Brain Science Finds Mail Bests Digital Marketing

The latest brain science explains why political campaigns will continue to rely on direct mail to win donors and voters, even as digital and social political marketing grab headlines. In fact, direct mail beats or ties digital advertising in almost all the ways political marketers seek to woo support, per a recent Temple University neuromarketing study sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service Inspector General's office. As reported by Direct Marketing News, the study, which showed a mix of 40 e-mail ads and postcards to laboratory subjects, found that a digital approach bested snail mail in only one area: grabbing attention. However, postcards outperformed e-mail in five other areas: holding engagement longer, generating a greater emotional reaction, generating speedier recall, and creating subconscious desire and perceived value. And the two methods tied in three categories: engagement in terms of the amount of information absorbed, memory accuracy, and willingness to spend. The Office of Inspector General, with 31% of USPS revenues tied to advertising mail, clearly is hoping the findings will inspire commercial marketers to make greater use of mail's power. But the findings apply to political marketers as well. Among the OIG suggestions are increased marketer testing of mail creative, sequencing, and digital print technology, such as augmented reality and QR codes. For more details, read http://www.dmnews.com/postal/direct-mail-has-a-greater-effect-on-purchase-than-digital-ads/article/423292/

Want to Tap Millennial Politics? Go to Facebook

If they want to get on the Millennial generation's political radar, campaigns need to go to Facebook. A recent Mashable article cites the evidence of social media's grip on Millennial politics with the latest Pew Research Center study, which found that 61% of Millennials, those born between 1981 to 1996, said they get political news from Facebook at least once a week. That social media preference easily outpaced the 37% of political input from local TV, the preferred medium of Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 to 1964. In fact, Millennials and Baby Boomers are mirror opposites in terms of preferred political news sources, with Boomers getting 60% of their political news from local TV and only 39% from Facebook. The study, in which Pew surveyed 3,000 people, also found that the Millennial age cohort tends to recognize fewer news outlets, with less awareness of half of the 36 sources that Pew asked about when compared to the Boomers and Generation X group (those born between 1965 and 1980). The report also polled Millennials on how much they trust different news outlets. Among the most recognized and trusted, CNN led (trusted by 60%, distrusted by 16%, with 19% in the middle). Next in trust were the news divisions of ABC, NBC, and CBS. Lowest trust went to digital sources like BuzzFeed and conservative media like the Rush Limbaugh Show. Among the top social media players, Facebook outdistanced Twitter, with just 14% of Millennials saying they got political news via tweets. For more, read http://mashable.com/2015/06/01/millennials-facebook-politics-pew/

Digital Ad Explosion Impacting Midterms and 2016

Digital advertising is seeing explosive growth in the 2014 midterm elections. A recent Politico magazine article cites estimates by Borrell Associates that $270 million will be spent nationally on digital campaigning, a 1,825% increase from 2010 when tablets first impacted the political scene. By 2016, Borrell sees online political spending at almost $1 billion, surpassing newspapers, direct mail and telemarketing for the first time. "If you’re trying to hit males 18 to 34, you probably want to be all digital," Amanda Bloom, a GOP consultant at BASK Digital Media, declared at last month's San Francisco conference hosted by Campaigns & Elections magazine. Campaigns are eager for the digital results they see in campaigns like Iowa's GOP Senate hopeful Joni Ernst, whose low budget Internet ad "Let's make 'em squeal" (noting her experience in hog castration) went viral and propelled her from third to first in the primary. Of course, the online tech giants -- Google, Facebook, Pandora and others -- are prepping for the political ad bonanza with new Washington strategists and election-oriented sales staff, per Politico. And ad planners for television, still the big dog of political spending, are also adjusting tactics to complement digital: Cross-promotional TV ads now urge voters to donate online and "like" Facebook, Instagram,Twitter and YouTube pages, while major TV ad buying agencies are touting in-house digital teams, Politico reports. For the full story, go to http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/2014-elections-digital-advertising-110322.html

Digital Marketers See Bigger 2014 Election Impact

Digital marketers for both Republicans and Democrats unite on one theme: Digital as a deciding factor in the 2014 midterm elections. A key factor is the declining impact of TV, even though it still gets the lion's share of campaign ad budgets. Al Urbanski, senior editor of Direct Marketing News, recently reported that Targeted Victory, a Republican digital strategy team, and Well & Lighthouse, a Democratic digital support group, had teamed to poll likely voters and found that 29% hadn't even watched television in the previous week! Respondents reported spending an average of just 10.2 hours a week watching video content on TV, compared with 12.1 hours viewing content on alternative channels such as desktops, mobile devices and DVRs. The quoted conclusion of Targeted Victory's co-founder Zac Moffatt, who was the digital director for Mitt Romney's presidential bid: "You can't go into election day with one out of three voters not having seen your message and think you've done your job." Moffatt's strategy is to put more effort into high-end data analytics to deliver segmented, personalized digital messaging, with a tilt toward e-mail over social media since e-mail is a proven fundraising tool, along with direct mail, and is more scalable than social channels when it comes to response, reported Urbanski. For the full story, see http://www.dmnews.com/digital-marketing-prowess-could-sway-midterm-elections/article/341999/

Political Marketers Divided on TV vs. Digital Spending

One of the hot debates among political marketers has nothing to do with policy or candidate; it's about budgeting between traditional TV campaigning and digital media. A younger tech-savvy generation is urging a boost in e-mail, online ads and mobile messaging, while seasoned campaigners counter that TV advertising still draws the biggest single share of viewers, justifying its lion's share of spending. Recent data bolsters the digital fans to some extent: A new poll -- sponsored by Google, the Republican digital firm Targeted Victory and the Democratic agency Well & Lighthouse -- found that just 48% of those survey said live television was their primary source for video content (down from 56% in 2012). TV ads are losing ground to "new technologies," the poll found, with 41% of respondents regularly or occasionally using a tablet or smartphone while watching TV, and TV viewers reporting increased viewing of prerecorded programs that allow them to skip past ads. "That means, for political campaigns, reaching younger, more diverse swing voters through live TV advertising alone is problematic," concluded the pollsters in a report by The Wall Street Journal Capital Bureau. But amping up e-mail and mobile communications introduces new problems: Focus groups conducted by the same pollsters found participants were more likely to see campaign e-mails and mobile ads as invasions of personal space, while TV and online ads were seen as less intrusive. For the complete news story, see http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/03/20/should-campaigns-spend-less-on-tv-ads/

2012 Nonprofit E-mail, Online Fundraising Grew

Nonprofit fundraising via online and e-mail showed strong growth in 2012, according to new research by M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network. Its "2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks" study found that 2012 e-mail lists grew by 15% over the prior year and online revenue grew by 21%, with monthly online giving up 43%. Social media followers soared, too, as nonprofit Twitter followers increased by 264% and Facebook fans went up by 46%. Still, social media impact was dwarfed by e-mail contacts, with only 149 Facebook fans and 53 Twitter followers for every 1,000 e-mail subscribers in 2012. But here's the bad news for nonprofits: E-mail response rates also declined by 21% last year compared to 2011, due to a 27% dip in click-through rates. For more on the study, see the AdvisorOne report at http://www.advisorone.com/2013/04/01/nonprofits-online-fundraising-grew-21-in-2012

Take Some Nonprofit Research With a Grain of Salt

We often pass along nonprofit research results to campaigns and causes, but here's a timely caution that all research is not equal. Some "studies" can mislead, and you should always look behind the curtain before you let any "findings" influence marketing strategy. In a recent opinion piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, cited five basic questions to ask before you swallow a nonprofit research report hook, line and sinker. Watch out for faulty methodology (self-selecting participants instead of a representative sample); unwarranted conclusions (those oversimplified headline grabbers); collective opinion (informed expertise is not unbiased data); unreported prior research (new findings without context); and unidentified sponsors (yes, research can be biased by its funding). For the full article, got to http://philanthropy.com/article/5-Simple-Questions-to-Ask/137743/

Obama Victory Has Nonprofit Measurement Lesson

Nonprofit organizations can learn a lot from the way the Obama campaign approached performance measurement, argues a recent blog in the "Stanford Social Innovation Review." Here are what the authors see as the key lessons from President Obama's successful election effort: focusing on cost-per-outcome; using the best research and expertise to design campaigns; segmenting and micro-targeting voters and donors; investing in a cross-functional data system; and making measurement a priority investment. The blog article concludes with a question: "What do you believe it will take for nonprofits to follow a similar course in their measurement approaches?" To simply answer "more money" can be self-defeating, so we would pose the challenge as how spending can be reallocated for more effective data and performance measurement. For the complete discussion, go to http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/what_obamas_campaign_can_teach_nonprofits_about_measurement

'Show Me Impact' Is Mantra of Rich Young Donors

Affluent young donors say they are more focused than their parents and grandparents on producing a measurable impact with their giving, according to a new study conducted at Grand Valley State University by 21/64, which advises young donors and their families, and the Johnson Center for Philanthropy. Wealthy younger donors want to conduct research on charities so they can find groups that meet their strategic goals, according to the study. But they don't dismiss family philanthropic aims: Only a third of those surveyed said they give to different causes than their parents. Still, wealthy young donors are more likely than their elders to support civil rights and the environment, and less likely to support the arts, religious groups, and health causes. The report was based on a survey of 310 people age 21 to 40, with the majority of those surveyed inheriting family wealth. And how do they like to interact? Online, of course. Nearly 78% of wealthy young donors said they gave online in the past year, and more than 90% said they visit a charitable organization’s website for information. For more details from the study, see the "The Chronicle of Philanthropy" article at http://philanthropy.com/article/Wealthy-Young-Donors-Push/136869

Online Videos Nab Attention of Majority of Voters

Whether informative or inflammatory, online political videos clearly won the attention of a majority of voters in the 2012 political races. According to the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project, 55% of registered voters watched political videos online this election season. And it was a highly social affair: Some 52% of registered voters said that other people recommended political videos for them to watch during the political campaigns, with social networking sites playing a prominent role in this process. For more on the research, see http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Election-2012-Video.aspx

PACs' TV Ads Rate High With Independent Voters

PACs dominate the TV ads seen as most effective by independent voters in this Presidential election. Ace Metrix surveyed independent voters and found that, of the top 10 most effective presidential ads, seven out of 10 were from PACs, according to a report in Adweek magazine. Only three non-PAC ads, from the Obama for America campaign, made the researcher's list of top 10 most effective ads. No ads from the Romney for President campaign scored in the top 10, but, of the seven top PAC ads, six favored Romney. For more details, see the story http://www.adweek.com/news/television/ace-metrix-scores-most-effective-ads-election-144872

Democrats Top GOP in Scanty Texting Sign-ups

When it comes to mobile political messaging, voters are more interested in sending than receiving. Campaigns across the political spectrum are asking for mobile numbers this election season as voters "sign" online petitions or donate. But according to "The State of the 2012 Election - Mobile Politics" from Pew Research Center, as reported by ClickZ News, just 5% of registered voters with cell phones have actually provided their mobile numbers. Democrats appear more open to receiving political texts than Republicans, however, and Independents are the most resistant to mobile messaging. Just 3% of Independent voters said they have signed up to get texts from a political group or candidate, compared with 6% of Republican voters and 8% of Democrats. But voters are less averse to sending their own messages: Of the 88% of registered voters who use cellphones, 18% have used their phones to post their own political comments on a social site. http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2215867/more-democrats-sign-up-for-political-texts-than-republicans

Survey: Online Political Ads Work to Woo Voters

Online political ads are both more ubiquitous and more targeted this campaign cycle. Do they work to win donations and support? The answer is "yes" per a new survey of American voters by Toluna, a global online survey provider. Adam Lehman's report in Advertising Age on Toluna findings confirmed that an increasing number of voters are encountering political ads online, with 55% of respondents saying they'd seen political ads online this year, second only to TV as a source for such ads (at 88%). In general, consumers were negative on all political ads, but the Internet-based ads were compared with radio and newspaper-based appeals as less offensive than other venues. (Most hated were robocalls.) More important, nearly 60% said the improved data-driven targeting of online ads is a "good thing," and more than half of respondents said the online ads had prompted them to take action: donating to a campaign (11%); going to a campaign website (14%); seeking more information about a candidate (25%)' paying more attention to a candidate's campaign (24%); or voting (33%). For details, see http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/online-political-ads-turn-voters-expect/237570/