How to Raise $1.8M in 3 Days
by Patrick Ruffini :: October 19th, 2007 1:26 amRepublicans need to understand what’s happening here:
This is the result of just three emails sent by the Obama campaign. It’s more than Mike Huckabee raised last quarter. It’s probably more than any Republican raised online last quarter with the exception of Ron Paul.
Think about that. One email. $650,000.
Imagine what their nominee will do to us with the entire weight of the online Democratic Party behind them. I’m thinking $1 to $2 million an email.
Each email is the equivalent two or three fundraising dinners. Each of which probably require hundreds of man hours to produce. That’s only for of one email, not the three that have been sent this week. One email that probably took someone an hour or two write, that took a few hours to get approved, that took another hour or two to be formatted and sent. (And “stripped down” email is even more efficient.)
All because they were able to build up a huge list in the hundreds of thousands using proven list-building techniques that, to some degree, can be duplicated by anyone.
At the end of Q2, the campaign claimed 235,000 BarackObama.com members. Given his astronomic traffic the first half of the year, the fact that they incredibly claimed more donors than online supporters, and growth since then, I have to think the mail universe they’re sending to is closer to 500,000.
So I’m going to guess their metrics for this campaign look like this:
500,000 emails sent
175,000 opened the message
40,000 clicked through
20% conversion rate
8,000 donors @ $80 per donation = $640,000
But as successful as Barack has been online, not all their campaigns have been this successful. Their end of quarter campaign, for instance.
Comparing this blog post with their fundraising graphic, Obama picked up 9,439 contributions in the last three days of the quarter, having sent an email each of those days. Assuming $80 a contribution (the going rate for Democratic online contributions, at least according to John Edwards’s ActBlue page), that’s just shy of $750,000. Or $250,000 an email.
How did they more than double their fundraising performance per email?
First, the message of this campaign is a lot stronger. It opened up on Tuesday with an email from BO himself called “Hillary’s money.” They’re going negative on Hillary. That’s attention grabbing.
Second, the goal is audacious but ultimately realistic. $2.1 million sounds like a lot. Unless you know you can count on at least $500,000 an email and show measurable progress towards the goal through a live counter. In 2004, Joe Trippi talked about the $100 Revolution — 2 million people giving 100 bucks to match President Bush. That probably struck a lot of folks as pie-in-the-sky. $2.1 million is doable. Set big goals you can realistically achieve with a short but powerful burst of activity.
Third, the message of the end-of-quarter campaign was so weak by comparison. It was basically: we’re 34/35ths of the way there — help put us over the top. That’s not inspiring. That tells people they’re not needed because they’re so close anyway, they’re just a statistic and someone else will fill the gap. Even though 10,000 new donors is a lot. They would have been better off resetting the counter to zero.
How much does the stripped down format help? Probably only at the margins. It probably means your message gets read more, but arguably the point is not to get people to read. It’s to get people to click. The first time they tried stripped-down email was in the end of quarter campaign and it probably didn’t help much. Message matters more.
This is all part of a pattern of experimentation that is vital in every campaign. The Obama team probably saw they weren’t getting the results they were used to getting in previous quarter-ending efforts, so they tried something different, using real dollars and starting the counter at zero.
Ron Paul’s campaign in the second quarter was everything its supporters so fervently claimed: distributed and supporter-driven. They raised $2.4 million. In the third quarter, they used technique to boost that return dramatically, putting a live fundraising counter on their homepage. That raised $5.1 million. Technique and gathering momentum doubled the return. And now, in the ultimate test of whether radical transparency and audacious goals can transform fundraising, they’re looking to leapfrog the frontrunners with a $12 million goal.
The lesson here is get in the game. Always try new stuff. Do bold audacious things to first build your list and then monetize it. Try everything at least once, but don’t get distracted by the shiny new Web 2.0 toys. Socnets still can’t raise what email can. And realize that the Web is more than just a medium for getting your message across. It’s a medium for moving people and money.
Tagged: barack obama 
fundraising online politics ron paul
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Oh my God!
Paris - The U.S. election process is heating up, and the mud is spreading! Hillary Rodham Clinton, the leading Democratic candidate for U.S. President, is being sued in the state of California in what may be the largest election fraud in U.S. history. All news of this case has been effectively censored in the U.S. mainstream media.
Hillary may have violated the law by not reporting large contributions to her successful 2000 campaign for the New York Senate. Mr. Peter F. Paul claims that his contributions were omitted from the public reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, and Hillary denies all knowledge of these contributions. See the latest ruling in Paul vs. Clinton.
Hillary even denies knowing Mr. Paul, who made the contributions to her 2000 Senate campaign. A video produced by the Equal Justice Foundation of America has been viewed more than 650,000 times. A case such as this would normally end any politician’s career in the United States, but, just like cream, corruption always rises to the top.
How can she deny knowing him when he turned on a video camera he had in his office, while others were present, and she thanked him for organizing this fundraiser and working so hard on it. She stated that her assistant had filled her in on everything and she would be checking back with him later.
DAMN! DRAMA ALREADY,PLEASE AMERICA NO MORE CLINTONS! OH AND GOOD JOB OBAMA CAMP!
In spite of MSM ignoring Barack and naming Bilary whenever possible, people are tuning in. It is absolutely disgusting how much MSM is influencing this election. Bilary already has name recognition and they will say things like “Bilary and the other candidates” we must stand up to them and call them out for their biased reporting. (I do and we need to flood them with our emails.)
They waste ink on those drunken drivers in Hollywood but do not give the American voters important news for this election. Other countries have better news outlets and to put it mildly the fact that we are not demanding better coverage, puts the shame on us.
Obama is the absolute best candidate for president because of his integrity–no federal lobbyist or PAC money, judgment–he opposed the war at a time when it was unpopular to do so, he has courage—he tells groups the truth…auto workers to make efficient cars…single fathers to be involved in their children’s lives and to not procreate irresponsibly…teachers to accept merit pay… that is leadership…
He is willing to make real changes in Washington… therefore our country and those who are entrenched in the “politics as usual” want Bilary so she can be defeated and I’m not certain which Republican is their annointed one.
See you all at 1600…
Imani
Obama ‘08
Obama is raising money from small donors who understand that contributions from PACs and Federal Lobbyist may lead to undue influence on policy decisions. Until we get mandatory public financing for federal elections, voters have to donate to the candidate that best represents their concerns. For the past 20 years, our policies have favored large contributors to campaigns. The Bush administration put incompetent large contributors into leadership positions at agencies like FEMA, FDA and DOJ.
Because he doe not accept this kind of money, Senator Obama will be able to select very competent, smart, independent
cabinet members from all political viewpoints. This will produce government that works for the people rather than for the interest of the Democratic Party leadership or special interests.
This story gets some things right, but it misses the underlying reason why Barack Obama’s fundraising defies conventional rules.
The lesson here is BACK BARACK OBAMA because if it wasn’t for “THE CANDIDATE” this kind of backing would not have been and still be a reality!
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