Online Politicking: Versatile Must for 2014 Campaigns

Every savvy candidate and advocacy group in 2014 is going to do some Internet politicking. But do they know how to maximize their online power? "How to Use the Internet to Win in 2014: A Comprehensive Guide to Online Politics for Campaigns and Advocates" offers itself as one guidebook. As summarized by Colin Delany, founder of Epolitics.com, for the Huffington Post, a winning strategy includes both online fundraising, for repeat pushes of those donate buttons, and online recruiting, for donors and volunteers who will become viral emissaries in turn. Campaigns are advised on mobilizing supporters to participate in e-mail efforts, virtual phone banks and digital rallies. Grassroots organizing is given a digital spin, too, with iPads, tablets and other mobile devices used as on-site donation takers (via mobile credit card readers) as well as dispensers of maps, videos and canvass talking points. Digital advertising, meanwhile, can be made more effective with improved analytics and targeting. The Internet is also a great way to quick-test, from A/B subject-line splits to complex positioning. Worried about the high cost of a shotgun mass media effort? Online geographic selection can offer cheaper and more precise targeting. Finally, the Internet is a rapid-response weapon in case of attacks and unfavorable coverage. For more, go to the blog post at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/colin-delany/the-internet-in-politics-_b_4420094.html

New Media Market Maps Offer Unique Look at Voters

Successful political ad strategy needs to go deeper than red and blue states to match voter demographics and views with media markets and costs. How does that redraw the American political map? Now, as reported in a recent Washington Post article, leading Democratic media firm GMMB and Civis Analytics have crunched 2012 election data to create that kind of mapping for the first time. Their mapping shows every U.S. media market in terms of political leanings, voter demographics, upcoming 2014 races and likely ad costs, and even the percentage of uninsured, which may influence how markets line up on the health-care debate. Their maps deliver some surprise results. Looking back on the Obama-Romney presidential race reveals that President Obama’s best media market wasn’t in a liberal enclave like San Francisco but rather in tiny Laredo, TX. Obama beat Romney by 54 points along that stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border. Why? More than 90% of voters in Laredo are Hispanic, a particularly pro-Obama group. In contrast, Romney did best in north Texas, in the Abilene-Sweetwater market, where he beat Obama by 60 points. Looking to 2014, when the Affordable Care Act may be a hot issue, both parties and independent PACs will be paying attention to media markets with large portions of uninsured. Since the political map shows that more than 20% of the population remains uninsured in large swaths of the West and Southwest, along with chunks of the South, watch for ACA-related ad spends there. For a chance to look at the GMMB-Civis maps in detail for different variables, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/03/the-2012-election-results-by-media-market/

Data-Fueled Targeting Is Redefining TV Political Ads

Data-centric political ad targeting -- which transformed digital politicking -- began redefining TV ad campaigns in 2013. Traditionally, political campaigns buy TV spots based on ratings data, such as the demographics of the core viewers of a show. Now, by combining voter data with set-top box data, campaigns can better segment TV audience voters. Firms are sprouting up to serve the new age of voter-data-fueled TV, especially since TV buys take the lion's share of political ad budgets. A recent Ad Age article surveyed some in the forefront of TV targeting, including Rentrak, a firm that provides local and national TV data on 12 million households from its partners in cable, satellite and telecom, and which worked with the Obama for America campaign last year. Rentrak claims it actually did more political business in 2013 with just a handful of gubernatorial, mayoral and down-ballot races. Using an outside firm (Experian in 2013), Rentrak matched TV-subscriber data to voter-file data from the campaigns and their parties to produce anonymized audience segments that categorize voters according to interests, likelihood to vote and political leanings. An example of the new trend in TV ad buying: Democrat Terry McAuliffe's winning Virginia gubernatorial effort spent around 25% of its persuasion-ad budget (ads intended to sway voters rather than generate fundraising) on ads targeted via voter-file matching and purchased through exchanges and automated TV-buying platforms, as opposed to ads with traditional behavioral or demographic targeting. For more, see http://adage.com/article/news/data-redefining-political-tv-ads/245286/

Hot 2014 Races to Fuel TV Ad Spending

If you're campaigning in states like Michigan and Arkansas next year, get ready to compete for attention with big TV political ad spends, per analysis by TVB, the local broadcaster trade association. Overall, political ad spending on local TV is projected to be $2.4 billion next year, according Kantar's Campaign Media Analysis Group, which is an increase of more than 4% from the $2.3 billion mid-term elections of 2010, the first election to see the effect of unlimited outside group spending enabled by the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision. Arkansas and Michigan are forecast to draw the hottest spate of political ad activity in the 2014 mid-term elections because of competitive House, Senate and governor races. Other states that will see heavy TV advertising include West Virginia, Georgia and Iowa--where there are open Senate seats--and Alaska and Kentucky, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Begich and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are being targeted by Senate campaign groups. Two wild cards may impact TV ad budgets, however: the influx of money from independent groups and "big data" analytics, which could temper TV mass-audience buys in favor of micro-targeting specific groups. For TVB's state-by-state political ad market projections, see the USA Today article at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/11/13/2014-political-ads-michigan-arkansas/3498023/

L.A. Mayor Race Brews Potent Microtargeting Potion

A Los Angeles-based digital ad firm recently revealed to Fast Company magazine its microtargeted data strategy in support of successful first-time L.A. mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti. Consulting for a PAC, the Engage:BDR agency's goal was to target a demographic of 500,000 English-speaking and Spanish-speaking Latinos aged 18-46. The agency says it combined 120 data points from offline household consumer statistics, "hyper-local IP data sets," census data and voter records to microtarget its online ad campaign. The campaign implemented an ad schedule of display and video ads, for both desktop and mobile users, with timings most likely to deliver response according to behavioral data. Mobile ads also were geo-specific down to the GPS coordinates of a given block, so ads could direct voters to their local polling places. The results, per the agency, included more than 7 million impressions in just two weeks and 10% to 17% better click-through rates for the target Latino demographics. For more, see the Fast Company article at http://www.fastcompany.com/3021092/yes-political-campaigns-follow-your-browser-history

HealthCare.gov Mess Has Lessons for Campaigns

What can the Obamacare website debacle teach a political marketer, or a brand marketer for that matter? A recent online post by David Heitman, president of a Colorado branding and PR firm, lays out some cogent lessons for campaigns and causes. The first obvious lesson, he writes, is that it's better to launch late than launch badly. The second lesson is to put a premium on critical feedback. Apparently, pre-launch issues with the HealthCare.gov website didn't get to the top, or the top didn't listen. Next, when something goes wrong, remember that the media and the voters can forgive a mistake but not a cover-up. Trying to deny or hide the truth only incites the media and sours supporters. And don't underestimate the intelligence of your audience by trying to mislead in a world of click-speed data sharing. As Heitman points out, when HHS boasted that 15 million visits showed the popularity of HealthCare.gov, Pew Research could quickly counter that 70% of those visitors had insurance and were not serious shoppers. The impact of technical errors on the Obama administration's credibility also underscores the vulnerability of candidates and campaigns to their high-tech advisors. Make sure your campaign has invested in a proven, trustworthy technical team! But perhaps the toughest political lessons are how failure in the details can undermine the larger vision, and how a launch stumble can risk the race. See the full post at http://www.bcbr.com/article/20131108/EDITION0806/131109942/-1/DigitalEdition

E-mail Fundraising: Learning From Obama's Success

E-mail fundraising, where a faulty subject line can cost millions of dollars in donations, can be a daunting prospect. Luckily for 2014 political campaigners, the successful Obama 2012 presidential bid blazed a path with extensive A/B e-mail testing. A recent econsultancy.com interview with Amelia Showalter, Obama's director of digital analytics, provided some tips based on that testing. To see how much it matters, consider that the difference in effectiveness of the best-performing test subject line and the worst-performing test subject line was estimated at over $2 million in donations. So take advantage of the lessons learned by the Obama team. No. 1: Test everything, because your "gut" and conventional wisdom are often poor predictors of what works with the electorate. The Obama digital team was consistently wrong in predicting which would be the top-performing test e-mails, Showalter says. In fact, "ugly" designs often beat "pretty" designs; the Obama team found a design with strident yellow highlighting trumped more subtle appeals, for example. And keep on testing! Create a testing culture immune to marketing and political egos, include columns for "tests" in all short-term and long-term e-mail campaign calendars, and constantly compare test results to prior performance (not just industry standards). Don't let the digital team perform in a bubble, however; spread the word about test results internally to get buy-in and generate new ideas from the wider campaign effort. Finally, make your e-mails both personalized and personal. For example, subject lines that are shorter and less formal perform better, per the Obama experience. A subject line that just said "Hey" was consistently most successful! Don't be afraid of mild curse words now and then as well; "Let's win the damn election" worked for Obama. For more on the lessons from the Obama digital team, read http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/63672-seven-lessons-obama-s-digital-team-learned-from-a-b-testing-emails