What Voters Think About Fundraising Emails – Josh Nelson (Civic Shout)

Josh Nelson:

The spamming and scamming tactics that have become all too common are doing real damage to our ability to reach people and hold their attention.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech Innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. Josh Nelson is the CEO of Civic Shout, whose motto is surprisingly easy email and SMS acquisition for your progressive cause or campaign. He's been a vocal critic of the status quo when it comes to online fundraising practices on both the right and the left. Civic chow just released a poll that asked Democratic and democratic leaning independent voters about their views around email and SMS fundraising by political campaigns. We dig into that poll in our conversation and learn more about the better way forward for campaign marketing that Josh is working to build.

Josh, we've got a lot to talk about in this fascinating poll you release, and I just want to hold it up as an example for other entrepreneurs, this is how you do marketing, right for your company, creating content, adding value. And so kudos to you for that, I think is a great idea. I hope more people do it. So let's dive right in. 57% of respondents said they would like to stop receiving all political campaign emails and texts immediately, and that what was fascinating to me is that also included people who told you they opted in to receive those messages. What does this tell us about the effectiveness of most digital campaigns right

Josh Nelson:

Now in aggregate? I think it tells us that the spamming and scamming tactics that have become all too common in our industry are doing real damage to our ability to reach people and, and hold their attention. You know, one thing I do wanna clarify is that we, we didn't get cross tabs that account for whether or not someone opted in to receive emails or, and texts. I I would say it's pretty safe to assume that

Eric Wilson:

People, I just did my own arithmetic on it, so I'll take the, the credit on that

Josh Nelson:

<Laugh>. Oh, excellent. Or the, I think it's pretty safe to assume that people who, you know, explicitly and intentionally sign up to hear from a campaign are in fact far more interested in hearing from them and far more likely to respond positively. What's sad to me is that digital campaigning has so much potential to engage people in the political process and, and change our politics for the better. But instead for the most part, we're squandering that right now by spamming and scamming supporters to such a great extent that many of them are at risk of tuning out completely.

Eric Wilson:

So let's figure out how we got here, right? Because I think part of it is we saw just a digitization of direct mail tactics, which were always sort of, I wouldn't say scammy, but written in that style of like, this is really urgent because you think of all the hurdles that someone would have to go to to write a check, mail it in, that sort of thing. But the internet has reduced the cost to do that and, and allowed people to just kind of amp up the, the tactics. This was effective at some point, right? I mean, so how do we get here?

Josh Nelson:

Yeah. I think you know, stepping back, say, you know, close to 20 years starting, you know, I think really with the, the dean campaign at least on the Democratic side, campaign managers, practitioners, candidates themselves started to see the tremendous potential of the internet for reaching, mobilizing grassroots supporters, right? So you saw that with Dean the dean campaigns, meetups on meetup.com, famously <laugh> the Obama campaign in 2008, took that to the next level with a phenomenal email program that raised a, a great deal of money and, and reached tons of supporters. I think that really caught the attention of some of the fundraising focused and, and big money focused folks certainly in the Democratic party and, and I, and I think probably in, in the Republican party as well. And that, you know, has morphed over the last, you know, 15 or 20 years into, you know, essentially a single minded focus on raising money, right?

You know, the phrase that gets thrown around is that you know, some campaigns treat their, their email community or their SMS community like an atm. And so, you know, folks saw that potential they started tapping into it, and they got, you know, I think over time increasingly, increasingly desperate to, to raise as much money as possible in the short term without any regard for, you know, the potential long term consequences of that. So I think that has led to, you know, in combination with, you know, a lack of any real standards body or any, any real enforcement from technology vendors that's led to some really unfortunate tactics where, you know, campaigns are essentially buying lists of donors sending them ridiculous volumes of unsolicited spam and using, you know, what are essentially fraudulent tactics to, to trick them into donating.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, I think that's the, that's the right diagnosis, that it, treating digital like an atm is a shortsighted mindset that we've, we've kind of boxed in our, our digital campaigns too, and, and really limited the potential. And, you know, we obviously risk polluting and probably already have a critical communications channel for campaigns big and small. If, if text and emails are just universally despised, especially as we start to see sort of the online media landscape fragment even further, what did you learn about how it's shaping voters' behavior?

Josh Nelson:

Yeah. Well, one of the most interesting findings from the survey was that 24% of Democrats and independents said that there were times this past cycle when they decided not to donate or volunteer. Wow. because they were afraid they'd get even more emails and text messages than they already receive. That's a huge amount of money huge amount of volunteer hours that were collectively leaving on the table by swapping donor contact info and, and spamming people with messages they don't wanna receive. I think it's useful to, you know, take a step back and think about that for a moment from a donor's perspective. So say, you know, you're someone who recently became politically engaged due to some policy development that matters to you personally. You decide to chip in $50 each to a handful of candidates maybe your local congressional candidate maybe leadership in the party you support folks who agree with you on that issue you care about in return, instead of being thanked for your donation <laugh> and being asked to get involved in other ways, your contact information, sometimes not always is then sold to dozens of other campaigns who proceed to bombard you with five or more unsolicited fundraising emails per day.

So we're essentially punishing people for getting involved in our campaigns online. And from a fundraising perspective I, I think that's unsustainable since we'll eventually run out of new donors to spam and scam from a civic engagement perspective. I think it's also problematic since we're creating a, a real disincentive for people to get involved in the political process,

Eric Wilson:

Right? And yeah, it's since a signal that you're only valued to a campaign is as a, as a donor. And you know, we, we sort of heard for the, the longest time that that was tho those emails were just going to a small segment of, of grassroots. And so they were always gonna be with us. It didn't matter, you know, what we said to them. And, and some of our post-election surveys I've been surprised at how many voters received fundraising solicitations. It's often reaching more voters than door knocks and phone calls. And so what should campaigns be doing in light of this shift of fundraising as voter contact?

Josh Nelson:

Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point about, you know, how many, just how many people, how many grad potential grassroots supporters are being reached by these messages. Especially when you look at, you know, the relatively low viewership numbers that we see on you know, on msnbc, on Fox News, on cnn you know, when compared to the millions or sometimes tens of millions of people who are getting these, you know, these fraudulent emails and texts you know, like we were talking about a couple minutes ago, I, I, I think the, the problem largely stems from campaigns viewing their digital program as an atm. So if it, you know, if all you care about is raising money, it's no surprise that you'll buy a donor list and and berate people until they donate or unsubscribe. So I would say that campaigns should take a much broader view of what they're doing online and recognize that email and SMS are also valuable channels for recruiting volunteers for educating potential supporters on your policy positions and for getting out the vote. So there are, there are other things that campaigns can and, and should be doing with their digital programs.

Eric Wilson:

I think if I could diagnose the, the, the breakdown in this way, it would be, you know, there's, there's a disconnect between believing that online life is real life. And for a lot of us over the last several years of the pandemic, we've realized just how much you know, online life has become real life. So, for example, you and I have, have really only ever interacted online. We met in person for the first time a few months ago at a conference. But, but that's, that's true for, for voters as well. And you know, I, I think it's really eye opening in your data that a third of voters receiving these messages find them annoying and they don't work. 68% of the people you surveyed said they didn't donate. So I'm curious, how do campaigns still justify the effort and the expense of these, these programs? Is there a is there a reckoning on the horizon?

Josh Nelson:

I, yeah, I think there might be. You know, many campaigns are, are defining success too narrowly, right? So they're, they're only paying attention to short term dollars raised without taking into account the damage their digital fundraising programs might be doing to their candidates reputation and, and to their long term fundraising prospects. And so, if you are just if you're, if you're only evaluating your email program on the basis of, you know, how much money did this email raise, how much do we raise in this, in this quarter in advance of the, the FEC deadline? You know, there, there are, you know, I hate to say it, but there are ways that you can you know, you can buy some donor lists and, and email people 20, 20 times a day. And you are, in the short term, probably going to raise a lot of money. I think what folks are missing, there are, are some of those long term reputational consequences and long term fundraising consequences.

Eric Wilson:

You're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with Josh Nelson, CEO of Civic Shout about email and SMS fundraising. Josh, with Civic Shout, you are building a different approach to email list building and fundraising. What is unique about your platform?

Josh Nelson:

Yeah, so at Civic Shout we believe that donors and supporters deserve the right to choose for themselves, which campaigns and organizations they receive emails and text messages from. So that's why we include an opt-in, in checkbox on all of our petitions on the platform that say, you know, essentially I want to receive emails and text messages from this campaign. We think that's better for both donors and campaigns. It's, it's better for donors because they're given the power to make their own decisions, and they don't have to deal with an onslaught of unsolicited spam from campaigns they don't care about. We think it's better for campaigns because when people intentionally sign up to get your emails or text messages, they're far more likely to respond positively when you contact them. So that includes vanity metrics, like open rates, as well as more important ones, like long term engagement and donations.

Eric Wilson:

And so the, the campaigns, when they sign up, they still get the, once someone has opted in, they still get the contact information from the, the user, right?

Josh Nelson:

Exactly. that's right. But the, the only way that a campaign or or non-profit, we work with progressive non-profits, labor unions, folks like that as well. The only way, you know, our partner organizations can acquire contact information of supporters is if that individual supporter signs their branded petition with an opt-in checkbox check that says they want to get emails and text messages from them.

Eric Wilson:

And so what you're starting to get to is one of the things that I, I, I really identify as a big trend in campaign technology broadly, which is software that follows a supporter rather than the campaign. Mobilized, I think is probably the biggest example of this, where it is an events platform that other people plug into. And, and it seems to me that that's what civic shout is, is building.

Josh Nelson:

Yeah, that's right. We're, we're building, you know, this, this base of you know, grassroots democratic and progressive activists and donors. And these are folks who, you know, by and large want to be involved with campaigns, right? They, they want, they wanna sign petitions, they wanna volunteer, they wanna donate and, and get involved in other ways. So, you know, in some ways we're sort of like a you know, like a, a matchmaker service, right? So on, on one side you've got the supporters who wanna be involved on the other side. You've got the campaigns and organizations who, who want and, and really need to reach those supporters. We, we facilitate that process.

Eric Wilson:

And you've obviously been very vocal about calling out bad actors in our industry, both in your party and in the Republican party. I can't imagine that that has earned you a lot of friends, maybe a few people in your DMS or inbox saying, oh, yeah, I totally agree with you, but maybe not saying it publicly. What what effect has it had in, in changing business practices within the, the democratic or progressive fundraising space?

Josh Nelson:

Yeah, I think it's yeah, it's funny you mentioned that it hasn't hasn't really made me too many friends. I think that's I think it's made me a lot of friends and it's made me a lot of enemies <laugh>, so I'll take the I'll take the good with the bad there. You know, overall I think we've seen we've seen some progress. So there's, you know, know a growing number of, of practitioners and agencies on the democratic side that are, are becoming aware of the the consequences of the status quo and, and of the need to treat potential supporters with respect. There were quite a few campaigns this cycle that sent emails laying out how they think about their email program and why they choose not to spam and scam people. You know, I've been watching debates over these types of tactics play out on the democratic side for about 15 years now, <laugh> and those, those debates are, are far from settled. But those of us who believe spamming and scamming are problematic have have been winning that argument for the past few years now.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And I think you've had something happen, you know, just in the last couple of months where between changes with Facebook advertising increases on privacy, you know, just right out of the box with, with Apple and Gmail, that that is, has really put a damper on some of these tactics. So I think people are gonna be forced to adapt, but it really is interesting. Have you, have you heard maybe anecdotally from folks who have sent out those emails explaining why they're running more respectful campaign, how that worked for them?

Josh Nelson:

I have not, although no, I have not talked to them explicitly about it. Although, one thing, you know, without, without naming the agency, there's a prominent democratic agency that sent emails along those lines from one or two clients, and then a few months later, they sent a bunch more of them from other clients, to me is an indication that it, that it actually worked.

Eric Wilson:

That's how, you know, it's working. Right, exactly. So Josh, beyond civic shout, doing this the right way and and appealing to kind of our better angels of, of being respectful of our supporters, what else do you think can be done to address this challenge of ethical digital campaigning?

Josh Nelson:

Yeah, so for a long time I thought that, you know, that it's a relatively small industry, right? And it's a relatively small community of people who you know, run democratic campaigns who run digital for Democratic campaigns. And so I thought that maybe through persuasion, through naming and shaming <laugh> and things like that, we could sort of change change the culture and change behavior. Myself and others tried that for years that did not in fact work, right? And it turns out, you know, when, when, you know, sometimes when you shame people for problematic behavior it just makes them sort of dig in their heels and becoming more stubborn. It's not a, it's not a very persuasive tactic. So for a while after that, I started to think that, that the best opportunity to, you know, get, you know, I, I, I mostly pay attention to the Democratic side, but to, you know, to get democratic campaigns to, to stop spamming and scamming would be for the technology vendors that we rely on to, you know, strengthen and enforce their terms of service, right?

So that could be an NGP van slash every action could be somebody like Act Blue on the Democratic side as well. And so I I spearheaded an open letter to NGP NGP Van about 15 months ago signed by, you know, close to a hundred prominent folks in the industry on the Democratic side, essentially calling on them to, to do just that strengthen and enforce their own terms when it comes to unsolicited spam when it comes to particularly, you know, deceptive or otherwise problematic tactics. They've responded a bit. NGP has taken some strides to, you know, particularly on the unsolicited spam side to enforce their, their existing prohibition on that more when it comes to, you know, what I call the, the scamming, the other side of the equation, which includes some of the, the, the fraudulent content we see NGP has, has essentially said that you know, it's not their place to say mm-hmm <affirmative> who are they to be the arbiter of, of what content is or is not acceptable.

One concern that I do have is that you know, I'm a, I'm, I'm a Democrat and I want Democrats to win. So I do worry sometimes that if, you know, if Democrats, you know, on this issue or, or others frankly, decide to take the, the high road and unilaterally disarm on some of these tactics, it could lead to a short term disadvantage, right? And so, interesting, you know, in the very short term, the side that's defrauding more potential supporters to raise more money has a, has an immediate advantage in that next election long term. I think, you know, the side that's doing that is burning out their donor base and has a, as a long term disadvantage, but ultimately, I would like to see both sides held to the same standard. And that's, you know, outside of you know, Gmail or somebody deciding to play a really decisive role, right? That's probably going to require federal legislation or, or some kind of regulation cracking down on, on spamming and or scamming, right? So that, that might look like you know, reopening and, and amending the, the Can Spam Act, which excluded and exempted political campaigns. And

Eric Wilson:

So can SPAM Act is essentially the federal law that says you can't send unsolicited emails.

Josh Nelson:

Yeah. And it's got a number of other sort of regulations about you know, letting people unsubscribe when they try to and, and things like that. So, you know, maybe, maybe there's an effort along those lines, or maybe it's through, you know, the, the fec the, you know, federal Election Commission or the Federal Trade Commission you know, could theoretically put, put some regulations in place.

Eric Wilson:

Interesting. Well I, I think that, you know, unless campaigns to get their acts together, that that stuff is, is certainly gonna be something that voters and constituents ask from, from their lawmakers. Cuz I mean, as we saw in your pulp, people are, people are sick of it. They, they don't wanna receive it anymore. I, I'm of the mindset that the, the bottom has fallen out of it and that we're gonna, we're gonna see a, a shift. Of course, they're always gonna be bad actors, but I, I, I'm, I'm really glad that you're, you're sort of leading this conversation and, and I think people are, are recognizing this on the, the right as well. So I'm, I'm curious to hear from you, Josh, who has the, the, the best email program on, on the left and the right, who are the folks who are doing this the right way?

Josh Nelson:

Yeah, so on the left you know, one of my favorite email programs and, and she has a great SMS program as well, is, is Alexandria Caio Cortez, I'm sure very popular with, with your listeners <laugh>. She,

Eric Wilson:

You had to go,

Josh Nelson:

Yeah, <laugh> her, her email program is run by a democratic agency called Middle Seat runs, you know, some of the best email programs for federal campaigns. Couple of the things I like about AOCs email program one she's never going to berate and guilt trip you, right? So she's never going to, you know, engage in, in some of the worst and most problematic tactics to squeeze every single donation out of every single potential donor. So that's appreciated. And, and they were, you know, one of the campaigns that sent those you know, one of these emails explicitly laying out how they think about their email program, why they, you know, consciously decided to treat their supporters with respect. Couple other things that email program does. One is they use it as an advocacy channel as well as a fundraising channel.

So there was, I think it was during the, the bipartisan infrastructure bill debate when they, they sent out an email encouraging people to call their member of Congress which is, you know, a tactic you usually see from advocacy organizations, right? In support of I think it was high speed rail, right? And this is a large, very engaged email community. So that's, that's the type of thing that can drive, you know, thousands of phone calls to to, to Capital Hill, right? Into key offices in, in a matter of hours and can actually move votes. Another great thing they did with their SMS program is, is sort of, you know, offering real constituent support. So, you know a couple years ago when you know, one of the, one of the hurricanes sort of went up the East coast and there was pretty devastating flooding in, in her district there in New York.

They send a text message to constituents essentially saying here are some resources if you need help, and none of these resources can help you reply to this text and we'll help you get the help you need. And, you know, as far as I know, they, they actually actually followed through on that. So those are just a couple examples of how you can sort of view your email and SMS programs much more broadly than, than fundraising channels and provide real value to people. I have to say, on the right, I just don't pay enough attention, you know, I, you know, like you said, I'll occasionally call out, like when I happen to see like, you know, when Trump does the 7,000 times match or something, you know, I'll see those and call them out, but I do not I probably should, but I do not intentionally sign up for Republican lists. I get spam from Ron Johnson and folks like that like everybody else which can't unsubscribe from turns out. Speaking of can spam, but I don't, unfortunately, I don't know well enough to say who on the right has great email programs. I, I'm definitely curious if, if you have thoughts on that though.

Eric Wilson:

Well, I think you're starting to see a lot more folks do content based newsletters in addition to their, their fundraising program. So I think that, you know Todd Young had a really good sort of Axio style newsletter this cycle. Blake Masters started doing a, a, a newsletter alongside their fundraising, you know, usually scheduled programming. But I wanna go back to AOC for a minute because I, I think a lot of people are gonna hear that and say, okay, well she's aoc she gets to do it differently. Is it, does one follow the other, right? Is like, because she is a, you know, a, a unique kind of standout character on the left, does that enable her to run a more advanced program, or do you think the fact that she's running a more voter friendly program gives her that, that platform? Is it the chicken or the egg?

Josh Nelson:

Oh, that's interesting. You know, I think it, I think that probably goes in both directions. Some, and I would say with some of the, with some of the things AOC does with, with, you know, her campaign's, email program it helps that that she's aoc, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so, you know, I didn't, I didn't mention before, but one of the things I like about the email program is that they will they will send long form very thoughtful emails that are, that are intended to to inspire you that are intended to motivate you or, or make you think. And so that's very, you know, I think on brand with, with, with her as, as a candidate. And so I think it, it lines up particularly well there. So, you know, if you are a, if you're a candidate who you know, believes in treating voters with respect and believes in communicating with potential voters substantively and, and in a, in a deep way that doesn't just rely on sound bites, I think that ultimately, you know, probably does make it easier to run digital programs in the same mold.

Eric Wilson:

Right. Well, my thanks to Josh Nelson free, great conversation. You can learn more about him in our show notes. I'm gonna include a link to the, the poll, which is, is fascinating reading. And as always, if this episode made you just a little bit smarter or gave you something new to think about, all that we ask is that you share it with a friend or a colleague. You'll also look smarter in the process. It helps get the word out about the show. And remember to subscribe to the Business of Politics Show wherever you listen to podcasts, so you never miss an episode. You can also sign up to receive email updates at business of politics podcast.com. You will never span you. And if you wanna make sure you, you always are up to date there, that's the best way to do it. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

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