eROI Days Email Agency » Barack Obama

Obama’s Rahaf Harfoush Rocks Keynote Speech at Innotech

Ryan Buchanan — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:34:33 +0000

The unsung hero behind an amazing integrated, grassroots campaign of traditional marketing, in-person events, and social media (well, she was mainly the social media part) gave a great keynote speech at the eMarketing Summit of Innotech today. Rahaf Harfoush was great. I show my twitter stream below of notes from the event, but also noticed she just launched a new site and blog – http://www.rahafharfoush.com/

Here is my twitter stream from Rahaf Harfoush’s awesome keynote speech at Innotech:

Very progressive. We can’t go backwards now to restrict all info to public.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Impossible to replicate. It was the perfect storm.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Grant park had 1 million deliriously happy people. Thx for great presentation @rahafharfoush about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Weekend before election – 1 million doors knocked on in pennsylvaniaabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Oh: this pumpkin was on messageabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Empower grassroots neighborhood movement. Mybo find an event near you. Yale grads did community service with obama gear – live obama brandabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Americans really cared – personalized the mission. People owned their part in obama’s successabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Rewarding the right behavior – activity index ranked the value of blog posts, hosting events – took into account taking action nowabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

#inpdx – kudos to raven and @grigs for kicking ass on the obama iphone app. Super cool.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Is @kentjlewis the only other person in room of 250 at innotech twittering now?about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Converting low end users – main way was thru email marketing. 1 billion emails sent by obama. Hyper-segmented based on location, donationsabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Advice on engagement – focus on quality of commenters, fb friends, twitter followersabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Random thought. Obama logo about promise and positivity. Mccain logo evokes military imagery.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Obama had 5x to 10x metrics over mccain on facebook, myspace, youtube, and twitter. 1 billion minutes obama video watched.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

2 million profiles created, 400k blog posts, 200k offline events all thru mybo community siteabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

New media had to be integrated into every traditional marketing and pr communication peiceabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Simple mesage. Hope. Change. Action. People resonated with that.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

In sept ’08, obama raised 150 million, 2/3 online. Largest month in political history.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Lastly, focused on small donations. Most donors had never given to any candidate before. Obama raised $750 million. Wow!about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Obama online very innovative from the beginning. 50 state strategy. Target the disaffected center. Focused on message of obama as unifierabout 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Watching rahaf harfoush speak #innotech about obama’s social media strategy #inpdx. Very engaging. Great topic.about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry

Stop asking for money, just once

Ryan Buchanan — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:41:42 +0000

Email is a direct marketing medium, and I appreciate this directness. I advise clients to be direct with a clear call to action. But everyday and sometimes 3 times a day can be too much. Yes, I am talking about an email program that I have praised and defended – Barack Obama’s email marketing program. McCain doesn’t know how to use email, and last week, Barack was using email far too much.

The following email was the twelth I received for the week yesterday and I just want to tell the Obama posse (Barack, Michelle, Joe, and the local Barack campaign manager) to stop asking me for money in at least one of these uber-frequent emails. A recent email example with subject line “Deadline: Tomorrow”:

Ryan –Over the last week this race has been transformed.Barack named Joe Biden as his running mate, and they accepted the Democratic nomination at our historic open convention in Denver.Our team is complete, and our movement is growing rapidly. But now we are facing our first major challenge together.

The August financial reporting deadline is tomorrow at midnight, and we have an opportunity to show that a campaign funded by ordinary people can go toe-to-toe with the Washington lobbyists and special interests lined up behind John McCain and the Republican Party.

Make a donation of $50 or more before midnight tomorrow, and you’ll receive a first edition Obama-Biden supporter kit.

Or you can make a donation of $30 or more and receive an Obama-Biden T-shirt:

https://donate.barackobama.com/08shirt

Thanks,

Obama for America

P.S. — The deadline is midnight Sunday, August 31st. Make your online donation now:

https://donate.barackobama.com/08collection

Barack Obama Email Marketing Inspires, except One Glitch

Ryan Buchanan — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:33:41 +0000

Barack’s email campaign has hooked me during this election season. His emails have been relevant, ultra-local (great list segmentation here), and the content is inspiring. I give it a 10 out of 10.

However, one of my colleagues, brought up a good point. Here is what she had to say:

Hi Ryan,
Just my latest email marketing peeve. I was a John Edwards supporter. When Edwards endorsed Obama, I got an email urging me to register at Obama’s site. There was a specific link (www.barackobama.com/johnedwards). I signed up because I do want to support Obama now, and I also want the Obama campaign to be able to gauge how much support comes via Edwards.

Below is the first email I got after signing up. As if I’ve been a supporter all along. It seems like a missed opportunity to send me something relevant, ie. thanks for signing up, we really respect Senator Edwards and like him, we support issue X, Y and Z.

It would have been so easy. Sigh.

Cheers,
Jean

Begin forwarded message:

From: Barack Obama
Date: May 21, 2008 4:45:21 PM PDT
To: Jean
Subject: Thank you
Reply-To: info@barackobama.com

Dear Jean,

You did it.

Not just yesterday, but every day for more than a year, you did what the cynics said we couldn’t do.

You said the time has come to get beyond the same old tactics that divide and distract us, and you gave people a reason to believe again.

Because of your work, we won the Oregon primary by a large margin — and made it clear that at this moment, in this election, there is something happening in America.

There is something happening when Americans who have never participated in politics get involved and knock on doors, make phone calls, and talk to each other about their vision for our country.

There is something happening when people vote not just for the party they belong to but for the hopes they hold in common.

Change is what’s happening in America.

The momentum you created won’t stop now. Together we’re building a campaign that will compete in the general election — and a united Democratic Party that can lead this country for the next generation.

You can keep it going by taking a trip to Montana for the last primary in the country. Supporters like you are needed to help get voters out to the polls for their June 3rd primary.

http://my.barackobama.com/cometoMT

We’re within reach of the nomination, and we are ready to take this country in a new direction.

Thank you for everything you’ve done to make this possible.

Barack

Barack Logobama – A Great, Simple Viral Site

Ryan Buchanan — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:29:50 +0000

www.LogoBama.com:

My friends over at a relatively new Portland, interactive agency, Substance, launched this site a few weeks ago. I asked founder Stephen Landau about his inspiration to do the site. He responded, “We figured if we’ve been talking about beliefs and change for the last 15 months, we should support the candidate who says the same stuff. Plus, it was a fun little project to work on. Not sure why we set the donation goal so high ($5,000) but then again, what’s the point in shooting for a small, attainable goal when you can aim for a bigger, more audacious goal.”

I especially like the way the logo you create can map into Flickr automatically and can be ported at any size into Flickr and a dozen other social networking sites. Nice work.

Here’s my quick, uncreative creation using the site: