The 2008 Tools Campaign: Microtargeting

Microtargeting is a process that answers the questions that are fundamental to the strategy of any campaign. Which voters support your candidate? Which voters are undecided? Which voters care about a particular issue? Which voters will vote at all? Most important of all, which voters will respond if you reach them?

Microtargeting utilizes a variety of tools that have guided commercial marketing for decades and have been more recently utilized by political campaigns as well. Microtargeting helps campaigns better shape and deliver messages to specific individuals and households by tracking and analyzing information on a person-by-person basis.

Voter files are the raw material of political microtargeting, because they are the way to start developing a person-by-person view of the electorate. Retailing changed in some dramatic ways when “point of sale” systems finally were put into place – high quality voter file systems are their broad political equivalent. Tremendous advances in data technology have made it easier than ever to access and analyze new high quality databases about voters which have rich amounts of detailed information drawn from public sources, commercial data providers, and past campaigns.

All of these approaches present a set of immediate challenges that can be intimidating to candidates and campaign managers. Microtargeting and testing can be expensive. Different people call different things “microtargeting” and there’s no Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for vendors. Some people appear more interested in microtargeting because it is cool or new than because it will really help win an election. Intentionally not communicating with a group of voters by holding them out as a control group strikes many as insane (and there are certainly times when it should not be done).

And on top of it all, any new and major project always threatens to distract campaign attention from getting the basics right – having the candidate or campaign make a persuasive case about issues that matter in language that people understand.

We cannot clear up all of these confusions or overcome all of these obstacles. We can, on the basis of our experience and the experience that others working in the field have so generously shared with us, lay out the basic steps for using microtargeting and some of the different options available. We also append a list of resources from which you can learn more.

Chief Technology Officer for Catalist Vijay Ravindran speaking on Microtargeting at our New Tools, New Audiences Forum on May 9, 2008.