Its important for politicians use all of the media resources available to help them whilst campaigning, a solid multi channel marketing campaign can effect the politician’s ability to win or lose campaigns. The previous couple of elections have seen an  increasing variety of communication platforms empowering politicians, helping them build support, finance their campaign and increase their exposure. In the recent presidential elections, multi channel campaigns were clearly evident.

Social media 

The Obama camp understood the campaign advantages from social media during the Presidential elections in 2008. The Obama team raised half a billion dollars from 3 million online donations through social networks Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube. This year again Obama used social media to his political advantage getting over 31,000 Facebook ‘likes’ and using various Tweets to build up support. Romney failed to have such an affect on social networks getting only 10,000 + ‘likes’ and Tweets backfiring.  Post election polls have indicated that had Romney achieved half the youth votes in the swing states he would have won the election. 

Email Marketing

The Obama camp generated a more effective email campaign; their emails  were creative, the message was clear and the public found it interactive. Conservative Romney did his email campaign no justice, his team remained with the same boring email throughout, it was text heavy with no creativity meaning the audience didn’t want to interact with the emails. With over 40 million email contacts in Obama’s list his emails had a far greater impact than Romney who only had 4 million email contacts.

Direct Marketing 

Direct marketing from both candidates was well thought though and impactful. Obama and Romney included similar inspirational messages from senators, first ladies, sons, daughters and campaign chairman. Media analysts and campaign managers have noted that, while direct mail is generally more effective in convincing voters than television ads, the mailings also worked well when integrated into all of their campaign activity.