The majority of corporations are launching big data strategies to hone their decision making. Rather than relying on marketers' and analysts' gut instincts, enterprises are turning to analyses of big data - a collection of customer information, sales data and other information being generated online.
Both Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama have included mobile applications as part of their campaigns. Romney's recently released "Mitt's VP" smartphone app was downloaded by tens of thousands of users so they could quickly learn who he chose as his running mate.
Obama's campaign released Obama for America, an application that gathers users and encourages them to promote voting. These programs are not only satisfying today's smartphone-savvy citizens, but they are also collecting information about users' demographics that can be used to tailor messages and reach out to potential supporters.
Twitter is also using people's posts to generate insight about the presidential race, according to Wired. Whereas there were 1.8 million Tweets on election day in 2008, there are now approximately 400 million per day. To tap into the posts regarding the political race, which have been gaining steam, a platform called Topsy gathers information about user sentiment and presents daily updates about which candidate is ahead.
To ensure the information is correct, and help them realize the best return on their investments, parties should verify the
contact data quality to check for phone numbers and names that are no longer in use.
