Campaign newsletters

According to Jakob Nielson, both the Kerry and Bush campaigns did a horrible job of providing a usable online newsletter for their supporters. He criticizes both campaigns for neglecting a perfect method of energizing their repsective bases and thus spreading their individual campaign messages to other faithful and undecided voters. While I agree that having an effective web strategy is important in this day and age, I am less critical of both campaigns for their decisions to spend their money on other electoral purogatives. According to Nielsen, the Washington Post's own election newsletter scored higher for usability. The evaluation was done using the 127 guidelines for e-mail newsletter designs.

Is it really that shocking that the campaigns didn't invest as much time and money into their online newsletters as the Washington Post? The Post is in the business of news....it seems more logical that the publication spend more time and money perfecting its news dissemination techniques. This is not to say that the campaigns are not in the business of news either. Indeed, they do have to disseminate their news effectively as well; however, the campaigns were (rightly) waging grassroots campaigns utilizing hundreds, even thousands of volunteers going door-to-door disseminating messages - I know, I was one of them. Campaign '04 should be defined in history by its aggressive on the ground grassroots activity on behalf of both parties.

Online newsletters are great means to energize bases and support grassroots activities, but in the case of the most recent presidential election, I feel it should be understood why the campaigns most likely spend their money as they did and consequently received a low rating by Nielsen. Both sides were already heavily energized in preperation for a race that was, again, believed to be very close; it was appropriate for both campaigns to continue to energize those supporters with on the ground grassroots investments, rather than through online newsletter improvements. I think it was a brilliant strategy, and obviously a winning one for the President's campaign.

Additionally, presidential campaign websites are traditionally operated by committee, thus they are already at a disadvantage if one were to compare them to their corporate counterparts like the Washington Post's newsletter. Corporate newsletters are most likely developed using a more streamlined operation, so is it any wonder why they would receive a higher rating by Nielsen?