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5 Takeaways from Email Marketing Campaign of Obama vs Trump

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A walk through the memory lane of Presidential election in the USA – Email campaign- Obama Vs Trump

Timeline 2008 Vs 2016

Back in 2007: Ways how Obama tapped the potentiality of the Social Media

Back in 2007 February, Marc Andreessen, a founder of Netscape and a board member of Face book, was asked if he wanted to meet with a man with an idea that sounded preposterous on its face. Mr. Andreessen marched to the San Francisco who was always a game to something new to meet this person.

Marc met an impressive person who was about to take on far more powerful forces in a battle for leadership. He toyed with the idea of social networking, with its tremendous communication capabilities and aggressive database development would help him beat the gigantic odds facing him.

Similar to a lot of Web entrepreneurs, the Obama campaign did not invent anything completely new. Instead, by amalgamating together social networking applications, they created an unforeseen force to organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans.

Instead, by amalgamating together social networking applications, they created an unforeseen force to organize locally, fight smear campaigns and get out the vote that helped them topple the Clinton machine and then John McCain and the Republicans.

He knew that he did not have the money to spend luxuriously so he tried to revolutionize through Social Media & as at that point of time Email was an emerging feature, unlike Twitter or Facebook.

As a result of using social media & email campaign, Mr. Obama not only did he have just a political base, but a huge database, millions of names of supporters who can be engaged almost instantly.

Obama’s e-mail message to supporters mentioned it like this.

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.” 
Obamacapture
Obama’s reach out for election

A new approach of the digital gateway was presented to the database of his supporters in the form of change.gov. Obama was the first candidate who did not stress on the fact about the revenue that can be generated by using Social Media campaigns, he understood that the technology was a given and that it could be used in new ways.”

Email and Texting campaign of Obama

Stephen Geer launched the email program in May 2007.

Three goals of the e-mail team:

Message, mobilization, and money.

There was a three-word code of success: respect, empower and include.

More than 7,000 customized e-mails campaign were developed & tailored for the individual prospects. They were sending between 5 and 20 targeted messages per month. Supporters could text “HOPE” to subscribe

Effects of E-mail Matching Campaign organized in mid-2007,

The campaign team invented grassroots matching. They sent out two emails: initially they asked the previous donors to give again if the campaign could find a new donor to donate the same amount; in the second, nondonors were told that if they donated any amount, the campaign would find a match from someone who had already donated

This help to raise tens of millions of dollars allowing of thousands of people to make connections with other grassroots supporters.

After his win, he sent a message to each of his members in his data base stating “All of this happened because of you. Thanks, Barack.

Another email campaign was released by his office “Share with a Friend the Accomplishment that Means Most to You” during the 2012 election which had an eye-catching graphics, which encouraged huge amounts of social media sharing to spread the message

Fast Forward to 2016 US presidential election via email marketing

There was a sea change in Email Marketing surface as technology had evolved with higher efficiency.

The Trump campaign:

The trump office had four domains, whose combined reach is an estimated 10 million. In addition to this, they had two borrowed domain also, gopteam.com and ChrisChristie.com.

Here is a study:

Around 70 percent is the competency of the inbox of Trump’s campaign emails, Out of the four Trump domains; one of them has an inbox rate exceeding 90 percent, while the other three range from 55 to 67 percent. The Trump domains provide a range of 14 to 28 percent as in terms of read rates.

Technology had evolved with higher efficiency.

  • The Trump campaign:

    The trump office had four domains, whose combined reach is an estimated 10 million. In addition to this, they had two borrowed domain also, gopteam.com and ChrisChristie.com.

    Here is a study:

    Around 70 percent is the competency of the inbox of Trump’s campaign emails, Out of the four Trump domains; one of them has an inbox rate exceeding 90 percent, while the other three range from 55 to 67 percent. The Trump domains provide a range of 14 to 28 percent as in terms of reading rates.

    One of the best Trump performers in Email marketing campaign:

    Email marketing campaign
    A visual trump’s initial campaigns
  • During the period of Sept. 20 to Oct 20, 2016, was an email marketing campaign

     

  • It read like this- with the subject line, “American Won Last Night,” it was deployed on Oct. 10 2016
  • This email reached an audience of 2.4 million, with an inbox rate of 61 percent and a 28 percent read rate.
  • Sign-up form for Trump was easier to locate on Trump’s website, as it was placed in a conspicuous spot on the home page, inviting visitors to subscribe just as they entered the site.
  • One of the prime & obvious motives was asking for donations for Trump. The sign-up process was in two steps.
  • The first step needed only the email address and zip code where required.
  • The second step was an elaborate one and most of the required information was obligatory to finalize the subscription.
    Donald Trump’s unsubscribe page was concise & crisp
  • T3capture

    Most of the emails from Trump were plain text messages that first and primarily called for donating to the campaign.

    It contained CTA buttons that stood out, trying to convince the subscribers to donate. Some of the emails had multiple buttons, each with a different amount.

    T4capture
    Email with cta button

    Emails were sent out with different sentiments very vigorously during the last two weeks preceding the elections with CTA buttons to find the polling stations, location

  • Obama

    Trump

    A renowned fact is that digital marketing played a major role in Barack Obama’s win during the 2012 presidential elections.

    Obama’s team made optimum utilization of various digital marketing platforms to ensure the win.

    Email campaigns were the foundation for presidential bids since January 2016. Trump & his competitors like Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders have been emailing their voters as friends (this term gained popularity during Obama’s campaign).

    A look at the email campaigns of the three remaining presidential candidates of 2016

     

    Emailforpresident emailsopened
    2016 email campaign report for the us presidential election

     

    Pic Courtesy: blog.getresponse.com/ http://www.dmnews.com/

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Rajashree Bhattacharya

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