• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Shop
  • Jobs Board
Campaigns & Elections logo

Campaigns & Elections

  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Articles
    • Industry News
    • CampaignTech
    • Creative
  • Videos
  • Buyer’s Guide
  • Reports
  • Expert Database
  • Events
  • Awards
    • Reed Awards
    • CampaignTech Awards
    • Rising Stars
  • Consultant Directory
  • Become a Member
  • Shop
  • Job Board
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

Is SMS the New Email?

It’s hard to beat the personalized appeal of phone banking, canvassing or email outreach. But these efforts are often expensive, ebbing in their effectiveness or require an army of volunteers to organize. Now, SMS is emerging as a cheap, effective alternative for organizing, managing volunteers, advocacy and fundraising.

Personalized SMS messages offer intimacy, a sense of urgency and, in many cases, a better response rate than other channels. How can such appeals be scaled to reach thousands of voters? How can volunteers be harnessed to help with such outreach? Here some tips on how you might incorporate SMS into your next campaign.

Learn the lessons of the past

SMS outreach campaigns aren’t new. President Obama’s campaign used it effectively for fundraising in 2012. Bernie Sander’s campaign used SMS effectively for mass organizing in 2016. Anti-Trump groups are now using it to organize.

Subscribe for Industry News Plus the Latest in Campaign Strategy & Tactics

Hidden
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Each of these efforts offer lessons in best practices. Some experienced firms, including Mobile Commons, have published helpful case studies to give groups and campaigns a road map going forward.

Run the numbers on all the channels available

The response rates to SMS messages is around 30 percent. Keep in mind, that’s the number of people who respond to a text. Meanwhile, roughly 33 percent of advocacy emails are getting caught by spam folders.

When it comes to a phone bank, a volunteer can send 10 times as many messages via SMS than through a phone call. This makes a well-run SMS campaign over 30 times more effective than phone banking. (Response rate is three times more effective with SMS and 10 times as many message are sent).

Personalization holds the key

SMS is similar to email in that they both need personalization in order to be most effective. With an SMS effort, campaigns first prepare a list of the cellphone numbers of people to be contacted. Volunteers are provided with short scripts that they text to people on the list, along with possible answers based on the response they get. On the other end, voters receive a customized SMS from a real human which improves the response rates. And like email, organizers can tweak the SMS messages based on which ones perform best.

Understand the technology

Many of the platforms for mass, SMS-based interactions used Twilio as the underlying platform. It provides the ability to send out SMS messages through an API. This is coupled with the equivalent of a CRM (Client Relationship Management) system that stores voter details, messages to be sent, responses received and stage of the interaction. It also tracks the effectiveness of different messages and the productivity of volunteers.

Deepak Puri is a Silicon Valley veteran and co-founder of Democracy Labs, a San Francisco-based non-profit that connects technical and media experts with progressive campaigns.

Share:
FacebookTweetLinkedIn

Primary Sidebar

By
Deepak Puri
09/25/2017 11:40 AM EDT
FacebookTweetLinkedIn

C&E Creative Summit 2023 Countdown:

Get Tickets

Most Read

  • Digital Organizing

    How Digital Can Help Thread the Needle in Virginia

  • Sponsored

    Combine Digital Advertising With Direct Mail, The SMART Way

  • Sponsored

    Political Comms Is The Premium Peer-To-Peer Texting Platform

Subscribe for Industry News Plus the Latest in Campaign Strategy & Tactics

Hidden
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Become a member and get access to exclusive content.

Join Today

Footer

Upcoming Events

  • September 21

    Campaigns & Elections Creative Summit

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

For the latest in campaign strategy & tactics plus industry news and analysis, subscribe for free today.

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Follow us

Follow Campaign and Elections for more daily content.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • About
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 Political World Communications, LLC

Advertisement

Subscribe for Industry News Plus the Latest in Campaign Strategy & Tactics

Hidden
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.