Breaking Down Presidential Campaigns' Email Strategies – Josh Klemons (Reverbal Communications)

Josh Klemons:

If you're not writing with short paragraphs, what are we even doing here? Most people are gonna read these on their phones. You wanna write it so that it's easy to read, easier to skip.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech Innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. We're joined today by Josh Clemons, a digital storyteller slash strategist, and the founder of re verbal communications, helping progressive campaigns, organizations, and brands of all shapes and sizes find, hone, and tell their stories online. Our conversation today is about the state of email marketing in the 2024 Republican primary, and Josh, of course has an interesting outsider's perspective as a Democrat and he wrote a blog post, which you can find in our show notes, where he assessed all of the 2024 Republican contenders email campaigns. We dig into what he's looking for, what trends he spotted, and what he thinks down ballot campaigns should take or leave from presidential campaign email strategy. Josh, first of all, what process or tools do you use to sign up for and keep track of all these different email lists?

Josh Klemons:

Yeah, for this, I kept it super simple and I signed up using just a dummy Gmail address so that I could easily track them all in one place. And I just, you know, went to their websites and signed up using my dummy email address. And I also used a little hack that Gmail has built in that many folks don't know about, which is if you add a plus after your email, so if your email was eric gmail.com, you could add Eric plus Tim Scott gmail.com as your email address, and then that would let anyone who signed up know what that email address is up to. So you would see it's coming to you. And if that email address wound up in the Nikki Haley campaign down the road you would be able to track that easily.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, I use that myself and, and was not smart enough to set up a, a dummy email way back when. And, and you'll find this in interesting Josh, cuz there's a Wisconsin connection. I still get hit up from Democrats from Davey's email list <laugh> back, and he hasn't been back in Congress in over a decade.

Josh Klemons:

Yeah, I also was not, I I, I have this dummy email that I've been using for years, but I've also signed up for lists from my Moore primary emails, and so I get a lot of emails in a lot of places. So I totally empathize with that for sure. I'll also note that for those who don't know, that also works if you're using a professional Gmail address, right? So if you're using your company name, this still works, which is a really helpful tool for folks who are like, you know, using a, a primary email that's workplace email and not just a Gmail.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And then a couple of other tools that I'll, I'll, I'll share with folks cuz I, I also write the Learn Test Optimize newsletter, as you know. And, and we subscribe to a bunch of newsletters there and, and use Feedly for that. Lets you create unique email addresses. Same thing with an app called Throttle and then pundit analytics of course which keeps track of all the different political campaign emails. And so you can go in and, and spare your impacts that way.

Josh Klemons:

There's yes, I love Feedly, but I actually not use it for email. I use it for blog tracking. Yeah. But, and there's a couple other sites as well like bill.com and political emails.org. So we'll get into this, I imagine. But one of the interesting things I signed up for the Tim Scott email list from this dummy account got a single email from 'em and then they dropped my email from the list interest. So in order to like look at his emails, I actually had to go to a third party tool to see what he was up to. And super interestingly, Donald Trump's, I have signed up for his list with this dummy email address probably five times in the last month. Still not on the list. They're either not moving folks over. I, I don't know what's going on. I've never really seen something like it. I get five, six emails a day from him for one of my other primary emails, but to my kind of, you know, tracking list, I'm not getting any.

Eric Wilson:

Huh well, let's dig into that in a minute. But one thing I think that is important to acknowledge is that being on the outside, and I've, I've been in your shoes, we don't have all the context about internal budgets decision making. I know that there are smart people on these campaigns that know how to do all the things that we're gonna talk about today. But for whatever reason, time, budgets, staffing, you know, they, they, they don't happen. So with that caveat, Josh, what, how did you go about assessing a campaign's email marketing from the outside? What are the things that you're looking for?

Josh Klemons:

Yeah, and I'll give that, I'll double down on that caveat of course, if they are testing things and I have no way to know that it's very hard to say what's good or what's bad. So totally agree with that. But just as somebody who reads a lot of email and writes a lot of email, I definitely have opinions. So the first things I'm looking for in an email program, do they have an onboarding series? Are they just jumping people right into the program or are they actually trying to like warm you up and get you like, you know, understand what the campaign's all about? Are they asking for things other than money <laugh>? Do they have a theory of change? Do they understand why they're running and why you should care about getting involved? Does their email program feel like it's unique to them or does it feel like a copy and paste email circa, you know, 2018? Do they build emails around a single ask or are they throwing 10 things at the wall and hoping you do all of them? So while I cannot know what's working for them from a fundraising perspective or like what's moving the needle, I can read an email and say, oh, this is a good email. This follows the rules. And I bet this did well versus, oh, this is not ideal. I'm, I'm, I'm not a fan of this.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And, and you, you touched on something that I think is, is really important and I, I like to go through this exercise of, you know, pick out an an email from a campaign in your inbox if you cover up the, the logo and the paid for, could that have come from any other campaign? And if the is yes, then then you miss the mark on, on writing something, you know, wor worth sending. And I think that's, that's hard to do if you don't know what you're saying. At the same time you know, the, again, it goes back to this bandwidth thing, you know, there's so much that we could be doing and should be doing. It's hard to to prioritize that whether, you know, tools are missing. Cuz I think a lot of the, the tools that are out there and, and speaking from the, the Republican side, you know, it, they're, they're priced beyond where most campaigns could get. Now obviously we're talking about presidential campaigns, they can, they can afford. But I, I think it's it's a challenge there as well.

Josh Klemons:

I agree. And I think certainly when you're talking down ballot, you kind of, you have to approach, as an outsider, you have to approach their strategies different than a presidential campaign. You know, if a presidential campaign is in a position where they can't afford to work with like professional team, whether that's internal or agency, like they're not gonna make it to the debate stage, let's just say that they're not

Eric Wilson:

Gonna get the 40,000 donors they need.

Josh Klemons:

Right, exactly. Whereas a, you know, a down ballot race, you know, you, you've gotta approach that with just a different level of understanding. Like that is probably, you know, a volunteer doing the best they can and certainly, you know, judge it differently. I think that's totally fair to to, I I would not do what I am doing with this whole, like judging the <laugh> campaign programs for down ballot races. I

Eric Wilson:

Don't think pick some random county commissioner and, and just dogg on that.

Josh Klemons:

Right? I mean, people struggle, you know, it is what it is. It's hard to get through this, but when you're talking about a presidential race, I think, you know, the best of the brightest of the party are coming together, making decisions about which candidates to support. And you, you know, you can learn a lot and certainly we saw this in 2020 on the Democratic side a whole lot of very big agencies were involved and we learned a lot as a party. And I imagine the Republican party will go through some similar, both learning struggles, but also like positive outcomes of that from the 2024 race, assuming, you know, we'll see how things go, but I imagine that there will be a lot of good that comes outta this for the party.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, I think it you, you may remember this Josh, but in 2020 I did the same thing that you're doing. I did a campaign funnel tear down for all of the Democratic candidates when they launched. And you know, it, it's really interesting to see where, where people are. And I think a lot of people found it useful. So you're to be commended for, for doing this for our side, easier to do as an outsider of course, because of course you're not criticizing your friends and, and colleagues <laugh>. Right? What, what's that one thing when you're getting an, and you open it and you're like, oh, okay, this is a, this is a good email. These people know what they're doing. Is there one thing that you look for right away and it's like, okay, this is gonna be good.

Josh Klemons:

Yes. Skim ability. If I can look at your email and in a matter of moments know what I'm looking at, that is a good email, whether or not I agree with what you have to say in that email. And if I need 10 minutes to sit down and parse through what I'm looking at, it is a bad email regardless of how beautifully it was written or what a great story it tells. And I think that we we're seeing that like you know, the Haley campaign is running a particularly good email program would say for the top tier. She's using large typeface, she's breaking it up with like, interesting elements. And I think that the, the, if you go look at the Biden campaign, his emails are short, large font. He knows his audience skews older

Eric Wilson:

So he can read them. Right. And he's writing for them.

Josh Klemons:

Yeah. Right. Him and his audience <laugh>

Eric Wilson:

And y'all's

Josh Klemons:

Audience as well. I mean, let's, let's be honest, it's a similar audience emails for campaigns and donating at this point. And if you're writing, assuming that they're gonna like take a moment to like break it. If you're not writing with short paragraphs, what are we even doing here? You know what I mean? Most people are gonna read these on their phones. You wanna write it so that it's easy to read, easier to skim.

Eric Wilson:

In my trainings when I get to this part, I have a picture of a NASCAR pit crew doing a pit stop, which, you know, in today's eras like 12 to 13 seconds, most people are spending less time deciding whether or not to read your email. Right. So much

Josh Klemons:

Less, i I would say moments like they're, if they open it, they're gonna scroll it with their eyes for about two to three seconds and if it seems captivating, maybe they'll read on, right. And if it doesn't, they'll just move right on.

Eric Wilson:

And so I think that's one thing that, that gets missed out a lot in this process because people can treat these emails as being, being really precious and it's totally divorced from the experience of how someone's actually gonna consume them. Right? So, you know, we read and make sure we spell check and test every link, but, and, and we might spend an hour, you know, trying to get an email together and through approvals sometimes more, sometimes less, and voters can look at it for like three seconds. <Laugh> right on on average. So I think that's something that gets missed out on a lot. And, and one of those things being Skimm ability, right? I'm gonna scrutinize the email that I'm writing very carefully, but that's not what the audience is doing.

Josh Klemons:

Correct. And again, it could move you, it could, it could overwhelm you with a emotion and email, but if they don't read it, it doesn't really matter. Nobody's going to donate on an email that they didn't read. And if your email is a giant wall of text, they're no one's going to read it. I mean, it's just not gonna happen. Maybe you have the very odd list that really prefers novellas in their inbox and if you've tested

Eric Wilson:

That, I'm not talking to you email list for example.

Josh Klemons:

Yeah. But for everybody else, I can pretty much tell you 99 out of a hundred emails are gonna perform better if they're easy to skim in the inbox, which doesn't mean they can't have a lot of texts, it just means they have to be broken up and easy to skim on a, on a mobile

Eric Wilson:

Whitespace and Yeah. Yeah. So Josh, what patterns did you notice across the, the G O P field's approach to email marketing? Good or bad?

Josh Klemons:

So I, I limited for sake of just my own sanity to the top tier. So there was six candidates that I reviewed. Two of them are not in my inbox, which I mentioned Donald Trump. I, I do have his emails, like I get them in other inboxes, so I have like certainly looked at them, but not a single time have I ever, if

Eric Wilson:

You had to guess, do you think that you're on some sort of rental list or something or it's an old house file?

Josh Klemons:

I have a feeling that their tech is broken. I could be wrong, but I have tried numerous times to sign up and the fact that it's not getting picked to me means something has broken on the site. Yeah. what's interesting is the first time I tried to go to it, it actually redirected to a win red page and the second time it didn't. So it says to me they're testing things and I'm wondering if they've tested actually signups. Like I'm wondering if they're noticing that new signups are not coming in because they're not getting ported over. So like, I just signed up for the Tim Scott email for the second time today actually. And within a moment I got an onboarding email from him, which is great. Why I'm not on his list though is a problem and we can delve more into that. Yeah. With Trump I've signed up for, or five times it just not gotten anything. So I actually think it's a portability issue. I think that I've signed up on a, some, I, I'm probably sitting on some spreadsheet somewhere four or five times and they haven't bothered to go through and pull that list and add it to their crm.

Eric Wilson:

All right. Well be careful what you list too much

Josh Klemons:

Enough credit. No idea.

Eric Wilson:

Right, exactly. Because you're, you're about to get added to all these lists as, as people are listening to this episode.

Josh Klemons:

Exactly. I can say so far out of the six that I've signed up for, only one of them has sold my email, but it happened very quickly. And that was Chris Christie he sold my email address to his super pac. Okay. I say sell, I don't know if he sold, gave away some other way, but the vast majority of emails I've gotten from Christie have come not from his campaign, but from his pack. Rhon DeSantis sent me a couple emails a day for four or five days and then took a week long break and then started sending me five to six emails a day every day for the last couple weeks. Hmm. which I don't think is a good tactic personally. I actually gave him a shout out in this little, like, graphic I did that I, I shared on LinkedIn that he had, he had sent me six emails in a week, which is fine. Now he's sending me five to six emails a day. And I think that that's problematic.

Eric Wilson:

One of the things that's tough here, and you mentioned this is like the, the, the testing and are you clicking and opening and reading all of these emails cuz that that could also send a signal back to <laugh> the campaign? Not enough. The person

Josh Klemons:

Is really getting five to six a day. Yeah. I'm certainly not clicking almost any link and I'm mostly reviewing the emails in batches, which is why I have this secondary email program. So no, it's not like I, I'm not, they're like, oh, he, he opened this within three minutes. We need to send him more emails. I've not donated to any of the candidates, obviously I've not asked for merch, I've not asked for yard signs. So I'm not the power user that like maybe you would want to email four or five times a day. If anything I'm a non opener and then, you know, big opener in batches. But I hear the question, I think it's a valid question. I just don't think it's the answer for this particular example. Yeah. That said Nikki Haley, she's emailed me actually more times than DeSantis, but because she didn't take that break in the middle, which I don't understand why he did I'm only getting like two to three emails a day from her. So that feels a little more, it still feels like a lot. I mean, Joe Biden's not emailing every day mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, Donald Trump is emailing more than that. Don Joe Biden is emailing less than that. So I mean, there is, there is room to maneuver there, but she's sending about two, two to three emails a day.

Eric Wilson:

So in terms of trends, volume, sort of oversaturating, any other trends that, that you've noticed?

Josh Klemons:

So a couple of them have onboarding series. Most of them do not. I think that, you know, it, it's hard to have trends when two of the six have just not emailed me. Right, right, right, right. But I do think that you can see that Haley has definitely like learned from what's worked. She's following like a best practices protocol. Desantis at times is, and at times is breaking that. And I can get specific there. Mike Pence's email feels like he asked an AI chat bot to write Ronald Reagan emails in 2023. Like, I, you know, it's very hard to parse out like who he is and what his theory of the case is from his emails. I can, I can feel his personality. I just don't know why he thinks he's gonna be president. And I think that's important, whereas Haley has done a great job of articulating why she is the right candidate for the moment.

So I think DeSantis and Hailey do a very good job of not asking for money in every email. I think I'll give them both credit there. And I'll just jump right into like a negative of the DeSantis campaign. I'll give you two. I I counted this morning out of 54 emails I've received from him, 50 of them use the word woke. 46 mentioned C R t 51 mentioned d e I and five use the exact phrase men can't get pregnant, like exactly in those words. Okay. <laugh>. And something else I noticed that I missed looking at these sort of like, as they were coming in, but this morning while I was like looking through the list again to sort of like refresh for this conversation, I noticed something I had not noticed initially. So he is been pushing bumper stickers and yard signs heavily, which I think it's a little much, but it's not bad. Like I, I think it's great that he has things beyond just asking for money. But I realized 10 out of 13 emails encouraging me to sign up to, to get a bumper sticker are identical emails. Literally copy and paste emails where I'm getting the exact same. Like when I was going through them one at a time, I was noticing nothing was changing in my inbox. And I was like, but

Eric Wilson:

Like the subject line was changing,

Josh Klemons:

The subject line was changing and nothing else. Hmm. The emails were literally copy and paste from each other. 10 out of 13 were identical. I've never seen something like that on an email program of this like level.

Eric Wilson:

That's interesting. And you know, I I think one of the things that I've, I've noticed and, and maybe you picked up on this, you pointed it out, they're not asking for money a as much. The, they're, they're kind of toned down, not as hyperbolic.

Josh Klemons:

I do think that's true. I, I think like Donald Trump's emails, despite not being in my, you know, tracking folder, I'm still getting them, they still feel a bit hyperbolic to me. You know, every, you know, he's asking for money constantly. It's a lot of concern. That said, I think that yeah, Haley and DeSantis as the two that are running the most kind of traditional email programs a whole lot of their emails don't ask for money, which to me is the sign of a campaign that has like faith in itself. If you're desperate to get to get nothing, but on the debate stage, all you need is that $1 donation. That's what you focus on. And the fact that they've been able to really like, stretch their legs you know, Haley's been using these like fun gifs. She did this clever thing that I really liked where she asked for questions from the audience, which is not that novel, but she's answering them. And I actually like that. I don't remember seeing anybody do it in quite that way. Like, you know, and her whole email was based around like answering one of the questions she got. And I assume that will be something we see as like a running theme over the coming that started recently. And I'm guessing we'll see more of it. Tbd well, I'll include, but like that, you know,

Eric Wilson:

I'll include a link in the show notes to our, our conversation with John Hall who's advising Nikki Haley's campaign on email fundraising. We had him on the show a few months ago. You're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with Josh Clemons about this date of 2024 Republicans digital email campaigns and what he's noticed about them. So what are you gonna try out, Josh, from, from what you've seen on the Republican side?

Josh Klemons:

Every cycle we sort of see folks leaning into what we learned last cycle and trying to iterate. I don't know how much iteration we've seen yet. I mean, it's still pretty early in the, in the cycle. I think Haley has done a quite a good job of really leaning into like, she's sort of like using the whiteboards like the Katie Porter style whiteboard with gifs and photos, which is nice. I think that DeSantis actually did something really interesting which is calling out the BS that all of us understand is happening in the email world, but most of us aren't necessarily leaning into in our programs. So he's actually saying like, he's not going to do BS matches, which, you know, nine times outta 10 aren't real. He's not gonna buy email addresses. I think the fact that a presidential candidate in 20 for 2024 stating that he will not buy email addresses is impressive and something to take note of, he's not the first to do it.

I mean, there, I've certainly seen plenty of Democrats make similar pledges, but for for a presidential race, I, I would call that impressive. I really like that. I, I think Haley has done a great job of really, like, again, there's so many emails to look at, so it it's both good and bad. But I really like that she's done a good job of really focusing in on single asks. And I think it's a good use case of how you can have a lot of asks so long as they're not all crammed into a single email. That said, I don't think that anybody's doing anything on like what the John Federman campaign did last cycle. You know, I, I don't think that of what I've seen yet. Nobody is going to have, you know serious, you know, articles written about what they're doing the way that John Fetterman's digital program managed to do. As far as what I'm the most excited about, which is beyond the scope of this conversation, maybe are you familiar with Congressman Jeff Jackson? And if you subscribe to his CK

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, we, we talk about him all the time. <Laugh>

Josh Klemons:

Okay. Yeah. I love I love what he's doing with email. I think that he has taken a complete, he has like taken a hammer to like the traditional concept of what a fundraising email program should look like. And I think that he is iterating a new future. And if anybody is sort of charting the path of what the next couple cycles will look like I'm guessing it's him. We'll, see, I could be wrong. You never know what like kind of comes out of this. But I think what he's doing, whereas he's just literally removing all the fundraising from his emails and making them about value and then occasionally asking for money when he needs it, is the future of email because people are just inundated and overwhelmed and don't wanna open their email boxes inboxes anymore. And if we can find a way to like change that, the people who find a way to change that will win. And I think he's doing a great job of that at the moment. Right.

Eric Wilson:

And I think the, the key distinction there is most email campaigns are really just the digitization of direct mail fundraising, right? So the, the, the copywriting is a little bit different, but same idea of, oh yeah, something bad is happening, I need you to mail in a check. We've just put that online. I, I think that the digital transformation of that looks a lot like what Nikki Haley's doing, what Jeff Jackson is doing, where you become a content creator and we're, we'll see more sort of like Patreon sub stack type models. We gotta figure out how that works in, in our political context because of the compliance aspects of it. And so, yeah, I think that's, that's right. And it really is going back to the earlier point of the sort of scammy tactics. It came up in, in our polling and in our focus groups and in conversations with donors, people just don't like it. And so I think you're seeing these presidential campaigns who know that they're gonna start introducing themselves to the country need to put their best foot forward. And so I think it's definitely a wake up call for other campaigns. I want you to look back on, on your team, Josh, and you've mentioned the Biden campaigns, emails a couple of times. What are, what are they up to? Are they trying anything new? What's, what's going on with them?

Josh Klemons:

Sure. Yeah. Well, first of all, I love his new branding

Eric Wilson:

With all the, like handwriting. And I

Josh Klemons:

Love the handwriting. It feels like an 80 year old man's email program, which is an amazing thing to be able to pull off, right? Like, they made it feel like he was printing up emails, writing notes on them, and then sending them to me. Which feels very authentic for, like you said, like an older candidate slash president. Last cycle, obviously they were all about gradients. It felt very young and fresh. And this cycle, they like really simplified the branding and added the handwriting, and I am all for it. His email program is very optimistic. It doesn't feel naive, but it's not doom and gloom, which it could be. You know, he's, he's definitely trying to run for like a brighter future. But then he's he's also got the dark Biden thing that they're leaning heavily into <laugh>.

So it sort of like keeps that, you know, like sort of like fun and quirky side to him that is clearly there. I would say you, you asked the question earlier, if you covered up the logo, would you know who this email is from? I think if you took all of these emails and turned all of them into Laura Ipsum and put them all against Joe Biden's, Joe Biden's would win because they're the easiest to read. They're the most skimmable, the largest font, the shortest paragraphs he has made it. Him and his team have done an amazing job of making his emails very easy to read with large typeface and clean design. I also love he's using, and granted he has, you know, a different position than any of the candidates who are, you know, the party is divided by as it's supposed to be right now, so it's harder, but he has a large amount of senders that he's using mm-hmm.

<Affirmative>, which I think is a really nice way to show that he has like a lot of party support. You know, you've seen his cm, you know, his campaign manager sending emails, but also many other people from his team. He does those weekly roundups from Team Joe that I really like. He started doing those shortly after winning that are kind of cool. You see something similar from Nikki Haley they're doing these weekly roundups from her cm. I don't like them as much, and I can get into why, but I do like them. I, I think it's a cool way to do it if they feel like they're written on a typewriter, which is clever, but my guess is makes 'em harder to read on a mobile device. Right? Yeah. Which is the main reason why I say I don't like them as much because they're literally just harder to read. But I think it's a clever if not novel, certainly a clever approach to like pulling back the curtain and saying, you know, let's pull back the fourth wall and have a real conversation about what's going on this week. And I think that's a really clever thing. Team Joe has been doing that since he won office, and the only campaign I'm seeing do that on the right right now is Nikki Haley. But I'm, I'm there for it. I think it's a, it's a solid approach.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, I mean, I think you co you've touched on a couple of challenges here. One is Joe Biden doesn't really have a credible challenge to the nomination, and he is not trying to raise a bunch of money to get on the debate stage. So there's some differences there. And that's why I always caution people of like, you can't just compare Republicans to Democrats in terms of digital marketing, in terms of technology because we're, we've got different challenges and different audiences. One thing that does jump out to me in our conversation is that we're starting to see a lot more complexity come to email or, or rather we're treating our email lists with more dimension than just donate, donate, donate. You know, one of the things that we found in our polling and our data from last cycle is that a huge number of people who donate to Democrats, along with independent swing voters are getting these Republican fundraising emails. And that's not a message that you are going to win people over with because it's designed to activate your base. And so kind of heartening to see that people are, are starting to, to take advantage of that. What do you think down ballot candidates can learn, even if they don't have the, the resources, the team, what can they pick up from these, these campaigns?

Josh Klemons:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think first of all, especially early on, tell folks what you're for, not what you're against. I think Nikki Haley's doing a really good job of, again, articulating the theory of the case. Whereas while DeSantis is running an okay email program in some ways I think, you know, he's using, if you're not terminally online, his email program is going to be confusing to you. And that's not good because a lot of these people are, that are on his list are not terminally online and don't know what c r t and d e I means. And he should be like simplifying things and making it in language that his audience speaks. And I think the down ballot candidates should learn from that even more. Don't look to Fox News or MSN BBC to set the tone, look to your constituents to set the tone.

What are people actually talking to about on the trail? That's the basis of your email program. And if you're asking for money or trying to give out yard signs, whatever it is, but like telling real stories that feel real, that feel like they're from the community is going to help with down ballot races. I've written a million down ballot emails like I work with a lot of down ballot candidates, and the ones that perform the best are the ones that actually feel like they're part of the community. Not like they were copy and pasted from, you know, a D trip or, you know if it feels like it could have been copy and pasted from a national campaign, it's not gonna do well because people see enough of those in their inbox. That's not what they need. What they want is emails that feel real and authentic and introduce themselves.

The other big thing that I would stress is keep your emails simple. Especially for mobile doesn't mean short. It, it can mean short, but simple, like clear. And also, and I've mentioned this phrase many times and I assume our listeners probably know what theory of the change is, but essentially you need to tell people why what you're asking for can actually make the difference. You're promising. Don't tell me that with $5 we can change the world because nobody leaves that. Tell me that with $5 we can buy five more yard signs because that's believable. So make sure that the theory of change matches the promises you're making. I see a lot of down ballot races making lofty promises that they probably don't believe, and I sure as hell don't believe <laugh>. You know, and if I don't believe it, you know, like neither does the average, you know, reader, and if they don't believe it, they're not gonna donate.

So I think simple emails, clear theory of change. Don't be afraid to not ask for money. And the other big thing, and this is where I would definitely go back to Haley and DeSantis to a degree have an onboarding series because if you don't have an onboarding series, you're sending that first email randomly whenever you happen to send it based on when you somebody signs up and it's probably gonna ask for money. Yeah. As opposed to like actually inviting people to join. You have no idea. And if you wanna see an example of a good onboarding series, sign up for Nikki's Haley's email list with a new program because I actually was quite impressed. She sent four or five emails with different asks before ever asking for money. They felt real, they felt unique. And it sort of like brought me into the campaign in a way that none of the other candidates really did.

Eric Wilson:

I wanna thank Josh for a great conversation. You can learn more about him in our show notes. There's a link to his blog post as well as his podcast. If this episode made you a little bit smarter or gave you something to think about or help you fix something with your email program, all we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague and you look smarter in the process. It's a win-win. People learn about the podcast. We reach more listeners. Remember to subscribe to the Business of Politics Show wherever you get your podcast, so that way you'll never miss an episode. You can also sign up for email updates on our website, business of politics podcast.com. With that, I'll say thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

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