Email Insider Summit – Day 1: Effective Use of Email in the Obama Campaign
Posted by Mike Ferguson on December 9th, 2008
The first morning session was with Stephen Geer, the Director of Email and Online Fundraising for Obama.
Here are a few of the interesting takeaways without an attempt to transcribe his entire speech.
1) Respect, Empower, Include
This was the mantra of their field staff, and ultimately one of the largest factors in the success of the campaign. Obviously, this underscores what many of us in the digital marketing arena stress with our clients, which is talking to people, not at them.
The manner in which the campaign used digital mediums, such as email marketing and social media, to virally empower local grassroots leaders was impressive — and ultimately very contagious and effective.
2) Strategy over tactics
They had lots of names, lots of bandwidth, and lots to say — but they didn’t just blast out bulk email in brute force fashion (other than calculated donation solicitations 
) Rather, they strategically analyzed their data so as to organize them into *meaningful* segments, and approached different people with different messages. One such example included segmenting those who were more likely to be local leaders.
Greer at one point cited “unrivaled list segmentation” as one of the key factors to understanding subscribers at an intimate, granular level. This allowed for the campaign to elicit heightened levels of emotional connection and community action.
3) It wasn’t all email
Email was used strategically to establish and reinforce messages and actions, but it wasn’t an island unto itself. They would use on and offline tactics, such as having field organizers follow up on measured digital responses in order to do things like have local community advocates organize political get-togethers in their homes with other local supporters. Not all digital, but impossible without it.
4) Frequency
Mailing frequency varied at the individual level based on data points. Again, the notable, and obvious exception here was with fund raising messages. However, striking a balance with frequency and segmentation was the way they were able to motivate their “troops” at different levels.
