Barack Obama 2008 Presidential Campaign 183Facebook pages, social communities, donation pages, Twitter forums,
YouTube videos and mobile apps.
Results
The campaign achieved high open and click-through rates for its automated
follow-up e-mails. Driven by sustained and timely e-mails and word of mouth,
the campaign received extremely high levels of engagement through social
networks and online communities.
The Obama iTunes app had more than 30,000 messages. The campaign’s
Facebook page had more than 3 million supporters; and the Twitter account
garnered more than 100,000 followers.
The ultimate result, of course, was a historical presidential victory for Barack
Obama.
Lessons
The Obama campaign has been widely lauded as a masterclass in online polit-
ical marketing and engagement, and will, no doubt, form a blueprint for future
campaigns both in the US and around the world. One of the key lessons from
this particular portion of the campaign, which focused on the critical ‘swing
states’, is one that resonates across all disciplines of online marketing and
indeed any kind of online business you’re engaged in. It’s simply this: keeping
things simple will improve conversion. Remove obstacles and reduce the
number of steps a user has to take to do what you want them to do, and more
of them are likely do it.
Increasing conversion is the most effective way of boosting return on your
online investment. Keep things as simple as they can possibly be for the user
- to check out of your online shopping cart, to sign up for your newsletter, to
subscribe to your RSS feed – and you’ll improve your results.