Trump, Clinton Campaign Email Statistics Show Shift in Tradition

The results of the 2016 Presidential Election has divided the country, and led many to ask how?

How did President-Elect Donald Trump buck tradition and still win to become the 45th President of the United States.

In short, for all of Hillary Clinton’s pronounced get-out-the-vote and data strategy, she failed to mobilize the base that elected Barack Obama to two terms. We have been writing all election season about Clinton’s massive lead in all email metrics and  that Trump’s email program was underdeveloped, and at times spam-plagued.

While this remained true, Trump’s final two weeks saw a marked improvement.

“Over the campaign’s final two weeks, continuing to use his four proprietary email domains and two “borrowed” domains, Trump mailed 956 email campaigns (only 13% fewer than Hillary’s for that period), and drove even stronger read rates than we had observed for Trump in the thirty days before that,” said Arthur Sweetser, chief marketing officer at eData Source, yet the Republican’s campaign saw relatively strong read rates.

Of particular interest, for Sweetser, was a series of emails sent on November 7th, all with the subject line “National Voter Assistance Hotline.” Message content included a phone number for voters to call if they encountered “any problems casting a ballot of if you witness any disruptions at a polling location.” Some versions of this message also included another number for the voter to call to volunteer as a poll observer. These messages produced read rates ranging from 18-33%.

Clinton also continued to mail actively throughout the campaign’s final phase.

“Her inbox performance — always strong — improved to 90%, and her read rates improved to 19%, from just under 15% in our previous report,” said Sweetser. “Two themes dominated Clinton’s late-stage emails: (1) Emails noting the narrowing polling numbers and requesting further donations to allay the risk; and (2) Very concerted effort to get-out-the vote on election day itself.”

The table below provides activity and performance detail for each candidate’s activity in the October 24 – November 9th time period.