The British Conservative Party has by far the best mass email marketing programme, compared to its election rivals, a new study shows.

But the research also shows that all UK political parties - including the Conservatives - are making basic errors in their email marketing and are consequently missing opportunities to influence voters in the run-up to this year’s general election. 

The study is Return Path’s first-ever research into the effectiveness of UK political party email marketing. Researchers signed up to the email programmes of the UK’s established political parties and tracked each email campaign over the course of two months.

Highlights revealed:

• Most political parties failed to send a welcome message
• Labour waited 58 days to send its first message, Lib Dems sent none at all
• Labour and Conservative collect geographic data on subscribers, but don’t use it to tailor their messages
• Most parties aren’t incorporating their social media links into their email messages

Margaret Farmakis, Return Path’s senior director of response consulting, who lead the research, said: "For all their platitudes about engaging with the electorate, political parties are certainly not walking the talk when it comes to email."

She continued: "Our study showed the Conservatives were by far the strongest party in their email communications. They took the least time to engage with new subscribers; sent messages at the promised frequency; and incorporated social media within their messages. If they were judged purely on the superiority of their email strategy, they’d win by a landslide.

"Overall, however, it’s difficult to give any of the parties a vote of approval for the effectiveness of their email campaigns. Yet, with the short time before the election must take place, there are still a number of simple steps that all the parties can take to improve, and so sway the undecided voters who may well determine the result of this election."

Read the full report here.