In the News (Week of June 16th)

Once a donator, always a donator. At least that is what Kate Kaye found in her piece on the use of list rentals in political campaign fundraising. Political direct marketers place their trust in donor lists compiled of individuals that gave money specifically to politics, to a cancer fighting organization or an advocacy group. It doesn’t matter who they gave to —it is the history of donating that matters (the more recent the better). The interesting part, however, is when direct marketers apply data-analytics to the rented donor lists to grow their potential audience. Kaye explains, “They might take a list of registered voters (publicly available data compiled by party organizations and vendors serving the political market), and have a rented list matched to the voter list to find people with similar characteristics who have not donated.”

While renting lists is tradition, going a step further to apply analytics and expand the base audience is where political direct marketing is headed. At Semcasting, we have found success in our method of zone targeting. Our Smart Zones audience targeting platform allows campaigns to reach qualified consumers based on voter history, demographics and location in real-time. At the same time, we are able to compile the characteristics and data points of existing donors on a list to match those of a look-a-like audience—increasing the potential reach and influence of campaigns.