Most campaigns would never show you this information in a million years, but what you’re looking at right now is a screenshot from directly inside our fundraising CRM, showing off how our emails are performing.
When we send out an email, we attach what’s called a “refcode” to the end of the links inside it – basically these make sure that every single email has a unique fundraising link, so that when a contribution comes in, we can understand where it came from. Refcodes help us see what messages resonate, what messages don’t, and a bunch of other data so that my team can help Wesley make informed decisions on what to send people.
(Of course, it’s not the only metric we use, because these emails are about a lot more than just fundraising. Something else Wesley does that’s a little different than most politicians is that even if he’ll ask you for a contribution, a lot of the time his emails really are more about sharing something important with you than the funds they bring in.)
But the data here does guide us. While we’ll usually try things a couple of times before discarding them (when you’re working for a PhD economist, you’d better make sure you have a good sample size), if we see that a certain type of message consistently does well or consistently does poorly, I’ll usually gently nudge Wesley to do a little more or a little less of whatever it is.
So whenever Wesley sends you an email that resonates with you, directly engaging with it – either by making a contribution, sending him a reply, or clicking on another link – goes a long way to helping us see what’s working and what’s not. And if peeks behind the scenes like this one are interesting to you, well, it takes contributions from folks like you to keep this campaign running, and making one today (of any amount) will help us understand that this is something you want to see more of.
