Looking at Presidential Email Marketing Campaigns

by Victor Green
3 mins read

Although each of our marketing endeavors are infinitely important to us personally, we can’t doubt that there’s no single campaign as widespread or influential as the U.S. presidential one. This year’s election in particular has been quite an interesting one, to say the least. Rarely in history have we seen two sides so vehemently dedicated to their own, while being openly opposed to the other. This is due to several factors that are too vast elaborate to list here. Instead, we’ll be focusing on one of them: the presidential email campaign. Just as Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton display polar opposites of presidential candidacy, each of their teams use their own specific set of techniques to reach and influence the public through all media, including email.

The Trump Campaign’s Method

The Trump campaign “mails from four domains, whose combined reach is an estimated 10 million,” writes DMN reporter Alexander Neely. “Additionally, the Trump campaign also continues to mail significant volume out of two ‘borrowed’ domains: gopteam.com and ChrisChristie.com. The inbox performance of Trump’s campaign emails is around 70 percent, which is 20 percent less than what eData Source considers acceptably strong. Out of the four Trump domains, one has an inbox rate exceeding 90 percent, while the other three range from 55 to 67 percent.” While Clinton certainly produces more email volume than Trump, Trump’s campaign shows a higher read rate than Clinton’s, ranging from 14 to 28 percent.

Clinton’s Email Rate Trumps Trump’s

Earlier on in the election, Clinton’s campaign would out-mail Trump by a whopping 10-to-1 ratio. However, as the election progressed, that figure has dwindled down to around 2 to 1, which of course is still quite a significant difference. According to Neely: “The Clinton campaign’s inbox performance of 24 percent is 17 percentage points better than Trump’s. However, Clinton’s read rate of 21 percent is 4 percentage points lower than Trump’s.”

Trump’s Best Performers

One of the ways that Trump gains so many followers so quickly is through his use of short, catchy slogans. Although several of his campaign methods can easily be questioned, it’s hard to deny how good he is at grabbing people’s attentions through his simple, concise phrasing. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Trump’s campaign team would use this strength in their emails. “The best Trump performers, during the period of Sept. 20 to Oct. 20, was an email marketing campaign with the subject line, ‘American Won Last Night,’ deployed on Oct. 10,” writes Neely. “Following the second debate, the emails reached an audience of 2.4 million, with an inbox rate of 61 percent and a 28 percent read rate.”

Clinton’s Email Highlight

As most of the global population knows by now, Trump’s leaked conversation with then “Access Hollywood” contributor Billy Bush wherein Trump bragged about his vulgar treatment of women has stirred the election in ways that have not been seen in recent presidential election history. At its simplest core, this sequence of Trump’s and Clinton’s campaign provided pure reality television-level entertainment for the masses. However, the implications of this leak run extremely deep when it comes to affecting the election as a whole. One of the mediums it touched was Clinton’s email marketing campaign, explained by Neely here: “[Clinton’s] best deployed email marketing campaign, between Sept. 20 and Oct. 20., read in the subject line: “Sorry to send this.” Launched hours after the leaked tapes of Trump’s groping remarks, it reached 2.5 million people and produced an inbox rate of 90 percent and a read rate of 24 percent.”

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