E-Pending Works
This morning I ran across yet another article about how cool Patrick Ruffini and Mandy Finn are, which forced me to finally read their Rebuild The Party platform.
I have to admit – I just don’t get Patrick’s distaste with e-pending. Mostly because it absolutely works or maybe I’m just more concerned with action than philosophy.
I detailed my reasons here, but I felt moved to comment further after reading these two comments back-to-back from the Rebuild The Party platform:
“The next Chairman must undertake a crash program to grow the RNC’s email file organically — no spam and no “e-pending” from voter files.”
Next sentence:
“…integrating e-mail signups into everything we do at the grassroots level, ensuring that everyone who goes to an event and or is contacted by a volunteer is given the opportunity to join our network.”
Ok, let me get this straight. Debbie is a 3 of 3 Republican primary voter and only 30 years old. We have the ability to capture her email address, but we should ignore it. Instead we should go sit outside of Wal-Mart of three hours like a panhandler and beg for email addresses?
With that same line of thought, we should also stop running television ads except on specialized channels that a voter can tune into when he/she is in the mood to check out some hot political commercials. We should also stop sending direct mail unless someone specifically requests them. I guess we should also stop all robocalls.
Patrick’s philosophy is a nice one…a real nice one. I wish we lived in some perfect world where everyone wants to hear every word a candidate spits out. But we don’t live in that world. We live in a world where ONLY a rock star celebrity candidate like Barack Obama can make those methods work. If you think for one second that a typical Republican Congressional candidate can pull off what Barack Obama has been able to accomplish, you are absolutely 100% crazy.
Patrick is right when he writes “winning the technology war with the Democrats must be the RNC’s number one priority in the next four years.” But we aren’t going to win that war by stealing their game plan because we don’t have the candidate that can make it happen. Yes, the Barack Obama campaign ran the most technologically advanced campaign in the history of our nation and even Republicans should commend their web team. More impressive is that they are continuing their Internet push as Obama transitions into office. What we have to understand is that those Internet strategies and tactics would have been impossible with nearly any other candidate.
I’d argue that Mitt Romney had a far superior Internet strategy than John McCain, but Romney wasn’t the rock star candidate that Barack Obama was. Romney couldn’t pull it off, as much as I prayed he would.
Trying to take Obama’s methods and applying them to our party will not work unless we find that kind of rock star candidate. In the mean time we have to move forward in a direction that will promote our kind of candidates online. Those aren’t the kind of candidates who can grow massive organic lists without prospecting.
Patrick’s philosophy that SPAM backfires is correct. However, you don’t have to SPAM with e-pending. I use it for email prospecting, which grows my organic lists.
This year I used e-pending for South Carolina State Senator Shane Massey. Through an email/voter list match, we acquired 1,932 emails. Because it was matched to a voter list, we were able to target specific messages to individual groups of voters. We sparingly sent emails to each group and in each email we requested that they join our “Team Shane” email list. Within three weeks we had 467 organic emails that we later used to build our phone banks.
Sure, we may have been able to acquire 467 emails if we sat outside of Wal-Mart every day for two weeks, but we didn’t have that kind of time. We did it the productive way… isn’t that the goal of technology anyway?
E-pending works. So do a lot of other annoying tactics like direct mail and robocalls. We should not be releasing plans that restrict our activities if we are going to “rebuild” our party. Every single possible strategy and tactic should be on the table.
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Patrick Ruffini November 25th
There’s a simple reason why I say e-pending works. Because it doesn’t. The open rate on a bought list is 3-4% — and I’ve never seen it go above 7-8% on any list not directly opted in on a website or though an event. The open rate on an organic list can be upwards of 30%. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The rate of clickthroughs and activation deteriorates even further beyond the abysmal 3-4% open. Those who open an e-mail on a bought list are less likely to take action. In my experience, the fundraising and activation value of any list matched directly from a voter file is practically nil — and this is for lists in the hundreds of thousands.
Oh, and no major e-mail vendor will even let you send to a bought list. So you’d better find some mom-and-pop shop that will — and keep the list as far, far away from your opted-in list as possible, or else watch as you’re suddenly unable to deliver e-mail to a third or half of your activists who *will* give money and volunteer.
A good online strategy will offer the right mix of old-school “push” tactics and new-school “pull” tactics. Online advertising — particularly search — is becoming an increasingly major driver of list growth. List rental can be a legitimate tactic if the owner of the list prefaces the message with a note explaining why folks are receiving this message from you. (For these e-mails expect a 10-15% open rate and maybe to make your money back half the time, much like a direct mail prospect list.) And contrary to the stereotype of “begging” for e-mail addresses outside of Wal-Mart, what I’m actually advocating is e-mail collection at every rally, with every door knock, and with every live volunteer call. Unless these also are risky, newfangled tactics that only Barack Obama can use and we are just supposed to spam and robocall our way to victory.
Wesley November 25th
Patrick – thanks for responding. I’m walking out the door for a series of fun, fun meetings. I’ll try to respond tonight.
Patrick Ruffini November 25th
That first sentence should obviously read “doesn’t work.” *Need caffeine injection*
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