• Time, Thursday, November 8, 2012 5:06 PM

The Obama campaign relied heavily on email to motivate supporters, most notably to make contributions. At the heart of the campaign's operation was a team of analysts, researchers, technologists and marketers who worked in a windowless room called "the Cave" in the campaign's Chicago headquarters. If the 2008 campaign's advantage was its network of databases of donors and supporters, the secret weapon in 2012 was even richer data aggregated into a single database, out of which the team in the Cave created targeted programs like the Quick Donate program which allowed 1-click repeat donations, and tested senders and subject lines that yielded 10x donation increases. 

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