hello everyone marco montemagno here
digital domination summit 2013 and with
me i’m so excited guys and i will tell
you why in a minute to have as a guest
Amalia Showalter I mean yeah thank you
so much for being here first of all yeah
sure so I never know I’m the worst
presenter to introduce my guests ever
because every time I I say and here we
have Seth Seth Godin goatee and we have
you know Gary vine a check I really am
horrible in this fix my memory but
Amelia I was following you because I
started to read a lot of interesting
articles at the end of the Obama
campaign that the last Obama campaign
and you were following all the digital
analytics and specifically from what I
understood all the testing on emails all
the email marketing strategies and when
I was reading I was really fascinated
and here is the reason why I’m so
excited to every year today because I’m
a tech entrepreneur and I do tones of
email campaigns and every time I think
gosh but what really will work I mean if
I change the subject if I send it on
monday or friday or this time at that
time does the text email work better or
a nice beautiful email and how can i
increase my my open rate how can i
increase my click to rate and so on so
that’s why when I I so the chance to
invite you i was immediately going for
it and you were very very friendly to
immediately accept the invitation and
yeah so I want to just go straight to
the point first of all how is Obama I
mean did you make it as well yeah i
don’t i don’t actually get to you know
hang out with him i am here in DC but I
you know he’s got a job to do so I think
he’s pretty busy Oh Rob but yeah I mean
I was I was the director of digital
analytics on the Obama campaign at this
last cycle in 2012 and so a lot of what
that meant was I was helping the digital
department dude ever do their job more
efficiently you know that includes the
website email program social media
messaging things like that um so you
know i mean i was i was on the campaign
staff not the White House staff we
actually have sort of a difference
between those two groups in the US all
right and what kind of tests you were
running as a general overview well
everything on our website was tested you
know through split testing and we had a
very talented a you know a web
development team that did all of those
tests my job primarily ended up being
about email testing you know we raised a
lot of money and we did a lot of you
know small dollar fundraising on the
Obama campaign and most of that came
through email when we’re doing online
fundraising it’s mostly about email and
and so we would do a very extensive
testing on our email so which meant you
know for every national fundraising
email that we sent out we would have
four different drafts or sometimes six
different drafts and each one would have
three different subject lines and so we
would send those there’s different
versions too little tiny pieces of our
list wait about an hour and then get the
results back and see which version of
those 12 or 18 different versions was
doing the best and then we could send
that the remaining eighty percent of our
list or so and then you know even that
even then we might split that remaining
eighty percent into multiple pieces and
test out you know should we have a blue
button or a red button or no button at
all you know should we know how should
we tweak every little aspect of our
email okay um all right the Justice
answered now I have 54 different
question variation for this ok I will
try to to get to go to all the point
that I have in mind number one all right
Obama campaign got a huge mailing list I
read one once was 17 million subscribers
or something like that when when they
started I don’t know exactly the number
but that’s in the right ballpark dry not
exactly that but it’s it’s that’s close
enough yeah so is a huge number and
from what I know all the companies that
I know unless they are you know Facebook
or YouTube they don’t have that kind of
level anyway so that the question number
one is do you think that testing is
helpful in the same way for big list or
small list the reason why i ask is
because if you do a little change in a
bhama fundraising campaign you probably
will raise I don’t know 1 million more
or 1 million less you know like you know
little yet and normally you don’t have
that kind of impacts what what do you
think well I think yeah smaller
organizations a smaller lists will not
be able to do the same level like the
same amount of testing that we did you
know they won’t be able to have 18
different variations to send out and
still have you know a list left over to
send a win or two but I think that even
small organizations should be doing some
amount of testing even if it’s just
splitting their list in half and you
know it you can learn a lot or your next
email by doing the small test on
whatever email you’re doing right then
or you know I think some people do very
limited amount of subject line testing
and that’s good i mean people should do
that but i actually think it might be
even better if people did a little bit
more draft testing so if you have a list
that’s big enough to do subject line
testing where you know you let’s say you
take you know ten percent twenty percent
of your list and send one subject line
today m and another ten twenty percent
of what your list and send another
subject line I actually would recommend
doing two different drafts summer
clients are important obviously and it’s
easier but I think testing out different
different messages you know different
variations that are especially if they
are very different from one another you
know if one has a much more um you know
when it’s more personal and sort of has
a story in it or what is more policy
focused or product focus you know I
think that when you have those different
variations if you have a small list then
you’re still likely to see some
being friends um right and you know I
think one thing that we found you know
we were not very good at guessing what
would win you know if we were if we knew
what would win we wouldn’t have to do
the testing but you know we would
frequently try things out and have know
what we thought was a really good theory
for what would win and it wouldn’t and
so then we would turn around and do the
opposite and I would find okay so that
we should go that direction or you know
we had a for a little while we had a
betting pool where we would bet on which
of those 12 to 18 versions would win um
you know so all the people who are you
know really into this in the office who
are writing the emails we were analyzing
the emails we would guess and we were
terrible we were so bad at guessing what
would win and so you know if even the
experts can’t accurately predict what
the audience is going to like the most
okay it just means that it’s that much
more important to do testing let them
let your audience tell you what you like
I want to get the chance to to have you
here to to understand one big dog that I
had for the last 15 years of my life and
so many discussions about it I got a
business partner that always say let’s
send a beautiful email full of HTML
stuff and great you know that people say
wow that’s beautiful and I say I’m a
technician and say no I want to send you
new text email very yeah plain text we
were one link to click and that’s it and
a lot of discussion about it so it’s
better to be beautiful or better to be
ugly in your experience in my experience
it’s better to be ugly all right yeah
you you in or at least that was our
experience um you know there was a time
on the campaign where i thought okay i
want to make the emails prettier not
necessarily really highly formatted but
just you know have um like I wanted to
put some you know slick-looking buttons
and you know just have it be a little
bit nicer to look a little bit more like
our very nice web pages which were
simple but also very attractive and it
turned out that didn’t win and then we’d
have had some tests where we put this
like ugly yellow highlighting
I’m certain for da Rosa yeah i mean i
was like gross and we didn’t want it to
win but it totally won it didn’t win
forever I mean one thing we learned is
that it’s important to keep testing
because there are things that are sort
of novelty effects and that allele of
highlighting isn’t going to work forever
um but we did you know generally find
that planar emails did better and you
know maybe that won’t be true forever I
mean I think that part of the reason I
think playing emails do well now is that
there’s just too many people that are
doing these highly formatted you know
too many boxes and pictures and
everything and so that people just kind
of tune that out and so if everybody
then switched to really plan emails then
maybe it would be good to be the one
with a you know very formal email yeah
but one other dot the what kind of field
do you think is the most important if
you can get an average I mean like the
subject is the most important or the
sender or i mean the the date that you
send the timing but what what kind of if
you should say okay my top list of tips
about what to test is number one day’s
number two numbers ring I i think the
draft like the actual text of the email
is probably the most important followed
by the subject line i think senator can
matter and i mean certainly you know we
definitely found that emails from barack
obama did much much better than emails
from some random you know personal in a
campaign obviously we couldn’t send
every single email from Barack Obama oh
no he’s yeah we sent a lot of email and
we don’t want better Barack and Michelle
Obama perform better Barack or Michelle
as a sender they both did very very well
um yeah and I mean you know off the top
of my head I would i would say the
president did better but we also you
know he was sending at specific moments
that were very big I think I think
Michelle might have had the lowest
unsubscribe right
you know people like raja ali don’t want
to add some stress but yeah i mean they
both like those were both just you know
their emails did phenomenally well um so
I think I mean sender obviously does
matter and it’s know it but I think that
if the choice is between you know a sort
of small variation or two unknown
senders I don’t think that you’re going
to get them you’re the most lift from
that obviously you have you know a
celebrity or a presidential run you will
get will get a lot of lift there but I
think just that you know basic testing
the text of the email testing you know
having these different flavors is very
you know I think that’s where you get
the most lift in your testing but why do
you say I’m India the text of the email
let’s say more than the subject because
in my mind I always think okay if people
if I don’t catch the attention with the
subject they will not open my email and
then they will not click on my link
which is my in my mind is my my goal to
get people clicking and press the
average percentage that I see of
click-through rate is normally very very
very very low and obviously if people is
not even opening the email they will not
click on your links so why do you say
the text of the email is more important
than the subject well it might depend on
you know it might depend on what you’re
trying to get them to do so you know we
were trying to get people to donate yeah
and so I mean yes I think it is very
important to me obviously you have to
have people open the email before or
anything else but you know what’s
actually going to motivate them to click
on the link and donate some money I
think has more to do with the message
that they see once they get in into the
email and so you know it yes I mean
ideally you’ll be able to test both and
wrong we did we were had enough list to
test both subject line and email so we
could get the best combination but I
think you know it to get people actually
take that action of getting out their
wall
and giving us some money it’s more than
just a subject line like that that
requires more of a more of a good pitch
yield so you know and also I mean you
know there’s some this is some of this
is just a feeling but I mean you know we
we would sometimes see uh you know we
see drafts do really well and it would
sometimes have subject lines that we
tested on drafts that didn’t do so well
but we would see that that subject line
helped that draft and so he said okay
what if we put that subject line they
had one over there on the draft that was
doing really well and put that together
and it didn’t it didn’t work as well and
so I think that there’s still something
about the draft text thing that matters
that’s interesting and if you could give
a tip and let’s say okay obviously every
company are different and also politics
is a different kind of animal for
several reasons but if you have a tip to
say okay look to to increase your open
right because I I do a step back my
feelings sometimes is that I see that
people they know they are not opening
emails you know they that sometimes the
feeling is that there are so so many
things and social facebook twitter email
and and you don’t know how to reach your
customer anymore because even if they
are subscribed and they love you still
they not open in the email maybe they
have no time or I don’t know so
sometimes I think why I mean on several
lists are me or my customers we try to
send email and well opening rate some
time is not as big as expected we would
like under percent the weapon right and
you know yeah fifty percent twenty
percent thirty percent it depends by the
industry so what what’s the best tip
that you could give I mean obviously if
you have Barack Obama sender subject
come to me you’ll be the next vice
president I probably that that that that
works you know but and sometimes you did
it i mean you playing around with this
but what would
you suggest to to accompany I mean to
increase their open rate on an average
basis well um you know I might I I mean
I work in politics so I don’t know that
every one of these tips would apply but
certainly we found that at you know sort
of shorter and less formal subject lines
worked better for us not always not a
hundred percent of the time but you know
in general you know our best subject
line overall was hey and you know so we
had emails from from the President and
we would test out all sorts of subject
line and this was the subject line hey
like that day you look really subject no
snowball it serious yeah only hey I’ll
try I’ll try when we finish the
interview I’ll send an email up with
this and that’s why I say I mean maybe
that only works for Barack Obama I mean
you get the president day and stayed
sending an email that says hey and you
know I like maybe that’s that special
accommodation but it’s something where
we tried that out I think all the way
back in 2011 and it did incredibly well
and so then you know a few months later
we tried it out again thinking that you
know hoping that people had sort of
forgotten that we’d already used that a
subject line and it did really well
again and so you know we eventually
eventually we started using that as a
subject line I don’t know like once a
month or something I might use it it
just I I think the only other only time
I ever saw it lose was an email where if
we probably personalized so you know we
inserted the person’s name like
personname into the subject line okay um
but that also is something that’s kind
of informal you know although you know
might not work as well for businesses
because businesses use that so much and
so is more of a novelty for our audience
to see the president you know putting
wrong with your name in the subject line
oh yeah I think less formal um you know
tended to be better like things that
where it felt like there was a real
person behind there you know we there
are some emails where we had a little
bit of light swearing like hell yeah I
like Obamacare or
I’m gay for Obama sent up different we
never went really blue I mean we didn’t
you know do anything that was really
offensive but um you know I think those
citron because it felt like a real
person was talking rather than just kind
of a focus group right let’s talk about
unsubscribe shun every time I go to
someone i’m subscribing i feel like you
know ah hey you know I on one side i
want to write and say hey why are you
and subscribing i mean and on the other
side is is difficult to understand why
he is unsubscribe be somewhat one
question is about how many emails you
know because obviously obama campaign
sent tones of emails i mean i was with
one of subscriber and i had to study old
demon so and gosh every two seconds an
email and ah but yeah the question is
why do you send so many email and did
you find any pattern in the unsubscribe
shun i mean if you send someone so many
email will unsubscribe more but then you
get more subscribers on the other way
what was the ratio behind that um yeah
so we did a big test to determine how
much email we should send and basically
the answer was send more email you know
we got more more donations the more
email we sent we did also get more
unsubscribes the more email that we sent
but the you know the relationship was
linear in the sense that you know you
send more emails you get more
unsubscribes but we didn’t find that it
spiraled out of control um so you know
it made sense it me I’m sorry my
computer just yell out for a second um
so made sense to send more email but on
the other side because you probably also
had subscribers keep coming right yeah
yeah and I mean you know if we get more
donations than we have more flexibility
to be able to you know run ads to
acquire more email addresses or you know
things like that and it made sense for
us of course you know we’re a different
case I mean we had an end date you know
we didn’t have to think about yum you
know years and years more of
emails and so you know we had a
different situation than businesses
might have I will say though I think
people would do well if they’re worried
about their unsubscribes go into the
data and look at who who is
unsubscribing you know one thing we
found was unsubscribe rates were highest
among people who had just joined the
list and usually that was people who you
know had just made a donation maybe they
you know they weren’t on the email list
before they came to the site wanting to
donate they give us some you know a
little bit of money and that puts them
on our email list but they never wanted
to be on our e-mail list they just
wanted to donate some money and so you
know when they unsubscribe I mean yes
that is sad like we want we want people
to stay on the email list but you know
in some senses we were never going to
have those people as subscribers I mean
they they never wanted to be on the list
in the first place and there’s nothing
you can do about that well I’m so I mean
if you find that you know you’re getting
unsubscribed from you know your best
users who have been on the list for a
while and then all of a sudden they’re
unsubscribing yeah that would be a
problem okay um but I think that some
amount of unsubscribes it’s just
inevitable and I think people worry
about it too much okay just a couple of
question more and then I let you go
first one is just a silly technical
curiosity you know in the business
industry you have several email
marketing platforms like MailChimp
Aweber I don’t know Constant Contact you
have several platforms that do the job
but I was wondering for such a huge
campaign where you know reliability has
to be maximal and you you raise a lot of
money true that that channel so what
kind of platform did you use was like a
custom platform that the Obama
developers team created or you used some
available platforms on the market to do
that if you can share yeah well for for
email we use blue state digital so all
of our email went through your bsd
although we did a lot i mean because we
had so much data coming in and going
out we did a lot of customization of
that we had you know back-end databases
that we you know would use more than we
would use the platform only because our
operation was just so much bigger than
than anything else so I mean you know we
relied on blue state digital but also
did a lot of customization for our
website it was all in house you know all
of that we had a giant team in front of
developers that created and tested at
the website and made it amazing and made
it very mobile friendly for instance
from all of that was done in house and
you know i mean we for analytics we
would use google analytics we would use
our own custom-built tools you know we
used a like we also had such a huge
staff that it was easy to you end up
using lots of different tools because
different people were doing different
things right Amelia last question that I
asked to all the speakers at digital
donation summit do you have three apps
or three websites or three tools that
you use for business and you absolutely
recommend because I think always that
tools are shaping the way people work do
you have a personal top three list well
for ya for for the campaign when we did
testing on our website and we would do
split testing with Optimizely so
Optimizely i was developed by someone on
the first obama campaign in 2008 oh come
and now is a company that a lots of
people use including actually the romney
campaign also used Optimizely and we had
a really good experience with that in
terms of website optimization so i would
recommend that it’s very user-friendly
um you know I think that it’s a good
good system / web testing um I did I
like blue state digital for our email
you know I mean I think every platform
has its quirks but um you know we were
able to send that many emails per day
and you know get pretty good results and
then I mean I guess the last thing this
isn’t so much a suggestion
cincin for a specific platform but you
know on the Obama campaign we developed
this quick donate system where people
could save their payment information and
that you know so by saving their credit
card event that we could send them
emails with links where they just click
on on the link and that’s it they’ve
done they’ve already donated and it was
you know phenomenally successful I mean
we really got people to donate more
frequently people we know we’re more
excited about it and I think that that
kind of saved payment information system
is going to become more and more
prevalent I mean obviously amazon
already has one click but you know and
in the political world there are now I
mean blue state is offering offering it
and I think other platforms are going to
be offering it and so you know
regardless of whether you build that
in-house or get get a tool to do it I
think safe payment information is a very
good thing very interesting I mean yeah
thank you so much I mean yeah sure
Walter a good luck for for everything
i’ll test immediately your your d plan
your suggestions thank you so much yeah just do a subject line that says hey
digital domination summit 2013 and with
me i’m so excited guys and i will tell
you why in a minute to have as a guest
Amalia Showalter I mean yeah thank you
so much for being here first of all yeah
sure so I never know I’m the worst
presenter to introduce my guests ever
because every time I I say and here we
have Seth Seth Godin goatee and we have
you know Gary vine a check I really am
horrible in this fix my memory but
Amelia I was following you because I
started to read a lot of interesting
articles at the end of the Obama
campaign that the last Obama campaign
and you were following all the digital
analytics and specifically from what I
understood all the testing on emails all
the email marketing strategies and when
I was reading I was really fascinated
and here is the reason why I’m so
excited to every year today because I’m
a tech entrepreneur and I do tones of
email campaigns and every time I think
gosh but what really will work I mean if
I change the subject if I send it on
monday or friday or this time at that
time does the text email work better or
a nice beautiful email and how can i
increase my my open rate how can i
increase my click to rate and so on so
that’s why when I I so the chance to
invite you i was immediately going for
it and you were very very friendly to
immediately accept the invitation and
yeah so I want to just go straight to
the point first of all how is Obama I
mean did you make it as well yeah i
don’t i don’t actually get to you know
hang out with him i am here in DC but I
you know he’s got a job to do so I think
he’s pretty busy Oh Rob but yeah I mean
I was I was the director of digital
analytics on the Obama campaign at this
last cycle in 2012 and so a lot of what
that meant was I was helping the digital
department dude ever do their job more
efficiently you know that includes the
website email program social media
messaging things like that um so you
know i mean i was i was on the campaign
staff not the White House staff we
actually have sort of a difference
between those two groups in the US all
right and what kind of tests you were
running as a general overview well
everything on our website was tested you
know through split testing and we had a
very talented a you know a web
development team that did all of those
tests my job primarily ended up being
about email testing you know we raised a
lot of money and we did a lot of you
know small dollar fundraising on the
Obama campaign and most of that came
through email when we’re doing online
fundraising it’s mostly about email and
and so we would do a very extensive
testing on our email so which meant you
know for every national fundraising
email that we sent out we would have
four different drafts or sometimes six
different drafts and each one would have
three different subject lines and so we
would send those there’s different
versions too little tiny pieces of our
list wait about an hour and then get the
results back and see which version of
those 12 or 18 different versions was
doing the best and then we could send
that the remaining eighty percent of our
list or so and then you know even that
even then we might split that remaining
eighty percent into multiple pieces and
test out you know should we have a blue
button or a red button or no button at
all you know should we know how should
we tweak every little aspect of our
email okay um all right the Justice
answered now I have 54 different
question variation for this ok I will
try to to get to go to all the point
that I have in mind number one all right
Obama campaign got a huge mailing list I
read one once was 17 million subscribers
or something like that when when they
started I don’t know exactly the number
but that’s in the right ballpark dry not
exactly that but it’s it’s that’s close
enough yeah so is a huge number and
from what I know all the companies that
I know unless they are you know Facebook
or YouTube they don’t have that kind of
level anyway so that the question number
one is do you think that testing is
helpful in the same way for big list or
small list the reason why i ask is
because if you do a little change in a
bhama fundraising campaign you probably
will raise I don’t know 1 million more
or 1 million less you know like you know
little yet and normally you don’t have
that kind of impacts what what do you
think well I think yeah smaller
organizations a smaller lists will not
be able to do the same level like the
same amount of testing that we did you
know they won’t be able to have 18
different variations to send out and
still have you know a list left over to
send a win or two but I think that even
small organizations should be doing some
amount of testing even if it’s just
splitting their list in half and you
know it you can learn a lot or your next
email by doing the small test on
whatever email you’re doing right then
or you know I think some people do very
limited amount of subject line testing
and that’s good i mean people should do
that but i actually think it might be
even better if people did a little bit
more draft testing so if you have a list
that’s big enough to do subject line
testing where you know you let’s say you
take you know ten percent twenty percent
of your list and send one subject line
today m and another ten twenty percent
of what your list and send another
subject line I actually would recommend
doing two different drafts summer
clients are important obviously and it’s
easier but I think testing out different
different messages you know different
variations that are especially if they
are very different from one another you
know if one has a much more um you know
when it’s more personal and sort of has
a story in it or what is more policy
focused or product focus you know I
think that when you have those different
variations if you have a small list then
you’re still likely to see some
being friends um right and you know I
think one thing that we found you know
we were not very good at guessing what
would win you know if we were if we knew
what would win we wouldn’t have to do
the testing but you know we would
frequently try things out and have know
what we thought was a really good theory
for what would win and it wouldn’t and
so then we would turn around and do the
opposite and I would find okay so that
we should go that direction or you know
we had a for a little while we had a
betting pool where we would bet on which
of those 12 to 18 versions would win um
you know so all the people who are you
know really into this in the office who
are writing the emails we were analyzing
the emails we would guess and we were
terrible we were so bad at guessing what
would win and so you know if even the
experts can’t accurately predict what
the audience is going to like the most
okay it just means that it’s that much
more important to do testing let them
let your audience tell you what you like
I want to get the chance to to have you
here to to understand one big dog that I
had for the last 15 years of my life and
so many discussions about it I got a
business partner that always say let’s
send a beautiful email full of HTML
stuff and great you know that people say
wow that’s beautiful and I say I’m a
technician and say no I want to send you
new text email very yeah plain text we
were one link to click and that’s it and
a lot of discussion about it so it’s
better to be beautiful or better to be
ugly in your experience in my experience
it’s better to be ugly all right yeah
you you in or at least that was our
experience um you know there was a time
on the campaign where i thought okay i
want to make the emails prettier not
necessarily really highly formatted but
just you know have um like I wanted to
put some you know slick-looking buttons
and you know just have it be a little
bit nicer to look a little bit more like
our very nice web pages which were
simple but also very attractive and it
turned out that didn’t win and then we’d
have had some tests where we put this
like ugly yellow highlighting
I’m certain for da Rosa yeah i mean i
was like gross and we didn’t want it to
win but it totally won it didn’t win
forever I mean one thing we learned is
that it’s important to keep testing
because there are things that are sort
of novelty effects and that allele of
highlighting isn’t going to work forever
um but we did you know generally find
that planar emails did better and you
know maybe that won’t be true forever I
mean I think that part of the reason I
think playing emails do well now is that
there’s just too many people that are
doing these highly formatted you know
too many boxes and pictures and
everything and so that people just kind
of tune that out and so if everybody
then switched to really plan emails then
maybe it would be good to be the one
with a you know very formal email yeah
but one other dot the what kind of field
do you think is the most important if
you can get an average I mean like the
subject is the most important or the
sender or i mean the the date that you
send the timing but what what kind of if
you should say okay my top list of tips
about what to test is number one day’s
number two numbers ring I i think the
draft like the actual text of the email
is probably the most important followed
by the subject line i think senator can
matter and i mean certainly you know we
definitely found that emails from barack
obama did much much better than emails
from some random you know personal in a
campaign obviously we couldn’t send
every single email from Barack Obama oh
no he’s yeah we sent a lot of email and
we don’t want better Barack and Michelle
Obama perform better Barack or Michelle
as a sender they both did very very well
um yeah and I mean you know off the top
of my head I would i would say the
president did better but we also you
know he was sending at specific moments
that were very big I think I think
Michelle might have had the lowest
unsubscribe right
you know people like raja ali don’t want
to add some stress but yeah i mean they
both like those were both just you know
their emails did phenomenally well um so
I think I mean sender obviously does
matter and it’s know it but I think that
if the choice is between you know a sort
of small variation or two unknown
senders I don’t think that you’re going
to get them you’re the most lift from
that obviously you have you know a
celebrity or a presidential run you will
get will get a lot of lift there but I
think just that you know basic testing
the text of the email testing you know
having these different flavors is very
you know I think that’s where you get
the most lift in your testing but why do
you say I’m India the text of the email
let’s say more than the subject because
in my mind I always think okay if people
if I don’t catch the attention with the
subject they will not open my email and
then they will not click on my link
which is my in my mind is my my goal to
get people clicking and press the
average percentage that I see of
click-through rate is normally very very
very very low and obviously if people is
not even opening the email they will not
click on your links so why do you say
the text of the email is more important
than the subject well it might depend on
you know it might depend on what you’re
trying to get them to do so you know we
were trying to get people to donate yeah
and so I mean yes I think it is very
important to me obviously you have to
have people open the email before or
anything else but you know what’s
actually going to motivate them to click
on the link and donate some money I
think has more to do with the message
that they see once they get in into the
email and so you know it yes I mean
ideally you’ll be able to test both and
wrong we did we were had enough list to
test both subject line and email so we
could get the best combination but I
think you know it to get people actually
take that action of getting out their
wall
and giving us some money it’s more than
just a subject line like that that
requires more of a more of a good pitch
yield so you know and also I mean you
know there’s some this is some of this
is just a feeling but I mean you know we
we would sometimes see uh you know we
see drafts do really well and it would
sometimes have subject lines that we
tested on drafts that didn’t do so well
but we would see that that subject line
helped that draft and so he said okay
what if we put that subject line they
had one over there on the draft that was
doing really well and put that together
and it didn’t it didn’t work as well and
so I think that there’s still something
about the draft text thing that matters
that’s interesting and if you could give
a tip and let’s say okay obviously every
company are different and also politics
is a different kind of animal for
several reasons but if you have a tip to
say okay look to to increase your open
right because I I do a step back my
feelings sometimes is that I see that
people they know they are not opening
emails you know they that sometimes the
feeling is that there are so so many
things and social facebook twitter email
and and you don’t know how to reach your
customer anymore because even if they
are subscribed and they love you still
they not open in the email maybe they
have no time or I don’t know so
sometimes I think why I mean on several
lists are me or my customers we try to
send email and well opening rate some
time is not as big as expected we would
like under percent the weapon right and
you know yeah fifty percent twenty
percent thirty percent it depends by the
industry so what what’s the best tip
that you could give I mean obviously if
you have Barack Obama sender subject
come to me you’ll be the next vice
president I probably that that that that
works you know but and sometimes you did
it i mean you playing around with this
but what would
you suggest to to accompany I mean to
increase their open rate on an average
basis well um you know I might I I mean
I work in politics so I don’t know that
every one of these tips would apply but
certainly we found that at you know sort
of shorter and less formal subject lines
worked better for us not always not a
hundred percent of the time but you know
in general you know our best subject
line overall was hey and you know so we
had emails from from the President and
we would test out all sorts of subject
line and this was the subject line hey
like that day you look really subject no
snowball it serious yeah only hey I’ll
try I’ll try when we finish the
interview I’ll send an email up with
this and that’s why I say I mean maybe
that only works for Barack Obama I mean
you get the president day and stayed
sending an email that says hey and you
know I like maybe that’s that special
accommodation but it’s something where
we tried that out I think all the way
back in 2011 and it did incredibly well
and so then you know a few months later
we tried it out again thinking that you
know hoping that people had sort of
forgotten that we’d already used that a
subject line and it did really well
again and so you know we eventually
eventually we started using that as a
subject line I don’t know like once a
month or something I might use it it
just I I think the only other only time
I ever saw it lose was an email where if
we probably personalized so you know we
inserted the person’s name like
personname into the subject line okay um
but that also is something that’s kind
of informal you know although you know
might not work as well for businesses
because businesses use that so much and
so is more of a novelty for our audience
to see the president you know putting
wrong with your name in the subject line
oh yeah I think less formal um you know
tended to be better like things that
where it felt like there was a real
person behind there you know we there
are some emails where we had a little
bit of light swearing like hell yeah I
like Obamacare or
I’m gay for Obama sent up different we
never went really blue I mean we didn’t
you know do anything that was really
offensive but um you know I think those
citron because it felt like a real
person was talking rather than just kind
of a focus group right let’s talk about
unsubscribe shun every time I go to
someone i’m subscribing i feel like you
know ah hey you know I on one side i
want to write and say hey why are you
and subscribing i mean and on the other
side is is difficult to understand why
he is unsubscribe be somewhat one
question is about how many emails you
know because obviously obama campaign
sent tones of emails i mean i was with
one of subscriber and i had to study old
demon so and gosh every two seconds an
email and ah but yeah the question is
why do you send so many email and did
you find any pattern in the unsubscribe
shun i mean if you send someone so many
email will unsubscribe more but then you
get more subscribers on the other way
what was the ratio behind that um yeah
so we did a big test to determine how
much email we should send and basically
the answer was send more email you know
we got more more donations the more
email we sent we did also get more
unsubscribes the more email that we sent
but the you know the relationship was
linear in the sense that you know you
send more emails you get more
unsubscribes but we didn’t find that it
spiraled out of control um so you know
it made sense it me I’m sorry my
computer just yell out for a second um
so made sense to send more email but on
the other side because you probably also
had subscribers keep coming right yeah
yeah and I mean you know if we get more
donations than we have more flexibility
to be able to you know run ads to
acquire more email addresses or you know
things like that and it made sense for
us of course you know we’re a different
case I mean we had an end date you know
we didn’t have to think about yum you
know years and years more of
emails and so you know we had a
different situation than businesses
might have I will say though I think
people would do well if they’re worried
about their unsubscribes go into the
data and look at who who is
unsubscribing you know one thing we
found was unsubscribe rates were highest
among people who had just joined the
list and usually that was people who you
know had just made a donation maybe they
you know they weren’t on the email list
before they came to the site wanting to
donate they give us some you know a
little bit of money and that puts them
on our email list but they never wanted
to be on our e-mail list they just
wanted to donate some money and so you
know when they unsubscribe I mean yes
that is sad like we want we want people
to stay on the email list but you know
in some senses we were never going to
have those people as subscribers I mean
they they never wanted to be on the list
in the first place and there’s nothing
you can do about that well I’m so I mean
if you find that you know you’re getting
unsubscribed from you know your best
users who have been on the list for a
while and then all of a sudden they’re
unsubscribing yeah that would be a
problem okay um but I think that some
amount of unsubscribes it’s just
inevitable and I think people worry
about it too much okay just a couple of
question more and then I let you go
first one is just a silly technical
curiosity you know in the business
industry you have several email
marketing platforms like MailChimp
Aweber I don’t know Constant Contact you
have several platforms that do the job
but I was wondering for such a huge
campaign where you know reliability has
to be maximal and you you raise a lot of
money true that that channel so what
kind of platform did you use was like a
custom platform that the Obama
developers team created or you used some
available platforms on the market to do
that if you can share yeah well for for
email we use blue state digital so all
of our email went through your bsd
although we did a lot i mean because we
had so much data coming in and going
out we did a lot of customization of
that we had you know back-end databases
that we you know would use more than we
would use the platform only because our
operation was just so much bigger than
than anything else so I mean you know we
relied on blue state digital but also
did a lot of customization for our
website it was all in house you know all
of that we had a giant team in front of
developers that created and tested at
the website and made it amazing and made
it very mobile friendly for instance
from all of that was done in house and
you know i mean we for analytics we
would use google analytics we would use
our own custom-built tools you know we
used a like we also had such a huge
staff that it was easy to you end up
using lots of different tools because
different people were doing different
things right Amelia last question that I
asked to all the speakers at digital
donation summit do you have three apps
or three websites or three tools that
you use for business and you absolutely
recommend because I think always that
tools are shaping the way people work do
you have a personal top three list well
for ya for for the campaign when we did
testing on our website and we would do
split testing with Optimizely so
Optimizely i was developed by someone on
the first obama campaign in 2008 oh come
and now is a company that a lots of
people use including actually the romney
campaign also used Optimizely and we had
a really good experience with that in
terms of website optimization so i would
recommend that it’s very user-friendly
um you know I think that it’s a good
good system / web testing um I did I
like blue state digital for our email
you know I mean I think every platform
has its quirks but um you know we were
able to send that many emails per day
and you know get pretty good results and
then I mean I guess the last thing this
isn’t so much a suggestion
cincin for a specific platform but you
know on the Obama campaign we developed
this quick donate system where people
could save their payment information and
that you know so by saving their credit
card event that we could send them
emails with links where they just click
on on the link and that’s it they’ve
done they’ve already donated and it was
you know phenomenally successful I mean
we really got people to donate more
frequently people we know we’re more
excited about it and I think that that
kind of saved payment information system
is going to become more and more
prevalent I mean obviously amazon
already has one click but you know and
in the political world there are now I
mean blue state is offering offering it
and I think other platforms are going to
be offering it and so you know
regardless of whether you build that
in-house or get get a tool to do it I
think safe payment information is a very
good thing very interesting I mean yeah
thank you so much I mean yeah sure
Walter a good luck for for everything
i’ll test immediately your your d plan
your suggestions thank you so much yeah just do a subject line that says hey
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