Patrick Ruffini: The Groupon Election: Compared to the same period four years ago, the Obama campaign is sending more than twice as many emails, and informative state-of-the-race missives from the campaign managers are practically gone. According to nycsouthpaw, where those Obama '08 emails had "data, strategy, and an air of knowingness," Obama 2012 emails are "hectoring, manipulative, full of angst, and there are just way more of them." A selection of subject lines: "SO COOL," "Up late" and my personal favorite: "(No subject)."
There is a simple reason for all of this: Because it works.
The Obama campaign does nothing if not a ton of testing. Reporters who have signed up with dozens of individual accounts report that the Obama campaign will test numerous subject lines in the first few minutes of an email send, until they settle on one version for the rest of the list. A culture of analytics is embedded through and through in Chicago, in every department from digital to field, and the campaign even has a Chief Scientist.