EDIT: This post was written when Trump’s emails were hiding in Spam. Here is the correct breakdown of this week’s emails.
Did I say things were starting to take off? Donald Trump’s emails have fallen flat on their face.
| Emails | |
|---|---|
| Total | 26 |
| Biden | 23 |
| Trump | 3 |
For all new readers: Welcome! I am currently on the mailing lists of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, though I have previously been on the mailing lists of 28 Democratic candidates! This blog breaks down recent emails with charts and excerpts. If you already know all of this, feel free to skip to the next chart!
It took some time for the Trump emails to kick in, so I started officially tracking his list on July 7. I have been tracking Biden’s for longer, but I will start comparing them as of July 7. All of these emails are going to a new email, and I have not donated, filled out surveys, signed petitions, or otherwise interacted with either candidate’s emails.
The rules I try to follow for the various categories are laid out in The Framework.
Joe Biden sent a total of 23 emails this past week. Donald Trump sent a whopping 3.
While Biden sent at least 3 emails a day, Trump struggled to remember that he needs to campaign to win.
Both Biden and Trump focused on fundraising, with over half of Biden’s emails and a full 2/3rds of Trump’s being focused on just getting my money. Trump’s third email also was a money grab, but at least I’d get a gaudy hat that violated the U.S. Flag Code to show my loyalty.
While Trump offered merch in two of his emails, one was a platinum membership card to get me to donate to become a part of his platinum supporters club, or whatever it’s called. This is less exclusive (500 members) than the gold membership tier (100 members), showing that Trump genuinely has no idea of the value of anything.
Biden, on the other hand, was trying to get my opinion, giving me campaign events to watch, telling me about upcoming events, and encouraging me to tell my friends about upcoming events. He was, you know… campaigning. Like he actually wants the job he’s trying to get.
With his emails, Biden consistently hits a hopeful or grateful tone, though this past week had a lot of excitement in his emails, which is actually fairly rare. He had a little worry, mostly coming from Elana Firsht, and one instance of guilt-tripping (you don’t want to wake up the day after election day and wish you’d done more).
Trump, on the other hand, just doubled-down on the guilt-tripping and ego-stroking.
It’s very hard to compare these two email strategies when one of the strategies seems to be “don’t email* at all,” but that in itself is telling. One candidate wants to put work in, the other doesn’t.
*It’s worth noting that these are the emails directly coming from Trump’s official mailing list. He seems to have MANY mailing lists that all work together to do a dance of campaign emails, but I am not on most of them. I’ve only managed to get on this official one.
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