The Paul Campaign Borrows From Obama

I don’t think Barack Obama is particularly talented, with one exception: he is the greatest money machine in the history of politics. So when it comes to fundraising, if you’re going to steal, you may as well steal from the master.

One famous aspect of Obama’s email campaign was his team’s use of seemingly odd or inappropriate subject headings. Foremost among these was “hey.” A tech publication writes:

President Obama’s successful re-election campaign last year was marked with many technological victories. … From a fund-raising perspective, one of the campaigns most powerful weapons was good ol’ fashioned email marketing and their most powerful subject line may surprise many.

“Hey.”

That was it. The concepts of “I Need Your Support” or “Help Me on the Road to Victory” proved to be ineffective for the Romney campaign, while the Obama campaign kept it about as simple as possible.

“Hey.” The article is accompanied by this graphic:

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I’ve always seen this as one of many ways in which Barack Obama’s team has dumbed politics down. But the Rand Paul campaign knows genius when it sees it, apparently. Today I got this email from Paul; maybe you did too:

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Sure enough, I opened the email. Who says Republicans can’t be hip?

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