Political SMS Marketing

NY Times: SMS #1 App for Political Candidates

New York Times Building

Did you happen to read the article by Nick Corasaniti in The New York Times, entitled Texting Comes of Age as a Political Messenger? If not, I highly recommend it for political campaign managers thinking about using text messaging to communicate and activate supporters. It’s pretty great as an SMS marketers to see the following quotes in The New York Times article:

The killer app for the 2016 presidential campaign is not an app at all. It is not even new. Texting — that 1990s-vintage technology — has suddenly become a go-to vehicle for presidential campaigns when they need to get a message out as widely and quickly as possible, and with confidence that it will be read.

A text message — despite its no-frills, retro essence — is something personal. Something invasive. Something almost guaranteed to be read.

What gives texting its political power is its ability to cut through a lot of other advertising noise: targeted posts on Facebook and Twitter, web video commercials and the pitter-patter of emails pleading for campaign contributions. A text message, by contrast, offers the nearest thing a candidate can get to ensuring that a message will be opened and read.

Texting can also be useful in reaching younger voters, who can be harder to contact through other means.

“People who will walk around with like 20,000 unread emails will still want to clear the notification circle on the text messages,” said Joe Rospars, the chief executive of Blue State Digital. “But there’s two sides to that. You can also quickly annoy people.”

Interested in learning how 2016 presidential candidates are using text messaging to solicit donations from supporters? Check out the article we wrote here for more information.


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