Here’s a confession:
I’ve long dreamed of taking my copywriting and marketing skills beyond.
Beyond what?
Beyond selling dog seat belts and online real estate investing courses and herbal supplements that make aged skin look less aged.
Yes, I’ve dreamed of getting into politics and fundraising. But except for a spurt of advertorials that I wrote during the 2016 election for a now-arrested scammer, I haven’t had much opportunity to do political work.
Even so, the field continues to fascinate me. And that’s what I want to tell you about today.
A friend just sent me a link to a website created by some nerds at Princeton University. They collected over 259,000 political emails, and they made this giant corpus available and searchable online.
What’s more, they did some analysis. And they found that “Manipulative tactics are the norm in political emails.”
No shit.
It turns out fake urgency (“FEC deadline!”)… fake reasons why (“matching your contribution”)… fake subject lines (“NOT asking for money”)… and fake offers (“please donate to complete your survey response”)… are all very standard.
Maybe you find that revolting, and a sign of the times. But I am a cynical donkey, so this made me think just two things:
1) The basics of manipulation are all you really need to get decent results, and
2) There is opportunity to squeeze out more money out of people with better marketing
And that is why I am now announcing my candidacy as a marketing and fundraising consultant, available for hire by any political party.
If you are interested, please submit your inquiries by email immediately, because I’ve already been contacted by all the major campaigns, and I need to make my decision before the FEC deadline at midnight tonight.
And if you are not yet ready to hire me to help with your campaign… or if you have no campaign to help… then maybe you still share my perverse fascination with the world of politics and fundraising. In that case, you might like my daily email newsletter, which deals with the seedy side of marketing and copywriting. You can sign up for it here.