In many states, primary races have wrapped up and the push toward November is underway. As campaigns readjust their focus, here are four budget-friendly voter contact strategies you can implement over the summer that will pay off in November.
1. Throw a post-primary unity event.
If you got through a bruising primary, coming together can feel difficult right now. But even if your opponent isn’t willing to get on board and endorse you, it’s up to your campaign to bring their voters into the fold. What does that look like? How about telephone town halls to shore up your base and bring people together:
- A statewide (or district-wide) telephone town hall empowers your candidate to speak with a large audience, feature guest speakers, take audience questions, and secure commitments to endorse, volunteer, or vote. The event can be live streamed (audio or video) and promoted across social channels.
- A telephone town hall is typically the largest organic audience to which a candidate will speak during their campaign. In 2020, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) spoke with more than 50,000 Texans in one event.
- Following last year’s Supreme Court decision, you can now outbound dial to cell phones, as long as no recordings are used.
- Sound clips can be combined with video and still images for future socials, website posting or targeting your base.
2. Expand your volunteer recruitment calls.
Spending your summer building your campaign army will be pay huge dividends this fall when you need to flex your grassroots muscle. But building your army shouldn’t take all of your time and efforts. In fact, you can scale your efforts by tapping extra help. A phone vendor can quickly and accurately generate a list of potential volunteers for your field team to just do the follow-up work. This can be done with a text / automated call combination, or with live calls for a higher-level, personal touch.
3. Focus on building coalitions.
In addition to volunteers, you want activate and leverage different coalitions to help you capture each and every vote. Want to reach veterans, farmers and ranchers, women, seniors or Second Amendment supporters? A campaign can drastically cut the time and cost of recruiting by identifying qualified, interested voters that your field team simply needs to confirm. Again, this can be done with a text/automated call petition drive combination, or with live calls.
4. Drive event turnout.
Well-attended campaign rallies, fundraisers and special volunteer events can help create momentum for a campaign. In order to build those crowds, you need an effective and reliable way to reach your target audience about your upcoming events. While many campaigns resort to social media or website event links, this has become less effective.
Live and automate calls as well as text messages can help inform the exact voters you need to reach about campaign events. It’ll not only guarantee with certainty that your entire target audience receives the information, but you can also ask questions while collecting RSVPs.
This will also free up volunteers and field team from the tedious work of hitting the phones. Instead, they’re able to stay focused on hitting their weekly metrics, making events a net positive to the campaign rather than a distraction.
Nicole Schlinger is the founder and president of CampaignHQ. Since 1999, CampaignHQ has delivered millions of effective P2P text messages, voter ID, persuasion, advocacy, patch through, and GOTV calls for winning campaigns and conservative organizations.
