Data, targeting, profiling, the new wizardry of digital campaigning – all captured media attention in the campaign of 2014 – but did they capture votes in the end? We start our Marketing Politics 2015 conference by assessing where the money really flowed in and around digital channels in the last cycle. Did we see budgets significantly reapportioned, from TV, radio, canvasing, print? Where and how did digital prove its ROI? ...  as data supporting other media? as digital advertising? in social initiatives? What did the last cycle teach us about smart investment in digital througout the inevitable course corrections in a political campaign?

Matching voter rolls with online behaviors (even credit scores) has become de rigueur. Everyone is harvesting and appending as many data points as possible. But that alone is not a winning strategy. The secret is how and where you use that data and towards what goals. With limited resources and even less time, campaigns need to decide quickly which data are most important, which models will render the most bang for the buck ... whether in ranking segments, modeling voter patterns, targeting TV buys, directing email, canvasing or social campaigns. We ask data warriors how they are creating campaign disciplines to shape how, when and where to use the massive databases being built for 2016 and beyond. 

Google, Facebook, Pandora and Twitter have been the main beneficiaries of digital campaigning in recent cycles. But what have we learned about how voters actually use these major channels of information and sharing and what impact they have on political decision-making. We ask the top platforms to share recent learnings as well as differentiate their value proposition for campaign 2016. 

As the targeting technologies become ever more precise, political campaigns are running into the same challenge as consumer marketers: audiences that can be more finely segmented than the message. Without content that speaks directly to the values and concerns of a given voter, all that tech and targeting is squandered. Digital targeting finds voters. Are the campaigns really connecting with and engaging them? Targeted content is costly and time consuming. What does it take to make the messaging catch up to the technology? What have we learned from recent campaigns about the ROI on more customized content, how it can be made easier and cheaper?     

Despite massive databases, sophisticated social media programs and spikes in digital spending, voter turnout continues to scrape historic lows. Is digital marketing really helping at all to close the “customer journey” in politics and get the political information consumer to “convert” and actually vote? As 2016 shapes up to be another ground game battle, we focus on the critical marketing goal – turnout – and what digital channels and tactics really may work next time. 

Every consumer marketer’s big challenge is connecting with Millennial consumers who eschew TV, dislike standard pitches about as much as they hold the institutions pitching them suspect, and assemble their information is such a fragmented, multi-channel fashion no one can keep up. The first generation of digital native voters would seem to be the low hanging fruit for data-driven, digital campaigning. But is it? The next generation of voters may be the biggest test of just how impactful digital can (and must) be. What is the Millennial engagement plan for 2016 and beyond?