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7. Mobilizing supporters through mobile devices – Ninety percent of Americans are within three feet
of their cell phones 24 hours a day. People still read more than 90 percent of their text messages, while
pages of e-mails sit unopened in inboxes. Text messaging and the mobile Web offers an opportunity to
reach supporters directly anywhere they are, any time of the day. It also is a much more cost effective way
to mobilize voters. A 2006 study by the New Voters Project found that text-message reminders helped
increase turnout by four percent at a cost of only $1.56 per vote, much cheaper than the cost of door-
to-door canvassing or phone banking, at a cost of $20 to $30 per vote.
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The campaign used major announcements to drive people to the mobile platform, such as Obama’s
choice of Senator Joe Biden as his running mate, which Nielsen Mobile has quantified as the largest
mobile marketing event in the United States to date.
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The campaign sustained interest through five to
20 targeted messages each month. For instance, supporters could text questions about polling places
and receive quick responses from the campaign. More than 30,000 people signed up from within
Denver’s Mile High Stadium while waiting to hear Obama’s acceptance speech during the Democratic
National Convention. The campaign also released a free iPhone application in October that gave people
up-to-date campaign information and organized its contacts to highlight phone numbers for people
in key battleground states.
8. Harnessing analytics to constantly improve engagement activities – Management consultants call it
kaizen – the concept of constant improvement. Obama’s campaign tracked the success of every e-mail,
text message and Web site visit, capitalizing on the analytics that are inherent in digital communications.
Each ad and e-mail was created in multiple versions (e.g., different headers, buttons vs. links, video vs.
audio vs. plain text) to test what worked and what did not. The campaign developed more than 7,000
customized e-mails, tailored to individual prospects, and made real-time improvements to its outreach
materials. Adjustments were made daily to improve performance and conversion. It worked. As the
campaign progressed, the effectiveness of the e-mail campaign increased and conversion rates
similarly improved.
9. Building the online operation to scale – In February 2007, Obama met with Netscape founder
and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen to learn how social media could power the campaign.
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The campaign spent more than $2 million in 2007 on hardware and software that would serve as the
foundation for the social media operation.
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It built an enterprise-level system that was ready to scale to
millions of supporters. As the primary season progressed and the general election campaign began,
Obama’s team continued to look for ways to innovate. It used a “crawl, walk, run” approach, integrating
new (and improved) social media elements into the campaign.
