Does This Mean McCain Will Win?

My colleague, Brent Rosengren, has an enlightening front page article for iMediaConnection on how the presidential candidates utilize (or in some cases, fail to) email marketing. He even provides a scorecard on how they all measure up in key categories.

Rosengren takes an in-depth look and reveals some interesting nuggets that may be applicable to your email program. Either way, political email is big business and the campaigns continue to place a strong emphasis on email and not just for fundraising but also for mission critical communications. I would imagine they are also cutting major overhead by using email as the key platform for getting their messages out.

I took a look back at an article I wrote 4 years ago on the Bush vs. Kerry email programs to see the progress of political email usage and it appears they have made nice strides but have a long way to go to make their email programs best of breed.


I did have this to say 4 years ago...I feel comfortable saying that Bush’s camp has a very slight advantage over Kerry in terms of email strategy and execution. Though I can’t predict the winner of this year’s election, I can say that we should expect to see increased usage of email marketing in both national and local politics as candidates continue to recognize the value of this timely, highly personalized, low-cost medium.

Will McCain's slight email win foreshadow a similar (and narrow) win as well?

top email marketing blogs

Mark Brownlow at EmailMarketingReports.com must not sleep. He covers the corners, deep and wide of the email world so that the rest of us can simply read about it in one place. Following on the heels of his Top 21 email marketing information sources list (of which I am honored to be on) he comes up with a new list that covers the top 44 email marketing blogs.

This list does an amazing job of categorizing the best minds in the blogging world that cover email marketing. Again, I am humbled by his inclusion of the brightwave blog in the list. This blog was picked under the Strategy and Analysis section alongside Email marketing strategy from Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey.

If you want to add some homework to your to do list or just add relevant RSS feeds, this is the list for you. Well done and again thanks to EmailMarketingReports.com for consolidating the best content and thought capital in the email community.

B2B Panel & Case Study

B2B email marketing usually gets snubbed by the broader email community, at least in my opinion, in favor of sexier retail and consumer campaigns. Maybe that is changing or I may be looking in the wrong places.

I recently participated in an engaging B2B panel titled Even CEOs Read Email - Addressing The C-Level B2B Target at the recent Email Experience Conference in San Diego with Barry Abel of Message Systems and moderated by Carol Krol, a Senior Reporter at BtoB Magazine .

The panel was filled with great questions that dug deep on reaching this elusive audience as well as general B2B email best practices. I won't go into detail on the event since so many others covered it more eloquently than I could. I really enjoyed the topic since it is one I don't get to speak on as much as my other speaking engagements.

While on the topic I wanted to share an article on an innovative remarketing campaign we ran for long time client, CoreNet Global. The title says it all CoreNet boosts event signups with remarketing campaign.

Super Tuesday Alert - Breaking News Inbox Abuse

Anyone's inbox feel abused after Super Tuesday? I have signed up for many of the major cable and broadcast's breaking news email alerts. It is generally a helpful and timely feature that includes simple text formatted breaking news. In theory, at least.

Nothing radical here for how the big networks traditonally use email alerts. Just sending useful news notifications before it breaks in the mainstream (generally). I began to have my doubts on the value and goals of some of these when I got a breaking news email months ago that featured a college football upset. While I am a big college sports fan, I had to think to myself whether or not that qualified as breaking news. When I think of breaking news, I think of GIANT BOLD PRINT HEADLINES that make you stop for a second. Think Hurricane Katrina or former President Reagan passing away. Not LSU losing to Kentucky.

Well, last night destroyed breaking news email alerts for me. Between the 3 major networks that I subscribed to, all were guilty of major inbox abuse.

All, in my opinion, were driven by beating out their competition to email the news before the others do. While I respect the desire to break news, do I need 34 emails in a 4 hour span that announce state by state projected winners, with Democrats and Republicans each warranting their own breaking news alert.

No offense to West Virginia, but I don't need a breaking news alert on who won their Democratic primary, followed by 6 other state projected winners in the following 7 minutes. Would it take much restraint to bundle these winners at least into an hourly wrap-up? Obviously, these were driven by their own objectives, goals and priorities rather than by the best email experience for their subscribers.

The breaking news email alert for a major media empire should be a sacred cow. Last night, they sacrificed this for one night of outdoing their brothers-in-arms.

I did not go all the way and unsubscribe but they should consider themselves on double-secret email probation.