Marketing Agencies Rush Into Profitable 2016 Race

Campaigns and causes seeking 2016 election victory will be able to select from a wider array of marketing services than ever before. Al Urbanski, Direct Marketing News magazine senior editor, recently took note of the rush by marketing agencies, especially those from the digital arena, to jump on the profitable political bandwagon. Examples include lead optimization specialist Fluent, which just set up the Political Pulse digital polling service and opened a Washington office, as well as programmatic ad platforms like ChoiceStream and Xaxis, which just unveiled Xaxis Politics, which are courting campaigns with claims they can harness offline and digital data to pull ahead, with social and mobile in the new media mix. Old-school direct mail experts are still in the game, too, Urbanski adds and points to the Ben Carson campaign, which raised $12 million via mail fundraising even before the candidate announced for the presidency. But e-mail will be where the real action is, according to political marketers interviewed by Urbanski. And in the e-mail contest, competitive intelligence firm eDataSource puts Democrat hopeful Hillary Clinton ahead so far, following the trailblazing of Barack Obama's e-mail blitz (20 e-mails to every one sent by opponent Mitt Romney) and segmented database (a 40 million name list compared with Romney's 4 million). Obama made marketing history by putting the small electronic "e" in electioneering, Urbanski remarks, so that while early GOP front-runner Donald Trump has made self-funding a selling point and aggressive Twitter his trademark, he may regret a lack of early "e" list building to turn donors and fans into voters down the road. See the complete article at http://www.dmnews.com/direct-line-blog/marketeering-turns-to-electioneering/article/453342/