How parties used segmentation in the 2005 British general election campaign

Abstract

Activities which in any other context would be described as direct marketing lie at the heart of modern party political campaigning. Indeed, these activities, and the targeting systems that drive them, played a far more important role in the 2005 British general election than they did in any previous one. In 2009, or thereabouts, their role is likely to be even more important in determining who gets to run the country. Yet despite the high visibility of a general election campaign and the implications of the election result on the ordinary lives of direct marketing professionals, relatively little is known in the direct marketing industry about the extent to which political parties use the segmentation practices which underlie the majority of campaigns in the commercial sector. This paper seeks to address this lack of understanding, using interviews with communications managers in the three main political parties supplemented by experience in providing advice to two of the parties on information strategy both before and during the election. In particular it analyses differences between parties and commercial advertisers in terms of the environment within which they work; reviews the data and data management practices that the parties employed during the recent general election; provides information on the parties’ own evaluation of their communications campaigns; and assesses how the use of segmentation techniques is likely to evolve in subsequent campaigns, for both Westminster and other parliaments.