The On-Line E-Newsletter: You Can’t Live Without It

A respected non-profit recently sent out an RFP for a firm to create a newsletter for the organization. Although we rarely respond to RFPs at New Harbor Group, we strongly believe that having a newsletter is a good thing. Every organization should have some way to tell its story and update its key audience on a regular basis.

But here’s the problem: This particular group asked for proposals for putting together a print newsletter. Bad idea. If you don’t have a newsletter, and you’re thinking about starting one, here’s why an on-line edition is absolutely the only way to go:

• Why pay for printing and postage? Who does that anymore? It’s simply a waste of money.
• Keep it fresh. The on-line version won’t get stale waiting for that “one last story” to be submitted, then getting printed and then sitting around in the bulk mail trays at the post office.
• Get (really valuable) information. An on-line version will give you data about your audiences – who opened the e-mail announcing the latest edition, and who hit “delete”; what stories are popular, and which ones aren’t. With a print newsletter, recipients may read it, or they may toss it – you’ll never know.
• And speaking of data, your advertisers will be thrilled to know how many people visited their website – and perhaps even hired them or bought their product because someone clicked on their ad in your e-newsletter.
• Keep the conversation going with social media. With your on-line newsletter you can actually engage with your audiences, either in the comment section, or even better – with social media. Your on-line e-newsletter is a great way to drive your readers to your social media pages (and your website itself), communicating with your audiences and finding out what they’re really thinking about you.
• Also - it’s “green”.

Amazingly, the main objection to an on-line newsletter is usually this: Somewhere out there exists a mythical, 90-year old person who doesn’t have e-mail or use the Internet. Needless to say, I’m dubious.  After all, we live in a world where 84% of Baby Boomers – who are now well into their 60s – say that the Internet is an essential, like bread and milk in a Rhode Island snowstorm. I’ve never met this person who isn’t on-line, or learned their name, but this person is the reason why people tell me they can’t possibly put their newsletter on-line.

Nevertheless, if you’re in print and thinking about the transition to an on-line e-news, I have a solution for the “90-Year-Old Person Who Doesn’t Use the Internet” problem which works like a charm. I’d be glad to share it.

Our client the Rhode Island Society of CPAs has a very successful on-line newsletter called “What Counts.”  Not only does the Society enjoy all the benefits of an on-line newsletter I described above, they also defray nearly the complete cost of the publication with advertising, which you can see at the bottom of this – and every - page when you click here.

And yes, we are prepared for that “person who is not on-line.”  If that person calls the Society they will print this version, and mail it to him or her. First class.

If you have an existing print newsletter, you need to be thinking about how to transition to an on-line edition as soon as possible. If you don’t already have a newsletter, and are preparing to start one, the only place you should be publishing is on-line.

What Does That Poll Really Mean?

Now’s the season for political “polls,” but what do they really mean – if anything?

There are two reasons to conduct a poll:
1. To find out information that you need to know.
2. To get some degree of validation for information that you want others to know.

Reason #1 is the political equivalent of market research. Some may find this idea unsavory because of worries that it could lead to pandering by candidates. Well, maybe. Certainly poll-driven candidates are out there, but I give voters more credit for seeing through them. In reality, it’s crucial for candidates to have good information about what voters care about in order to stay in touch with the electorate’s top priorities. If a candidate wants to talk about apples, but the electorate wants to know about oranges, the campaign’s in trouble. A poll can help a candidate know what voters want to know about – and address those concerns.

Unfortunately, polls with reliable numbers are hard to find and expensive. What makes it hard – and expensive - to conduct a good poll?
• You need good callers who understand the questions and ask them the right way;
• You need callers who can be trained to pronounce candidate names and place names correctly;
• Informative polls are long, and it’s difficult to get people to stay on the line all the way through to the end;
• It’s harder to find voters in the era of the cell phone, which are off-limits to pollsters by law;
• It takes time and a real expertise to draft a sound, useful questionnaire;
• It takes time and expertise to interpret the data, weighing it properly so it’s reflective of area demographics.

In short, the kind of good data you need for the first kind of poll is expensive and difficult to come by – and becoming even more so.

Which brings us to the second kind of poll. These tend to be notoriously unscientific and rigged to score points for whoever is releasing it. Your radar should really go up if poll numbers are released by a political party, an organization affiliated with one or a special interest group.

In reality, all public polls should be greeted with healthy skepticism. Media outlets used to do them with the necessary rigor, but few can afford it anymore, with some national exceptions (NY Times, CBS, etc.). Local media outlets are, for the most part, unwilling to spend the money it takes to get really good data. They usually settle for on-line polls or automated telephone polls. (I think my dog Buster responded to one of those the other day.) What you end up with is very cheap data that barely passes the accuracy laugh test – but is reported by the media with a straight face. The best information is usually found in the hands of well-funded candidates, and jealously guarded like the precious commodity that it is.

If you want to know who’s really up and who’s down, the best indicators are not public polls but the activities of the candidates. If they’re spending precious time and resources campaigning in neighborhoods, towns, counties or states they are expected to win, they’re in trouble. If they’re launching a desperate attack on an opponent, they’re in trouble. But if they’ve kept a consistent message, are counter-attacking from the high ground, and campaigning in areas that are considered a toss-up, they’re looking at good numbers.

Apologize Like You Mean It…

Recently, Susan G. Komen for the Cure® faced an avalanche of criticism when they announced their decision to eliminate most of their grants to Planned Parenthood. Within hours, the decision dominated online chatter and social media outlets, making it the lead headline on the network news cable news, and almost every major newspaper and online news-site across the country. Realizing they had made a major misstep, Komen eventually released a statement of “apology,” and revised their decision.

Now that the dust has begun to settle, it’s worth taking some time to address Komen’s apology and assess its effectiveness. In my view, the apology was flawed for several different reasons.

First and foremost, the apology rang hollow. Why? Because Komen seemed more focused on asking the public to relax and calm down, rather than truly seek forgiveness. As they put it, “We believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect.” They also urged “everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country … to help us move past this issue.”

I understand Komen’s leadership desperately wanted to put the barrage of criticism behind them, but when you make a mistake, part of the learning process means having to hear from those you’ve disappointed. And if you’re an organization that raises millions of dollars from hundreds of thousands of donors, you should be willing to show some patience.

Second, Komen tried to deflect their blame as a misunderstanding between why the decision was made and how the public interpreted it. According to the Foundation, the criticism erupted as “a presumption” from the public that the decision was based on politics. Building upon that theme they insisted they did not want their “mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.”

But was it really the public’s fault that their decision became politicized? Surely, they recognized well before issuing the new policy that there would be major political ramifications. If not, you would have to wonder if their policy team was asleep at the wheel, which in itself would warrant an apology.

Most importantly, the apology was ineffective because despite using more than 300 words to express their “apology,” not once did Komen “take full responsibility” for the decision, and the fallout that rocked the organization. Within hours of the decision being deemed unacceptable by millions of people who had supported Komen in the past, they should have recognized immediately that they had greatly misjudged the public’s reaction.

In my view, taking full responsibility for that misjudgment would have gotten Komen quite a bit farther in repairing the public’s trust. When an individual, a company, or an organization has done something wrong, you can never underestimate how important “taking full responsibility” can be to repairing the relationship between the public and those at fault. Taking responsibility, showing patience, and admitting your flaws in judgment are some of the most important keys to making a genuine, sincere, and effective apology.

Alexander Hamilton

Ah, the ‘Golden Age’ of American politics. Newspapers defined the issues in measured, non-partisan tones while statesmen debated the issues, transcending personal attacks and invective as they traveled the land.

Having just finished Ken Chernow’s fantastic bio of Alexander Hamilton, one thing is clear –

It never happened.

Our gauzy impression of the Founder’s era is wishful thinking. Newspapers back then were vicious, partisan purveyors of every conceivable rumor, easily the equal of today’s Internet, only slower. Meanwhile, the Founders made insider deals in backrooms while engaging in all manner of political skullduggery. Some, including Hamilton and Jefferson, even did “have sex with that woman.”

Make no mistake, though – they were giants. Moreover, it’s hard to escape the feeling that it was an unusual bit of extra ordinary luck for the Founders to exist together in their singular place and time. Charles de Gaulle noted that “The graveyard is full of indispensible men,” but Chernow’s book makes it hard to imagine any of it coming together without George Washington.

Hamilton’s story is a fascinating, distinctly American one. Born to a single mother, he endured an impoverished, tumultuous childhood in the West Indies on St. Croix. But he showed great promise at an early age, and a group of wealthy local merchants pooled their resources to send him to New York to attend what became Columbia University. Hamilton called New York City home for the rest of his life. Today, his life size portrait looms in the background at City Hall whenever the Mayor of New York holds a press conference.

Hamilton had talent and drive in great abundance. He left college when the Revolution began, earning a reputation for bravery in battle, and quickly rose to become Washington’s right hand man at the age of 21. Back in combat, he personally led one of the final charges of the war on British positions at Yorktown.

In Washington’s first term, it was Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, more than any other American before or since, who laid the foundation for our modern American economic system. (Two years ago, when Atlantic Monthly listed the 100 Most Influential Americans in history, Hamilton was ranked 5th, and was the first non-president to be listed.) The clash between Hamilton’s vision of a manufacturing base with a strong federal government and Jefferson’s state-oriented, agrarian outlook defined the politics of the age. Jefferson got more and better ink - both then and now - but today’s U.S. is much more Hamilton’s country than it is Jefferson’s.

Now about that “Golden Age”…

The Founders cut back room deals. In fact, in a small New York room while the city served as the new nation’s temporary capital, Secretary of State Jefferson and Hamilton cut the Granddaddy of all American political back room deals. To bind the states more closely to the central government, Hamilton proposed that the federal government assume and pay the Revolutionary War debt of the states. This was obviously tempting to the states, but Jefferson saw what his colleague was up to. So he agreed to what was called “assumption” – as long as Hamilton agreed to place the new permanent capital in the south, on the Potomac River to be precise. The deal was done.

There was all kinds of maneuvering. Hamilton, with the approval of Washington, worked hard to repair relations with England, seeing trade with the Mother Country as a key way to build a strong economy. Amazingly, at the same time, Secretary of State Jefferson was conspiring with France (where he served as ambassador for many years) to undermine the English, passing along privileged information from cabinet meetings and generally working to thwart Hamilton’s efforts to cultivate them.

They fooled around. Before there was Monica, the widower Jefferson carried on at Monticello with his slave Sally Hemmings, while Hamilton got around as well, despite a loving relationship with his wife that produced several children. One particular dalliance of Hamilton’s with a woman named Martha Reynolds, exploded in public view in 1796 in…

…The vicious, partisan newspapers. Newspapers in those days were political vehicles more than news sources. The Jeffersonian papers reveled in the delicious details of Hamilton’s affair with Mrs. Reynolds. They also “exposed” John Adams’ plan to re-establish the British crown in North America by marrying his son to the daughter of George III. (Don't feel bad for Adams - after a falling out between the two, he rarely missed a chance to point out that Hamilton was, well, a "bastard".) Incredibly, even Washington was the subject of partisan abuse, like any other common pol, during his second term. Meanwhile, the Federalist newspapers denounced Jefferson for the “rape” of his slave.

Tough stuff – never mind Hamilton's deadly duel with Aaron Burr, who at the time was sitting Vice President of the United States!

I highly recommend the Chernow book. It will reinforce how fortunate we have been as a nation, and it will cure you of that longing you’ve had for a Golden Age of American Politics – something that never happened.

Notes on Last Tuesday…

It says something good about America that my kids (ages 9 and 11) don’t even give it a second thought that an African-American has been elected President of the United States.
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A sad end for John McCain, a genuine American hero who I voted for twice over the years. It’s troubling that what McCain endured for his country in Vietnam, and how he understands patriotism, are viewed by too many as out-dated relics of an ancient era.

McCain’s defeat recalls this nugget - almost always true - from an old-timer late one night many years ago in a smoke-filled Providence campaign headquarters: “Who wins campaigns? The guy who runs the best campaign!”

George Bush dealt McCain a tough hand. But in both tone and execution, McCain’s effort was unworthy of him. In contrast, Obama’s campaign was the best presidential effort I’ve seen in my lifetime. (How do you quantify that? Obama is the first Democrat to break 51% since Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and only the second since Harry Truman in 1948.)

The GOP base McCain inherited from Bush and Karl Rove was a stone around his neck. That base is careening perilously away from the new mainstream in American politics and heading over the cliff into “Fringe Valley”. To placate that base, McCain had to say things he knew better of, and pick the unsettling Sarah Palin. Twenty years ago, when Jesse Jackson was winning Democratic presidential primaries, I used to wonder if a Democrat could say what had to be said to win the nomination and still win in November. Walter Mondale and Mike Dukakis confirmed that the answer was "No.” Now, McCain’s campaign makes me wonder if the GOP hasn’t created a similar, self-defeating dynamic.
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In my little town of East Greenwich (pop. about 13,000) I had the chance to work with some neighbors on a school bond referendum for a new middle school that proved, again, that a good campaign almost always wins. The amount in question, $52 million, was a daunting amount for a town our size, made even more so by the current economic climate. Further, voters had already rejected a similar plan two elections ago. But starting in the summer, a small, focused group of volunteers began to identify supporters over the phone. This is a grueling process, but one that makes the difference between victory and defeat. In fact, in local races, there is no substitute for phone banking and door-to-door campaigning. It doesn’t matter what else you do: a candidate that doesn’t do those two things might as well just roll the dice. And challengers who aren’t prepared to invest the time and effort in these two things should seriously reconsider running at all.
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It was heartening to win with 65% of the vote, particularly with a tiny budget of only a couple thousand dollars raised on the Internet. My old rule of thumb for local races was that the campaign should expect to spend $2 to $4 per voter, with most of that money going to direct mail. But just as the Internet is making mainstream news outlets struggle for relevance, the ‘net is also helping save local campaigns thousands of dollars by allowing them to bypass the Post Office and communicate directly with voters. Direct mail is still an important tool, but in a local race it becomes a lot lower priority – our campaign didn’t do any, and didn’t suffer for it. (We didn’t do any newspaper advertising, either.)
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The Rhode Island GOP continues its march to extinction, winning only 10 of 113 legislative seats. Sure, I know New England is rough terrain for Republicans, and I know that the larger turnout in Presidential election years is tough to overcome. Still, I wonder how many of them relied on mail, earned media and other indirect communications to make the kind of personal contact that only doorbells and volunteers on telephones can create.

If you’re not directly touching voters – like Barack Obama or the Taxpayers for EG Schools – you’re probably not running the best campaign. And if you're not running the best campaign, you're probably not winning.

“Pretty Good” Government

I’m all for “Good Government” (even though “Pretty Good Government” sometimes gets better results), but the recent fracas about the process surrounding the hiring of Providence School Superintendent Tom Brady (one of the best in the business) reminded me of a true story about President Teddy Roosevelt’s seizure of the Panama Canal Zone from Colombia. After the deed was done, Roosevelt asked Attorney General Philander Knox to author a legal opinion justifying the audacious action. To his immortal credit, Knox responded “Mister President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality.”

Show me the Money

What does it cost to run for office in Rhode Island? That’s one of the questions that will be raised at a campaign school for new candidates scheduled for this Saturday. In the General Assembly, this summary of what every candidate raised and spent during the 2006 elections offers a good idea of what kind of fundraising is involved. Minus the leadership, the average House member raised $12,160 in 2006 and spent $15,366 to win. In the Senate (again, less the leadership), the average winner raised $19,621 during the election year and spent $24,090.

Not surprisingly, winning is a little more expensive for newcomers. The four Senate first-termers spent $29,000, $39,000, $40,000 and $50,000 respectively to win. Of the eight House first time winners, four spent between $20-$25,000 and two spent about $10,000. Another, who had held a different office before, spent $8,700. Finally, a first-timer with no opponent spent only $1,265.

Every candidate will tell you that fundraising is the most onerous part of the job. But the numbers – particularly in the state Senate – show that it’s a must, if you’re serious about winning.