Blog: Chris Dodd

Well Written, Unique Emails Stand Out in Crowded Inboxes

I’m still deciding which candidate to support in the primaries. This means I get a lot of email every day from the several candidates I’m following. I don’t pour over every message that hits my inbox. Usually I delete most without a thought and only read the ones that really catch my eye, which doesn’t happen all that often. Today I was excited to get an email that not only caught my eye but also kept my attention. 

There were two reasons this particular message worked – it was a clever idea and it was incredibly well written. The message itself was essentially just an email forward. Senator Chris Dodd forwarded me an update he got from his online director on how his online campaign is doing in comparison to the other campaigns. (Disclaimer: We designed the Senator’s first presidential website at the end of last year and helped with online strategy but haven’t worked with his team recently.)

The mass email forward has been done before by candidates and advocacy groups, but this one surpassed other efforts I’ve seen. Its personal tone and great writing throughout made me scroll down to read the entire email chain – and happy that I did. The email even made me want to donate so Dodd can beat John Edwards’ fundraising goal, and I like both candidates.

Kudos to the Dodd team for sending out a superb email – I think you’ll see a good boost to your fundraising numbers from it. I’d love to see some smaller organizations try to replicate this message for their causes. The returns will easily transfer to many issues, and sending supporters an honest and unique email like this will make a good impact when it’s well done.

Read the message and pay special attention to the tone and writing style throughout it – that’s what really sets this apart and makes the message work.

Senator Chris Dodd’s presidential website got a great shout out today, winning the website value award by The Hotline Political Network.

“Who wins the Web site value award for Q1? Chris Dodd and Barack Obama. Though both had Senate Web sites off which they could build, but presentation and features are certainly above par for their price tag.”

We were involved in both Dodd’s senate site (also on Drupal) and his presidential site, which we built on Drupal 5.0. Our ability to deliver this kind of value is in large part thanks to building on the Drupal framework, which gives us a great development starting point. But the benefit of using open source software was only the starting point. We integrated a lot of fun, strategic tools and Dodd’s team has done amazing things with them. It really pays off to work with creative people like Tim Cullen and Tim Tagaris from Dodd’s camp. Congratulations on the great work guys.

Jon Stewart is an "avid reader" of Chris Dodd's blog. Who knew? Well, now a lot of people do. In an interesting bout of news coverage, the day after senator and presidential candidate Chris Dodd appeared on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart talked about Dodd's Drupal site on the show. Jon didn't make fun of Chris Dodd for still having Tom as one of his top friends on his MySpace, but he did rip on the page in a classic Jon Stewart way. And the unicorns? They make a great MySpace theme.

Here's the video.