It's election year in Slovenia.

25 political parties are contending for votes to get as many seats as possible in the Parliament and promises are flowing around like leaves in the wind.

I don't have any favorites this time 'round, but that's no surprise.

What's interesting is that the leading party really jumped on the internet marketing train. They're doing it so well (on their web site at least, they still haven't launched any noticable campaigns) that I'm back to their web site every day.

1. Some of the party's members are publishing their own on-site blogs ... which are actually readable and quite fun.

2. You can use an interactive map to find out the names of the candidates in your district and get more info on them. And most surprisingly, the candidates are actually encouraging visitors to contact them via e-mail.

3. Various election and Slovenia related news are updated almost on a daily basis.

4. They've even incorporated multimedia in the mix, with video greetings and the like. The thing that actually impressed me the most were the video recorded "testimonials" from notable non-political individuals, explaining why this party is getting their vote. The testimonials are done so well that they could be used in any infomercial, and they're even believable.

5. You can take a quiz on how good you know Slovenia ... and the quiz naturally promotes their achievements during the past 4 years.

6. You can keep an eye on their bus tour using another map, telling you where the bus is currently located.

7. Their hosting internet chat conferences with the party's most notable representatives.

8. And there's even a toll-free telephone number for more information.

Of course, there are many other things they could be doing (at least publishing an e-zine, collecting their visitors' e-mail addresses and publishing an RSS feed), but this is none-the-less a step in the right direction.

And naturally, their internet marketing initiative is still very far from what we can observe in the USA, like the "Create Custom Posters" campaign from Bush-Cheney that let's supporters create their own campaign posters; or the Howard Dean blogs.

Hopefully, we'll be seeing even better internet usage in the next 4 years. And you never know, they might even through in an internet PR or Ad campaign as well.