Political email programs require continual maintenance, especially in today’s environment where platform issues, privacy updates and heavy send volume can all impact results.
In an interview with C&E, Nicole Cairns, partner at FogLamp Content Studio, said senders need to closely audit the metrics of their programs to ensure those emails keep landing in inboxes and that engagement remains high.
“See which piece of the process isn’t working, whether it’s your conversion rate from your email to your landing page, or it’s getting more people to open, or getting more people to simply click,” said Cairns. “You kind of have to take a look at whichever piece of the process isn’t working and diagnose … From there, make alterations.”
If a program is getting a solid number of opens but the click-through rates are lagging, have a good look at the email content and things like link placement and button placement “to try to get a good sense of which piece of the email is driving people to take action and which pieces aren’t.”
Ultimately, said Cairns, the biggest determinant in such a high volume email environment will be content. If the approach is “cut and paste,” as opposed to doing the work to craft content that’s truly reflective of the candidate and their supporters, engagement is far more likely to lag.
“If the content isn’t authentic to the candidate, to the race and what people really care about, it’s hard to make any one of those pieces work much less getting all of them to work together,” said Cairns. “So we’ll kind of pick a couple of different approaches depending on what’s working and what’s not.”
Watch our full interview with Cairns above for more on creative testing, graphics, and tips on email length.
