As citizens gear up for Election Day on November 6, political campaigns are doing what they can to reach potential undecided voters at the last minute. According to On The Media, a New York City-based radio show, this often includes sifting through mounds of data about undecided voters that campaign managers obtained through businesses and other organizations.
“They’re running algorithms that are basically looking for patterns between that big mass of data they have about each of you with the information that their polling tells them about specific attitudes about the election that’s underway,” Sasha Issenberg, a political journalist, said during the show.
PJ Vogt, a producer for the On The Media, mentioned that when Republican candidate Mitt Romney was campaigning for governor of Massachusetts, his team used big data to learn that undecided voters were also most likely to be premium cable subscribers. This information gave campaign managers a way to pivot marketing tactics and appeal to this single audience.
Using custom software to maintain customer data
While running for a public office may be much more intense than advertising a new product or service, it’s essentially the same. By using big data to cultivate information about loyal customers, but those that are on the bubble but likely to be persuaded, companies can find a common denominator that will allow them to form a foundation for their marketing or advertising campaigns.
But in order to do this effectively, companies will need the technology to house and manage all this data. By consulting FileMaker developers to create custom database software, marketing departments will be able to more effectively aggregate and analyze this information to find the strongest connections between potential customers.