Candidates' E-Mails Have a Bottom Line
Just Past the Chatty Subject Is an Appeal for Campaign Cash

By Michael D. Shear and Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, November 25, 2007

The subject line on the e-mail is short, one of those must-click phrases that makes the recipient think it's a quick reply from a note to a friend: "Re: Hey."

But click on it -- as thousands of Barack Obama supporters did -- and the chatty e-mail opener turns out to be a gimmick straight from the spammer handbook: a direct fundraising appeal from Michelle Obama on behalf of her husband's campaign. "Please," she wrote, quickly moving past the faux-friend conversational tone, "make a donation and get us there."

As the 2008 presidential primaries approach, campaigns such as Obama's have started sending out scores of e-mails every week to hundreds of thousands of potential donors, and their subject lines are often misleading, tantalizing or overly familiar -- much like the all-too-common commercial spam that fills e-mail inboxes with lurid promotions for medical devices, male enhancement or financial scams.

Instead of faceless campaigns or unknown operatives, many of the candidates are turning to celebrity endorsements to make their e-mail pitches. "Mind if I drop in?" asks former president Bill Clinton in one. "Let's do lunch," proposes his wife, front-running Democratic candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, in another.

"It's all marketing," said Josh Levy, an editor at the Web site TechPresident ( http://www.techpresident.com), which tracks the use of technology by the candidates. "It's all cynical. When stuff stops working, you have to tap into whatever trends are there."

Such e-mails are a key to fundraising in this election -- Clinton raised $8 million online in the last quarter, while her closest rival, Obama, has collected a record of nearly $26 million online so far for the year -- and are central to organizing volunteers, especially a new generation of Web-savvy young activists.

"They are the people who want to hear from the campaign. They are the people who are more likely to volunteer for the campaign, the people more likely to respond to fundraising appeals," said Jonah Seiger, who runs Connections Media, a Washington-based Internet strategy firm. "And guess what? It's getting harder and harder to get these people to open their e-mails, and that's why you're seeing campaigns experimenting."

E-mail played a critical role four years ago, when former Vermont governor Howard Dean sent regular e-mails to more than half a million supporters and raised millions of dollars via the Web. In 2004, other campaigns obsessed about Dean's massive e-mail list. The campaign made public the size of the list on its Web site. This year, candidates are keeping the scope of their e-mail lists to themselves.

"We don't release specific numbers," said Mindy Finn, chief online political operative of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

Clinton is rumored to have the largest list, with upwards of 1 million addresses. A few months ago, the campaign announced its 1,000,000th supporter, "a good chunk of that number," said Peter Daou, Clinton's Internet director, "from our e-mail list." Added Daou: "But I don't want to be more precise than that."

The goal of some of Obama's campaign e-mails, said Joe Rospars, his new media director, is to make supporters feel as though they are a part of the campaign. That explains the subject lines that read "RE: Hey" and "RE: The Fierce Urgency of Now," both from Michelle Obama.

"It's the common denominator across all the campaigns," said Patrick Ruffini, former online director of the Republican National Committee who served as webmaster of President Bush's reelection campaign. "E-mail is the one thing that all campaigns, no matter who are, has to do -- and has to do well."

The e-mail tricks are not unlike those used for years by their paper-and-ink cousins to persuade recipients to rip open an envelope.

Some political pamphlets arrive in "snail" mailboxes with what appears to be a personal note scrawled across the front. Others have a stamp that says "TIME SENSITIVE. OPEN IMMEDIATELY!" -- giving it the look of an important bill or government notice.

But the clever e-mail subject lines are new to political campaigns, whose online strategists are trying everything they can to maximize the thousands of e-mail addresses they have compiled.

In dozens of campaign e-mails saved by The Washington Post in recent months, e-mails have taken a cue from direct mailers, with intriguing, sometimes downright confounding subject lines that beg to be opened.

One subject line from Democratic candidate Bill Richardson read: "Fwd: Zogby Poll: Half Say They Would Never Vote for Hillary Clinton for President." The e-mail touted the results of a poll that implies that the New Mexico governor is the most likely Democrat to beat a Republican in the general election.

Cindee Badalamente, an Obama supporter and a high school counselor in Phoenix has gotten most of Obama's e-mails, including those from Michelle.

"It confused me a little bit. It looked like I e-mailed Michelle first or something. And, I'm like, 'Wait, I didn't,' " the 43-year-old Democrat said. "The e-mails are trying to stand out; I get that. And that might work for some people, but for me, it's a bit much."

An e-mail from the campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), using the endorsement of a former star quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, carried this subject line: "From Roger Staubach."

In one of the Clinton campaign's most-talked-about -- and in some corners of the blogosphere openly mocked -- recent e-mails, her husband seemed to be making a most unusual come-on to the thousands of e-mail recipients. His subject line? "You, me, a TV, and a bowl of chips."

On Wednesday, his wife e-mailed a note to a few thousand of her closest friends. "This year, I'm so thankful to have you with me working for change," she wrote. "From my family to yours, have a very happy Thanksgiving. All the best. Sincerely. Hillary."