# Hot Blava

The national debate will always seep over into local politics and thus, events on the national stage will find their way into Hot Blava. We hope that Hot Blava will be an interesting mixture of national issues and issues that affect Utah, and particularly Utah County where we live. Mostly, it is great to write about issues you're thinking about as it solidifies your thinking... or exposes your own irrationality. You can decide which is which.

## Monday, June 26, 2006

### Commercial Ads in Political Campaign Email

I just received a last minute email from the John Jacob campaign. It was a letter from his wife. The email had a graphical banner at the top. The banner was the campaign logo and a picture of Mrs. Jacob.
If you click the banner, you end up at the website for the company that sent the email rather than the Jacob campaign. There is no link to the campaign website at all in the email.
My email reader hides images in email messages by default. The "alt" text is "The Ginormous MailChimp Sale." So, instead of a picture of Jacob's wife, I'm treated to an ad for MailChimp.
If I were on the Jacob campaign I would be furious. I'd also be looking for a new email company.

#### 3 Comments:

At 6:46 AM, June 27, 2006, ProvoDon said...

  Vote for John Jacob.
  I voted for John Jacob at the State Republican Convention in May as did all the other state delegates in my precinct and as did the majority of delegates that day. There is a reason. We spent several months studying the incumbents voting record and listening to the candidates positions on the issues. It is time for a change and to have our representative in Congress truly listen to us and represent our views. "Temporary Guest Worker Programs" are the height of arrogance from our elected officials - they are not guests and they are not here temporarily. It is time for a change. VOTE FOR JOHN JACOB.

At 9:15 PM, August 08, 2006, Ben said...

  Sometimes, I Google our company name, just to see what comes up (hey, it's the new national pastime).
  That's how I came across this post about MailChimp and John Jacob's campaign.
  Just so that you don't think we're complete nuts over here, I wanted to let you know that we don't insert ads into our users' email campaigns. In fact, we don't insert *anything* into users' email campaigns, and that's why most of our users come to us in the first place.
  What you saw was someone using one of our free HTML email templates (available whether you're a MailChimp user or not), and they apparently forgot to replace the alt-text we coded.
  The sample templates are there to give some users a "jumpstart" with their campaigns. It's up to the sender to actually customize them with their own images and alt-text and links.
  I'm sure (well, I *hope*) that if you clicked "display images" the photo would have been what you expected, and definitely not our template "ginormous sale" image.
  Perhaps the next time I update those templates, I'll use "Alt text goes here" instead.
  Thanks,
  /ben

At 10:05 PM, August 08, 2006, Bradley said...

  Thanks for the info, Ben. That certainly explains it!

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