Online Political Campaign Case Study PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 10 February 2009 21:21
By Thomas Lee

In Spring 2008, I was asked by a close friend, Pam Tucker, if I would come to New Hampshire and manage her campaign for the State House.  She had never run before, but she got fed up one day with the NH Democrats tax increases and decided to do something about it.  I was so excited that I committed to manage her campaign right then and there. What she didn’t discuss in that conversation was that her opponent was a popular, wealthy, incumbent in a Democratic district.  She also failed to mention that he was the Majority Whip for the New Hampshire State House – but then again, silly me, I never asked. 

One of the luxuries of doing web design and online marketing for a living, is that I can be rather mobile. So, for several months over the summer and fall, I found myself on the other coast living in small town New Hampshire. 

Over the summer, we put together a traditional grassroots campaign-house parties, door to door canvassing, phone calls, yard signs, etc. We also decided to have a little fun and see what kind of attention we could stir up with an online campaign. 

THE WEBSITE
In order to raise the candidate’s visibility we first planned for a website that would share the candidates’ biography, personality, and political vision. Second, we needed the site to contain the latest political news relating to the race. Third, we wanted the site to serve as a vehicle through which voters could sign up to volunteer or show their support for the candidate. Fourth, we wanted to create an online public forum in which supporters and volunteers could share ideas or plan political events.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION AND VALIDATION
Once the website design and development phases were completed, we focused on code optimization to obtain visibility and good ranking in major search engines. Key personalized meta data was added to every section and a complete markup validation was performed for optimum ranking and browser compatibility.  

ONLINE MARKETING
While the website was being developed, our team gathered together email addresses for approximately 30% of the voters in the district, as well as hundreds of political and policy leaders around the state.   We did this by collecting mass emails and by researching online and print resources for information on elected officials in New Hampshire.  

Once the website was complete we sent mass emails to voters and to policy leaders announcing the launch of the Tucker Campaign Website. We also put together a press release that was sent out to an extensive list of bloggers, political website journalists, as well as all print media in the state. Several New Hampshire political websites and blogs took note of our site and posted stories and links to the Tucker site. To strengthen our visibility, we also worked on link building by networking with other political websites so that the site URL could be around the internet.

Numerous stories and blog discussions about the Tucker website popped up on blogs and political websites across the state.  

ONLINE VIDEO
Once the initial surge of statewide attention waned, we went to work on creating a campaign video that recreated the process of how the candidate had come to the decision to run for office. In doing so, we concretely defined her reasons for being a candidate and why it was necessary that voters elect her their state representative. 

ONLINE VIDEO MARKETING
We posted the video to Youtube and sent out another batch of emails and press releases to our lists of voters and statewide political insiders.  
Several sites posted stories and links to the Youtube video and to our website driving thousands of eyes to our media materials.

CAMPAIGN e-UPDATES
A significant number of visitors to the campaign website signed up either to volunteer, received email updates, or to show their support for Pam Tucker.  
The campaign took this information and followed up with personal contacts to display yard signs and to recruit volunteers for door to door walking and phone calling.  
We also continued to send out campaign updates to these supporters to keep the excitement level building towards election day. 

WEBSITE METRICS
With our analysis software, we were able to identify patterns within the web traffic to the Tucker site. We determined which key words were most often used to find the site as well as which web links were used most frequently. We took this information into account after each phase of the marketing campaign to enhance the value of follow up marketing efforts. 

INTERNET SECURITY
Over the course of the campaign, the website came under constant attack from hackers. We remained vigilant to the evolving methods used by these unknown assailants and continuously adapted our development design to shore up security weak points. The hardware servers we use are monitored 24-7 and utilize the most advanced IP Table firewall available and the latest in spam and virus protection to prevent unauthorized access to our website.   

THE RESULTS:

For the Greenland State House District:
Obama  for President (Dem) won             +11
Lynch for NH Governor (Dem) won         +50
Shaheen for US Senate (Dem) won           +3
Porter for US House (Dem) won               +10
Clark for State Senate (Dem) won             +19
Pam Tucker Republican for State House    +7

AFTER THOUGHTS:
Our opponent campaigned hard on the ground and in the mailbox. He received much more attention from the local newspapers and his supporters were able to get more letters published. 

The one area of the campaign where we unquestionably dominated was on the internet. Our website and online videos were seen by thousands of voters and thought leaders across the state. We lit up the blogs and coordinated an active email campaign spreading our campaign message through networks of friends. We were able to get our message out while our opponent simply did not exist online. 

Our investment in internet political marketing tools and our overall domination in the race on the web was a factor in how we were able to counter the combined effects of the 2008 Obama tsunami and our opponent’s power of incumbency. 

Moving forward, any candidate who does not have a significant online presence is risking the same fate faced by the incumbent in this race.  Effective communications is the lifeblood of politics and technology relating to how we communicate is rapidly evolving.  It is imperative that our Republican candidates in 2010 are as informed and up to date as possible about new developments in this field.  
 

Comments  

 
0 #8 Robin Ray 2010-01-30 18:01
I too hope Pam has great re-election results, let's go for double digits!

This is a great case study, showing
how a great web presence can translate into activated volunteers & mitigation of media bias - which will many times
translate into elections won!
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0 #7 Brian Hanf 2010-01-30 18:01
Great Story. like other comments I like you still had ground campaign. Everything is connected!
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0 #6 Noe Chavez 2010-01-30 18:00
Thomas;

Great article, I was planning to run in the primary election next year hoping to get a shot at the title
against the progressive Liberal Jackie Speier in the CD12 in November of 2010. Unfortunately, I must wait 4 more
years, because I been a U.S citizen for only 3 years. I have the fire in the belly, the willingness and the ability
to run against any Democratic incumbent in my district. Even though walking precincts and meeting the voters one on
one is the greatest feeling, I agree that technological tsunamis such as the one you mentioned are indispensable. I
am technologically disabled and I can barely use my cell phone however, I do have the next four years to get with
the program and thank you for keeping me informed. Keep up the good work.

Noe Chavez
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0 #5 Adam Klaers 2010-01-30 18:00
Great motivation. I've been thinking of challenging my local state senator for her seat and this article give me
great motivation. It sounds like the old notion of work smarter not harder is the truth with this article.
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0 #4 Bill 2010-01-30 18:00
Wonderful, insightful article!
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0 #3 Paul Elliott 2010-01-30 18:00
Thomas, thank you for this insight.

Keep up your excellent work!
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0 #2 Thomas Lee 2010-01-30 17:59
Thank you for your comments Steve.

I hope Pam has even better results when she runs for reelection in 2010,
however, she did win her 2008 race by 7 points while all other Republicans running for State or Federal office lost
in her district.... thats rather extraordinary in its own right.

To your other point...I'm not sure in 2009, we
have completely done away with conventional political strategy. Online campaign complements an overall strategy,
but does not replace it....maybe in a few years it will..

Tom
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