It’s easy in the small to medium enterprise world to look at huge companies and think they have access to special tools, people, or metrics that cause them to ‘win’.
While some large companies do have custom software, the advances in technology is lowering the metrics gap between large and small companies.
Google Website Optimizer and Google Analytics are both free programs that any company can use to make data driven decision. Guess what? Obama’s campaign used these same free tools to determine what combinations lead to higher donations and other visitor engagement methods.
Here is a video (it’s hand shot by an engineer at the talk, so it’s not completely steady) where someone who worked on Obama’s campaign looks at the software and the metrics used to win an election.
That is a great video. Having access to data, asking good questions, and measuring results are the keys to getting the most out of an online campaign. Unfortunately, most stop at step #1.