An Internet strategist for President Bush’s reelection campaign and one of the few new media leaders for the GOP, Patrick Ruffini, cut a video Friday analyzing some new recruitment tactics over at BarackObama.com. Ruffini reports that Obama’s website is carefully testing several messages and images to recruit new email registrations, using a splash page "for the first time since the election."
Tracking Obama’s online marketing is likely to interest only junkies and insiders, of course, but Ruffini speculates that the move may indicate that Obama’s aides are working harder to replenish his 13 million person email list. "It might actually be a sign that their subscription rate has certainly gone down," he says, suggesting that "the President’s core supporters are maybe not as enthused by the lack of progress … on health care reform or on Afghanistan."
While Obama supporters may be concerned about Afghanistan policy, the email list has not shied away from presenting the argument for more troops. This week, Vice President Biden emailed millions of Obama supporters a video of Obama’s Westpoint address, asking them to watch and share the footage. "It’s a clean break from the failed Afghanistan policy of the Bush administration," he wrote, "and a new, focused strategy that can succeed."
Here is Ruffini’s new video: