13 million e-mail addresses acquired by a single political campaign is astonishing. But what if Obama for America had purchased that e-mail list instead of growing it organically? Would it have been nearly as effective in GOTV or raising 2/3 of Obama's half-a-billion dollars raised online? No way.
Blue State Digital (Obama's digital strategy team) spells out why in a recent blog post. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, I figured I would share their thoughts with you on why your campaign should avoid buying, selling or stealing e-mail lists:
- These people didn’t ask to hear from you. Nobody – not even you -- likes to receive emails from organizations that they didn’t ask to hear from. Sure, your list might suddenly double in size, but do those names care about your cause? Are they going to take action on your behalf? Probably not.
- You’re killing your statistics. Everybody who runs an email campaign is obsessed with metrics. What’s a good open rate? What’s a good click-through rate? What’s a good action rate? What’s a low unsubscribe rate? If you dilute your email list with purchased names, you’re immediately dropping those statistics.
- It’s disingenuous. One of the key components of a really successful online campaign is authenticity. People organize online because they want to be a part of a grassroots movement bigger than themselves; they don’t want to feel like they’re a pawn of a purchased PR stunt.
- Your own email service provider won’t let you upload the list. Nearly every company in the political/nonprofit technology industry has a policy against purchased email lists.
Click here to read the entire post from BSD
