December 2008

How the Obama campaign
maximized online donations
It’s not magic, just marketing strategies
and tactics that work. By Raquel Hirsch

Regardless of what you think about the outcome of the November 4th American election, from a marketer’s perspective there is one sure conclusion: the campaign marketing team did a phenomenal job with their “product.” They struck a chord that resonated with their base and energized younger voters; plus, they were able to use social media successfully.

One particular area of interest to marketers concerned with e-commerce and Web marketing where the Obama campaign truly shone was fundraising.

Barack Obama obtained more than $650 million in fundraising—nearly the combined total raised by George W. Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 federal election. In September alone, Obama’s staggering $150 million in donations more than doubled his previous record. According to Bloomberg, the campaign “obliterated every political fundraising and spending record in US history.”
How did his campaign organizers accomplish this?

Naturally, the answer is complex and multifaceted. Yet, from a marketing perspective, the solution is very straightforward; providing strategies and tactics from which all marketers can learn.

Broad-based appeal
First, the campaign went for the broadest possible customer base. It’s easier to get one dollar from 100,000 people than to get $100,000 from one person.
As early as February 2008, the campaign reported on its official Web site that more than 280,000 people had created accounts on BarackObama.com and from those online accounts, 6,500 grassroots volunteer groups had been created and more than 13,000 off-line events had been organized through the site. At that point, more than 370,000 individual online donations had been made (more than half of which were less than $25 donations). All in all, some three million donors brought in the staggering $650 million total.

To build the base, at every opportunity Obama volunteers “fanned through the crowd,” gathering the names and e- mail addresses of people who could be asked for small donations again and again.
Then, the campaign focused on frequency marketing.

Once it had cultivated a broad base of engaged supporters via the Web, the Obama campaign went after the small donors early and returned to them often. Obama fundraisers collected $8 million online in the first quarter of 2007— quadruple the campaign’s goal of $2 million. Almost half of this money came from people contributing $200 or less, compared with the 34 percent who contributed under $200 to the McCain campaign.

The “secret sauce”
All the considerable effort and money spent driving traffic to the site generated a given online donations rate. At WiderFunnel Marketing, we are convinced that campaign management saw getting more actions (i.e., more donations and higher average donations) from the traffic already on the Web site as its next challenge.

In an amazing bit of sleuthing, my business partner Chris Goward “discovered” how the Obama campaign successfully used a conversion rate optimization strategy to maximize online donations.
To optimize this online donations rate, or “conversions,” the team deployed a conversion rate optimization strategy whereby it ran experiments and determined with scientific certainty what Web visitors considered the most relevant and timely content. In other words, by running statistically valid experiments, the Obama team made data-driven decisions and progressively redesigned key Web pages.

As Chris discovered, the Web team used Google Website Optimizer to run multivariate tests on various pages of their site (www.barackobama.com). Tests were run on the Home Page, the Donation page (still running at press time) and others.

Figure 1: shows a view of what the Obama team was testing. The red dashed line shows the placement of the SwapBox (i.e., the Google Website Optimizer section script) on the Web page. Figure 2: shows what we have arbitrarily selected as the ‘Control’ – a dual dark-blue tee shirt Figure 3: shows promotion Variation A - Single tee shirt Figure 4: shows promotion Variation B - Modified lighter blue Figure 5: shows promotion Variation C - Dual white tee shirts Figure 6: shows promotion Variation D - No offer

 

When you donate $30 or more, you'll receive a
limited edition shirt to show your support for change.

The winner: Barack Obama
Which offer variation worked best?

That, we don’t know. In many ways, it doesn’t really matter.

As marketers, the learning here isn’t “You should always ask for a $30 donation and offer a white tee shirt,” because that learning isn’t applicable to you or another political candidate, and it may not even be applicable to the Obama campaign in four years time.

The learning is that, just like with the Obama campaign, all Web marketers can make data-driven decisions (instead of leaps of faith) and progressively redesign key Web pages —or the entire site —based on facts.

In our experience, focusing on running ongoing conversion rate experiments for clients in a wide variety of industries and with a wide variety of business goals, we have learned one thing: testing always pays off in improved conversions.

Raquel Hirsch is president of Vancouver-based WiderFunnel Marketing Inc., a unique marketing services company that helps clients convert their Web site traffic to actions that generate desired results. For more information visit www.Widerfunnel.com