By bbr

by Sarah Warlick, copywriter and editor

With the national election at a safe distance behind us, it’s a good time to analyze one of the controversial campaign tactics the Obama camp utilized from a marketing perspective.

During the campaign, the Democratic candidate sent out a constant stream of emails to potential supporters with what struck many recipients as overly casual subject lines. “Hi,” “About tonight,” and “Hey,” were among them. “Wow” and “Join me for dinner?” read others, and one much-mocked missive was labeled simply, “Clooney.”

These aren’t the sorts of email headings that most people would consider appropriate for use in a business email, even among people who work together on a daily basis, so on what grounds should they have been considered suitable for fundraising communications?

While they earned a good deal of derision among comics and pundits, the campaign claims that the subject lines were well researched to be a highly effective approach. The results make it hard to argue convincingly against the strategy: online fundraising brought $690 million to the campaign, and much of that total was in response to these emails. In an article published on Bloomberg Businessweek, Joshua Green reports:

The appeals were the product of rigorous experimentation by a large team of analysts. “We did extensive A-B testing not just on the subject lines and the amount of money we would ask people for,” says Amelia Showalter, director of digital analytics, “but on the messages themselves and even the formatting.” The campaign would test multiple drafts and subject lines—often as many as 18 variations—before picking a winner to blast out to tens of millions of subscribers. “When we saw something that really moved the dial, we would adopt it,” says Toby Fallsgraff, the campaign’s e-mail director, who oversaw a staff of 20 writers.

It quickly became clear that a casual tone was usually most effective. “The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your in-box from other people,” Fallsgraff says. “‘Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration.” 

Getting a barrage of marketing emails from any source becomes an irritant at some point, and yet, surprisingly, the campaign never ran up against that expected tolerance threshold. Fallsgraff indicates that,

“At the end, we had 18 or 20 writers going at this stuff for as many hours a day as they could stay awake. The data didn’t show any negative consequences to sending more.”

This stands in direct contradiction to the advice we offer our clients when we discourage them from bombarding their email-weary audiences with constant marketing messages. We still stand by that advice, noting that most people will exhibit greater tolerance (and deeper pockets) for such critical and relatively rare events as a presidential election than they will for ongoing relationships with service providers.

Even with the caveats, observing the effectiveness of this strategy of constant, super-casual messaging is educational, however counter-intuitive it seems. Like most Americans, however they voted, we’re glad the campaign is over and done with for at least a couple years. But we take our marketing lessons wherever we find them, and observing unexpected results is a valid one.

The takeaway is that there is unlimited value in trying new approaches and testing, retesting and testing again. Don’t rely on what you think will work or not work – give your ideas a try and measure the results carefully. Only then will you know you’ve hit on the brand new strategies that give you an edge over the competition.