It’s bad enough that the various political movements in this country are apparently passing around e-mail names like Viagra at a porn-star retirement home, now the Democratic Governors Association has apparently hired 419 scammers to write its subject lines.
Either that, or its copywriters have graduated from an e-mail marketing school based in Nigeria.
My evidence: two recent e-mails, one from Ben Metcalf with the subject line “Alliances,” and one from Raymond Glendening with the subject line “Help.”
Alliances? Help? What the heck kind of subject lines are those? I’ll tell you who needs help here. It’s whoever is in charge of the DGA’s e-mail program.
As reported here before, the DGA was already committing the basic e-mail sin of including unfamiliar names in its “from” line. Now it’s sending e-mail out with mystery, one-word subject lines seemingly written by Nigerian 419 scammers.
What’s next? “Assistance?” “Winner?” “Proposal?” “Trust?” Heck, I just saved the DGA hours of copywriting time.
There seems to be a mentality at non-profits and political groups that often places them beyond help with their marketing.
For example, after a piece appeared here two weeks ago on bad non-profit-and-political-e-mail practices, reader Trish commented that as an e-mail marketing professional, she had offered her services free to some non-profits and had been blown off.
I’ve had similar experiences. A little over a decade ago—maybe it’s closer to two decades now; I’m not sure; alcohol does funny things to one’s perception of the passage of time—I was a copywriter for a catalog firm in a suburb of Buffalo, NY. I noticed a local non-profit had a really, really crappy direct-mail piece, so I contacted them and offered to help them clean it up for free.
They seemed interested enough, so we scheduled a meeting. At the meeting, however, it was immediately clear they would not hear of making any substantive changes to their really, really, crappy DM piece.
The reason: It was someone’s territory and that someone had an emotional attachment to it and every single word, comma and period it contained. I thanked them for their time and left having accomplished nothing beyond wasting my time and theirs, although something told me they wasted time as a matter of course.
In another case, during the beginning of last decade’s dot-com boom I was asked to address a professional trade group and explain some of the basics of online advertising. During my talk, some little piss-pot spoke up and said in an accusatory tone: “Isn’t it true that all the good online advertising is gone?”
I explained that he would have to define what he meant by “good” and that as far as I was concerned there was quite a bit of good online ad inventory available—“good” being defined as inventory that drives response at an acceptable cost per lead when the right creative is employed. The piss-pot then asked a few more combative questions and sat back looking smugly with the clear approval of his boss who was sitting next to him.
“Good doggy,” I thought.
I then said something along the lines of: “I’m here on my own time as a favor to you people. There are many things I can be doing right now that would be far more productive than this. Do you want to learn something or should I just leave?”
Someone apologized on piss-pot’s behalf and we finished the meeting shortly thereafter. I left with the distinct impression that the sentiments of many in the room were with piss-pot, and that they believed the Interwebs was a fad akin to the CB radio.
Too often, political jostling and petty territorial issues get in the way of smart decision making. I know, not a revolutionary thought by any stretch.
But with e-mail being so cheap to send, organizations—especially seemingly non-profits and political groups—can do a really bad job at it, fail to get expert help even when it’s volunteered, and have their incompetence go unnoticed for a very long time. Just ask the Democratic Governors Association.
