The Good - The Bad - The Baskerville

Viola Baskerville was recently a candidate for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant Governor of Virginia. Although she lost her primary bid, her website is certainly worth discussing. Her small budget campaign made some both good and bad decisions regarding her Internet campaign.

One particularly innovative feature on Baskerville's website was the Invite Viola to Your Event option. By clicking a link on the home page, users are taken to an online form through which they can request Baskerville's attendance at their function. As a candidate with little name recognition and few resources, this feature encouraged community members to feature the candidate at their events by making it an easy and accessible process. This allowed Baskerville important voter contact and a way to earn media coverage. It also made the scheduling process simpler for the campaign and easier to manage.

The Invite Viola form collects essential information in an efficient manner. It asks typical contact information, such as name, organization, e-mail, phone and address. It also requires event information such as date, time, number of expected attendees and a description. Finally, the form categorizes Baskerville's attendance as "attend and be recognized," "deliver keynote," "deliver brief remarks." The information collected allowed the Baskerville team to make strategic decisions about event attendance without time wasted on follow up phone calls or emails.

Unfortunately, Baskerville's Volunteer for Viola feature failed to perform in an effective or strategic manner. After signing up to volunteer and receive the newsletter on June 1st, I received not one piece of communication from the campaign. Baskerville did not even send out an email reminding supporters to vote in the sleepy and easily overlooked primary.

The perceived snub by the of campaign of those who wished to volunteer served to alienate Baskerville's most important supporters. By not contacting them and inviting them to become a part of the campaign, Baskerville missed an important opportunity. Utilizing viral marketing techniques, the campaign could easily and cheaply empowered their supporters to recruit others to the campaign.

This constitutes a serious strategic error since the extremely low voter turnout in this election meant that mobilizing just a few voters could have made the difference. With no candidates utilizing paid media in the primary, an aggressive Internet communication plan would have been the most efficient way to spread her message.

In addition to the lack of follow up, the volunteer form had serious usability issues. For example, while it clearly states "* indicates a required field", there were no asterisks on the form so users were left to guess. Also, there is a link to the privacy policy at the bottom of the page, but it is in extremely small print and brings a "page not found" error when clicked.

Although Baskerville did attempt to utilize the Internet to assist her campaign efforts, her failure to follow up with supporters and potential volunteers ultimately hindered her efforts. Baskerville could have easily and cheaply mobilized supporters by using the Internet resources she already had, which could have made the difference in the primary contest.