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You Got Mail? Analysis Shows That Sometimes, McCain's Supporters Don't

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

John McCain's e-mails don't get through to their intended recipients as much as Barack Obama's do, finds a recent test by the emarketing firm ClickMail.

While the finding might sound mundane, it's significant because e-mail has become the prime way that campaigns communicate with supporters for everything from fund-raising, volunteering and getting out the vote.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Ron Paul all set new records over the past year in e-mail and web fund-raising appeals after major campaign events. And e-mail has become a major way that campaigns keep supporters updated with their progress.

"From what we see, the McCain campaign is not getting the same percentage of e-mails through. They're not able to get as many e-mails through as the Obama campaign is," says Marco Marini, ClickMail's CEO. "To the extent that email marketing is a vehicle for donations or getting the message across or whatever their goals are, they're being limited just by that fact alone."

The week-long test, conducted last week, found that McCain's e-mails only get through at two-thirds of the rate that Obama's do to their intended recipients.

While there could be many reasons for this, the leading one is that the IP addresses from which the McCain campaign's e-mails are sent are not authenticated while the Obama campaign's are, Marini says.

Marketers who send out large volumes of e-mail should maintain lists of legitimate IP addresses on their web site servers so that the e-mail recipient's servers can ping the source of the e-mails for authentication he says.

Image:WigWam Jones

Full post as published by Threat Level on October 15, 2008 (boomark / email).