Online Technology Key to Obama’s Fundraising Success

President Obama always seems to be on the cusp of innovative and new ideas whether it concerns health care, aiding homeowners with their mortgages or addressing unemployment. Regardless if you approve or disapprove of his policies, you have to admit that he always seems to be on the cutting edge. It is obvious that in this race to return to the Oval Office for a second term, he is treading new ground in the realm of online political fundraising.

Like the majority of Americans, the president seems to be glued to his mobile phone. Always with Blackberry in hand, he is constantly abreast of impending news and connected to his various contacts. He is also taking this same approach in his fundraising efforts.

NPR.com reports that the president’s campaign committee, Obama for America, took contributions from more than half a million people in the final three months of 2011 in which 200,000 of them were brand-new donors to his campaign. One reason is due to the immense effort his campaign is focusing on social media fundraising. “You know, they spent a million bucks in the quarter, basically, on technology,” says Clay Johnson, author of The Information Diet: A Case For Conscious Consumption. He says he’s not surprised to see that the Obama campaign spent about as much on Internet ads as it did on postage — more than $2 million.

“Now, the online advertising and the postage, that’s about either getting new people into the campaign or convincing people to donate. But the million dollars in a quarter on technology is about creating infrastructure,” Johnson says.

According to this same article, it appears that this is just the beginning of Obama’s efforts to dominate the online world to gain more donor support. It was reported that his campaign spent close to $400,000 on software and Web hosting, more than $600,000 on computer equipment and more than $43,000 at Apple stores just in a three-month period starting from last October. It is interesting to note that last quarter, Obama also invested $65,000 in text messaging.

In this fast paced world where everyone is connected to the internet, it seems rather obvious that this is the best way for politicians to gain support and financial backing. With the new strategies that are being formed in this election and the innovative devises that are continually being advertised by computer companies, who knows what the 2016 presidential elections will look like?