Obama the interactive marketing superman

danny g over at AdPulp points it out again. Barack Obama has put together one of the most sophisticated interactive marketing machines. Think about it. He has one sale in mind. November. Not multiple widgets, varied merchandise, aggressive sales cycles. One sale. November. And yet so much to learn from this one sale. Salon reveals even more:

“Now Obama's campaign is aiming to be ahead of even the GOP's standard in applying sophisticated data mining techniques across the board, supported by all the traditional canvassing, door-knocking and other work it's been doing. The campaign is collecting some of the most helpful data on its own. For example, aides can track what time you open e-mails from them, and if you show a consistent pattern, they'll start sending them at around that time of day. "The marginal benefit of sending some people an email at 2 o'clock vs. 3 o'clock vs. 4 o'clock might not make sense [at first]," said Michael Bassik, a Democratic consultant with MSHC Partners, the firm that did John Kerry's online advertising in 2004. "But once you start getting an e-mail list that's 3 million, 4 million, or 10 million people, increasing the returns for a fundraising e-mail by 5 or 10 percent means additional returns of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars."

If you're one of the 1 million people who have a login on Obama's social networking site, they know how often and when you visit, and they can use that to gauge how committed you are to the campaign. A few months ago, the campaign sent out a three-page survey asking people about their voting habits, how often they go to church, which groups and issues they identify with and whether they've given money to political candidates in the past. The point of all of the online gadgetry is to get people to show up for offline events. "We've tried to orient the tools less as a social network and more as a mobilization network," said Joe Rospars, Obama's online director. "We're creating opportunities for people to get out there and do things -- the campaign is election-outcome oriented."

Obama has one of the most savvy marketing teams ever put together.  I think we can all learn a little here.