John Shinkle/POLITICO URGENT: Dems' email bonanza

House Democrats have their email fundraising down to a science: Cast Speaker John Boehner as the leading villain, use President Barack Obama’s signature (but sparingly) and don’t hesitate to go ALL CAPS with a subject line like this: “BREAKING: IMPEACHMENT.”

Over the top? Undoubtedly. But the fact is it’s working — better than anything Republicans have tried so far. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised $4.8 million, thanks to a series of “red alert” emails feeding off talk of impeachment and Boehner’s lawsuit against Obama over executive actions. It was the committee’s best week for online fundraising.


All the handicappers say Democrats have no chance of retaking the House in November and that the party may well lose seats. But in the race for cash, their official campaign arm is leaving the GOP in the dust month in and month out — and email fundraising is the No. 1 reason why.

Republicans are taking notice.

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“I’ve been loving the [DCCC’s] emails,” GOP digital consultant Wesley Donehue said at a recent campaign tech conference in San Francisco. “I’ve been sending them to my team [and saying], ‘Do this, because this s—- is awesome.”

Still, the five-alarm fire approach isn’t without skeptics, even among Democrats. Some party activists worry the tone and frequency of the messages will have a “boy who cries wolf” effect, desensitizing donors over the long haul and ultimately making them less willing to pony up. “There’s a risk that people … will disengage,” said Will Bunnett, a member of Obama’s 2008 email team who now manages online campaigns for the communications firm Trilogy Interactive.

The DCCC folks seem entirely unburdened by such concerns. The results, they say, speak for themselves: The committee is on pace to easily top its 2012 record of $49 million raised through emails — and all those millions translate into more field workers and TV ads this fall, and potentially a better election night.

The man behind the missives is Brandon English, a 30-year-old Brown grad who came to the committee in 2006 with minimal experience in digital technology. Sporting jeans and beat-up sneakers on a recent day at party headquarters, English recounted how he landed that entry-level gig: He did a Google search for “Democratic Party jobs” and stumbled upon an online department opening at the DCCC in Washington.

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“Which, if I’m being honest, I’d not heard of up to this point,” he cracked.

English shot through the DCCC’s digital ranks over multiple election cycles, proving so effective at pushing donors’ buttons that DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (N.Y.) and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi made personal pleas to him after the 2012 election to stick around for two more years.

“Obviously, it’s not normal to be the guy that’s on Year Eight at a party committee,” English said. “It’s usually you do your two years and you go.”

He is plainly having fun. English recently did his own end-zone dance on Twitter, after ABC reporter Jonathan Karl asked at a White House briefing whether the Obama administration coordinated with the DCCC to raise money off the impeachment talk.

“LOLz (A: no. we’re just that damn fast),” English tweeted.

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Media buzz keeps building, from an Atlantic tick-tock of 21 messages sent over one week about impeachment to a Tumblr post pitching other humorous ideas the Democrats could use to raise money. (One suggested subject line: “There Is Literally No Reason Left To Live.”)

Faiz Shakir, a former Pelosi digital director who now has the same job for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said English has “been able to evolve and adapt their email strategy to capitalize on the zeitgeist of the moment.”

Striking an urgent tone in emails hasn’t been difficult. The GOP has given English plenty of material, from countless Obamacare repeal bills to the government shutdown and demands to see Obama’s birth certificate.

“If the Republicans weren’t constantly awful,” English deadpanned, “we wouldn’t be sending emails about how the Republicans are constantly awful.”

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The Democrats’ digital operation is actually a mix of low tech and high tech.

English’s 11-person team is squirreled back in a corner of the DCCC’s headquarters, with several desks overlooking the Amtrak tracks. No resemblance here to a Silicon Valley startup with ping-pong tables or a Zen meditation room; it’s a cubicle farm straight out of the 1990s. A large red digital clock hangs on one wall, not far from a rack of old-school print newspapers and magazines.

For ideas, English and his staff lean on cable TV, online news and their own email inboxes to see what Democratic-aligned supporters are most riled up about. After a 9 a.m. senior DCCC staff meeting, English and his deputy, Charles Starnes, huddle with the writing team to map out the day’s email strategy. Three writers usually pen three versions of a message before sharing them for peer editing. English then weighs in before handing the drafts over to Starnes for a final scrub.

Recognizing about a third of their audience will read emails on a mobile phone, English said he insists that messages are no longer than 70 words before the first donation link.

“We know we have to get to the point and we have to get to the point quick,” English said. “I’m very incredibly nit-picky about every single word in our emails. Any extra words, extra sentences, unnecessary anything can just kill an email.”

The DCCC gets a little more technical when it comes to testing their emails to see what works best to get donations.

Some messages do well no matter what. Anything from Obama is typically a winner, English said.

But a more in-depth analysis is vital for testing messages from the likes of Vice President Joe Biden or Pelosi, as well as generic emails from the DCCC. They usually send out six versions of an email to smaller subsets of their larger email list. Within a half-hour, English’s team will have enough responses to know what’s working or not.

Subject lines make a big difference. Donors responded with 50 percent greater frequency when they received an April email headed “Boehner INFURIATED,” compared with just “INFURIATED.” The subject line “CRUSHING blow” also did much better than an email that simply addressed the recipient by name to offer a “status update.”

Boehner subject lines tend to elicit a big response, English said, because liberals despise his reluctance to challenge tea party conservatives. But there are others who are strong draws, too, including the former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. “We will miss Michele Bachmann,” English said.

Democrats also have had some of their most successful fundraising days at the end of a month, when their messages have a more urgent tone. Not coincidentally, that’s the same time as a Federal Election Commission reporting deadline.

“The fact we know POLITICO is going to write a story about our July fundraising numbers, good or bad, we have to be ready for that,” English said.

Democrats declined to say how many addresses are on their list, except to acknowledge their list is smaller than the 16 million Obama had at the end of the 2012 campaign.

Republicans have been building up their own direct email appeals too, but they are far behind the Democrats. House GOP officials say their email operation didn’t really kick off until 2012, giving Democrats an eight-year head start in collecting email addresses and spending millions of dollars for critical infrastructure investments.

“There’s no black magic,” a senior House GOP campaign official said of the Democratic efforts.

But GOP officials also readily admit they’ve been trying to copy the Democrats. As much as he’s loathed by Democratic activists, Boehner is the GOP’s top draw for a fundraising email signature. They also have had success using Paul Ryan, Ben Carson, Sarah Palin and Condoleezza Rice.

Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, the finance vice chair for the National Republican Congressional Committee, praised the Democrats’ success and said Republicans are working hard to catch up. “We’re on a high growth curve, but we started on a much lower level than they did,” he said.

But Republicans have also gotten in trouble for using a Democratic tactic of singling out people in emails who haven’t recently sent in donations.

Georgia-based conservative blogger Nathan Smith questioned the Republican National Committee in a recent post for sending him an email asking in the subject line if he’d abandoned the party.

“I don’t take kindly to threats, and I know my Republican friends don’t, either,” he wrote. “This email doesn’t exactly make me reach for my wallet and doesn’t do much to endear me to them.”

Still, Stivers defended the tone of the emails.

“The reason the DCCC does things that are annoying is cause it works,” the Republican said. “And we want to try to push things a little bit but not be as annoying as they are if we can.”

The GOP declined to release details about how much money they’ve raised online compared with other methods. Their federal campaign disclosures also don’t distinguish between email, direct mail and other fundraising tools.

Despite the DCCC’s success, there are rumblings of discontent among some in the party about the alarmist tone and volume of the email solicitations.

“I have a lot of respect for what the DCCC has been able to do,” said Neil Sroka, a former 2008 Obama digital campaign aide and now communications director for the Howard Dean-affiliated PAC Democracy for America. “But there’s a concern that with this churn through email addresses whether or not they’re forgetting that there are people on the other end of them.”

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) acknowledged it can sometimes be a bit much.

“Many of my friends get at least one a day,” he said. “They hesitate to hit the delete button, but they understand they’d be dead broke if they responded to every appeal. And after a while, I do think the urgency of these appeals begins to ebb just a bit.”

But without the Democrats’ email fundraising efforts, Moran said the party would lose seats in the midterms.

“As long as it works,” he said, “it’s going to continue.”