As the Republican National Committee's deputy chief of staff, Larry Purpuro spent two years working to bolster the party's Internet presence, spearheading a project called e.GOP that culled thousands of supporters' e-mail addresses and made party Web sites more interactive.
Purpuro soon realized how underdeveloped Internet marketing was in other political venues, prompting him to establish RightClick Strategies LLC.
"As much as folks in campaigns would like to present their strategies as sophisticated, it's mostly elementary," Purpuro said. "In politics, we never really had the time or resources to develop effective marketing campaigns. Succeeding on the Internet is not just about having a Web site, it's really about marketing."
RightClick began as a one-man operation, with no customers and little more than a business plan. But Purpuro's political contacts gave him access to associations and other potential clients that might not have taken other entrepreneurs so seriously.
The company targeted as customers conservative political organizations and associations that represent corporate interests. Both groups, he said, were largely lacking the kind of point-and-click access to members necessary for effective marketing.
"With the Internet, you have the capacity to track the information, who opened it, when, what stories they looked at and whether they forwarded it to somebody else," he said. "The capacity to deliver up to 100 pages of information with one e-mail is just not something you can match in other ways."
RightClick's team of 10 employees and a couple dozen contractors rebuild client Web sites with a targeted marketing strategy in mind. The sites, Purpuro said, must be easy to navigate, interesting and full of relevant information. RightClick also employs less visible capabilities, such as a system for capturing e-mail addresses and creating member databases.
The company is focused on its service offering but is also developing software that will allow organizations to develop Web-based marketing plans on their own. Increased use of the Internet and new campaign finance laws will make the medium more important than ever, Purpuro said.
"E-mail is a lethal weapon in campaigns. It can be timed, targeted and tracked in ways that direct mail, radio or TV cannot be," he said. "And at the end of the day, their success in communication and organizing and fundraising is a function of being wired to their membership."
