New Polling on U.S. Presidential Digital Campaign Proficiency shows who's dominating the Digital Campaign Trail

Episerver™, a leading provider of digital marketing and digital commerce solutions, today announced the results of its Digital Presidential Campaign Proficiency Poll, tracking the digital savviness of the top U.S. presidential hopefuls. 

Episerver evaluated seven top presidential candidates (based on aggregated national poll numbers from RealClear Politics as of Aug. 27, 2015) during the time period of Sept. 5-10, 2015, ranking them in order of digital campaign proficiency in the race to the White House. Candidates were ranked on various criteria, including quality of web site content and organization and volume of daily unique visitors, as well as breadth of social media use, volume of followers and level of engagement.

The polling shows clear digital campaign leaders and laggards. The candidate leading the pack in digital electioneering is Donald Trump, with an overall digital campaign score of 75. Bernie Sanders and Ben Carson also received top scores for their digital campaign efforts. On the flip side, while Jeb Bush may have the presidential bloodline, the poll results show his digital campaigning lacks luster; Bush received the lowest digital campaign score of 24. Slightly above Bush, but also lagging in digital campaign proficiency according to the polling was Ted Cruz. Marco Rubio’s and Hillary Clinton’s digital campaign proficiency scores put them in the middle of the pack, with only a three-point spread between the two candidates.

Episerver has no affiliations to any presidential candidates or political parties, but does have more than 8,800 customers in some 30 countries that leverage its Episerver Digital Experience Cloud™. Encompassing the tools for the creation, management, and publishing of digital content, with personalization and analytics built in, the Digital Experience Cloud provides marketers, digital and online teams with the power, insight and agility to act on a business moment, and the confidence to realize their aspirations with a technology foundation that supports more than 30,000 websites worldwide. 

Episerver says studying the digital swagger of politicians can reveal best practices and innovative strategies that can be leveraged by commercial and non-profit entities, which aspire to deliver standout digital experiences.

“If you want to see cutting-edge digital marketing in action, keep an eye on the U.S. presidential campaign,” said Joakim Holmquist, Episerver’s Director of Digital Marketing. “Digital media expertise and persona mapping/audience targeting was quintessential in Obama’s winning the presidential race in 2008. Now, eight years later, digital technologies and strategies have gotten even more sophisticated.

“The marketers managing these political campaigns have the marketing funnel worked out so clearly – they are employing sophisticated conversation mining, persona mapping and message personalization. They are ‘all-in’ and there’s a lot to be gained or lost.”

Holmquist goes on to say that this time around the next president of the United States will be Commander-in-Chief of the digital domain, even before being sworn into office.

“The Obama digital team was groundbreaking in its data driven marketing and testing of images, buttons and copy on landing pages to find the optimal mix that would make visitors opt in their e-mail addresses and eventually donate money. This time around anything digital will be tested and optimized. Whether it is online ads, email campaigns or social sharing, it will be subject to tests to determine the best headlines, copy, and images.”

Analytics is playing a greater role in digital campaigning, thanks to greater proficiency in aggregating and analyzing data. “Using advanced algorithmic attributing modelling, data from all different channels will be combined and crunched to show hidden correlations and provide insights into campaign efforts,” says Holmquist. “The savviest digital team will more accurately understand outcomes and reallocate spend to optimize campaigns for the overarching goals of getting more volunteers and more donors, which will eventually translate into more votes, which could ultimately translate into securing the presidency.”