Tories lead email blitz by parties
The Conservative Party is beating its rivals in the use of email in the run up to the general election, but all parties are making fundamental errors.
Return Path carried out research by opting-in to receive email from the main parties over a course of two months. Tories sent subscribers 12 messages over that period, compared to just one from the Labour Party. Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP and DUP failed to send any emails to subscribers. But the BNP was the biggest emailer, sending 20 messages in two months, of which 15 were intercepted by spam filters.
“For all their platitudes about engaging with the electorate, political parties are certainly not walking the talk when it comes to email,” says Margaret Farmakis, Return Path’s senior director of response consulting who led the research. None of the three parties sent a welcome message on sign-up.
