AOL E-Mails Are Surprise Political Gold Mine

Political fundraisers are mining donor gold from veins of AOL e-mail addresses, reveals a recent USA Today report. A January study by digital marketing firm Fluent found that while only 4% of subscribers to political e-mail lists had AOL.com addresses and 48% had Gmail accounts, the AOL users accounted for 22% of all donations during the November-December 2015 study period. In contrast, Gmail users contributed just 13% of total donation dollars. The generosity of AOL folks makes them stand out from the e-mail crowd: The average AOL user donation was $159, while Gmail users gave an average of $31. Why? Differences in average age translate into differences in average giving. AOL e-mail addresses tend to belong to older donors, and "80% of all donations from e-mail are coming from people 50 or older," explained Fluent CMO Jordan Cohen. These older AOL donors should be especially valuable to Conservative causes since the average Republican donor online is 55-plus, according to Republican digital strategy firm Harris Media. However, the rate of return on e-mail for political campaigns is high regardless of address, age or party affiliation, added Cohen, pointing out that President Obama's e-mail list in the last campaign amounted to about 40 million people, and 4.5 million of those donated, which is "a huge response rate." For more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/02/18/political-fundraising-aol-email-donations-campaigns/80556614/

Tips on Online Fundraising for Political Rookies

For rookie political campaigns, online fundraising can be daunting, appearing to require digital expertise in everything from website building to #cashtags and online video. But even those "starting from scratch" can succeed reassures a recent Campaigns & Elections magazine article by Laura Packard, partner in the Democratic digital strategy firm PowerThru Consulting. Packard ironically begins by warning neophyte fundraisers against rushing into the arms of an expensive digital consultant, especially one who offers to raise big bucks without a proven donor list. Instead, she suggests less costly basic steps to an online fundraising base. Start by being realistic about online fundraising goals, she advises. Direct mail, phone campaigns and big-donor meetings will bring in the bulk of donations; a digital effort is a valuable tool but a supplemental one. And while social media generates lots of buzz, the workhorse of online fundraising is still e-mail. So, Step No. 2 is to find a good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform to handle your e-mail deployment and response, ranging from small-file options like Constant Contact to NGP VAN used by most Democratic campaigns. Bottom line: Don't use a personal e-mail account that not only appears unprofessional but lacks good deliverability and response tracking. Third, build a decent website with a prominent e-mail sign-up and a way for potential donors to give via credit card. Website-building doesn't have to be expensive either; domain registration sites offer cheap/free tools to create web pages that are good enough for start-up. Finally, and most important, build that e-mail list; the bigger the list, the more money you can raise! For her suggestions on CRM options and list-building, go to http://www.campaignsandelections.com/campaign-insider/2544/starting-from-scratch-here-s-how-to-hit-your-online-fundraising-goal

Election Spurs Sale of Valuable Voter, Donor Data

One way presidential hopefuls raise money for 2016, and pay off debts from prior campaigns, is to rent out valuable voter and donor data. And that's a boon for other candidates and causes. "A lot of folks that ran in 2012, their lists are on the market," Ryan Meerstein, senior director for Client Strategy at Targeted Victory, a Republican tech firm, recently confirmed to The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper. Targeted Victory, for example, paid $1.1 million to rent list data from Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential bid. GOP presidential bidder Rick Santorum has earned nearly $281,000 by renting supporter lists from his 2012 election effort, while 2012 GOP also-ran Newt Gingrich has earned $434,000 off supporter lists. The most coveted data, campaign pros told the Pittsburgh newspaper, includes the personal contact information of campaign donors. Also desirable are lists of supporters "willing to turn an online action into an offline action," such as attending a rally or posting a lawn sign, added Meerstein. Of course, national candidates are not the only source of valuable political data. On the market are voters by city, state and local campaign, members of special-interest and advocacy groups, and donors to a range of politically relevant causes, with many of those lists selectable for party affiliation. Political lists are rented via data brokers, like Beyond Voter Lists, the article notes. But we would add that a good broker will help candidates and causes avoid the problems also cited in the newspaper article, such as overuse and poor targeting, by checking usage history and making sure list data is updated and matched with client targeting. See http://www.post-gazette.com/news/nation/2015/06/01/Political-fundraising-campaigns-manage-debts-by-selling-data/stories/201506010025

Can Facebook Kick Up 2016 Political Donations?

Will Facebook become a more significant ingredient in the political fundraising mix of 2016 candidates and causes? Consider mid-term election research conducted by Facebook, as reported in a recent medipost.com article. Facebook tracked the Senate campaigns of Democrats Michelle Nunn of Georgia and Mark Udall of Colorado. OK, so the candidates lost, but their Facebook ads won in terms of donor power. Facebook found that not only did Facebook ads provide at least a 200% ROI but people who saw the ads gave more on average than those who did not. Specifically, people who viewed Udall's Facebook ad gave $47.87 on average, while those who did not see the ad gave an average $42.70. There are good reasons Facebook will be an attractive fundraising addition in 2016, argues a recent mediapost.com article by Shawn Kemp, co-founder of ActionSprout, which helps nonprofits optimize Facebook. Facebook has the deepest social reach: 42% of Americans have a Facebook account, compared with 19% on Twitter, the second-largest social network. Facebook offers attractive targeting options such as geo-targeting and look-alike audiences. And Facebook ads, while not a key donation driver alone, can have a multiplier effect in multi-channel efforts, as shown by Facebook's mid-term election experiments. So, for example, combining Facebook ads with an e-mail campaign to the same targeted list could boost giving per donor. For more, see http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/248996/facebook-advertising-matters-for-political-fundrai.html#

Donor List Rental Still Top Political Fundraising Tool

Donor list rental is still the leading tool of political fundraisers despite hype about social media and online politicking, reports a recent Advertising Age article. The list-rental dollars in this year's elections are indicative: The National Republican Congressional Committee already has spent just under $200,000 to rent the Romney 2012 e-mail list from Targeted Victory, a consultant for Romney's digital campaign. The Democratic National Committee has put a $190,909 per month value on the Obama for America list, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee told the Federal Election Commission (FEC) it used $135,000 worth of the same list twice in April. While the Obama and Romney lists may be among the largest, they are hardly the only lists being rented per FEC reports. Candidate campaigns and advocacy groups are renting lists of online petition supporters, campaign event attendees, donors to specific nonprofits or political candidates, left-leaning subscribers to The Nation and DailyKOS.com or right-leaning subscribers to Newsmax, and so on. The primary season is especially rife with donor list rentals as lesser known candidates vie for cash to support upcoming election bids. Why are donor list rentals so key? Can't the data wizards extract targets from public voter data using known-donor profiles? "You can build predictive models of likelihood to be a donor using your list of donors and lists of people who have not donated to you," Alex Lundry, senior VP at GOP data analytics firm TargetPoint Consulting, acknowledged to Advertising Age. But he then added, "That will never perform as strongly as just going out and renting a list of people who have given before to another campaign."A person's history of donating is the best predictor of another donation, the political direct marketers agreed. Read the full article at http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/world-campaign-tech-list-rental-a-force/293714/