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Obama Spending Money on Search, But Making Money on Email

Campaigning online has shifted the political fund-raising paradigm significantly, and forever altered the strategies candidates employ to feed their machines. When we read news stories about this phenomenon, however, we rarely learn exactly what online channel is driving the donations—search, email, social networks, etc. The headlines usually credit “the internet.”

Peter Greenberger who runs the Elections & Issue Advocacy group at Google was kind enough to make some time for me recently, and indicated that each of the campaigns is dedicating over 50% of their online marketing budgets to search—with some dedicating well over 50%. What I find most interesting, however, is that the candidates are primarily leveraging paid search to build their email lists.

Barack Obama is, hands down, the most successful online fundraiser. He often raises over a million dollars a day online, and has certainly forced the other candidates to get more sophisticated about how they approach the web. His online strategies definitely seem to be working. So how exactly is he soliciting donations?

Type “obama” into Google and click on the top link, a paid search listing. Where do to you land? The link takes a clicker to a page that features a simple opt-in box asking for name, email, and address, with an adjacent video window featuring a message from the candidate. There is no “donate now” button, or form with various contribution levels, just a simple opt-in box to register to receive updates from the campaign. Mr. Obama realizes that your email address is the most valuable donation you can make, and that with it he can more effectively induce you into making larger, more frequent donations, or solicit your assistance in making phone calls and otherwise promote the campaign. Obama may be spending the majority of his money on search, but it seems from this example, that he may very well be raising most of his money through email.

—Nicholas Einstein of Datran Media

Posted on April 11, 2008 1:16 PM |

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Comments (1)

John Arnold:

Excellent example Nicholas. It's too bad this kind of customer acquisition is so foreign to small and medium sized businesses. Email can indeed lower the cost of prompting a first-time purchase, and the value of an opt-in email database far exceeds the value of an analytics report showing anonymous landing-page visitors.

Posted by John Arnold | April 14, 2008 12:01 PM

Posted on April 14, 2008 12:01

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the voices of email

The Email Experience Council's membership includes many of the brightest and most committed email marketing experts. We're pleased to have some of them share their insights here on these pages. Our blog contributors include:

Elie Ashery is the president and CEO of Gold Lasso, and is responsible for the company’s vision and strategy execution. Before joining Gold Lasso, he co-founded Newsletters.com in 1997, selling it to The Tribune Cos. in 2000. He then worked for IncenSoft, focusing on email marketing while there. Read more.

Amy Bills is the senior manager of field marketing at lead optimization company Bulldog Solutions. She is responsible for lead generation and the go-to-market execution of Bulldog's new products and initiatives. Amy was previously the editorial team leader of Freescale Semiconductor’s internal creative agency and a senior editor at Hoover’s Online. Read more.

Nicholas Einstein is director of strategic and analytic services at Datran Media. Specializing in email and CRM strategy, he helps some of America’s top brands leverage online channels to communicate more effectively with their customers and prospects.

Lisa Harmon is a principal at Smith-Harmon, a creative services consultancy dedicated to email marketing strategy and production. She works with marketers to increase clickthrough, maximize revenue, and infuse delight into their email creative. Lisa is also the blogger behind edm.smith-harmon.com, an ongoing commentary on the best (and worst!) in email marketing creative. Read more.

Chip House is ExactTarget's VP of marketing services, leading the teams responsible for client success. He was named to BtoB Magazine’s 2005 “Who’s Who in B-To-B,” for being a vocal proponent of legitimate commercial email and an active lobbyist regarding spam and privacy issues. Read more.

Stephanie Miller is VP of strategic services for Return Path, the leading email performance company. She works with marketers to earn a higher ROI and response from their acquisition and retention email programs—developing content, contact and segmentation strategies, along with testing, measurement and production programs. Read more.

Jeanniey Mullen is the eec’s founder and the global EVP and CMO of global online publishing company Zinio. She is a thought leader and visionary in the email and digital marketing field. A columnist for ClickZ, she has published numerous papers and is a frequent speaker. Read more.

Charles Stiles is the VP of worldwide business development at Goodmail Systems. In his role, Charles is focused on helping generate a better understanding of the email environment and potential solutions for a better consumer experience. He currently serves as the chairman for the Messaging Anti-Abuse Work Group. Read more.

DJ Waldow is an account manager at Bronto Software. He works with Bronto’s largest clients to help them achieve and surpass their marketing goals. An active member of the email marketing community, DJ posts regularly on the Email Marketer’s Club, publishes a bi-weekly email marketing best practices newsletter, and films BrontoFire. Read more.

Chad White is the EEC’s director of retail insights and editor-at-large. He founded and is the author of RetailEmail.Blogspot, a blog dedicated to tracking the email marketing practices of the largest online retailers. Chad regularly writes major research reports on email marketing and is an Email Insider columnist for MediaPost. Read more.

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