How We Used Data to Win the Presidential Election by Dan Siroker

Editor's Notes

2. Barack Obama came and spoke here at Google back in November 2007 and I was lucky enough to be attendance when he spoke. I want to share a few clips from that talk to help explain why I didn’t to quit my job here at Google and go work for the campaign.
5. His last words are why I quit Went to Chicago and slept on the floor of the one person I knew in Chicago.
7. Before I get into what we did at the campaign and the lessons we learned, let me give some context and explain how the campaign worked. Disclaimer: lots of other parts of the campaign used data, I’m going to focus on New Media
8. Before I get into what we did at the campaign and the lessons we learned, let me give some context and explain how the campaign worked. Disclaimer: lots of other parts of the campaign used data, I’m going to focus on New Media
9. Before I get into what we did at the campaign and the lessons we learned, let me give some context and explain how the campaign worked. Disclaimer: lots of other parts of the campaign used data, I’m going to focus on New Media
10. Before I get into what we did at the campaign and the lessons we learned, let me give some context and explain how the campaign worked. Disclaimer: lots of other parts of the campaign used data, I’m going to focus on New Media
11. I lead a team of six engineers and analysts. Not all are pictures here. All of the great things I’m going to talk about today were because of their hard work and determination.
13. I’m going to first share some of the results from the campaign then explain how we achieved those results and the share the lessons learned along the way.
14. Probably familiar with this
15. Maybe weren’t aware of this: 913 total years of YouTube watching. 1382 years on our website. Total translate to over 2 millennia of time spent living and breathing Obama More than twice as many unique visitors came to barackobama.com than voted for John McCain
18. All of this success would not have been possible without fundraising.
19. Online includes some money raised in traditional fundraisers as well
20. Now I’d like to share the top 5 lessons my team learned during the campaign. This is not a to do list of how to win an election, but rather a methodology to make data-driven decisions.
22. This is how we defined success.
23. The most important part of defining success is to...
25. defining quantifiable success metrics to measure that success.
26. Let me show you what that means with our last experiment
27. Let me show you what that means with our last experiment
28. Let me show you what that means with our last experiment
29. Let me show you what that means with our last experiment Lot of firms focus on the first and last parts of this funnel
30. So that’s lesson #1, now lesson #2
48. Translates to over 4 million of the 13 million email subscribers we ended up with
49. Translates to over 4 million of the 13 million email subscribers we ended up with
53. So that’s lesson #2, now lesson #3
54. This lesson is in and of itself a generalization but it also happens to be true.
55. Here is another concrete example of the benefits of segmenting users into separate buckets and not over-generalizing.
56. Campaign-value percent improvement: Net value per impression (after fulfillment cost) + subsequent value Had we picked one it would have been sub-optimal $3 million dollar improvement we would not have had otherwise
57. This is true in many cases. Just because the last experiment worked doesn’t mean we have to show the splash page every time. Don’t show the splash page for repeat visits Email split tests based on previous highest contribution. So that’s lesson #3: never over-generalize.
59. Bill Clinton speech You can rarely create special moments, you can only take advantage of them when they are given to you.
60. September 2nd at Republican National Convention
61. Made over 10 million dollars in less than 24 hours.