Democratic Senate campaign emails are November disasters in the making. Here’s how to fix them.

If you’ve ever donated to a Democratic candidate, you’re probably getting bombarded these days with countless emails from campaigns with battleground US Senate races. You likely hear from Tim Ryan, Raphael Warnock, and Maggie Hassan every day, often more than once per day. And now with the Pennsylvania primary election over, you’re starting to hear from John Fetterman, too.

Or are you?

Nominally the emails come from “info@warnockforgeorgia.com” or “info@e.timforoh.com,” etc., but they’re all written in the same voice and look practically identical. Here are emails from those four candidates:

With the voice exactly the same from email to email, it’s easy to believe the email isn’t coming from that specific candidate’s campaign but from some cubicle in some office somewhere in DC. Not even a cubicle in the specific candidate’s campaign office. To wit: John Fetterman’s email today that I captured above didn’t come from his campaign email address; it came from Tim Ryan’s.

As a graphic designer and photographer, someone who cares about the power of storytelling through words and images, not to mention someone who has run countless email campaigns and who once dreamed of running political campaigns as a career, I die a little every time I receive one of these. If these truly represent the campaigns of each of these Senate candidates, Democrats will lose the Senate in November, because this approach represents everything that’s wrong with the Democratic Party.

Dull and repetitive

Those four emails above are from four different campaigns, but I could have put up four emails from the same campaign and ended up with a graphic that looks 99% similar. Looking at any one of these, your eyes can’t help but glaze over, if you even open the email at all. A good open rate (the percentage of recipients look at the email or at least click on it in their email app as they scroll through their inbox) is 25–30%; a common open rate for government and politics-related emails, according to Campaign Monitor, is 20%. I’d be surprised if these campaigns get even a 5% open rate at this point. Let’s not even talk about click-through rates (the percentage of people who take action from an email, such as clicking one of those boring blue boxes), which must be abysmal.

As a big-tent party, the Democrats often try to be all things to all people, except when playing defense on certain things such as keeping the Senate at least 50% Dem (more on that below). As a result, the party’s messaging is often generic and dull.

The wrong kind of specifics

Every email wants “just $5” or some other low-threshold commitment; some emails ask for very specific amounts like this one from Tim Ryan:

One could say this is at least creative and sticky because it makes a connection. But it’s a meaningless, gimmicky dollar amount, and this approach gets tired fast.

Worse still is the suspect target dollar figure, like in this email from Warnock’s campaign that desperately needs $3,273 to make up a shortfall that day (and don’t miss that “could” word in there—more on that in a moment):

In writing classes they’ll tell you specific details are important. Details make a story more real. Sure, sometimes. I’m reminded, though, of the countless times someone has come up to me at a gas station and told me that they were on their way to somewhere and their car broke down and they needed “$138.47” (I can’t remember the actual numbers they’ve proffered) for this or that repair to get going. When the number is that specific, my bullshit meter goes into the red. I’ll probably give them some money anyway, because they’re obviously desperate in some way, but I’m almost certain they’re lying.

I’m not saying that Warnock’s campaign (or, more likely, that writer in that cubicle in DC) is lying about the $3,273. But they decided they needed some specific number — any number — to sell their story and make it feel more urgent and real. And they probably pulled that number from some spreadsheet somewhere. But it still smells like bullshit.

The specifics I want to know — which they never tell in any detail — are how they’ll spend these donations other than on airwave time. What’s the campaign’s strategy for outreach? GOTV? Engagement? How will my dollars actually move the needle in Ohio, New Hampshire, Georgia, or Pennsylvania? The emails say nothing.

Relentless “urgency”

Every single email is breathlessly urgent in its push for a donation. There’s always a deadline “at midnight TONIGHT!!!1!!!” or “my opponent has just raised $15 million and we’ll be drowned out if we don’t act fast!” (Never mind that the actual election is five months from now.) Or worse, as Warnock’s email said today, “our ad could go dark, and we could end up ceding the airwaves” (italics mine): it’s an urgent possibility of urgency!

(It reminds me of the disingenuous messaging during NPR/PBS member station pledge breaks where they urge listeners/viewers to donate because there’s a matching pledge from a donor, and if they don’t reach that match, they “have to offer to return the pledge.” You know that 99% of the time they’re keeping that pledge, so the urgency is meaningless.)

Yes, the country is in dire straits right now, and there are a lot of things we desperately need to fix. But messages of urgency need to be fewer and farther between, because otherwise it becomes a Chicken Little situation. Save it for when it really counts.

Only playing defense

Ask any of my friends: I’m no sports aficionado. But I’m pretty solid on one concept: you can’t win if you only play defense. Tim Ryan’s emails are a litany of victimhood about how much more money is pouring into J.D. Vance’s campaign than his. Warnock keeps visibly fretting because CNN says he’s the most vulnerable candidate.

The actual messaging in almost all of these campaign emails is reactionary: how bad their opponent is; how much more money their opponent has; what will happen if they’re not elected.

Yes, sometimes people will vote for something by voting against the opposite. But more often if voters don’t have something to vote for, or a reason to think their vote matters, they likely won’t vote at all. And if there’s one thing that every already engaged Democratic voter can agree on, it’s that we need people to vote this November. Dem turnout has to be high in battleground states. Period. But it won’t happen if people don’t care enough about their candidate.

So these Senate candidates really have to win over their voters, and they can’t win with defense alone. The candidates need to show how they’ve helped people in the past and how they’ll affirmatively help people in the future. They have to be bold and lead, not just react to their opponent. Democrats routinely let Republicans control the narrative, and that has to stop now.

Unengaging and uncreative

I saved the worst for last: the emails don’t connect on a real emotional level. If it really is just one person in the DC cubicle writing all these emails, no wonder these candidates all come across as the same bland person.

It would be more engaging to focus on real people in each of these states, and why they support their candidate. I’m in California; I’ve never been to Ohio. I need to get to know Ohioans and the challenges they face. I need to feel it. And then I need to know why it’s so important to support this specific candidate. The Democratic Party is basically approaching these races like “any Dem will do”: elect the Dem because he or she is the Dem in the race. No other reason. How’s that working out with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema?

And an Ohioan is different from a Georgian, who’s different from a Pennsylvanian, who’s different from a…New Hampshirite? (Just had to look that one up, which goes to show: we’re all different.)

Step it up, Dems

The very first thing that needs to happen is that we need to see differences in the messaging and approach from these candidates. It can’t all come from the same person in DC. Make us feel the richness of each of these places and why each candidate in that place matters. Put the messaging in the hands of people in those places who know the places and people well, and start from there.

Bottom line: Get creative. Be bold. Talk about actual, notable accomplishments. Come up with specific, bold, innovative plans to do better. Be candid. Approach us as genuine people we can care about. Save the urgent messages for when it’s really urgent. And switch up the messaging every time. It will take longer to create your emails, and there will be fewer of them. But your net gains will be far higher, because finally we’ll pay attention and take action.

Ryan, Warnock, Hassan, and Fetterman campaigns: we need to you to step it up! Will you rush a creative, bold, groundbreaking email by our urgent deadline tonight? We can’t do this without you!!!!1!!