July 2004 Archive

Parties Are Waging Battle of the Databases (washingtonpost.com)

Funny thing about this article - is that the power of databases were understood by the RNC, but in the Dems world - it took a lot longer and a lot more time. The money wasn’t there - the software was all open-source - and now the data is beginning to flow. Fortunately, DataMart is quite large - and cumbersome. There are other tools that help in modeling - and the data within DataMart is impressive. But what will be interesting is how DataMart will be exposed to the state parties - and how they will allow others to access it - with the security and other issues that come into play.

So - is anyone surprised at John Edwards being selected as the VP candidate? After so much speculation and discussion - it is almost funny that Senator Edwards was thought of not being the primary candidate. If I was going to tell you my belief when the moment was that he was destined to be the VP was in the sit-down debate with Larry King - as the two of them were discussing the issues - and you could see the “easy” rapport they had. In the Internet Team, I remember someone saying “There he goes - applying for the VP position”.

He brings all the things he says he does - and interjects the campaign with momentum as well. And, whether or not he is a trial lawyer or was against NAFTA - truthfully, he is campaigning - he is terrific campaigner - and, from people I work with that worked with him, he is a good person. And for that, I support him wholeheartedly.

Why are people so surprised about JohnKerry.com asking for emails to receive the VP announcement. This is the first Presidential campaign that finally got the power of the Internet when it comes to fundraising and money generation.

Twelve months ago, the Kerry Campaign had an email list of under 180,000 email addresses that could barely get a boost from any announcement - even the launch of the website in early September only
generated 7,000 new email addresses.

Today, a petition to fire Rumsfeld acquired 250,000 emails into the campaign’s coffiers - and in two days, the campaign generated on the order of $5M into their coffiers. What is not clearly comprehended by much of the people in politics today is that emails are golden - they are the low-cost, high-tech alternative to direct mail. And in this world, the owner of emails that generate the return - gets the gold. In the dot.com era, we use to talk about the long-term value (LTV) of a customer. In this era, LTV is determined by the news cycle - and email and the ability to respond and communicate to a group of supporters - whether they are strongly tied to you or not - is the power the Kerry Campaign now has. And since the campaign is NOT the DNC and is not governed by all of the strictures that the DNC is governed by, it has been able to push the limits - the bounds - of what could happen. What Kerry has tapped into is similar to the subscriber model - once you give once, it is so much easier to give again - especially if you have only given something like $10, $20 or $50. Now, with McCain-Finegold, democratic politics and the connection that people have to the candidate is even stronger.

Why do I think Kerry will win? Simply, he has generated the most people who have “supported” him throughout the campaign. In this campaign, over a 250,000 people will have donated to the campaign online - and, when the numbers come out, over to 1M emails will have been captured.

The question will be - how will the DNC and the campaign use this list of names and performance to get out the vote.