Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some in Chattanooga at the Soclal Ecclesia Conference. One of the highlights of the conference was a surprise visit by Daniel Ryan from President Obama’s digital campaign team. Now regardless of your politics, it’s a fact that Obamas digital campaign team set the gold standard for conducting an effective online marketing campaign.
Daniel gave a lot of great insight into how Obama’s team viewed data and used it to make their decisions. His visit also reminded me of a resource that every church communications team should read. It’s called Inside the Cave by Engage Research. It’s really great ebook that gives insight into how Obama’s digital was built, how they functioned and how they ran their online marketing. Here are some of my key takeaways from Inside the Cave.
Your Intuition Could Be Wrong
What was the most popular email subject line for the Obama campaign? Hey… That’s right the most popular subject line was “Hey…”. Now there’s no way I would’ve guessed that would work as a headline. However, my intuition was wrong as was many of the Obama staffers who thought the same thing. Yet, when the email went out, the results were there.
Intuition can often serve us well, however when we let the data speak for itself we can test our assumptions and make the best decisions. Are you making assumptions with your church’s social media? Are you letting your intuition get in the way of data that could help your social media be more effective?
Staff To Get the Job Done
When you compare Obama’s digital staff to Romney’s digital staff the first thing you’ll notice that Obama’s team was better staffed for the challenge of running an online campaign. Not only did Obama have more staff, he also had some of the most elite people in their respective fields.
Are you staffed to get the job done at your church? What pieces to your team are you missing? Can you fill in the missing gaps with volunteers?
Prepare for the Worst
One of the effects of Hurricane Sandy was the disabling of servers on the east coast. A number of websites and organizations were crippled when they lost power. Obama’s team however did not run into that problem.
How did they avoid these problems? Well, Obama’s team over-prepared for scenarios just like Hurricane Sandy. They created some of the worst situations possible and then created emergency plans. Then they ran their team through the scenarios. So when Hurricane Sandy hit and server’s went down, Obama’s team was ready.
Test your assumptions, staff for the job and prepare for the worst. These are just some of the many takeaways from Inside the Cave. I encourage you to download a copy and share it with your communications team.