Politics and Spam

I was an early supporter of Kamala Harris for the Democratic presidential nomination, so I was a little sorry, though not surprised, to see her drop out of the race yesterday. One thing I’m not going to be sorry about is no longer receiving a relentless barrage of emails from her campaign.

In March, I made a modest donation to Harris’s campaign. Besides the California affinity, I saw her as a relative moderate (particularly compared to Sanders and Warren) who could still motivate progressives and get out the vote with women and minority voters who will be so crucial to winning the general election. What I didn’t fully expect was an email onslaught that was largely devoid of thoughtful content — instead hammering me to donate again, and again, and again.

To be fair, I doubt Harris’s campaign was any more aggressive with their email solicitations than other candidates, Democrat or Republican. And the DNC has, perhaps inadvertently, encouraged over-solicitation of donors due to their qualification criteria for the debates, which mandated broad, “grassroots” support. But out of curiosity, I wanted to add up just how many times her campaign contacted me.

Between my initial donation and her announcement yesterday, I was sent 456 emails from the Harris campaign — over 1.8 emails per day, on average. The notes came from Kamala Harris, Kamala Store, Kamala 2020, Kamala Fundraising Team, Team Kamala, Kamala HQ, Kamala War Room and many other monickers. And they all purported to share a sentence or two of “news.” But the bottom line was always donate, donate, donate.

Email marketing best practices typically advise no more than one or two emails per week, not per day. Consistently, the #1 reason people unsubscribe from email marketing lists is too many emails. Members of Congress felt the spam problem was so bad (of course, not their spam), that they passed the CAN-SPAM Act to regulate email marketing practices. Though Harris’s campaign appears to be in compliance with the letter of that law, they and other politicians are definitely bending the spirit of it. No spammer thinks they’re spamming.

Even Harris’s “I am suspending my campaign” email included a “Donate” button

What politicians need to learn is what progressive companies already know — you need to provide your subscribers something of value. A company can no more say “buy, buy, buy” than a politician can say “donate, donate, donate.” And that was really what was lacking, both from Harris’s emails and her campaign overall: a message of substance that resonated with voters and engaged them enough to open their pocketbooks.