As the internet community was still in its infancy in 2004, the best connector between candidates and voters was the email mailing list.
To better reel-in those interested, the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign made sure to have the sign-up application to their email list on top of their site’s banner.
Kerry-Edwards campaign also had their email sign-up on the top of their site, however, there is far less text. It’s also no coincidence that it’s directly over the “donate” button.
According to Samuel J. Best and Brian S. Krueger in their article “Analyzing the Representativeness of Internet Political Participation,” John Kerry’s campaign while working with the Democratic National Committee, collected a record $122 million in contributions through the internet in 2004.
Though an unprecedented number in 2004, what was even more impressive was when the George W. Bush re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee managed to gain over 7 million email subscribers.
In his post-election thank you, George W. Bush had over 7 million subscribers on his mailing list, making it the most successful voter contact strategy at the time. *Numbers according to The Washington Post, and Pew Research Center.
By November 2004, the Pew Research center reports that 3-out-of-4 of Kerry campaign emails to its list contained an action box to contribute money, compared with fewer than 18% of Bush’s campaign emails.
During the same time, 78% of Bush campaign emails featured a box to forward the message to a friend, as opposed to 5% of Kerry’s emails. In Bush’s emails blasts, 22% had a box to create or contact an online team of supporters – while Kerry’s emails did not.
In the 2004 election, the most successful way to reach out and connect with voters was via their emails. Doing so allowed for the candidates to not only send news letters to interested voters, but it also played a major role in collecting donations.
