Much has been made of the various presidential candidates mobile strategies, as well as the introduction of Square as a fund raising tool. Both the Obama and Romney campaigns are using it, the New York Times reports. Search is being intensely tracked. Experian Hitwise data shows that the Mitt Romney site received the majority of visits from Florida for the four weeks ending January 28, 2012. This is in contrast to the US overall, as Newt Gingrich’s site received the most visits last week.
Little attention has been paid to that most basic of digital marketing strategies: email. LorenMcDonald at Silverpop explores some of the trends he is noticing among the candidates thus far.
- All the candidates collect email addresses on their home pages.
- Four of the seven candidates asked for zip codes along with email addresses at opt-in, but only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul required it to process the subscription.
- Two of the candidates—Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann—offered social sign-in via Facebook.
- Two of the seven candidates used a double opt-in process when collecting email addresses—a considerably higher ratio than marketers in general.
- Only Michele Bachmann sent a welcome message after the opt-in. Bachmann was also the only candidate who launched a preference center at opt-in. This led subscribers into an expansive form, collecting detailed contact and interest information.
