Roses are red, violets are blue, you can write good emails too!
Doomscroll 2.18.2024
Happy Sunday and welcome to another edition of Doomscroll, your favorite newsletter for all things digital on the right! Hope everyone had a fantastic Valentine’s Day. If you didn’t, there’s always next year! Let’s get to some scrolling.
One Question
Thanks to everyone who answered last week’s One Question about Biden. Out of everyone who responded, literally 100% of you said Biden will be on the ballot in November. I have to say, I’M A LITTLE SURPRISED. Where are all my tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists? My political junkies in need of a good convention fight? Maybe some of you are still out there, but it seems like for our purposes, we’re all pretty much resigned to a 2020 redo. That said, 75% of you are also sure (as of right now, anyway) that if it’s Trump v. Biden, the Donald will be claiming victory this time. Cool, cool.
This week’s One Question is about WinRed. Me? As a user, I’m a huge fan. The new tools and widgets are great. The customer support is **chef’s kiss** excellent. I basically have no complaints. But I do spend a lot of time opening fundraising emails just to click on everyone else’s links to see what they’re doing on their WinRed pages (yeah, I’ll admit it). Several weeks ago, a reader even flagged some of the Trump campaign’s pages and I have to agree: what I’ve seen from Team Trump lately has been nothing short of glorious, IMO. But what do you all think? Any tips or tricks that you’ve found boost conversions? Any best practices you think are underrated? Any pages you’ve seen lately that you’d like to highlight? Spill the tea, ya’ll!
Who’s Doing What
—2028 is calling…
If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was gearing up for ::cough cough:: something. The other day he released a video on Twitter with some highlights from his recent appearance at Washington and Lee’s Mock Convention. “To win, Republicans have to give voters a reason to vote for us,” he says in the video’s money line. Now look, I’m not trying to take away 2024’s “moment,” but I do enjoy collecting political, digital easter eggs on the way to future elections. And this is an easter egg if I ever saw one. Way to get the folks talking! (ok me. He got me talking).
—Saint Melania
It seems like everyone was talking about that Valentine’s Day fundraising email Team Trump sent this week. The “Love Letter to Melania” will go down in history as one of the most romantic pieces of fundraising copy in the history of American politics.
Ok I jest. But really, kudos to whichever staffer wrote the copy. If you’re out there, make yourself known so Doomscroll can give you a proper hat tip!
—Speaking of email copy…
Yes, there’s about a 1,000,000% chance I initially clicked on this email because I thought some NRSC staffer fudged up the subject line and I wanted to (lightly) make fun of it in Doomscroll this week. But the joke was on me! It was legit and I was immediately chastised and impressed all at the same time. Clever. The first line was even better:
But there’s a couple other interesting things to note about this email as well. 1) It’s a revshare between the NRSC and the Trump campaign. 2) When you click to see the split allocation, you can see that out of $100, $99 goes to the committee and $1 goes to Trump. I find that interesting. 3) I bet the opt-in rate for making it a monthly recurring donation is pretty high with text like this:
When I said earlier that I spend (way too much) time dissecting fundraising emails and WinRed pages, I really meant it!
—Let’s end on a depressing note
So Republicans lost the NY special election this week. I guess we all sorta saw it coming. I didn’t follow the race close enough to be able to dissect or diagnose the GOP loss there, but I did think this was worth highlighting:
Since the special election was first announced in December for Feb. 13, both Suozzi and Pilip’s parties have poured millions of dollars into advertising and messaging.
All told, the Democratic machine has bankrolled $9.6 million in advertising and campaign messaging on behalf of Suozzi, while its Republican counterpart has put about $6.8 million behind Pilip, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure records as of Wednesday evening.
Almost all of that Republican spending — $6.4 million — has gone into attack ads and campaigns. Democrats have spent $6.9 million targeting Pilip too, but they have also spent $2.6 million promoting Suozzi. Republicans, on the other hand, have put just $396,000 toward positive messages about their candidate.
Allow me to harken back to Brian Kemp. The numbers would suggest that Republicans spent so much time and money attacking Suozzi and trying to convince people to oppose the other side, that they forgot to tell voters why they should vote Republican. Am I wrong? If not, we gotta figure this out.
—JK, we’ll end on a lighter note.
Just going to call this my meme of the week.
2024 Roundup
This is where I make note of a few other things that caught my eye this week.
So yeah, I did chuckle at these “love letters from Trump” that Team Haley put out this week. Nice job. See them here.
Was this the shortest Senate campaign ever? See Matt Rosendale’s statement here about dropping his bid less than a week after he announced.
North Dakota Lt. Governor Tammy Miller launched her campaign for governor this week. See her video here.
Larry Hogan released his first ad this week, addressing “women’s issues” head-on. See it here.
Joe Manchin announced he will NOT be running for president. Mmmk. Read more about that here. P.S. I had no idea he is 76!!! Did anyone else think he was younger than that? Or just me?
Who’s Spending Where
From February 8-14, the top conservative spender on Facebook ads was Liberty Defender Group at $152,000 on a bunch of weird pro-Trump ads. And we’ll just leave it at that. The Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism Inc. spent about $104,000 on ads that seem to be mostly about raising awareness about hatred towards jews. AIPAC is also still spending big, with $96,000 going towards anti-Hamas ads and ads that call out lawmakers ::cough cough Rashida Tlaib:: who stay silent about anti-semitism. Fourth place this week goes to Newsmax Media at $79,000, while fifth place goes to PragerU at $67,000.
From February 8-14, the top conservative spender on Google was, once again, AFC Victory Fund, which spent $134,000 on a bunch of ads in Texas hitting lawmakers for being anti-school choice. SFA Inc. came in a distant second with $55,000 on ad spend. Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee spent $42,000 on Google ads, while Nikki Haley for President Inc spent $39,000. Rounding out the top 5 was Congressional Leadership Fund, which spent $29,000 on a bunch of anti-Tom Suozzi ads and some various other search/fundraising ads for other candidates.
P2P
Also, either Josh Hawley and Lauren Boebert share a vendor…or this messaging just works really well:
Industry Watch
Guess what, everyone? Know one knows what makes a good political ad!! That makes you feel great, huh? Per Politico:
Some political ads work a lot better than others. But nobody really knows what will reliably make an ad click with voters.
That’s one of the major findings of a new study from researchers who analyzed data from Swayable, a platform used by Democrats to test the effectiveness of different messages and advertisements.
…
The researchers found that a range of characteristics — such as mentions of issues or facts about a candidate, whether an ad was positive or negative in tone, and aesthetic choices like whether the ad featured everyday voters or the candidate themselves — does not reliably predict which ads performed best.
My glass-half-empty-types will look at this and get depressed. My glass-half-full-types will look at this story and say HECK YEAH. No two races or cycles are alike! So what a great chance for us to get creative and try new things! :D :D :D
The Grapevine
Mike Hahn has joined Frontline Strategies. Congrats, Mike!
The Prosper Group’s Kurt Luidhardt was on Campaign War Stories to talk about the business of being in the digital industry at large. Interesting perspective, so listen to it here if you like that sort of thing!
And congrats to everyone who found out they are Reed Award finalists. Hopefully I’ll see you all in Charleston next month!
Got a tip for The Grapevine? Job announcement? Job opening? Fav poptart flavor? Email ‘em to me at itsthedoomscroll@gmail.com
Last But Not Least
From the other side of the aisle:
So the Biden campaign joined TikTok. They could literally sign up for a new gmail address and the campaign’s digital operation would get glowing coverage for a week straight, but I digress (IYKYK). I have so many mixed feelings about this. Anyone who knows me on a professional level knows that I advocate very strongly against Republican candidates using TikTok. It’s just too hypocritical for our side to rail against China and then get on a Chinese-owned social media app. That alone makes it hard for me to believe that anyone on our side of the aisle could get on the app and it NOT seem like just a phony ploy for younger voters (pro-tip: the youths see right through it). Hence why I say to avoid it altogether.
But I get the Biden team’s logic here. Heck, it’d probably be political malpractice for his campaign NOT to be on TikTok, given how much he’s bleeding support these days. That said, I want to highlight this hilarious quote from one of the CNN pieces that covered this relatively minor piece of “news”:
Ariana Afshar, a 27-year-old California-based content creator with more than 200,000 followers on TikTok, said the campaign’s TikTok doesn’t change the fact that he has refused to support a ceasefire in Gaza. She doesn’t plan on voting for the president.
“This technique would’ve been successful, in my opinion, if he actually listened to young voters,” said. “But he doesn’t, so it’s coming off a bit phony.”
LMAO. Anyway, the content I’ve managed to see so far has been meh. I’ll be curious to see how they leverage the platform, though, and how many times they get Biden to visit someone’s house to eat Cook-Out. Still, and I’m gonna be real honest here: anything other than crotchety old man content is going to seem in-authentic in my book. Joe Biden doesn’t want to sit around eating fast food! He wants to drop f-bombs and scream at his staff. I say when it comes to his campaign’s TikTok content, LET BIDEN BE BIDEN. The Gen Z’ers will love it. It’ll be like Simon Powell circa American Idol 2002.
From the other side of the tracks:
Pinterest is highlighting its 2024 color trends, and I like ‘em. Read more about them here. I think sometimes we undervalue the power COLOR can have with voters when it comes to our political creative. Is there anything we can do with these palettes, for example? I say, why the heck not?!
That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! Did you like it? Consider forwarding to your friends!