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"Digital technology may influence the 2012 election more than any other in history. The latest mobile apps, Reddit AMAs and Google+ Hangouts have demonstrated how closely tech is integrated into the political landscape.\nOf course, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney aren't doing it all on their own. Their campaigns have enlisted the help of digital consulting firms, which specialize in providing their clients with advantages in the technological sphere \u2014 voter data integration, fundraising tools, web page production, mobile apps and more.\nBut what exactly do these firms offer, who is behind them and whom can they benefit?\nBlue State Digital\nFormer members of Vermont Governor Howard Dean's digital campaign team founded Blue State Digital in 2004, after Dean failed to earn that year's Democratic presidential nomination. During his run, Dean broke ground by using the Internet to raise donations from supporters, leading to a record number of small-dollar donations while mobilizing thousands of grassroots volunteers.\nThomas Gensemer, Blue State Digital's managing partner, tells Mashable that he worked on Dean's team before leading the digital efforts of Wesley Clarke's campaign, who was also gunning for the 2004 Democratic nod. \"Neither of our guys became president,\" he says. \"But I think, in ways big and small, we scratched the surface of what it could mean if you embed digital technology ... in the middle of a traditional campaign.\"\nGensemer explains that he and his business partners \u2014 Jascha Franklin-Hodge and Joe Rospars, now Blue State Digital's chief technology officer and creative director, respectively \u2014 were frustrated by the digital shortcomings of the campaigns, in addition to lack of digital tools and services geared toward politicians.\nClick here to download our entire special report as an e-book. It features exclusive interviews with digital\u2019s political game changers.\nWhen those campaigns ended, they started hearing from numerous people who wanted to be the next Howard Dean \u2014 not just candidates, but organizations, essentially anyone who was trying to raise money online. The three partners believed they could learn from their missed opportunities and grab a chance at redemption.\n\"We realized we may have a business on our hands,\" Gensemer says. \"The traditional sense of fundraising was declining as people [looked] toward online as a way of [stirring] audience development and membership.\"\nOver eight years, Blue State Digital developed into a robust and diversified business, working with more than 200 clients, including the Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee and, perhaps most notably, Obama For America.  The company's services are designed alongside a customer relationship management (CRM) tool set, oriented for advocacy actions \u2014 a mix of digital organizing and fundraising tools meant to deepen, monitor and optimize a candidate's or organization's relationship with a voter or member.\n\u201CEveryone said for years that this was going to be the year of the mobile, and ... I think it\u2019s finally here, and we\u2019re seeing the benefits and challenges of that.\"\nThe company offers services in email and online communications, web design, social media, search engine optimization, advertising and more.\n\"Everyone said for years that this was going to be the year of the mobile, and over the past 18 months, especially with the introduction of tablets, I think it's finally here, and we're seeing the benefits and challenges of that,\" Gensemer says. However, he explained that from a platform perspective, the most important thing is scalability, both for the Obama campaign and for the larger non-profits with which the company works.\n\"The scale to get out Obama's tens of millions of emails in a hour [is important] so the alert that he writes right when he walks offstage seems relevant, as opposed to taking 12 hours to process through the list,\" Gensemer says. \"Also, if you look at the evolution of politics in digital, the amount of money raised in 2004 or Howard Dean's breakthrough fundraising [compared] to what is raised today ... it's moving so fast.\"\nThe clients in digital consultancy vary, so companies have to adapt to the specific needs of each. Blue State Digital team members often work as copywriters, video editors, webpage designers or social media strategists to provide tools for the most effective client or campaign.\nThe company's political success has helped to broaden its international scope. It now works on presidential campaigns in France, Mexico and Brazil, as well as political work in the United Kingdom.\n\"We're taking the American political learnings, and not applying it directly, but augmenting them to be relevant to the cultures,\" Gensemer says. \"That's a specialty of ours.\"\nEngage\nIn 2007, political strategists started Engage to revamp the digital space in Republican politics. Engage's founders had previously been involved with the Republican National Committee as well as with President George Bush's 2004 campaign.\n\"A lot of people ask me, 'Why\u2019d you go back into politics after those experiences?'\" says Patrick Ruffini, president of Engage. He says that he and the other founders could have easily gone into the corporate arena and made a lot of money there. But for them, money wasn't the issue. \"We just loved politics. We loved the game. We were hungry.\" \nHe also says that, at the time, the Obama campaign and the Democrats seemed to be getting all the credit for digital programs, and they wanted to prove that Republicans had made digital advances, as well.\nEngage offers complete online campaign solutions for websites, blogs and social networks, as well as social action, fundraising and advertising platforms. \nEngage currently works with House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. And the company helped Congressman Paul Ryan on his leadership PAC for two years, before Romney announced him as his vice presidential running mate. Engage also works with entities in the corporate and non-profit worlds looking to maximize political engagement, including Google and Pew Research Center's Voter Information Project. \"That\u2019s a project we are very deeply involved with this year to bring voting tools to the major tech outlets, so the polling place data you\u2019ll see on Google on Election Day is powered by them,\" Ruffini says. \n\u201CWe just loved politics. We loved the game. We were hungry.\"\nRuffini explains that the wide range of clients means emphasizing different messages, strengths and positions for each race. \"I think we pride ourselves on really looking at specific situations,\" he says, \"whether you\u2019re incumbent, whether you\u2019re an insurgent, whether you\u2019re younger, whether you\u2019re older, and tailoring an online strategy that works specifically for you.\"\nThe Engage team has also studied the best services and products available on the market and has built upon them, as well as creating some of its own. For example, the agency built engagement platforms that use game mechanics to increase activity on behalf of a campaign, which allows campaigns to collect more data about their supporters and mobilize them to action. \n\"Data is, I think, a huge thing for us,\" Ruffini says. \"Specifically looking at how campaigns and other types of organizations can better collect data about their supporters, but also looking at the broader social media conversation and extracting data from that conversation to be able to see how the electorate is moving in real time.\"\nEngage has built various kinds of data platforms and has conducted studies to measure effective electorate advertising. For instance, the agency has taken Facebook apps and studied users' Likes to analyze their levels of political engagement and leanings.\n\"We think that not only is social media going to be the biggest engagement platform in human history, but it\u2019s also going to be the biggest data platform, and it\u2019s going to revolutionize how we measure and how we understand the electorate,\" Ruffini says. \"We\u2019re constantly trying to stay ahead of that trend, trying to figure out what we can figure out about the massive amounts of activity on social media, to be able to spot where the presidential race is going or where our candidates are going, and to be able to respond to it in real time.\"\nEngage has also been influential in the fight against SOPA, PIPA and online censorship, an issue about which Ruffini feels passionate. He mentions the Internet's ability to impact politics, democracy and public life.\n\"I [think] there is some obligation from those of us in the political arena to defend what made that possible,\" he says, \"which is the freedom of the Internet, the freedom for people to interact, to express themselves, the freedom for platforms like Facebook, like Twitter, Google, YouTube to exist without censorship, without them having to monitor every single piece of content they post.\"\nTargeted Victory &amp; NGP VAN\nBlue State Digital and Engage might be two of the more established players in D.C.'s digital politics scene, but they're not the only ones shaking things up. Targeted Victory on the right and NGP VAN on the left are also busy shaping the way politicians interact with voters online.\nTargeted Victory was founded in 2008 by Michael Beach and Zac Moffatt, who is currently working as the digital director for Romney's campaign. Both worked for the Republican National Committee prior to founding Targeted Victory. \"We saw that there was a need for and an opportunity to really use digital in a political campaign and make it a top weapon,\" Beach tells Mashable. \"We try to provide holistic online solutions \u2014 websites, creative online advertising, marketing, text messaging, analytics, social media, database management \u2014 all of that, under one roof.\"\nAccording to Beach, the Obama and Romney campaigns will spend 80% of their budgets for a two-year period over the next two months, so they won't be investing a lot of money into research and development in the other 22 months of that two-year cycle. That's where companies like Targeted Victory come in. \"We are the digital infrastructure for a lot of these campaigns,\" Beach says.\nThe company offers online advertising, mobile communications and social media strategy: custom social media plans and conversation strategy services. The latest buzz about the firm has been its close work with the Romney campaign, its most prominent client. \"Targeted Victory assists [the Romney campaign] with online advertising, email marketing, online analytics and online fundraising,\" says Ryan Meerstein, Targeted Victory's senior political analyst. \"We have a dedicated team in Boston who works directly with the Romney team.\"\nNGP VAN, meanwhile, offers a suite of digital tools to Democrats designed to give them an edge in fundraising, field organizing and messaging.\nAccording to Stu Trevelyan, CEO of NGP VAN, the company's fundraising and compliance product is used by Obama, almost every Democratic senator, almost every member of the House of Representatives and thousands of other Democratic and progressive candidates.  Almost every Democratic candidate relies on the Vote Builder organizing tool from the company, and state parties use it for volunteer management and voter contacts \u2014 door knocking, phone banks and other efforts.\n\u201COur special sauce is being able to provide an integrated package across the spectrum of campaign activity.\"\n\"Within the digital realm, our special sauce is being able to provide an integrated package across the spectrum of campaign activity,\" Trevelyan says. \"For example, with our email tool, you can create a link in an email that pre-populates the contribution page with the highest previous contribution, whether that's online or off.\" This means that if a supporter gives $25 online, but $1,000 at an offline event, the company stores both of those pieces of data in that supporter's file. This can be more difficult for firms focusing solely online, in which case supporter information may be stored in different places.\nThe close integration of offline and online data is an important selling point for NGP VAN's entire suite of tools.  Trevelyan says digital's \"age old problem\" is that it can be an information silo or an information ghetto \u2014 in other words, a system with either separation of data or a lack of data altogether. By matching online data points to their offline counterparts, NGP VAN helps prevent either scenario, thus increasing efficiency in the end.\nIt's About Winning, Not Making Money\nIt may seem strange that these firms work for either the political left or right, since they all provide similar resources to campaigns and committees. However, the choice really boils down to individual preference \u2014 after all, it's more productive to work for candidates you believe in.\n\"I think, like every other element of the campaign, campaigns and parties are looking to gain an advantage,\" Trevelyan says. \"I think it's also just easier for a partisan company to be in the room when brainstorming and important strategic activity is happening.\"\nBeach agrees, explaining that these partisan companies are in it for more than the money, so naturally the teams' political leanings will establish the relationship with their clients. \"The strategy side of our company is more integrated with these organizations than a corporate entity would normally be,\" he says.\nOne thing's for sure: Just as technology is evolving, so is the role of digital in politics.\n\"I think [digital in the political sphere] is no longer in its infancy, and it's no longer even a toddler \u2014 it's a real, live adolescent,\" Trevelyan says. \"It probably doesn't quite have the seat at the table that the media consultant does, but I think that's going to change over time.\"\nIllustration by Bob Al-Greene\nMore in-depth coverage from Mashable's special politics report:\n\nHow Close Are We to Internet Voting?\nHow Crowdfunding Is Rewriting the Campaign Finance Playbook\nDigital Campaigning: Meet the Marketing Wizards of D.C.\nVoter Data: What the Candidates Know About You\nCan Targeted Ads Save Millions of Campaign Dollars?\nHow Social Media Can Safeguard Your Vote\nHow to Market the Next President\nThe Rise of Mobile in Election 2012\nElection 2040: The First President for Digital Natives\nSocial Is the Secret Weapon in Local Politics\nGaffesplosion: The Unrelenting Hype of Modern Politics\nCan Social Media Really Boost Voter Turnout?\nWhy Big Data Falls Short of Its Political Promise\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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