Tweet

Five Web Analytics Lessons from the Obama Campaign Coakley Should Have Heeded

Guest post by: Brian Molstad

Article Overview: Martha Coakley’s failed Senate run has led many to review the key differences in strategy between her campaign and Scott Brown’s. It’s pretty clear that Brown took the web seriously and Coakley seemed to largely ignore many of the social media and web analytics strategies and tactics that swept Obama into office. This post highlights web analytics lessons from the Obama campaign which are every bit as applicable today as they were over a year ago for any organization.

Five Web Analytics Lessons from the Obama Campaign Coakley Should Have Heeded

Martha Coakley’s failed Senate run has led many to review the key differences in strategy between her campaign and Scott Brown’s. It’s pretty clear that Brown took the web seriously and Coakley seemed to largely ignore many of the social media and web analytics strategies and tactics that swept Obama into office. Ad Age and Social Media Today have taken a look at (and criticized) Coakley’s overall digital and social media’s approaches. This post narrows in and serves as a reminder of web analytics best practices which can mean the difference between coming in first or a distant second.

The Obama campaign tracked digital metrics obsessively yet ingeniously with great success. The techniques they used are just as applicable today as they were over a year ago.

Dan Siroker was a Google employee, who in December of 2007 decided to take a leave from Google and assist the Obama campaign in setting up a web analytics methodology. He was there for a month, came back to Google for a stint, then in July quit permanently to join the campaign full time through to the general election as director of web analytics.

As a measure of their success, of the $656 million raised by the Obama campaign, $500 million of that was raised online compared to $201 million the McCain campaign raised overall. ($201 million does not include the federal campaign funds McCain accepted).

In November of 2009, Siroker gave a presentation at Google (viewable on YouTube) about his experiences and the campaign’s web analytics wins. In it, he outlined five key lessons learned, which are excellent guidelines for any web analytics initiative be it for a political campaign or business marketing.

Lesson 1: Define Success with QUANTIFIABLE Success Metrics

Setting goals such as, “drive traffic via PPC” or “use the email channel to maintain a dialogue with our audiences” are not specific enough to gauge success.

Instead, Siroker’s team set quantifiable goals related to cost per click, signup rates, money raised per email recipient, and many more. He said, “We always had more to do than we had man hours to do it.” As such, having very targeted goals was essential to ensure time expenditures could be justified.

Lesson 2: Question Assumptions

The team utilized Google Website Optimizer to determine which landing pages and creative content pulled its weight. As an ad-hoc survey, Siroker asked the audience of a series of images and calls to action, which combination they thought was best received by splash page viewers and resulted in the most sign ups. It turns out the audience’s assumptions were wrong (so were the analytics team’s originally) and it required multivariate testing to get to the truth (“Learn more” and the “Family Image” were the winners).

Getting the version right meant over 4 million more people signed up for the email list between the time they ran the experiment and the election!

Lesson 3: Divide & Conquer

This lesson demonstrates the power of segmentation. As Avinash Kaushik puts it, segment or die! Data takes on a whole new meaning when you can know as much as possible about the people who generated it.

This was illustrated by the team’s donation button experiment. In it, they sent donation solicitations and tested different donation button verbiage (Donate Now, Please Donate, Why Donate, Donate and Get a Gift, and Contribute) with each audience (never signed up, signed up but never donated, previously donated). The results varied significantly based on who the visitor was when they got there.

Winning combinations:

• Never signed up: Donate and Get a Gift
• Signed up, never donated: Please Donate
• Previously donated: Contribute

Monetary results: tens of millions of dollars in additional donations.

Lesson 4: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

This lesson goes to show that it’s not how much you spend on technology; it’s how much you invest in talent. One would think that a presidential campaign which broke all sorts of war chest records would use its means to select the most robust and most expensive analytics tools on the market. In fact, Siroker’s team used many free and open source tools. These included Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, Trends, and App Engine, and TextMate, Open Reports, and DbVisualizer.

Lesson 5: Take Advantage of Circumstances

After Sarah Palin made a remark at the Republican National Convention in an attempt to undermine the perceived value of being a community organizer, the Obama campaign immediately sent out an email to their list protesting this notion.

The recipients responded. From that one email the campaign raised $10 million.

Think of your own organization. How close are you to putting these lessons into practice? Do you have examples of challenges or success stories?

Don’t pull a “Choke-ley” and underestimate the power and benefits of digital marketing, social media, and web analytics. Know where you stand before you’re passed up by a Brown blur.

Related Articles
  Mass. Senate Race Alternate Ending Compares with Major Account Selling
  Article #38 Simple How To Web Analytics
  What Every Manager Can Learn From Barack Obama
  Lead Like Obama
  Google Analytics - Just the Facts

Article Tags: email marketing, google analytics, google website optimizer, internet marketing, martha coakley, obama campaign, social media, web analytics



Related Forum Posts
Re: What I Enjoyed Reading This Week - June 11 - Hi Evan, Thank you for the reading material. I look forward to the general release later this month as outlined in the 'Google Analytics To Add Search Query Data From Webmaster Tools' article. Anything that helps us to understand maximise extra data from Google Analytics can only be of benefit. regards, Mal.
Re: Obama or McCain? - If I want to be partial , I would say Obama because I am black. But this should not be if you want to vote objectively. Otherwise, I will prefer Obama because of his age, charisma and energy
Re: Still Not Sure Who To Vote For? - Hi IdeasU, Don't worry, I'm still committed to the evancarmichael forum, but I have been very busy since I returned from my holidays with editing work, extra teaching work during college term, several large and complicated orders from my Japanese-games-shop customers and the launch of a monthly PLR article writing service (see sig file!). === Back on topic... If I were an American citizen I would vote for Obama. I explained what did it for me on another thread. My main interest was foreign policy, but the more I watch Obama and McCain the more impressive Obama seems and the less convincing McCain appears. So far, Obama has proved excellent in handling the ad hominem attacks, and McCain's attempts to smear him with "associating with terrorists" look increasingly lame.
Re: Obama mentorship system - Obama is a new-age thinker in my opinion. I think Obama is a tremendous progressive thinker and political icon that will inspire the younger generations throughout his tenure. His ability to 'break the mold' and do what needs to be done instead of repeating how things have been going to date, will set his mark in American history. The meeting of the minds sort to speak is exactly what every new president needs to do in order to appreciate the magnitutde of information and decision making that is required of him.
Re: Still Not Sure Who To Vote For? - [quote="topeyinka":1j77tiy7]I don't need no software to tell me who to vote for if I am in America. Obama is my man any day. Not because I am black, but because he is young, enrgetic and resourceful[/quote:1j77tiy7] I'm a middle-aged white guy voting for Obama. He's highly intelligent and the dynamic leader we now need to lead us through the economic turmoil. He has the potential to be another great like JFK.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Track Your Time for Increased Productivity

The Death of the Sales Magazine

Designing Employee-Enhancing Training Programs

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.