Politics aside, the recent U.S. Presidential election was historic on many fronts. While “change” was a major theme with various candidates throughout the entire election process, one big change was how the candidates chose to communicate with voters. Sure - there were the expected town hall meetings, speeches, interviews and debates. All par for the course. But Obama’s campaign did something others didn’t do much of, if at all. They plugged into the social network of American voters and invited them to join the ride.

Voter turnout in this election was the highest it’s been in nearly 40 years and Obama’s campaign engaged an unprecedented number of voters through new channels including websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter (165k followers and a reach of 8.3M at last check) and mobile (2+ million voters).  Just like most new technology, it can be challenging to sift through all of the hype to see what’s valuable and what’s just a fad. Twitter wasn’t very interesting when people were just using it to share what they were eating for lunch but becomes much more interesting when used engage an audience interested in a topic, cause, company, etc. In a similar fashion, mobile marketing is evolving in the U.S. (hint: we’re still catching up to other countries).

While it wasn’t perfect, Obama’s campaign set a benchmark for mobile marketing (and mobile recruiting) which included:

Text Messaging: texting (or “SMS” - short messaging service) was a core component for  the campaign. They acquired their own short code (a 5 to 6 digit number used for text messaging) early on and used it effectively throughout. Some highlights:

• The shortcode (62262) also spells OBAMA on a traditional keypad. This may seem subtle, but there are far more mobile users who don’t have smartphones than there are with smartphones. This shortcode is memorable and easy to translate when punching it in on a traditional mobile phone.
• They used SMS/text as an anchor point for raising awareness and engaging voters on their mobile devices. It was promoted during speeches, town hall meetings and whenever the opportunity presented itself. The advantage of mobile vs. traditional channels is the “time and place relevancy” that you can’t get with other channels. People standing in the crowd at an event/speech are easily able to send a text message to join a cause or get more information. An invitation to text “GO” to “62262″ ignited the mobile campaign.
• Call-to-action: most of the SMS/text messages included various calls-to-action including links to the mobile site.

Multichannel approach: the campaign leveraged their online presence to promote the mobile offerings, including several ways to join:

• From the website: pretty straight forward and convenient for those who happened to be on the website. Nice tie-in with mobile and a way to stay engaged while not in front of a computer.
• Mobile site: most mobile phones with web access are limited to a bare bones browser which doesn’t do well with the majority of websites out there. Mobile sites are optimized for these browsers including page layout, reduced image sizes and navigation that is conducive for the small screen. These sites are also referred to as “WAP” (wireless application protocol) or “mobi” sites.
• iPhone application: for those with an iPhone, the campaign developed an application tailored for the iPhone. Not only did it provide a pretty slick experience, it tapped into the buzz within the iPhone community as several new applications surfaced for the first time.

Mobile Marketing - Lessons Learned

Beyond the technology of mobile marketing, a big reason for the success of the mobile marketing campaign had to do with the programmatic approach the campaign used. In large part, it seems to have started as one big experiment with no precedence or pre-existing ROI studies to justify it.

IMHO, here are a couple of reasons it was successful:

• Committed Mobile Program: the campaign committed to mobile and thoughtfully put together a program that enabled its success. They didn’t wait for someone else to try it or fall into analysis paralysis to see if they could guarantee an ROI. They knew there were 250 million mobile subscribers in the US, with a majority of age to vote. They didn’t throw out a half-hearted attempt at mobile marketing that was doomed to fail - they stepped up with a plan to get the word out about it, attract voters and keep them engaged.
• Compelling calls-to-action: making the same information available on a mobile device that’s available on a website is mildly interesting. But the Obama Campaign did an incredible job of offering compelling calls-to-action. Time and place relevancy - that’s what makes mobile marketing unique and so different from other channels. Getting potential voters to “join the cause” from their mobile phone while listening to a speech in person captures that moment where an individual wants to take action. Without that immediate call-to-action, how many people would leave the speech intending to join online at some later time but never get around to it? Other calls-to-action included the ability to hear a recorded voice message from Obama as well as mobile downloads including ringtones, videos, whitepapers and wallpapers.
• Viral marketing & recruiting: from every touchpoint, including the mobile site, the Obama campaign fully leveraged word-of-mouth and made it simple for anyone to spread the word. Whether it was forwarding an SMS/text message, sending an email referral to friends or tapping into social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, MySpace, etc.) - the campaign made it extremely easy to spread the word.
• Sense of Urgency: people like to be “the first to know” and the campaign did a great job using milestones in the election process to leverage the value of the mobile channel. Being the first to know the VP pick was a huge success with over 2.9 million voters raising their hands to get a text message with the announcement as soon as it was available. Another text message was sent to registered voters reminding them to vote the week before the nation marched to the polls. Another message went out during President Bush’s farewell address calling for those registered to “renew America w/service projects around the Inauguration” which was interesting timing, but more importantly a continued dialogue with the audience (beyond the goal of getting their vote during the election).

It wasn’t all smooth sailing - there were timing and delivery problems with some of the text messages including the VP Pick text message that didn’t make it out to voters until the middle of the night and after major media outlets started reporting on it. However, the Obama mobile campaign made history and has helped pave the way for others to leverage mobile as an effective marketing channel. It wasn’t conducted on a shoestring budget - much of the technology required customized solutions or a patchwork of different vendor technologies. We’re beginning to see how mobile marketing programs can be successful - and the technology is evolving quickly to make these capabilities available as a cost-effective solution for engaging an audience.

Filed under: SMS, WAP, call-to-action, campaign, mobile marketing, mobile site, text messaging, texting