Sending targeted, political email marketing campaigns are the fastest way to get your political message in front of a large relevant audience.
So you’ve dedicated to run for office now you need a political email marketing platform to connect with constituents and political donors. Election season is a time of outreach and trust-building with potential voters and you have a limited amount of time to do so. You need to get your message in front of the right people at the right time. Follow these tips to get the most out of your political emails.
Targeted Email Lists
A good political email campaign starts with a quality email list of recipients who reside in your jurisdiction. It should be clean and not contain, spam traps, honeypots, and non-existing emails. The more targeted the list the better. Criteria such as name, gender, age, occupation, income and voting party are some of the basic information needed to target your messages to the right audience. If you are a Republican candidate, you don’t want to send your communications to voters from other parties who don’t share the same values and beliefs.
List Segmentation
The working class, service class, and creative class are all affected by different issues. Whether its the economy, healthcare, trade or immigration, use targeting data to segment your email lists into different groups and tailor your political email campaigns to the issues that matter most. You don’t want to send the same message to a farmer who may be more interested in trade issues to a hedge fund manager whose primary focus may be tax cuts.
Get Personal
Content marketing techniques apply to political email marketing campaigns as well. Simply stating “Hi, I’m {Name)and I’m running for office in {District} please donate {Dollar Amount}” is not the right approach to engage recipients and get them excited about voting for you. Candidates need to market themselves by telling their personal stories, sharing their position on the issues, laying out future plans, etc. Like any cold email marketing campaign, you want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your field by sharing relevant information and offering value to your recipients.
Personalize your send from name (i.e. Bill for Senate), and stay away from a no-reply@ address as it gives the impression you don’t care about your voters. This could be bad news for your open rates so choose one that is recognizable. Use a valid email address because your recipients may want to respond to you. Inbox providers take into consideration the actions your recipients take after your email reaches their inbox, so a valid email address can help build a positive sender reputation.
Catchy Subject Lines
The subject line can make or break your political email campaigns. Inboxes are getting hammered with millions of emails every day, so how do you stand out from the crowd? A good example of a successful political email campaign with attention-grabbing subject lines is the one ran by Barack Obama. The Obama campaign raised $690 million through email marketing. They focused on casual subject lines that you might receive from a friend. Some of the most successful were simply “Hey”, “Are you in?’ and “Meet me for dinner”. Test multiple email drafts and subject lines before you send an email blast to your subscribers.
Put email marketing to work for your political campaigns.
