you be most inclined to open?
• The frequency of emails, daily, weekly, monthly?
• The content of the emails
• How specific they are to you – this indicates the level of targeting is done by the sender
• Offers were made, links and look-and-feel generally.

How to do your Political Campaign Email Marketing Targeting

So email marketing relies on the good quality targeting of the voter. Universe matched with relevant information in order to be successful. Doing the targeting can be one of the more difficult tasks. But there are a number of techniques that can be used.

1. Voter database

Firstly, use your voter database and the intelligence contained within that to create segmented groups for email blasts. Obvious possibilities here include by precinct, by voting history, or any of the other key data-points you hold on voters

2. General to specific

If you don’t have any data on which you can segment, ie, you just have the email address and perhaps the person’s name then it is still possible to run a smart segmentation program. Starting by sending an email to everyone in your database. You can build segments based on who opened, who did not, who clicked links within the email.

3. Voter outreach data

If you are using campaign tech like Mailcot or any other method of digitally capturing and organizing information from voter outreach then you can segment based on that. Set up custom fields or surveys in your canvassing operations that can provide the basis of email targeting. For example, you might have a standard question asked of all voters such as ‘do you intend to vote for our candidate’. It is then very simple to set up a list of voters who do intend to vote for you. Who can then receive emails designed to ensure they get out to vote on the day. The rest can be divided into email lists that target swing voters or ones that set out to persuade those who are set against your candidate.

4. Differentiated signups

Another great way to find targeted groups of people is to set up differentiated email signup forms on your website. Ask your website visitors if they are interested in, say, healthcare reform, to sign up for your newsletter. All leads captured from this signup button then go into a newsletter letter marked ‘healthcare’. Similarly, on other pages of your site. You could have the same type of form, but this time talking about ‘education’. Some websites contain newsletter forms that ask the person, as they are signing up, what issues that most concern them.