Howard Dean may have missed his shot at the White House. But his campaign will be studied by fundraisers for a long time to come.
For one thing, the campaign raised $18 million online in nine months. For another, it drew 430,000 daily visits per day to its Web site for an average stay of 12 minutes, according to Vinay Bhagat, chairman of Convio Inc., the Austin, TX-based service provider employed by the Dean organization. .
The Dean campaign also did plenty of direct mail, but it was the online effort and “meet-ups” that made it unique, Bhagat said, speaking at the Direct Marketing Association’s Nonprofit Conference in Washington, DC. .
Dean’s people viewed the Internet as a strategic marketing tool right from the start, Bhagat continued. By December, that meant a program of daily Web site updates and daily e-mails. .
That was no small thing, for the e-mail file had grown from 50,000 to 630,000 addresses during the same nine months. .
Where did they get the names?
“There was no acquisition of lists,” answered David Salie, former director of house party fundraising for the campaign. “They came from online registrations and events.” Roughly 100,000 came from meet-ups or other forums.
Moreover, all of these supporters had opted in for regular e-mail updates, Bhagat said. And they proved that they couldn’t be contacted too often, for the campaign achieved a sustained open rate of 38% with its e-mails.
Those messages featured a personal writing style and were often segmented by state or affinity group. The Dean people also tried blogs, viral marketing and micro campaigns.
What is going to happen to the e-mail names now? Salie answered that this would become apparent as the Dean campaign enters its “next incarnation.”
But none of this came easy. “The pace is frenetic,” Bhagat said. “We’d get requests at 2 a.m. or 3 a.m., and up in Vermont they’d work all weekend.”
The key to online success, though, is that “you have to invest right level of resources, and put in a fair number of people,” Bhagat continued. “There was executive level commitment by (former chairman) Joe Trippi.”
Another secret is that Dean’s people were “not shy about making the ‘ask,'” Bhagat said. “They made it often and through multiple channels.”
The populist thrust of the Dean campaign also made it a natural for house parties
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