Political Campaign Tactics: Reach More Voters with Email Appending

To be successful, political campaigns need to get their message out to as many voters as possible.

Email plays a crucial role in this process. It allows your campaign to connect with people that want to hear from you, any time you want, with whatever message you like.

Here’s the rub. Email only works if you have a working email address for your target audience and your message reaches their inbox.

Political Campaign Tip – A Bigger Email List Is A Better Email List!

When it comes to winning elections, the size of your campaign’s email database is a major factor. Want to grow yours? Email appending is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to do it.

Engage, Engage, Engage

Email appending is not an acquisition strategy – it’s an engagement mechanism. You simply leverage the voter data you have (name and postal address) to broaden your email reach.

How to Make Email Appending Work for your Political Campaign

Here are 3 easy steps to take to ensure that your email append project generates positive results for your political campaign.

1) Find a reputable provider:

Vet providers carefully. Many will make lofty promises. Very few will deliver on them. Selecting a vendor is all about trust. Sure, the price might look attractive, but can you trust them with one of your most valuable assets – your political campaign data?

Here’s a checklist to get you moving in the right direction.

2) Make sure there’s an opt-In permission pass

Seems like a no-brainer, right? Not so fast. Most providers in this space won’t handle permission messaging for you. You’re on your own.

This is a red flag! If they’re not willing to message their appended data, why should you be? Find a vendor that will deploy an opt-in message on your behalf. The benefits are three-fold:

1. Confirm the deliverability of your new addresses.
2. Reduce the number of bounces and spam complaints hitting your sending infrastructure.
3. Get a list of engaged “hand raisers” that want to hear from your political campaign.

3) Make sure hygiene is part of the process.

Some vendors claim to send a permission message but won’t perform basic email hygiene on the list. This is a recipe for disaster.

If your match file contains scraped or purchased data, it’s likely to be chock full of nasty stuff. Also, bad addresses, like spamtraps and honeypots, can slip through the permission process. Hitting just one can bring your entire email program to a screeching halt. Other than your candidate getting snarled in a major scandal mid-election process, this is about the worst thing that can happen to a political campaign.

Find a partner dedicated to cleansing your matched data. Otherwise, your sender reputation and inbox placement will take a hit and future campaigns will miss the mark.

Wrapping Up

If done properly, email appending is a powerful and cost-effective way to generate more of the opens, clicks, donations, and votes your candidate needs to win. Follow the tips above and choose a vendor wisely. Good luck!