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The No. 1 goal was to get buy-in from supporters, even if that just began with attending an event or volunteering.
"Build a level of enthusiasm, and then slowly ask for more," Ehrenwerth said. "It was much easier to ask for a gift after we had buy-in."
The campaign also capitalized on moments when supporters' emotions were running especially high. For example, it would e-mail constituents immediately after hot debates with messaging that tapped into the emotions stirred up by an issue that the candidates had talked about.
Ehrenwerth said the campaign also relied on a lot of behavioral science to determine how to engage supporters. Organizers realized people are much more likely to do something if they think everyone else is, so they touted volunteer and donor numbers as much as possible. They also offered donors the chance to be entered into lotteries to win things like dinner with Obama and five of their friends.
Some other key takeaways from Ehrenwerth's presentation:
- Significant resources need to be put toward an organization's Web site. Consider adding videos to your site, as well. Videos drove up visitation and revisitation to Obama's site.
- Employing someone with community-organizing experience who is familiar with doing really grassroots, face-to-face contact with supporters — might be of value to your organization.
- Diversify fundraising sources.
- Try to get a small contribution at first. As the Obama campaign proved, this strategy can still result in a large amount of money over time.
- Work at getting repeat donors. Many donors to the campaign gave small donations, repeatedly.
- Make sure your Web site is user-friendly, and especially that contributions can be made easily.
- Employ new media and have staff dedicated to spending time on them. According to Ehrenwerth, the Obama campaign had a new-media director in each state. They created interactive blogs and talked about everything going on for the campaign locally. He said being on Facebook and other social-networking sites is mandatory because the opportunities are endless. These sites aren't just populated by the under-30 demographic, though it's a good place to reach those individuals as well. In five years, he said, it will be unthinkable not to have a presence on social networks — so start now.If your organization lacks the staff — or those with an understanding of how these sites work — to do this, Ehrenwerth recommended seeing if a staff member's son or daughter who might be more familiar with the sites can help you create and maintain a profile for your organization.
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