On Monday, March 2, 2020, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar officially dropped out of the 2020 Presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden… but she didn’t email to let me know until 11:59 AM the next day.
Amy was in the race for 386 days, though I only tracked his emails since May 21, 2019, or 286 days. During that time, she sent 637 emails to my non-donor account and 584 to my donor account, for an average of 2.23 emails every day.
Amy preferred to email on Wednesdays and Thursdays, taking a brief rest on Mondays.
Her emails were largely sent between 11 AM and 4:59 PM, though she tended to send more early-morning emails than most candidates. Her evening emails were largely debate-related, for both during and after the debate.
Amy’s focus was always on raising money. More than any other candidate, she was the most consistent with her fundraising asks. If I had already donated, she asked me for $15/$25/$50/$100 or another amount, for an average of $47.50. If I hadn’t already donated, she changed that first $15 to $5, for an average of $45.
This almost never changed, in her nearly 300 days of emails.
And Amy sent a lot of asks for money.
Amy would string out debate highs by hyping me up for a pre-debate fund, then would email during the debate for support for how well Amy was doing, and then run a post-debate fund for nearly a week after. She frequently quoted events and articles that happened weeks or months ago, with her favorite line (Amy is “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare“) coming from her launch event in a blizzard on February 10, 2019, and used as recently as March 2, 2020, the day she dropped out.
Another favorite email of Amy’s was her focus group survey. I was specially chosen to participate in a focus group survey 39 times. She liked to know how she was doing after FEC deadlines and before debates.
Like her fellow Midwestern candidate, Amy had an incredibly high optimistic rate for her emails, just 0.9% shy of Pete’s. Her 8 pessimistic emails were all about her fundraising goals not looking good. Most of her 32 mixed emails were also on fundraising, though she did occasionally mention how well Trump’s Midwestern polls were looking.
Out of all of the 2020 candidates, Amy was the only one who made it through 2020 without insulting her fellow Democrats via email. In fact, only Kirsten Gillibrand could also claim this credit, though Kirsten dropped out in the summer of 2019. (Wayne Messam and Seth Moulton can also claim this, but between them, they only sent 1 email, so they don’t really count).
Most of Amy’s anger went toward Donald Trump in her emails, citing him frequently as being scared of her, being able to beat him, and even creating some unflattering merchandise featuring him.
Amy’s design team has the dubious honor of being simultaneously good and horrible, which makes me suspect that her design team did not actually have any say in what her emails looked like. Although her early charts were… bad…
…her later fundraising charts grew very creative.
The problem with her charts was that she never finished them. Ever. Each chart or image would show up once, at best, or be reused for a different fundraising goal.
But the problem with Amy’s emails were her color choices.
I write myself little notes to remind myself what was in each email. Reading through my notes on Amy’s emails…
COLORS, OOF. Debate threshold went up, team did an outstanding job (peek in the windows story), now we need to take advantage of momentum, give money plz? 
Five thousand donations by midnight! SECOND GOAL OF THE DECADE. HORRIBLE HIGHLIGHTING COLOR CLASH 
People love watching Amy on the debate stage! FUNDRAISING CHART, TOO MANY COLORS 
Amy is surging JESUS AMY WHAT IS WITH THE COLORS 
Amy has NEVER lost a race but she needs your help HOLY CRAP AMY YOUR COLORS 
This campaign is on FIRE and its colors are REALLY BAD
And these were just the emails bad enough to be worth mentioning. Amy also loved beige highlighters and bright yellow. She loved clashing blues and conflicting reds. By the end, I was convinced that Amy’s email writers were deliberately trolling me because sure, surely, no one could be that bad at color design.
Unfortunately, Amy’s campaign never really gained the traction it needed. I’m not saying the email coloring was the cause, but I’m saying it certainly didn’t help. Her best headline came on the day of her launch, and nothing else ever quite reached those heights.
So thank you, Amy, for your run. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors, and I highly encourage you to get a new email team before you relaunch your Senate campaign.
