Comments Requested - an OFFICIAL grassroots email newsletter?

[tarabyte]

I haven't mentioned it before today because I thought someone else was taking care of it.

Seeing today's email from the TeaParty07 group left me disappointed, the subject line of the email just said "moving on from teaparty07" which is the same subject line as they've had for the past two weeks. As anyone who knows marketing would agree, a dull subject line is not going to motivate many people to even open -- let alone read -- an email.

Given that it is a moneybomb day, it was important to get the word out there, and I frankly feel that TeaParty07 failed in this regard.

So it seems to me that there is a HUGE missed opportunity to rally up supporters via email marketing.

As a professional email marketer and creator of my own autoresponder service, I am strongly considering starting up an official grassroots newsletter to keep people informed and to send out frequent calls-to-action.

We have at least 150,000 actual donors to the campaign, right? Well if everyone was on one centralized grassroots newsletter, we could really get the message out about any grassroots type of stuff that is going on.

The newsletter could really go huge and viral.

I could set it up so that when people sign up they also pick their state, so also if there are any state-specific announcements those could get sent just to subscribers who were in that state.

If we had a big centralized grassroots email newsletter, it really would help spread information FAST about anything that is important.

I don't mind hosting and managing the newsletter for free as the free publicity for my new service would likely cover all of the costs, but I would need some help getting the word out there to build the list, and also help to generate the content for the newsletters.

My servers can easily handle sending out 150k or even a million or two messages per day if we grow fast enough.

Any ideas folks? I am open to comments, suggestions, etc. We need more donors and more calls to action and an easier way to get the message out from one centralized, grassroots place.

[boondoggle]

It exists already, no one cared. Yeah, really.
http://www.paulunteer.com/

The problem is being able to viralize it. We should have used Tea Party as a foundation. I've already made plenty o' threads on this problem, but here was my latest:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=92854&page=1

You'll read through my frustration and meet antoganists who believe extremely that nothing can benefit Paul online . . . Yeah . . . It's quite the adventure. Good idea though.

[tarabyte]

It exists already, no one cared. Yeah, really.
http://www.paulunteer.com/

The problem is being able to viralize it. We should have used Tea Party as a foundation. I've already made plenty o' threads on this problem, but here was my latest:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=92854&page=1

You'll read through my frustration and meet antoganists who believe extremely that nothing can benefit Paul online . . . Yeah . . . It's quite the adventure. Good idea though.

Well, I have experience in this sort of thing. I don't know that Paulunteer does. Their site wouldn't entice me to sign up for their newsletter.

[Rebel Resource]

There's nothing I'd love to see more than a newsletter which has input from all the grassroots.

Not elitist, but democratic. If Paulunteer failed, it was probably because it did not reflect everyone's views.

[Redcard]

Honestly, it's just about too late. By the time you get moving on it, it'll all likely be over.

Why not a newsletter for the movement, tho? Not just a Ron Paul thing, but something about the message?

[tarabyte]

There's nothing I'd love to see more than a newsletter which has input from all the grassroots.

Not elitist, but democratic. If Paulunteer failed, it was probably because it did not reflect everyone's views.

Yep, if it works I'd want to have grassroots helping generate the content for the newsletter.

Something like what I had originally thought that TeaParty07 was all about.

But with a better marketing angle all geared towards increasing donations, increasing grassroots support, and getting people to take action. Like if Faux News does something retarded, that day's newsletter could tell people, go here, email this person.

I want something action-oriented, where people are given more things to do to support the campaign, and given stuff to forward to their friends, or whatever.

I'm brainstorming on this, but done right it could be huge. Just it would need a lot of grassroots support, because I'm just one person and my business eats up most of my time. While I can donate my energies to getting the newsletter off the ground and my resources to sending it out, I don't want the full burden of having to come up with all of the content for the newsletters.

I want it to be more of an information mecca, so when something important pops up, everyone who cares about Ron Paul and has an email address knows about it very soon.

[tarabyte]

Honestly, it's just about too late. By the time you get moving on it, it'll all likely be over.

Why not a newsletter for the movement, tho? Not just a Ron Paul thing, but something about the message?

Well I thought about it earlier, but I guess I placed too much faith in what Trevor and pals were doing. But today's moneybomb email failure really got me thinking about this.

[Redcard]

Well I thought about it earlier, but I guess I placed too much faith in what Trevor and pals were doing. But today's moneybomb email failure really got me thinking about this.

Well, I'm not being too pessimistic here.

Either we are in a decent spot on Feb 5, or we're mostly out of the race. I have my opinions, but if we do a RP newsletter, and we end up losing the primary.. well, how much long is RP going to be in politics?

Instead, we should focus on long term. The long term message of this, because, frankly.. we're not likely to win this election. And even if we win, we need Congress to back us, and currently, they won't.

[RobS]

Yea, the TeaParty and Nov5 emails suck. To much text... I get confused reading them and I know what their message is going to be before I read it.

[literatim]

I think that not only would a newsletter be useful, but an instant messenger database to send action messages to would be useful.

[AlexMerced]

I send out a monthly newsletter to everyone in Liberty Independence Alliance

http://libertyia.ning.com

[epro]

I would like to see your newsletter include this as an important task and is perfectly inline with the Precinct Captain project from the campaign HQ .

It has been proven that when you focus on your own precinct and set a target goal for X number of supporters you have actual measurable results that you can target for your meetups. If you hit those goals ahead of schedule, raise the bar and get 5 more contacts for each person.
My precinct had the largest vote total for Ron Paul at our caucus because that was my direct area of influence.

I owned my rural precinct and just got out there and started talking to people and sharing the videos about why I supported Ron Paul.

Oh how important those videos were in converting people over I can't overstate this enough. Thats how my precinct table was filled with over half Ron Paul Supporters. we had 31 attendees for precinct 5 in Iowa and 17 of those folks were for our guy.

Look - Money is great!
handing out flyers is great!
But nothing beats face to face heart to heart conversations. - This more than anything. I had the most success here and it was like a snowball just gaining size. it took a while but when it did, we had a huge burst of supporters within the last 2 weeks before the caucus.

I would be willing to look at what you put together and give suggestions if you like. I am by no means an English Major but I am willing to help a Patriot.

epro

[Sentinelrv]

I send out a monthly newsletter to everyone in Liberty Independence Alliance

http://libertyia.ning.com

The problem here though is that not everybody in the grassroots is registered for that newsletter. What we need is a centralized newsletter that the entire grassroots signs up to in order to get info fast, so we can act on it.

Right now we're completely scattered across the internet, and it's doing us no good this way. I support this idea, because it will bring the entire grassroots together, and we'll all be updated with the latest info.

[JimInNY]

meet antoganists who believe extremely that nothing can benefit Paul online . . .

That's funny since 90% of the r3volution found out about it online. lol

But it is a GREAT idea and should be pursued.

[JimInNY]

The problem here though is that not everybody in the grassroots is registered for that newsletter.

Even if we can't get the entire grassroots on one newsletter, we should at least have all of the other smaller newsletters on one bigger one. The smaller ones get the newsletter and foward it out to their lists.

[tarabyte]

I send out a monthly newsletter to everyone in Liberty Independence Alliance

http://libertyia.ning.com

This is good but once a month is too infrequent. I suggest at least 3 times per week.

People need constant reminders, gentle pushes and the occasional not-so-gentle calls-to-action.

Getting everyone organized and having a central channel to spread information would really help the grassroots out a lot.

There just needs to be a good, centralized way for people to get me the information so that I don't have to spend all my time looking for it, b/c I can't personally spend more than a few hours a week on it.

[Soccrmastr]

the Ron Paul money bomb weekly newsletter:

http://www.ronpaulmoneybomb.com/messages/msg/269.html

[gerryb]

This is good but once a month is too infrequent. I suggest at least 3 times per week.

People need constant reminders, gentle pushes and the occasional not-so-gentle calls-to-action.

Getting everyone organized and having a central channel to spread information would really help the grassroots out a lot.

There just needs to be a good, centralized way for people to get me the information so that I don't have to spend all my time looking for it, b/c I can't personally spend more than a few hours a week on it.

I would not subscribe to a newsletter that sent a message out 3 times a week, unless it was a financial newsletter. After the elections, once a week may be pushing it.

[bobmurph]

Doesn't have to be official...just start a newsletter.

...probably don't want mention anything about official grassroots or central leadership...you'll get crucified in these parts;)

[Sentinelrv]

Even if we can't get the entire grassroots on one newsletter, we should at least have all of the other smaller newsletters on one bigger one. The smaller ones get the newsletter and foward it out to their lists.

That's a good idea....So instead of getting everybody to relocate to a different newsletter, we just have all the existing ones work together to get out the info.

[JustBcuz]

For me, this is kinda a tough sell. I get pretty much all the news I need & more right here in the Paulhive.

And lot of my meetup feels inundated by all the stuff our members toss back and forth in our email lists. I don't think they're looking for more email.

BUT, If you can you get the non-forum types to sign up for it I think this could be helpful.

Send it out once a week, hit the big stuff, keep it short & sweet w/quick descriptions & a list of links rather than lengthy updates for each project...Maybe send an extra email 'reminder' to help promote money bombs. Consolidating some of the smaller newsletters would probably make some people happy too..

But I'm rambling...if ya'all like the idea, go for it. :)