Presidential Candidates Taking Their Email Subscribers For Granted

ClickZ recently ran a story on the fact that both Obama and Clinton aren’t addressing issues of WHY their subscribers should vote for them:

…By neglecting to discuss issues in recent e-mails to Texas voters and distinguish one candidate from the other, both campaigns may have taken support for granted.

“It assumes that everybody who signs up for the e-mail list is a supporter…and in a closely contested race that people aren’t looking for reinforcement of why they should vote,” said Reich. “Campaigns do themselves a disservice by thinking that e-mail in particular is not going to fall into somebody’s inbox who needs more than just a reminder to find their polling place.”

That danger was driven home to me by Dan Kennedy recently… If you’re not familiar with Dan Kennedy, he’s a well-respected high-profile business trainer who has a pretty rabid group of followers/customers. If anyone could assume that their audience was pre-sold on them it’s Dan, but even he said that when he makes the mistake of not re-selling and proving his worth to his existing customers when promoting a new offer, his response suffers.

Lesson learned: Never take your customers, partners, or constituents for granted. Keep re-selling them on yourself even after you believed you’ve already convinced them.

Tags: campaigning, clinton, email, issues, obama