Florida Candidate for Governor Spews Spam Everywhere
It appears that GOP gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist is sending massive quantities of unsolicited email to Floridians - and then is failing to unsubscribe people who want off the list. How does this happen? See below.
Worst of all, the incident is getting him painted as a hypocrite. From the St. Petersburg Times:
As attorney general, Charlie Crist rails against spam e-mails."Spam is an annoying, intrusive form of e-mail that almost all of us receive but few of us want. Much of it is just clutter, but some of it can be downright offensive," the attorney general declared in a May press release heralding his efforts to fight unwanted e-mail.
But as a Republican candidate for governor, Crist is annoying Floridians himself by obtaining people's addresses and sending them unsolicited e-mails touting his gubernatorial candidacy and asking for campaign donations.
And they're failing to remove folks who want off the list - even Republicans:
The Crist campaign e-mails, they noted, prominently show people how to unsubscribe. That didn't work so well for Joe Spooner, a 41-year-old investment adviser from Brandon. He has no idea how the Crist campaign got his e-mail address, but repeatedly tried to unsubscribe.After the fifth request to be removed, a frustrated Spooner fired off an e-mail reminding the Crist campaign how Crist touts his fight against spammers: "The irony and hypocrisy amazes me. Do I need to file a complaint with the Attorney General's office? Anybody have the number for the Fraud Hotline?" wrote Spooner, a Republican.
Of course, the campaign is hiding behind the exemption in the CAN-SPAM act that exempts political communications.
"It's not spam," insisted Arlene DiBenigno, Crist's political director. "It's political speech. We're not selling anything, we're not being deceptive. We love the First Amendment, and there's nothing more powerful than political speech."
Yes, yes, that's true - but why would you spend time and money sending emails to voters that don't want to get your communications? And worst of all, why would you fail to honor their request to get off the list?
Most likely, the Crist campaign fell victim to the temptation to buy one of those big lists from a vendor that claims to be able to match email addresses with lists of likely voters. Even if you believe that that's possible (how many Joe Smith's are there in the world?) - the fact remains that you're sending unsolicited email.
It may not be illegal under federal law, but you're still going to negatively impact your future ability to send email to people who do want to receive it. AOL is filtering 1.2 billion spams a day - they're not very tolerant of people who send it.
And if that doesn't convince you, try this on: Do you really want to be the next candidate with this headline? Do you really want to be the next campaign staffer to have to explain it to your candidate?
Remember the Golden Rule for the Internet:
Don't Send E-mail to People Who Won't Be Happy to Receive It.
Elsewhere:
SpamKings: Charlie Crist's lax email etiquette
Myopic Zeal: Anti-Spam Florida AG Crist Sends Spam
HearSay.com: Florida AG Crist uses state list to send unsolicited email
Tech & Marketing Law Blog: Is the Florida Attorney General a Spammer?
Previously on P&T:
How do you build your email list?
Don't creep people out
All about political email
Kari Chisholm | January 8, 2006 | Comments (8) |
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Comments
So is there any legitimate way to try to match e-mail addresses with, say, lists of Democratic primary voters?
Posted by: Chris Williamson | Jan 9, 2006 1:50:16 PM
Chris... I think the key issue is which direction you're working.
If you've got a big list of supporters, and you want to make they're all registered to vote, that's one thing.
But taking a big list of registered voters and trying to uncover their email addresses (in order to send them unsolicited email) is both marginally ethical - and not likely to be very effective.
There is no magic, instant solution to building a big list.
Even more importantly, the "big list" isn't necessarily your goal. I recently heard Joe Trippi argue that campaigns should be interested in building meaningful relationships with a moderately-sized group - not a giant list that is only used for content-free and meaningless pitches for money.
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Jan 9, 2006 4:15:43 PM
But many campaigns do not have the fortune of being the dean campaign or Moveon, and they need a sizeable list in order to accomplish any amount of online activisim or fundraising. Many local candidates start off with VERY small lists...as you say, there is no "instant solution" but that is exactly the problem...if the campaigns were to try to build their list organically, election day would be over before they got any where close to what they need.
Appending a portion of voters in their districts is viewed as an imperfect but faster method of building a list. Only a small percentage of those people are going to opt-in, but at least that small number is alot more than what they started out with.
Posted by: Jason | Jan 19, 2006 10:59:34 AM
Of course, the Dean campaign started with less than 1000 email addresses.
There are no shortcuts. We can sit here and argue about whether or not its ethical to buy a list of people who don't want your mail, but the fact remains:
If you spam people who DON'T want your email, you are likely to wind up damaging your ability to send mail to those people who DO want it.
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Jan 19, 2006 12:17:47 PM
If that is so, then how do you ever use email as a voter contact tool, if you are only sending emails to people who already support you ?
Posted by: Jason | Jan 19, 2006 3:24:33 PM
You don't.
Email is not a direct voter contact tool.
Email is for organizing your existing supporters.
There are, of course, ways that you can reach beyond your existing supporters to help find new supporters.
Blogs, blog ads, targeted radio ads (think Air America), emails from endorsing organizations and people to their lists, tell-a-friend, fun-forwards, high-interest petition campaigns, etc.
Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Jan 19, 2006 3:43:10 PM
Now we are getting into it...
This is the same line of argument you hear from people opposed to paid phones, negative TV buys, and cold calling people for fundraising. If you cant break out from the group that already supports you, your campaign/organization will wither in an echo chamber.
I think its easy to point to major presidential campaigns for examples of success – sure there is something to learn there, but these races are rare and stakes are considerably higher It would be a mistake to model Kari for Dogcatcher after the Dean campaign...
A local candidate run blog ads all over the place, but with the RARE execption, they will not help him. And small candidates don't have the luxury of having large national organizations send out emails on their behalf. Tell-a-friend, petition campaigns, and forwards will only work once you have a list in place to send those things to in the first place!
Posted by: Jason | Jan 19, 2006 4:09:08 PM
So back to your first reply, Kari ...
It sounds as if your answer is that e-mail append is always "marginally ethical." I assume that means that all e-mail append vendors get their data in shady ways.
I ask this question because you're preaching to the choir. Every e-mail list I've ever worked with has been, as best I could determine, truly opt-in. I've had to police clients a few times when they wanted to use addresses someone else obtained for some other purpose.
Having said that: I have exactly zero experience renting lists or doing e-mail appends. But I know some people who seem fairly decent and ethical who've appended e-mail addresses to voter lists. I suppose I should ask them how/where they buy addresses. But it makes me wonder if there may be legitimate vendors. And then you could send these addresses exactly one polite invitation to join your e-mail list, sending anything else only to people who confirm they want it.
If I got such a request out of the blue from a candidate in whose district I live, I'd be inclined to opt in to the list, since I vote and I like to know what candidates are doing. In fact, I'd prefer it to what some political organizations apparently do, which is to get my address from other groups and just put me on their regular lists.
Posted by: Chris Williamson | Jan 29, 2006 1:33:37 PM
