Today’s political campaigns are more competitive than ever. You and your team spend a lot of time trying to make clear, compelling arguments that win constituents over. But at the end of the day, personal connections are the best way to get voters to see your campaign’s side of things. Enter campaign text messages.
Campaign text messages cut through the noise and reach constituents through a convenient, fast channel. With an open rate of 98% and an average response time of 90 seconds, they’re the best way to connect with your target voters. Today’s technology helps teams save time and reach more people, too. Political campaign texting platforms, for example, help campaign staffers send, receive, and organize thousands of constituent messages.
So how can you use campaign text messages to make politics personal? Let’s dive in.
Include Personal Details
Political campaign SMS technology lets teams include personal details in each text. Small touches like these are expected by today’s voters.
First, your team should ensure that your political campaign SMS platform is integrated with your political campaign management system. With an SMS integration, the contacts and custom fields in your campaign management system will automatically sync with those in your SMS platform.
Then, your team can create a basic template with space for custom fields. Once you click “send,” your political campaign texting platform will use merge tokens to insert constituents’ custom fields into outgoing texts. Even if your team sends campaign text messages in bulk, voters will feel as though each message was sent one at a time. Don’t forget to add a team member’s personal signature, too. This will let your constituents know that they’re receiving texts from a person and not a bot.
A template might look like this:
Hi there {{first name}}, Joe from Tammy Blair’s political campaign here! Don’t forget that tomorrow is the last day for folks in {{registered county}} to vote. Need help making it to the polls? Text back to learn about our rideshare program, or text STOP to stop receiving messages.
Consider sending your campaign text messages to small groups. The smaller the group, the more targeted your messaging can be. You can narrow your lists by polling place, last year voted, level of party loyalty, and other key details.
Have One-to-One Chats
Meeting constituents face-to-face is the best way to form personal connections. But many voters are too busy to attend rallies or other events that your candidate hosts. Campaign text messages are the next best thing.
SMS is a personal channel. Your constituents are text friends and family members all day long through their native SMS apps and over-the-top apps, like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Your political campaign texting platform’s shared inbox accepts messages from all of these channels. All of your teams’ replies arrive in that original channel, too. If you start a chat with a voter in a channel they feel comfortable with, they’re more likely to want to chat with you.
Once constituents respond to your texts, your team should answer their questions, then engage them in chats. This is a great way to let them know that there’s a real person on the other side of the phone. They may even open up and discuss their concerns or questions further with your team.
A conversation starter may look like this:
Hi there {{first name}}, thanks for responding to our survey. I’m worried that you said you won’t be able to make it to the voting booth on time. Do you feel like you won’t have a ride there, or is there another problem? I’d love to help. Text back to reply, or text STOP to stop receiving messages.
Open-ended conversations help your teams identify constituents’ needs and quickly work to solve them. Your team may want to prioritize chats as a strategy to form personal connections.
Follow Up with Everyone
Constituents like to know that their votes really matter. Following up with them is a great way to show that your campaign staffers take their opinions seriously.
Send a text when someone hasn’t answered a text after a while. Constituents might not realize that a real person is waiting for them to respond. When you text again with a more personal message, they might realize that you’re looking forward to their reply. You can also send a follow-up text after a one-to-one chat. This is a great way to ensure a constituent still feels good about a decision or that the constituent is going to take up your team on a service offer.
Political campaign SMS platforms make following up easy. Your team can set up SMS drip campaigns to circle in on a schedule you’d prefer. Your political campaign texting platform will even remove constituents from lists once they answer or complete another action.
Follow-up campaign text messages might look like this:
Hello {{first name}}! This is Joe again, from Tammy Blair’s campaign. Are you still on the fence about Proposition 34? Text back to reply, or text STOP to stop receiving messages.
SMS drip campaigns are a great way to show constituents that you’re intent on winning their vote.
Got questions about campaign text messages? Talk to our team.
