Tim Fullerton

Not so great marketing. I got this email from Senator McCain’s campaign today.

As a special thank you, we have another piece of exclusive John McCain 2008 gear. Today, we are offering the official John McCain 2008 hat with your contribution of $100 or more in response to this email.

They’re giving away hats for $100 contributions? One thing I’ve learned is that donors appreciate you spending their money in an effective way. For the Senator who has championed government waste, this seems like a huge waste of money and resources. Unlike many environmental campaigns, donors have not come to associate getting gifts with donating to political campaigns. If people aren’t expecting it, why offer? This means the campaign will actually receive less profit from each donation and it will take critical staff resources to manage the relationships with the companies distributing these hats. Not a great fundraising appeal in my opinion.

We switch it up a little tonight and talk about a favorite of the far right, Senator Sam Brownback. This is your standard political site. Not a MySpace or a YouTube to be found. There is a simple, easy to find sign up box for emails and his announcement video is on the site (though not on YouTube). Brownback does has a blog and it is updated every day. However, take a look at the number of comments. Most posts do not have any comments, while others have 1,2 or maybe 3 (for an example of the opposit, check out Obama’s site).

Brownback is clearly one of the lesser known candidates, which makes you think it would be very important for him to take the Edwards approach of signing up for every social networking site out there. Every supporter counts and he needs a lot to catch up to the more well known Republicans running.

Overall Grade: C

Up tomorrow: Governor Bill Richardson (D-NM)

Senator Barack Obama’s online team continues to impress. I received a fundraising email from the campaign today with an interesting twist:

So I’m asking you to promise to match the donation of someone who hasn’t taken the leap yet.

Here’s how it works:

-You choose the amount you want to match.
-You write a message to a potential donor about why it’s important to own a piece of this campaign.
-You’ll be matched with a fellow supporter who’s making their first donation because of your promise.

Yet another brilliant strategy that is going to bring in more money and even more supporters. Anyone who works in the non-profit world is familiar with matching gift campaigns. Those usually work by getting a large donor to give a specific amount and then ask smaller donors to give and the large donor will match it. In this case, Obama is asking his small donors to make a small match. Donors who have recently given are going to be compelled to give again, and others who are thinking about giving, will probably make the move (As of this writing, over 2400 people have already pledged to give again in less than twelve hours). For a campaign that is depending on a large grassroots movement, this is another brilliant piece of marketing. It’s all about deepening engagement online, and the Obama campaign has it down to a science.

John Edwards was the first top-tier Democratic candidate to announce his run for President in 2008. So far, he has led an impressive effort online. Edwards website is filled with engaging content. All videos are posted on YouTube, pictures on Flickr, and his MySpace and Facebook profiles are prominently linked on most pages (he even has RSS set up on the site). What is interesting about Edwards social networking strategy is that he has a profile on virtually every site on the net. Little known sites like 43 Things, Ning and 20 (20!) other little know sites get a lot of attention on this site. Clearly they are taking the “lets throw everything against the wall and see if it sticks” approach. Since legitimate presidential campaigns have legions of volunteers and interns, this approach should be used by EVERY campaign. John Edwards is clearly one of the few candidates that get the web as it’s used in 2007.

Another impressive thing about Edwards online strategy is his aptly named “One Corps.” Created as a way to get people more involved, this group allows people to take action in their communities not just to help get Edwards elected, but to make a difference (though let’s be clear, this was done to help get Edwards elected). From collecting food for a local pantry to pushing for energy independence, the One Corps is connecting Edwards supporters across the country. This is going to be extremely useful in the coming months.

The one negative I will say is that I have not seen an Edwards email for quite some time. With the focus so early on in this presidential race, I would have expected Edwards to continue his aggressive email strategy (in January-February I was getting weekly emails it seemed). Where did these go? There have been studies done that show if you do not email your list for over a month, it has a negative impact on your future results.

Overall grade: A

Up tomorrow: US Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS)

Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to be reviewing how each of the potential presidential candidates are doing online. I’ll be looking at everyone from Hillary, Obama, McCain and Rudy, to the lower tier candidates. I’ll mix it up between Republicans and Democrats and we’ll start later today with the first top-tier candidate to announce, John Edwards.

A lot has been made about how the web will influence the 2008 elections, but as of right now the clear frontrunner on the web has to be Barack Obama. I received a very impressive email from the campaign this evening and I thought I would share this piece:

In the two weeks since this campaign kicked off:

- 3,306 grassroots volunteer groups have been founded and attracted tens of thousands of members who are organizing online and offline

- 4,416 personal fundraising pages have been established, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in small contributions

- 6,706 people have created their own blogs and begun chronicling why they are supporting Barack and their campaign experience

- 38,799 people have created profiles and started networking with other supporters in their community and across the country

Senator Obama is taking the right approach to the web. He’s creating a giant base of loyal supporters at the grassroots level. Deval Patrick did the same thing on a smaller scale in Massachusetts and crushed his opponent. By creating this base, he will reach more people, raise more money, and eventually gain more votes. John Edwards has done a very good job online as well, but Barack’s numbers are just flat out impressive.

Like everyone else, I generally get hundreds of email messages a day, but two stood out that came within ten minutes of each other. Let’s start with the first from Vice President Al Gore.

On March 21st, I’ll hand-deliver your message to Washington when I testify at Congressional hearings on the climate crisis.

Can you commit to finding 10 friends to send a message to Congress demanding immediate action?

Ask them to visit:

http://algore.com/cards.html

Does this sound like someone who is NOT running for President? Most online communications experts know this type of message is a strong way to build up ones list. Why else would Al be so interested in growing his list. Clearly asking people to contact their own Representatives would be a more effective way to have an impact, but this message clearly is for list building. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of Mr. Gore in the 2008 Presidential race.

The other is from Al’s former boss, President Bill Clinton. Only this isn’t about him, it’s about Hillary.

In less than six days, thousands of people — old friends and new ones — have risen to the occasion and donated over $800,000. Those financial resources will help fund critical organizing and campaign activities in the weeks ahead.

This email is important because it shows that Hillary is not only getting support from high dollar donors within the Democratic Party, but also people contributing $10, $25, $50. This is significant as Senator Obama and John Edwards are counting on the “Netroots” to overcome Hillary. We’ll see how this plays out over the coming months.

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my new website dedicated to online communications. It’s going to take me a few days to get up and running, but I will be posting daily updates on issues ranging from how the Presidential candidates are using the Internet to gain supporters and money, to how bad my commute was on the T (let’s hope those are few and far between). I’ll also talk about some great examples of organizations using the internet/online communications to further their cause. I will also be providing reports from the Nonprofit Technology Conference in April and the Convio Users Conference in October. Hopefully you will find this a useful resource.

Thanks for reading and wish me luck!