What Can We Learn from this Election?

So what did we learn from this past presidential election? And no, this is not an article about whose politics best suit the needs of our country. This article about how Team Obama got their candidate reelected when everything should have pointed to a Romney victory.

Although both candidates spent hundreds of millions of dollars on “traditional” types of media, it was the Obama campaign that really took its marketing to a new level…all based on using the database of voters they had complied during the 2008 election. Team Obama realized the most efficient way to “get the vote out” was to analyze those people who voted for them in 2008, model their behaviors and contact them through a variety of cost effective mediums and constantly measure the results. Just take a look at this quote from an Obama senior adviser:

"We could [predict] people who were going to give online. We could model people who were going to give through mail. We could model volunteers, in the end, modeling became something way bigger for us in '12 than in '08 because it made our time more efficient."

It not only made them more efficient, it worked!!! The results speak for themselves. The Obama team knew they were sitting on a gold mine of intelligence and opportunities if they used it correctly. Early on in the campaign they used their data for fund raising (over $1 Billion raised) and then repurposed the data to turn out votes.

Can you begin to see the parallels of using your data to drive more sales, service and retain more of your customers? I can hear many of you saying, “I have been mining my own database for years”, but have you really? Simply cleansing or de-duplicating your data to produce the occasional “Lost Souls” or “In-Market” direct mail or email campaign might drive a few sales every few months, but that’s not what we are talking about here. This conversation is centered on whether or not you have a strategy that connects the most relevant message with the most relevant customer.

Breaking down and analyzing your data on a daily basis can be the most cost-efficient and effective means to drive more business to your dealership. Certainly it takes time and effort to routinely connect with your customers. Utilizing data-driven decision making services and tools can produce overwhelming results for your dealership. If you need any more proof, look no further than what great data mining and analysis did this past election!

James Green is the vice president of sales for Visible Customer, an MADA Services Company. For more information, contact James at 612-254-2047 or www.visiblecustomer.com.