On February 1st, I used a new account to sign up for email from 25 potential prez candidates from both parties to study their use of the medium. Here's a summary of what I've found:

1. Most of the candidates have studied how email was used in the 2004 prez campaigns and have adopted elements that worked

2. Just like with their websites, nobody has offered anything innovative or interesting. (If even to engage the press or DC insiders only, you would think they would be putting more attention and energy into their mass emails) ...

Continuing a review of potential prez candidate emails, today's topic is the use of a candidate's spouse to soften the candidate's image.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that most of the campaigns have caught on to effective email tactics used in the 2004 presidential campaign and down ballot campaigns since.

Politicians and campaigns could be connecting with me you us more effectively through the smarter use of email.

I guess it's because he's not running for president that Bill Frist is now free to communicate like a normal human being. Presidential candidates should take a lesson.

The Web on the Candidates

Which candidate has the strongest stance on universal health care? Is it 53-year-old John Edwards? Or 59-year-old Hillary Clinton? How about 10-year-old Susie Flynn? Flynn is running for president on one platform, getting health insurance for the nine million uninsured children in America. While this might seem like a cutesy ploy, Susie (and her handlers) are actually quite serious -- in one video she argues that, for the amount we spend every three and half months in Iraq, every child in the U.S. could be insured. She even takes her campaign to Capitol Hill. When will another candidate adopt her platform?

One of the most exciting things about watching the evolving use of digital strategy in the presidential campaigns is seeing the emergence of new best practices. The Edwards campaign provides a great example of what I mean. While many campaigns, especially those with blogs, have set up an RSS feed, Edwards has provided several RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feeds on its RSS Central page for supporters to more easily keep up with news and information from the candidates, the Edwards campaign has created several specific feeds, including an RSS feed of the candidate’s events calendar.

When critics point to the Republican Party's problems online, my response is that our problems aren't online. Our problems are offline, in a cranky base, in a reluctance to truly motivate and inspire cause-oriented Republican voters, and in the fact that we are in power in the midst of an unpopular war. Many of these apparent problems go away or get a lot better once we unify against Hillary as the nominee. If this were simply a contest of Web sites and technology -- GeorgeWBush.com vs. JohnKerry.com in 2004, GOP.com vs. Democrats.org, Voter Vault vs. Demzilla, microtargeting vs. what exactly? -- Republicans would win hands down.

Or at least, that seems to have been the case until now.

I've worked with enough of the developers and tech visionaries on the Republican side to know that the talent to build great online experiences, ones that connect you directly with your voters, exists in abundance. But recently, this approach has lost ground to a theory that the best way to communicate with your base is through third parties like bloggers and social networks. That means Republicans are far out front on things like blogger conference calls, hashing out legislation on Red State, and Twittering. And they're quietly losing ground on the basics of online campaigning: e-mail lists, Web development, and video.

Last night, I got an email from John McCain filled with typical political happy talk like "Though we have a long, hard road ahead of all of us, I know that with your help, we will prevail," and "Together, I have every confidence that we will be successful."

I certainly don't feel any outsized affection for Senator McCain, but I sincerely believe he missed an opportunity to make history. To really engage his supporters in a valiant comeback attempt, to give them ownership of the campaign, and to maybe -- just maybe -- set in motion some momentum that could have gotten him back in this. It's a strategy that will take guts -- a willingness to publicly put the very survival of the campaign on the line (as though it isn't already).

Here's the email McCain could have sent (after the jump):

Just got an interesting email from the DNC asking me to...no, not to give money, but to send a thank-you note. (Paging Miss Manners...). Actually, it's a clever idea, since constant begging for donations can be a big turnoff for supporters and can hasten an email list's decline.

The controversy over MoveOn's General Betray Us ad reminds us that the best online strategy is still about getting the basics right. In this case: tapping into the visceral reaction to an event within the first 12-24 hours and inviting your supporters to participate to respond in ways that count. And you'll primarily use the most unglamorous, Web 1.0 club in the bag: e-mail.