Surprisingly, only the Greens and the BNP sent a welcome message to new subscribers. Both emails arrived within 24 hours of sign-up, but while the Greens won extra points for personalising their welcome message with the recipient’s name, the BNP message amounted only to a few lines of text and some branding.

3) FIRST REGULAR EMAIL

Perhaps the most astonishing results from Return Path’s research found that half of the parties studied (50%) didn’t manage to send a single regular email during the two months of the

First regular email

UKIP:

Conservatives: BNP:

Labour: Others:

Only the BNP included “Forward to a Friend” links within emails, yet these were at the very bottom of their messages where they were unlikely to be spotted and acted upon.

5) FREQUENCY AND DELIVERABILITY

Frequency & deliverability

Conservatives:

UKIP: BNP:

Labour: Others:

5/10 4/10 2/10 1/10 0/10

study. Researchers didn’t receive a message from the Lib Dems, SNP, DUP or Greens. This lamentable performance meant that they were effectively ignoring subscribers who had asked to receive their emails, and missing the opportunity to engage and influence voters.

Labour came close to joining this inglorious

group – their first regular email arrived 58 days after sign-up. The Conservatives’ first email arrived the soonest, six days after sign-up, while the BNP’s and UKIP’s both took nine days to arrive.

But it’s not just about how long messages took to arrive – the content of the first message is also a vitally important factor to make sure that the relationship gets off to the best possible start. Here, the Tories and BNP lost points – the former’s first email was promotional, with links to the Conservatives’ Christmas shop; while the latter’s was a correction for a mistake, citing a broken link in a previous email. Neither of these messages are particularly engaging to new subscribers, who may still be exploring where their political allegiances lie or looking for information about where the parties stand on key issues and how to get involved or learn more.

Social media / word of mouth

BNP:

Conservatives: Others:

Political party websites fail to deliver, says index

8/10 3/10 2/10 1/10 0/10

There is no golden rule for how many messages marketers – or political parties – should send, or how often. What’s most important is for senders to meet the expectations that they set at registration.

That said, in the run-up to a general election, one message a week seems a reasonable frequency. The Tories were very close to this frequency, with 12 messages sent over the two months of the study; UKIP sent three and Labour sent just one solitary email.

On delivery to the inbox (rather the junk or spam folder), most of the parties fared well – all their messages were successfully delivered to the inbox. The BNP, however, had serious problems on this score. Of the 20 messages sent during the timeframe of the study, three quarters landed in the spam folder.

AND THE WINNER IS...

FINAL TABLE

Conservatives:

BNP: UKIP:

Greens: Labour:

Lib Dems:

23/50 16/50 11/50 10/50 7/10 3/50

While the Tories were the clear overall winners, none of the parties studied had an email campaign optimised for subscriber engagement and high performance. There were simply too many missed opportunities, from not personalising emails to neglecting to send any messages at all.

7/10 6/10 0/10

4) SOCIAL MEDIA / WORD OF MOUTH

While the majority of the parties studied provided links to their social media presence on their homepage, only the Conservatives and the BNP included social media links within their emails.

www.dmarket.co.uk

That’s a shame because, properly done, email

is a proven, trusted and powerful direct marketing method. While all the parties are clearly not engaging with voters as effectively as they could, we hope their example will help other commercial senders avoid errors and make the most of this powerful channel. n

Margaret Farmakis is Senior Director of Response Consulting at Return Path.

April 2010 19

The websites of the main political parties in the UK are resolutely failing to connect with the population – that’s the news from the Sitemorse Q1 2010 UK Government website index. In partnership with Alterian, Sitemorse tested the functionality, accessibility, performance, email links and metadata of all websites at the heart of the central government and politics, in order to ensure accountability and best practice online. With all the main political parties including IT and the internet in their manifestos, and online engagement being seen as key to success in elections elsewhere, the report discovered that further work is required on the key political sites if they are to succeed in effectively connect with the population. When ranked against a range of government websites, only that of the Liberal Democrats made it into the top 50. Additionally, its website was the most improved in terms of accessibility and performance, rising from 333rd place last quarter to 37th this quarter. Overall, the Conservative Party’s website ranked 187th ahead of Labour’s, which ranked 385th. David Eldridge, CEO of Alterian comments: “With an eye on the forthcoming general election, online engagement is playing a major part in UK politics. The main political parties all recognise this, and there has been good progress with some government websites now being very strong, having formed a good basis for building engagement with citizens. However it is evident from the report that there is a long way to go, and worryingly for the three major political parties, who did not rank well at all, there is still a lot of work and investment to be done. Lawrence Shaw, CEO of Sitemorse, comments: “To be truly successful and appeal to as wider audience as possible, government organisations need to transform the way that they engage with the public and provide access to services online. The report highlights where this is being done well today, and areas where it can be improved for the future.”

The results emphasise the importance of having a strong Content Management System, independent from IT and integrated into their communications strategy, believes Eldridge. The full survey methodology and findings can be found at www.alterian.com/sitemorsegov. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40