Americans love post-election scuttlebutt, and there is no shortage of pundits eager to fill the demand. The marketing community in particular enjoys dissecting major elections, assessing what worked and what did not to see if there are implications for their brand.

One takeaway from the 2012 election that made the rounds recently is that the Obama for America outspent Romney for President on display advertising. While this is interesting, marketers could draw the wrong conclusions from this data.

President Obama won the election for many reasons, but display ads were not likely a major contributor. Display is a great medium, but it is typically direct-response oriented, where success is measured by clicks from viewers who are already motivated to act. While this has its place in promoting specific actions like voter turnout, petition gathering and fundraising, banner ads are far less effective at shifting a viewer’s perception on a issue, let alone persuading an undecided voter.

When it comes to persuading the undecided, there is good reason television advertising dominates. Few other mediums can capture the emotion and story-telling ability of live video. Some ads are so powerful that they become synonymous with the campaign itself, such as Lyndon Johnson’s “Daisy” ad in 1964, which warned of a nuclear winter, or Ronald Reagan’s iconic “Morning in America” in 1984. In the 2012 election, TV advertising represented nearly $1 billion of spending on behalf of the candidates, or about half of the total amount funds raised.

In-stream video advertising, the most analogous digital medium to television, also garnered high budgets during the election. Video — particularly programmatic buying of video where marketers retain control over every aspect of a buy — allows marketers to repurpose existing television ads, pinpoint specific districts, control where ads are running and optimize in real-time based on which ads perform best. Reporting in video is particularly robust, letting campaigns move beyond clicks to measure engagement. For instance, campaigns can tell how long an ad maintained user’s attention, which provides insights as to where the message worked or fell flat.

The results are a powerful electioneering medium that display cannot match. As Forrester stated in a recent report, video is similar to TV because it offers the ability “to go above and beyond ‘static’ display in communicating brand messages, making it a medium that marketers pay attention to.” According to our research, video easily beats display at getting viewers to remember an ad’s message, with lift in recall averaging 8.3% compared to between 1.8% and 2.4% for banner ads. This difference is poised to increase in the next few years, according to Forrester – half of the marketers they interviewed believe online video will get more effective over time, while 66% of marketers believe display will become less effective.

In the 2012 election, it was clear early on that the support of the undecided “swing” voting bloc (which overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008) would require the most courting by candidates. With this in mind, Mitt Romney for President, along with Targeted Victory focused on persuading voters in swing states during the election, and video offered the best format to do that, representing about 70% of Mitt Romney’s spend on persuasion advertising. While the results were encouraging for future campaigns, ultimately they did not make the difference. But we are clear on one thing: it was not getting outspent in display that determined the election outcome.

It is revealing to look at some of the creative of actual display ads from the election. The majority from both campaigns were clearly designed to either help in fundraising (getting people into an email list) or increasing turnout among existing voters.

But existing voters are only a piece of the puzzle. If elections were about clicks, search ads would be the hottest thing in political marketing.

Michael Beach is Co-Founder of top political agency Targeted Victory

Keith Eadie is VP of Marketing at TubeMogul

This article originally appeared in Media Post. Click here to view the article online.  

Targeted Victory was well represented and took home a total of 35 Pollie Awards. Check out the breakdown below and a few photos from the night. Congratulations to everyone on the team!

Gold (10)

• Online Advertising – President: Romney for President
• Online Advertising – Best Use of Search Engine Marketing: Romney for President
• Best Use of Pandora: Romney for President
• Website – President: Romney for President
• Landing Page – Presidential Primary: Romney for President
• Best Use of Twitter: Romney for President (Ann Romney)
• Best Use of Facebook Advertising: Romney for President
• Best Facebook Application: American Crossroads (Best Use of Voter Registration)
• Best Use of Website Fundraising: Romney for President
• Best Use of Mobile Application – Republican: Romney for President

Silver (16)

• Online Advertising – Best Use of Voter File-Matched Advertising: Romney for President
• Online Advertising – Best Use of Pre-Roll Advertising: Romney for President
• Website – Presidential Primary: Romney for President
• Website – President: Romney for President
• Landing Page – President: Romney for President
• Best Facebook Application: Romney for President
• Best Facebook Strategy: Romney for President
• Best Use of Social Media: Romney for President
• Best Social Media Strategy: Romney for President
• Best Use of Social Media Fundraising: Romney for President
• Best Use of Advertisement Fundraising: Romney for President
• Best Use of Email Fundraising: Romney for President
• Website – Best Use of Early Voting/Absentee Ballot: American Crossroads
• Best Use of Pre-Roll Advertising (Internet – Public Affairs & Issue Advocacy): American Crossroads/GPS
• Best Use of Voter File-Matched Advertising (Internet – Public Affairs & Issue Advocacy): American Crossroads/GPS
• Best Use of Voter Registration (Internet – Public Affairs & Issue Advocacy): American Crossroads/GPS

Bronze (9)

• Overall Campaign—Internet Campaign: Romney for President
• Best Use of New Technology: Romney for President
• Online Advertising – US Senate: Scott Brown for Senate
• Best Use of Twitter: Romney for President (Mitt Romney)
• Best Use of Twitter: Romney for President (Paul Ryan)
• Best Use of Facebook GOTV: Romney for President
• Best Use of Email: Romney for President
• Website – Best Use of Negative Contrast: American Crossroads
• Best Use of Voter Registration: American Crossroads

Elections may be zero sum games, but digital efforts are not. @MittRomney’s social strategy was at the forefront of Twitter innovation in 2012 – one that should serve as a blueprint for political and corporate campaigns in 2013 and beyond. Twitter recently released a case study on the Mitt Romney Campaign’s successful use of Twitter to drive dialogue, mobilize supporters, and shift voter attitudes throughout the race. The Campaign’s principle goal was to build an active and engaged online community. To achieve this goal they adopted an all-encompassing social plan, cross-promoting content on multiple social platforms. On Twitter, advertising, real-time response, and target audiences increased engagement rates and likelihood to vote for the candidate.  In another study,  SocialBakers chronicled how the Campaign was able to use additional platforms to accomplish these same goals. There were four main points of focus with @MittRomney’s Twitter strategy: seeding the conversation, real-time response, integration with additional platforms like TV, and targeting.

Read Twitter’s case study below or on Twitter Business.

In June of 2011, Mitt Romney (@MittRomney), the former Governor of Massachusetts, launched his second candidacy for the presidency of the United States. In August of the following year, Romney chose Paul Ryan (@PRyan), the U.S. Congressman for Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district, as his running mate and formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination at the 2012 Republican National Convention.

Their challenge

Romney for President, Inc. needed to mold public perception around the 2012 presidential race, expand the reach of his core campaign messages and respond quickly to detractors. Specifically, the @MittRomney team wanted to help form and fortify the opinions of influencers like news media, who are instrumental in shaping voter perceptions during elections. In a two-screen environment, the @MittRomney campaign also needed to enhance the viewing experience for Americans during critical televised moments of the race to steer the election dialogue as well as influence attitudes.

The @MittRomney campaign made a strategic decision to use Twitter to create a platform that would serve as the candidate’s online voice. It was important to share content on Twitter using a first person narrative with the @MittRomney account while setting up other Twitter accounts for additional messaging. Each Tweet was delivered as an extension of the candidate’s messaging on domestic and foreign policy, and the platform served as a digital soapbox. Twitter was also used as a means of communicating responses to the Obama campaign, major campaign slogans/calls to action, appeals for grassroots fundraising and volunteers.

Their solution

There were four main points of focus with @MittRomney’s Twitter strategy: seeding the conversation, real-time response, integration with additional platforms like TV and targeting.

Seeding the conversation

Hashtags are one of the most important and unique aspects of Twitter, providing a common forum for users to discuss a topic by including a hashtag in their Tweets. To spark conversations, drive the campaign’s messaging and increase reach, @MittRomney ran three Promoted Trends in 2012 using the hashtags #BelieveInAmerica, #RomneyRyan2012 and #CantAfford4More.

Each Promoted Trend was aligned with popular televised events – the Republican National Convention (RNC) and two presidential debates – and provided @MittRomney with the single best way to control the narrative of each campaign milestone.

Real-time response

To extend reach and build momentum, the campaign used Promoted Accounts across five Romney related Twitter accounts: @MittRomney, @PaulRyanVP, @AnnDRomney, @TeamRomney and @RomneyResponse. During key televised events, the campaign used Promoted Tweets in timelines and in search from @TeamRomney and @RomneyResponse for aggressive real-time responses to the Obama campaign that could not come from @MittRomney directly.

These Promoted Tweets shared quotes and key messages to help frame the Twitter conversation around the RNC and debates as well as drive influencers to learn more on rapid-response microsites (romneyresponse.tumblr.com and debates.mittromney.com). With Twitter Ads, @MittRomney was able to steer conversations in real time and keep momentum building well after the events were over.

During the second televised debate, a unique opportunity arose when President Barack Obama (@BarackObama) countered @MittRomney’s comment that the U.S. Navy is now smaller than anytime since the early 20th century by saying, “Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.”

Debate viewers quickly turned to Twitter to discuss the quippy TV exchange and within minutes ‘horses and bayonets’ began trending. The @MittRomney campaign acted quickly and white-listed the handle of influential allies like Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (@BobMcDonnell) to be able to promote Retweets of their responses. @MittRomney targeted Promoted Tweets in search to extend the reach of these pro-Romney Tweets and shape the dialogue in real time.

Twitter helped turn many similar critiques and negative attacks against @MittRomney into positives. When Democratic National Committee consultant Hilary Rosen said on CNN that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life, ” the Romney team again mobilized. Instead of issuing a press release, they launched the @AnnDRomney Twitter account, creating a platform to respond to the remarks in Mrs. Romney’s own voice and in an immediate way. Those Tweets were well received and helped shape public opinion about the candidate and his family.

Integration with additional platforms

To extend their reach, the @MittRomney campaign also tweeted in real time during the 60 Minutes interview with Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan. These Tweets were sent at the start of the interview, allowing the campaign to control the Twitter conversation from the beginning. @MittRomney used keyword optimization to target Promoted Tweets to conservatives, users interested in the election and 60 Minutes viewers.

Targeting

Targeting was the most important tool @MittRomney had on Twitter. While each targeting tool that Twitter offers was useful on its own, the best strategy for targeting was to combine multiple types in one campaign. Multiple keyword/hashtag groups were created to target specific audiences including conservatives, independents and debate watchers. @MittRomney also targeted Promoted Tweets by gender, device (desktop, mobile, etc.), geo (battleground states, etc.), interests (politics, women’s interests, etc.) and handles (journalists, news sources, etc.) to reach influential users and their followers.

On Election Day, the Romney campaign posted “dark Tweets” containing state specific content for each battleground state. These Tweets were then turned into ads using a three-fold targeting strategy. Lists of state specific media sources were uploaded to each Promoted Tweet, layered with conservative political interest targeting, and geo targeted to the appropriate states. This allowed @MittRomney to reach civically engaged voters on Twitter, an integral aspect of the overall “Get Out The Vote” efforts on Election Day.

“Twitter is the ultimate real-time engagement vehicle. It was invaluable when we wanted to frame out a specific narrative during an event or announcement. There was no better way to get our viewpoint out there. Plus, with Twitter Ads, we were able to target the right type of Tweet to the right user. The paid layer over the organic Tweets performed like lightning in a bottle and sparked a massive amount of conversation.”

Zac Moffatt Partner at Targeted Victory

Tip: Own the conversation in real time.

When Paul Ryan was announced as the Vice Presidential candidate, the @MittRomney campaign launched the @PaulRyanVP account and used Promoted Tweets in timelines and in search to build excitement as well as shape the narrative around the announcement. One of these Promoted Tweets generated a 21.9% engagement rate – more than seven times the average engagement rate on a Promoted Tweet.

Their results

With Twitter, the @MittRomney team increased engagement, site traffic and reach of the campaign’s overall real-time response efforts across the Internet. @MittRomney was able to generate massive conversation on the three Promoted Trend days: a total 303,900 Tweets were sent that used the Promoted Trend hashtags. The average engagement rates across all three trends was 15.45% – more than five times the average engagement rate for a Promoted Trend. Promoted Tweets saw engagement rates as high as 22% and averaged a 6% engagement rate.

A brand survey conducted by Nielsen showed that @MittRomney Twitter Ads increased likelihood to vote for @MittRomney by 20%. The survey ran during the October 16th presidential debate when the Romney campaign targeted a jobs & economy-related message to Twitter users in political target states like Ohio, Florida and Virginia.

Since January 1, 2012, Twitter followers for @MittRomney grew by more than 500% with one fifth of this new follower growth resulting from Promoted Account campaigns. There were also significant increases in new followers after each Promoted Trend: a total of 136,400 followers over the course of the three trend days. Overall, the @MittRomney campaign drove a total of 25.1 million paid media impressions and generated over 33 million earned media impressions through Retweets.

4 keys to success

1. Spark conversations.

The @MittRomney campaign used Twitter to monitor sentiment, gain insights into key election issues and create real-time responses that were timely and relevant. “The fragmentation of the media landscape has weakened the traditional path from advertising to attitude change – it is now a much more organic process,” says Zac Moffat, Partner at Targeted Victory. “Ads are ‘released into the wild’ in an attempt to start a conversation, first on Twitter, that then captures the attention of the press. The message then gets into mainstream media coverage and shows up later in the form of public opinion shift.”

2. Integrate with TV.

Eighty percent of television viewers use another device while watching TV. By integrating Tweets with what was happening on television, the @MittRomney campaign was able to reach constituents across devices and create a truly “two-screen” campaign. Promoted Tweets had strong call to actions to download mobile apps and visit campaign websites, which resulted in high engagement and increased traffic to that content.

3. Connect with relevant audiences.

@MittRomney used a combination of targeting options in individual Twitter Ad campaigns to deliver the right Tweets to the right audience at the right time and generate double-digit engagement. The @MittRomney team targeted Promoted Tweets by gender, device, geo, interests and handles to reach influential users and their followers.

4. Share rich media.

By embedding videos, TV ads, links and images in Tweets, the @MittRomney campaign was able to create strong engagement on Twitter and drive earned media via Retweets. Infographics are particularly engaging on Twitter and the Promoted Tweet below had an 18% engagement rate.

Persuasion moves online

Another obvious top trend is more underappreciated. While much of the news media have focused on the greater use of social media and other Big Data-dependent means to target messages-whether emailed or cookie-targeted-another change that mattered and took off in Election 2012 was format: the advent of far more Web video for many political messages

In 2004 and 2008, targeted online messages were used to rally the faithful and raise money. But with Web video-essentially TV, only far more targetable-more elaborate and effective creative could be transmitted, and with it the power to persuade uncommitted and “weak leaner” voters to back one candidate or the other. “A banner ad is really no way to persuade a voter-not like a 30- or 60-second [Web] video,” Michael Beach, CEO of GOP targeting firm Targeted Victory, says.

And there’s another major factor leading to persuasive efforts online, according to Beach. It’s the favored-or only-media habitat of more and more voters.

“We told our clients, look, what’s changed between 2008 and 2012 is that persuasion is moving online,” Beach says. “If we look at what’s driving persuasion online, we see that there’s now this huge segment of people that can only be reached online.”

The discovery was confirmed for Beach in 2011, when Targeted Victory, working with other firms, conducted a traditional, 800-person national survey to see how the electorate was “consuming media.” The survey found that fully one-third of the people likely to vote in 2012 had not watched live TV other than sports for the previous week. They called this the “off-the-grid” universe

Under such circumstances, “if you increase your number of ads on TV, you’re just increasing the number of messages that people see again and again.” So anyone who wants to win elections must also go online, Beach says, because it’s clear that an increasing number of people get their news and entertainment online, and only online.

Engagement: New Metrics

Another aspect of persuasion and video moving online is that the audience is engaging more often and for longer periods. And with Web analytics tools, targeters can finally get what they’ve always wanted-feedback about how much and how deeply their messages are being engaged.

“Once you get really data-driven, you are getting ongoing feedback from your ads,” Beach says. “In this campaign, we were getting feedback  on how  long people watch the ad, what actions they then engage  in, whether they share it with friends-or watch  a second video!”

“We love this because you can measure everything,” Beach says, “We run a lot of ‘push-me’ expandable ads. You run your cursor over one, then you click on it-and it doesn’t take you to a site, it brings the site experience to where you are, and we can measure the whole experience.”

He notes that the feedback data makes A/B testing of messages simple-and fast. “We test a couple of versions. Maybe Ad A has an average view time of 16 seconds, but Ad B’s is 8 seconds,” he says. “Let’s say we find that the main message-the impact-comes at the 1 1th second. So we know the average viewer of Ad B didn’t even get our thesis-and we can change it. That’s measuring engagement.”

“Think about how much more valuable that is than just jamming an ad in front of someone,” Beach notes. “You don’t know any of this stuff with direct mail, or TV. And everyone right now is grappling with this question, because we’ve never had this kind of information.”

…

(Good) Content Needed: The Medium Isn’t the Message

A fair number of media stories and some microtargeting insiders present a picture of a customized ad or email for nearly every person-or, if not, that there are thousands of customizations of each message. In fact, while today’s online messages can be far more narrowcast than those on network TV, the majority of them are tweaked for fairly large groups. One reason for that is simple: Creating apt messages-words and images that will move voters in a desired direction-is very difficult and labor­ intensive.

“One misleading thing to come out of the general  press coverage of microtargeting is when reports make it seem like every person online is getting a personalized message in an ad,” Kate Kaye, a senior reporter  for Advertising  Age who covered  the digital  political space from 2006 to 2012 for Click-Z. “That’s not the way it looks, really. We’re talking  about large audiences-these ads often aim at hundreds of thousands of people who  fit in a certain category, using various  technologies  to send a message that might incorporate whether this audience cares about  the environment and, say, lives in a certain state or region.

“Sure, the messages-the ads-are being targeted using technology, it’s not a person doing that,” Kaye continues. “But the actual ad creative-the display ad or video ad­ there actually has to be a person designing it. For the most part, somebody has to sit down and create the Obama for dog lovers ad, or whatever.”

“Everyone wants to focus on data, but we have more data than we know what to do with now,” Beach, of Targeted Victory, says. “There can be more data, and there can be more data integration, but what we need is to create a message that can hit those data points. That’s what these campaigns need to be rebuilt around.”

Beach adds that it was the same for the Obama team. “They had more than us-but they needed more actually to do the work,” Beach says. “They also think that they had more data than they did content, still. This is a group of people who were making 10 videos a day, on YouTube!”

Even if each message needn’t be customized to meet each family’s or individual’s tastes, data-driven  customizations  will be more plentiful, he predicts, and that will take more creative talent working harder  than ever. More messages, more quickly created and deployed, will be the name of the game in Election 2016. “You’ll need more. More creative people, more production people-more everything.” Beach says that an ad will be put out and tested and replaced overnight if the online feedback calls for it.

“It will be a totally different timeline, because, with the feedback loop, you’re no longer running an ad for two weeks, and going out with a poll to see if it works,” Beach says. “In 2016, if that ad’s no good, campaigns will stop it that very night-and put out ad number two. In 2012, neither side had the infrastructure to do that.”  He comments that each may have done a “one off” but neither could make it standard practice.

…

You could call it the “big data-ization” of digital media buying and banner ad trafficking, but it is much more than that, say officials at Lotame Solutions Inc., the 7-year-old provider of Crowd Control, a unified data management platform that collects, unifies and analyzes site-visit data to create and enable real-time personalization for individual visitors.

Users of Crowd Control are able to leverage the more complete picture of a site visitor’s context to serve ads that could lead to more actionable results.

…

Digital advertising agency Targeted Victory in Alexandria, Va., runs Crowd Control for clients that include the Republican National Committee and many other GOP-related candidates and organizations. Working from a database with information about all the registered voters in the U.S., Targeted Victory uses the data management platform to turn site visits into votes or other actions, such as donations and volunteering.

Michael Beach, who co-founded Targeted Victory four years ago, has found that beyond creating those actions, Crowd Control has the potential to change his business to deliver even more value to clients trying to reach particular individuals.

More data produces need for more content

“The data obviously is really extremely valuable in terms of just being able to narrow your targeting,” Beach said — and that, he added, is going to translate into increased demand for content or advertising that can be delivered. “So, if we had 10 people making ads in the creative process before, we are going to have 50 people,” he said. “All these organizations are going to be building up their creative capacity.”

…

This article is excerpted from TechTarget. Click here to view the full article. 

Targeted Victory is seeking experienced professionals and individuals who have an interest in crafting and executing digital strategies and who also have a passion for politics along with the appropriate experience. Listed below are the specific positions we are looking to fill and their requirements.

• Director, Data Science and Research
• Director, Client Strategy (Associations)
• Director, Client Strategy (Statewide Initiatives)
• Director, Email Marketing Operations
• Director, Online Fundraising
• Manager, Research
• Manager, Targeting
• Manager, Data Structure
• Manager, Ad Operations (Trafficking)
• Project Manager, Online Fundraising
• Project Manager, Advertising
• Analyst, Client Strategy (Statewide Initiatives)
• Analyst, Data Science and Research (Site Optimization)

We are also always looking for interns and offer a paid internship program.

By: Alexandra Bruell

We were at the Park Hyatt Hotel — a popular watering hole for what USA Today calls those “who like to be seen and not heard.” I’d been there just long enough to order a much-needed glass of pinot noir (after nonstop meetings and a sleepless 7:05 a.m. Amtrak that morning thanks to former Pennsylvania Governor-turned-media-commentator Ed Rendell’s loud phone conversation with a reporter) when my companion, a public-affairs contact, ran into a former campaign buddy, who proceeded to regale him with a story in which they referred to Madeleine Albright as “Mad.”

This is a typical day in D.C., where everyone knows everyone, and government fuels not only conversation but business. It’s a breeding ground for trade associations and PR and public-affairs networks. Perhaps what best defines the nation’s capital is the aggressive networking culture. As Trevor Francis, a senior VP and partner at Fleishman-Hillard puts it, “It’s the biggest small town in America.”

AGENCIES 

Most holding-company-owned agencies in D.C. are anchored by a PR shop. Fleishman-Hillard has a 400-person D.C. operation that also houses media and creative services. Other large players include WPP’s Ogilvy and Burson-Marsteller, Omnicom’s Porter Novelli and Ketchum, Interpublic’s Weber Shandwick, along with independents like Edelman and Levick and Widmeyer.

For the last full year available, 2011, the largest agencies actually headquartered in Washington, according to the Ad Age DataCenter, were down or flat. Those include independent APCO, which acquired ad shop Strawberry Frog last year; WPP’s Glover Park Group; and independent Qorvis. But that’s not to say agencies didn’t grow in 2012. Edelman touts D.C. revenues of $58.2 million and 8.1% growth.

While the large public-affairs shops are well-established and have muscle, there’s no shortage of small players, such as RP3, a newer entrant with 40 employees; SmithGifford; and White & Partners. D.C. is “a town that breeds startup public-affairs boutiques like rabbits,” according to Edelman regional president and global chair of public affairs Rob Rehg.

Large networks are increasingly competing with digitally savvy political ad firms like Bully Pulpit Interactive and Targeted Victory, as well as countless small and boutique public-affairs groups such as Harbour Group, BlueText, Goddard Gunster, QGA Public Affairs and Story Partners.

With heightened competition, there’s a silver lining. “We’re seeing more talented people showing up who, four to five years ago, we would never have seen,” said Pam Jenkins, president of Weber Shandwick’s Powell Tate. “D.C. is becoming a more creative town.”

…

This article is excerpted from Advertising Age. Click here to view the full article. 

“We tried to be very conscious that this team doesn’t have creative opinions, this team has data,” says Ryan Meerstein, a senior political analyst from Targeted Victory, the agency who ran testing and optimization for the Romney campaign. “It’s hard for the team to argue with a graph that proves what works and what doesn’t.”

The graphs were results from A/B tests – lines that showed how two different versions of a web page performed over time. Rather than have protracted discussions on the design that could work best, the team tested and gathered data to inform every design decision.

The team went for the low hanging fruit first: email sign-ups. They hypothesized how different combinations of graphics, headlines, forms and color impacted a visitor’s decision to sign up for email updates from the campaign.

From the start, the team considered increasing email sign-ups on mittromney.com a primary goal.

“Email is still the golden goose of fundraising when you’re making direct solicitations,” Meerstein says. “We’re seeing each email valued at anywhere between $7-8 in future revenue.”

Knowing how beneficial email was to raising money for the campaign, they tested heavily on the homepage and splash pages of mittromney.com always optimizing for email sign-ups. Optimizely was their testing platform of choice.

“There were some hesitations in our shop to use Optimizely because of past connections,” Meerstein says. “But we got past that and started to use the product and found it just far superior to any of the other ones we were using prior.”

Between May 2011 and November 2012, the Romney campaign’s 140-person digital team along with Targeted Victory ran hundreds of tests.

“Once we saw the ease of using Optimizely, the ideas started flying. We wanted to start testing just about everything,” Meerstein says. “We started on the splash page and when we saw success, we continued to build from there.”

Call-to-action button test 

The team started optimizing for  donations with a test on the main call-to-action in the right upper corner of the homepage. They wanted to see whether button color – blue, green, yellow or red – and word choice – “Contribute,” “Support”, or “Donate” – impacted the likelihood of a visitor to click.

Overall they found that color did not have a definitive impact, but the word “Contribute” did show a statistically significant improvement of 10%

Knowing that “Contribute” converted visitors to click more often than “Donate,” the team changed verbiage all over the site – and in all email messaging – to reflect the test results.

Home page carousel test

Still armed with the goal of maximizing email sign-ups, the team focused the next iteration of testing on the carousel images on the homepage. A carousel is a rotating slideshow of images that designers frequently use to showcase featured content. They tested using a carousel versus a static image offering visitors the chance to win a trip to the Republican National Convention with the headline, “Be There in Tampa.” The main metric they measured was the percentage of visitors who reached the email sign-up confirmation page.

They tested four variations:

1. The control – A full page moving carousel.

2. A half-height moving carousel.

3. A static image with an “enter to win” form.

4. A static image with a “learn more” button.

Adding the form to the homepage image increased the percentage of visitors who signed up by 632%.

In this case, visitors seldom reacted to the “Learn More” more button. They reacted extremely well to the immediacy of the sign-up form giving them the chance to win with filling out just two form fields.

State specific splash pages

Next, the team used geographic location as a pull to encourage visitors to sign up for email updates. The team wanted to gauge whether visitors signed up more with a message specific to their state or a generic one.

Simply by adding “Florida” to the call-to-action text, visitors who saw this page entered their email and zip code 19% more often.

The data clearly showed success in personalizing the message. With this test as testament, the team decided to make the splash page specific for each state. They used geotargeting in Optimizely to send visitors from each state to a page with a message specific to that state. So no two visitors to mittromney.com from different states saw the same message. Using Optimizely, the team delivered a unique one-to-one experience for every visitor to the site from September 2012 to election day.

Personalization proved to be a powerful tool for the Romney campaign. They saw greater signups on the splash page and more interaction with local events advertised on the site, especially as voting started.

They did personalized call to actions based on absentee states and early vote states. Visitors from Ohio saw messages directing them to early voting locations and the hours they were open.  Visitors from Colorado saw targeted messages for how to get an absentee ballot.

“The thing that was great about it was that we could go in there and set up the personalized experiences in 30 minutes,” Meerstein says. “In the final weeks of the campaign, there’s a huge difference between something being live on Tuesday morning and Thursday night.”

These tests demonstrate how critical time-to-test and time-to-results is when the stakes are incredibly high. Waiting for results or for bottlenecks incurred by the dynamics of teamwork is not an option for presidential campaign teams. In a matter of days, the team had conclusive results about which variations won. Without relying on the creative or engineering team, the analysts themselves used the tools within Optimizely to create huge gains in email sign-ups.

“You really can never test too much,” Meerstein says.

Originally posted at Optimizely.com

Socialbakers recently released a case study focusing on the Social Media efforts of the Romney for President campaign. In addition to looking at the overall social media strategy, the case study compares growth and engagement rates between the Romney Campaign and the Obama Campaign.

Key findings from the Socialbakers case study:

• “Romney attracted significantly more Fans than Obama from July to October. At the end of August Romney had more than 4 times more new Fans than Obama.”
• “Romney outperformed Obama from June through October in terms of the number of Fan interactions.”
• On Twitter, “Romney had significantly higher engagement rates throughout the campaign than Obama.” “This was a reflection of Romney For President’s belief that Twitter efforts should focus on increasing quality and engaged Followers instead of solely net growth.”

Most telling is the growth and engagement rates of the Mitt Romney Facebook page. Nearly 10 million fans were added between May and Election Day, which is nearly twice as many as the Obama page. During the final five months of the campaign, the Romney page consistently had higher engagement levels than the Obama page. On Twitter, the @MittRomney account consistently had higher engagement rates that the @BarackObama account, despite being significantly outnumbered in number of followers.

Socialbakers Study: 2012 Social Media Campaign of Mitt Romney

Moffatt outlined the objectives of the 2012 Republican National Convention digital experience:

1) Build new experiences on YouTube, allowing everyone to see every minute of the convention via live streaming
2) Bring in social conversations – from Google plus, Twitter or Facebook, aggregate them and spread the momentum of the convention across the country
3) Emphasize Google hangouts so people could come in and share their thoughts on digital, as well as all feelings around the campaign.

Further, the case study elaborated on the successes of the platform:

[T]he Republican followers are actually talking about their candidate and are overall more engaged; a true sign of social media success.

• 4 million + Tweets in 4 days
• 37% engagement rate on Facebook, with 5.5 million followers
• 5 million + YouTube viewers for the Convention video that existed on the site for only one week
• 32 minutes Average time spent on the DEC per viewer; Over 3 days, the Convention witnessed over 300,000 hours of live streaming

Read the full case study:
Thismoment Case Study: Republican National Campaign