Archive for March, 2009

March 16th, 2009

Does the list make the candidate?

The Washington Post recently did a story about how the organization “Obama For America” (OFA) is poised to flex their organizing muscle for the Presidents budget proposal. There are plenty of stories out there that talk about this move from a political aspect and whether it will be effective but many outlets are under reporting the premise that enabled OFA to mobilize millions in support of the Presidents agenda. Alex Vogel, a republican political consultant hits it on the nose at the end of the article,

“If mail lists made Karl Rove, e-mail and cell lists made Obama,” he said, referring to the former White House deputy chief of staff. “But what good is a list if your message is bad?”

The point is this – “the list” or database is the essential tool for a win. As Alex Vogel points out it was the list that made the candidate (or the consultant). I can’t stress the “tool” portion of that statement enough, a list is tool and nothing more – just as a good hammer can help you build a house simply having the hammer doesn’t mean you can build it.

According to TechPresident.com Obamas email list is around 13 million email addresses. If you match that with the reported responses in the Wapo article (30k) that puts the conversion rate right around .23%. The article does note that only the people who “attended or hosted” an Obama house party would receive an email so it is safe to assume that not all 13 million email addresses were used – probably a lot less than half received an email.

I am going to go way off the reservation here and guesstimate that 1 million emails were sent out – at that number the OFA is looking at a 3% conversion rate. A rate that is incredibly low for an opt-in list like that. So, that begs the question, is the list bad (highly unlikely) or is the message not resonating? (and yea this is assuming I am right that they sent out around 1 million emails – even if they sent out 500k a 6% conversion rate is probably not great)

I will leave you all to debate that question, but OFA has the list/database which is half the battle and they will continue to wield it until it attrites away or the message resonates.

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March 2nd, 2009

Vlytics Turns 1 – I think

Yesterday, almost 1 year to the day of Vlytics’ 1 year anniversay, one of our clients won a very close race in CT.  As a first time entreprenuer in the notoriously difficult tech start-up arena I feel like a rookie baseball player hitting a walk-off homerun in they’re major league debut, I am ecstatic not only for the win but for also making it this far.


Given our thirst for accurate numbers and precise data you would think I would know the exact moment at which point Vlytics became more than just an idea.  Well I don’t, it could be when I couldn’t sleep and around 7:30am on July 7, 2007 after 8 hours of writing/diagramming came up with a 24 page document that served as the foundation for the Vlytics platform and algorithms.  It could be when I took my first meeting with some politicos to get some feedback on the idea in August 2007 or maybe it was when I filed my first patent on January 24, 2008?  It could be February 23, 2008 when I almost died driving to CT to pitch my soon to be first clients.  Rather I chose March 3, 2008 as the inception of Vlytics as a company as this is when I accepted my first round of private financing and thus crossed the threshold of theory to the realm of execute or fail.  

I am happy to say that Vlytics will be around for another year and we expect growth in both our platform as well in our revenue (and yes we had some significant revenue in 2008).  I read back in July of 2007 that only 1 in 10 startups make it longer than a year – I don’t know if its true but I certainly feel like I beat the odds.  

Google Analytics tells me that if your reading this you probably have read this blog before.  Common sense tells me that if your reading this I have probably met you and told you about Vlytics, because of that I owe you thanks – thanks for listening, contributing, criticizing, and using Vlytics – without you I wouldn’t be looking back at the past year as a success.  

Since Vlytics is all about stats I figured I would give you some from the 2008 election cycle:
These are aggregate across all of Vlytics clients so as not to give away any campaign methods. 

Some campaigns knocked on a lot of doors and some didn’t.  Some sent out A LOT of email or relied on mail more than phones.  More in depth stats on what seemed to work later – we are rolling in vote histories so as to get some real in depth aggregate data so we can figure out the effectiveness of these methods – keep an eye out for that report later this spring/summer.

One thing for sure is that every single one of my clients now has the best database in they’re respective districts – the next person who runs in that district will have the benefit of knowing who turned out and who didnt and what issues motivated them and what issues didnt. The goal is to create a truly invaluable information source that gets more intelligent as the years go by – a true foundation for success now and in the future.  

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