Wes Moore for Governor of Maryland

Email strategy
Creative design

Rebuilding an Email Program for a Historic Candidacy

THE STORY

When Wes Moore launched his campaign for Governor of Maryland in June 2021, he set out to build a statewide campaign for ALL Marylanders. 

His message? Unifying.  His approach? Inclusive.

But in November 2021, the candidate’s fundraising program was focusing on fake deadlines, final notices, and not utilizing the wealth of personal stories and life experiences the candidate had to offer.

The email program was raising $100 here and there, poor email program stewardship was tanking their domain’s deliverability, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars the campaign invested in list growth was essentially for naught with open rates regularly below 2%.

But, most importantly, the email program wasn’t a positive representation of the candidate or the campaign.

OUR OBJECTIVE

FOGLAMP was hired to bring the email program back from the brink of destruction… and turn it into a significant source of revenue ahead of a crowded primary with very strong opponents. To do that, we focused our efforts on two areas:

  • Improving email deliverability, ensuring emails land in inboxes. If emails are going to spam, it doesn’t matter how attention-grabbing your subject lines are or how compelling your content is.

  • Delivering quality content the supporters want to open and engage with.

Data Health or: The Really Important (But Not Sexy) Work

Immediately, we got to work to rebuild the campaign’s domain reputation. We began by targeting our sends very narrowly to 30 Day Actives to increase open rates and deliverability. We regularly (every 1 to 2 weeks) sent our best-performing emails to less active segments in an attempt to reactivate the large number of inactive names on the list. Responsibly.

Weeks later, we were able to expand our audiences, continuing to expand as long as open rates were healthy (15% or more). Just months later, we reached a point of seeing 20 to 25% open rates even when sending to much broader audiences of users who’d opened in the last 6 months or more.

From Low Deliverability to a Powerhouse Fundraising Program

Tedious, difficult work over the course of many weeks set the stage for the list to become a fundraising powerhouse upon Wes’s come-from-behind victory in the July primary.

The high-impact moment allowed us to test the limits of the list, after months of improving its health. In the days following the primary victory, we generated more than 200,000 opens and raised $13,500 from email addresses that had been inactive for nearly a year. 

Increased open rates from

under 2% to of 20-25%

Re-engaged 200,000 dormant supporters

Grew the 30-Day
Active list by 200%

Increased the number of lifetime

openers on the list by 51%

Creating a Content Mix to Improve Results

Landing into inboxes is half the battle. To fully turn the program around, we needed supporters to first open the email (subject lines) and then engage with the email by clicking links (high-quality content) and eventually taking action.

We worked to create a mix of long, personal stories, high-quality graphic emails, and shorter, more tactical emails around fundraising deadlines to test what the list responded to.

Our email creative for Wes focused on lifting up his message, amplifying his personal values, and breaking through the polarization to talk directly to everyday Marylanders. From his grandmother Mama Win voting for her grandson and sharing how his military service shaped his vision for Maryland’s future, we gave his supporters content they wanted to open.

The Results

Our one-two punch of working on deliverability and content were exactly what Wes’s list needed to turn around and deliver into a program that made the candidate proud, and provided the revenue the campaign needed to make history.

In the end, we were able to:

  • Increase the number of lifetime openers on the list by 51%

  • Increase open rates from under 2% to an average of 20 to 25%

  • Grow the 30-Day Active list by 200%

  • Grow fundraising quarter over quarter — ultimately raising nearly 1000% more after Wes’s primary victory, compared to a year before.