This blog post from Powerline explains why I still send out those email links. And why I intend to fight very hard to keep the Tea Party alive and active until it really, really overcomes. This is what I have been thinking to write on my blog, but had not managed it yet. I think if the Republican Party doesn’t learn to use the internet as well as the Democrats, all hope is lost. I know that is how Obama was elected the first time and even more serious use was made of it this time.
They didn’t use only emails, Facebook was a tool of theirs but the most devastating was Twitter. I watched C-span this morning and saw a Congressional staffer confirm that written letters and phone calls are no longer looked on as a very good use of a congresspersons time, Twitter is where it is at. Twitter is instantaneous and they all read them, they read ALL of them. Letters are looked at as a yes or no, that simple, they don’t care what else they say. He said they read ALL of a “tweet.” And they get more and more of them.
I signed up for twitter some time ago, but have not really mastered the “art” of a tweet. Now I know I must learn, I must learn fast, and so should you. There are many issues we want to make sure they don’t cave on, so let’s get started and get those tweets flying. And remember you can send them to both sides.
Here is what Scott Johnson of Power Line wrote about the Obama campaign’s use of the internet:
If there is such a thing as political science, I think the folks who ran the Obama campaign have it mastered. Consider the story behind the Obama campaign emails, which we regularly received without asking and also regularly misread with something like morbid fascination. They were a key component of the campaign’s monumental fundraising haul. At BloombergBusinessWeek Joshua Green provides a glimpse of what he rightly calls “the science” behind those campaign emails:
The appeals were the product of rigorous experimentation by a large team of analysts. “We did extensive A-B testing not just on the subject lines and the amount of money we would ask people for,” says Amelia Showalter, director of digital analytics, “but on the messages themselves and even the formatting.” The campaign would test multiple drafts and subject lines—often as many as 18 variations—before picking a winner to blast out to tens of millions of subscribers. “When we saw something that really moved the dial, we would adopt it,” says Toby Fallsgraff, the campaign’s e-mail director, who oversaw a staff of 20 writers.
It quickly became clear that a casual tone was usually most effective. “The subject lines that worked best were things you might see in your in-box from other people,” Fallsgraff says. “ ‘Hey’ was probably the best one we had over the duration.” Another blockbuster in June simply read, “I will be outspent.” According to testing data shared with Bloomberg Businessweek, that outperformed 17 other variants and raised more than $2.6 million.
Writers, analysts, and managers routinely bet on which lines would perform best and worst. “We were so bad at predicting what would win that it only reinforced the need to constantly keep testing,” says Showalter. “Every time something really ugly won, it would shock me: giant-size fonts for links, plain-text links vs. pretty ‘Donate’ buttons. Eventually we got to thinking, ‘How could we make things even less attractive?’ That’s how we arrived at the ugly yellow highlighting on the sections we wanted to draw people’s eye to.”
Another unexpected hit: profanity. Dropping in mild curse words such as “Hell yeah, I like Obamacare” got big clicks. But these triumphs were fleeting. There was no such thing as the perfect e-mail; every breakthrough had a shelf life. “Eventually the novelty wore off, and we had to go back and retest,” says Showalter.
Fortunately for Obama and all political campaigns that will follow, the tests did yield one major counterintuitive insight: Most people have a nearly limitless capacity for e-mail and won’t unsubscribe no matter how many they’re sent. “At the end, we had 18 or 20 writers going at this stuff for as many hours a day as they could stay awake,” says Fallsgraff. “The data didn’t show any negative consequences to sending more.”
Okay. Everything I thought I know is wrong! I stand corrected. I hope someone at GOP Central is paying attention. I’m afraid we have a lot to learn from the mad scientists of Team Obama.
Some patients find the choice between the use of an underscore _ or a dash – or a space as a cialis cheap fast separator in naming web pages has been raging on the net since 1999. Women also may consume Gynecure capsules to improve their reproductive activities. supplementprofessors.com cialis soft tabs Is the service affordable or beyond your limit! True that some company’s charge viagra australia mastercard huge prices for their services. Today, teenagers have become quite enthusiastic about discount cialis driving.
