Hail to the Chief

I have a geek-like obsession with the workings of American politics. And this unhealthy obsession has left me with a great love of ‘West Wing’. I even thought ‘Lincoln’ was a great use of my time!

About a year ago I came across a profile for a man called Harper Reed.  This is someone you will probably never have heard of; a man prone to oddball pronouncements like ‘this morning is a red fang type of morning; and a man who was critically Barack Obama’s CTO or chief data scientist.

And it was because of this guy and the teams he led that Barack Obama is still America’s Commander-in-Chief.

For the past 12 months I have been following with rapt attention the work of Mr Harper and anyone wanting to develop a world class insight led marketing programmes can learn much from his work to re-elect Obama.

This man and his team raised more money from more people than anyone had ever done before, signed up more volunteers than previously and far more than his enemy, and registered more people to vote. Not too shabby then!

Most importantly they got their man elected again with 51% market share compared to his enemy’s share of 48%, no mean feat in a struggling economy and with the jobless rate touching 8%.

There isn’t enough space here to do justice to this work so for the moment I have picked out what I believe to be the three key lessons that us mere marketing mortals might learn.

Lesson #1 CRM is a strategic differentiator

Obama saw his CRM programme as a real strategic differentiator and as a result derived huge benefit at so many levels from his programme, something organisations like Tesco in the UK have done. Too often businesses use data and their so called CRM programme as tactic to drive e-mail distribution rather than placing it at the heart of their business strategy. 40% of Obama’s headquarters staff comprised data and technology geeks drawn from the data and analytical elite of Silicon Valley, academia and Fortune 500 businesses; digital and analytics sat alongside the political staffers at the top table; and analytics in particular grew 5 times over 2008 and was used to improve aspect of the campaign. How many businesses use their customer data analysed to within an inch of its life to improve and optimise their business from top to bottom?

Lesson #2 Follow the data

You won’t get anywhere without data and Obama went to great lengths to capture through his supporters’ customer journey as much data as he could lay his hands on. Data is the fuel for intelligent marketing programmes and you can never have too much. Obama gathered 4 levels of data:

·         Volunteered: data provided by his supporters

·         Borrowed: data fused from other sources like voting data; shopping patterns; etc

·         Derived: driven by observed behaviours like response to e-mails and website interest

·         Social: by linking to individuals social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn Obama    was not only able to improve the profiles of his database but also obtained access to his supporter’s networks.

This was data capture and management on an industrial scale feeding a voracious Single Customer View enabling a joined up understanding of and communication with supporters and prospects.

Lesson #3 Torture the data

Data never gives up its secrets willingly; it must be tortured to do so.

Obama may have stopped the torture of terrorist suspects but this does not extend to data which was tortured ruthlessly for insight and understanding. Few other CRM programmes have the same level of ruthlessness and ambition.

He developed predictive and propensity models that were run in real time and updated overnight; every interaction was personalised, and this just wasn’t about using the respondents name but about the content and from whom it was sent; and 18 e-mail variations were tested with just about every variable probed and dissected to optimise response including day of week, time of day, subject line, content, author and so much more besides. Impressive stuff.

It is not suggested that everyone out there managing a CRM programme has the ability or the resources to do ‘an Obama’ but we could at least learn from him and ponder what we can apply. 

A recent IBM report suggested that 40% of senior marketers saw Big Data as their ‘next biggest challenge’ but only 71% felt ready to deal with it.

For marketers genuinely wanting to turn information into intelligent insight, Barack Obama and his team are a great source of ideas and inspiration. Hopefully it won’t make you prone to oddball pronouncements but maybe they will be singing ‘Hail to the Chief’ to you’.