Political SMS Marketing

Republican SMS Fundraising: How to Win With Text Marketing

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SMS marketing has taken the political campaigning world by storm. Political candidates and organizations sent more than 5 billion election-related text messages in October 2020 alone. SMS messaging is an affordable, efficient, and effective way to communicate with constituents and grow a political candidate’s support base.

Text message marketing creates a unique opportunity for political campaigns to fundraise large amounts of donation dollars with a very small investment. Political campaigns simply can’t succeed without donations in this day and age, which are even harder to gather if the campaign can’t effectively spread the word about its plans and initiatives.

If a campaign wants to have a fighting chance at winning, it must grow its supporter base and simultaneously increase fundraising dollars. This blog focuses on why winning republican and conservative campaigns use SMS marketing as part of their communication strategies. The article also highlights best practices and examples of text messages.

 

Why Use Text Messaging for Political Campaigning

Below are a few reasons to use text messaging for republican fundraising and political campaigning.

 

SMS Messaging Is Safe and Secure

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Did you know text message marketing is heavily regulated by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA)?

The TCPA is a law that protects Americans from unwanted text messages, ensuring that organizations only communicate with individuals who have given consent. The CTIA, although not a law, represents the wireless carriers and has significant power. Not following CTIA regulations can result in the suspension of a short code. If your campaign’s short code is suspended, you won’t be able to message your constituents until the suspension is lifted.

Although these regulations and laws may sound harsh, on the contrary, they benefit the sender and the political organization sending the messages. Subscribers willingly give their information and know that political candidates and organizations won’t contact them without their consent. This increases the likelihood of positive engagement with political text messages—which means more donations, votes, and support for a political candidate or political campaign.

At Tatango, client success managers work closely with our political customers to ensure the customers understand all laws and regulations so all their messages safely reach supporters.

 

SMS Messaging Is Reliable

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SMS messaging is a highly reliable medium for communicating with constituents and gathering donations. Your message is practically guaranteed to be opened and read very quickly. 90% of SMS marketing messages are opened within 3 minutes, and over 99% of SMS messages are read at one point or another! These statistics, coupled with safety and security, produce an ideal fundraising environment for political campaigns.

As an SMS software provider, our goal is to ensure that your campaign can always get your message across. Our software can send 100,000 political texts per minute and 6 million per hour—that’s 33 times faster than the closest competitor.

 

SMS Messaging Yields High Results

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The safety, security, and reliability of SMS marketing yields exceptional results and is one of the main reasons republican candidates, organizations, and advocacy groups are using SMS. On average, our political clients see an ROI of $5 for every $1 spent on SMS marketing and MMS marketing.

The Tatango SMS marketing platform provides a safe, secure, and efficient way to gather donations. Currently, Tatango integrates with WinRed, ActBlue, EveryAction, NationBuilder, and many other political fundraising tools to ensure you can get the best donation results from your SMS marketing investment.

In addition to offering a wide range of integration options, the Tatango SMS marketing software has the highest level of security in the SMS industry. We have stress-tested our software against the highest volumes to ensure you can reach supporters when it could mean the difference between winning or losing an election.

 

Political SMS Marketing Best Practices

Now that you’re up to speed on a few reasons why SMS marketing is so powerful for political candidates and organizations, keep reading for a few best practices that can increase your fundraising numbers.

Promotion

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Although SMS marketing yields impressive results, you must have consent from each supporter to send them mass text messages. Even if your campaign has a list of 1 million phone numbers, if each individual didn’t consent to receive text messages from your campaign, legally, you wouldn’t be able to communicate with them via text.

This is why we recommend promoting your SMS campaign everywhere so you can grow your list as quickly (and legally) as possible. When working on your communications and marketing strategy, ensure that your team is using marketing space wisely and helping you grow your subscriber list—and as a result, helping you grow donations via SMS. Promote your political short code on campaign materials, podium signs, press conferences, social media, ads, campaign buses… get creative, and watch the subscribers roll in.

 

MMS Messaging

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MMS messaging is a form of SMS marketing that gives the political organization a little more creative freedom than a regular text message. MMS messages allow up to 5,000 characters of text with Tatango, and can include a subject line and media content such as videos, images, GIFs, vCards, or sound files.

MMS messages allow your campaign to elaborate on major issues important to your subscribers and utilize media content to grab their attention.

 

Call to Action (CTA)

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Data shows that people who responded to political text message CTAs were 9.6 percent more likely to vote than those who didn’t respond. Including a call to action in your SMS messages helps guide the supporter and gives your message purpose.

Political campaigns often use CTAs such as donation links, surveys, event registration, and voting reminders and information.

 

Personalization

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SMS marketing software makes it easy for you to personalize SMS messages to the individuals by including the individual’s name in the message. You can even segment your campaigns by zip code to increase voter turnout in key areas. A personalized touch will help get the reader’s attention and help the message feel like it comes directly from the republican candidate.

 

Data

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When working with an SMS software provider like Tatango, you get access to a plethora of data. We recommend taking advantage of every piece of it. Examine how your text messages and CTAs are performing so you can fine-tune your SMS marketing strategy and ensure you can get an even better ROI.

Additionally, utilizing data will help you segment your audience to send messages focusing on what specific segments of your audience are most responsive to. Data shows that subscribers who received SMS messages with information about a candidate or district-specific issues were 8.2 percent more likely to vote.

 

Political SMS Message Examples

Curious to see how these text messages look in action? Below are a few political text message examples and use cases.

 

Donations

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One of the best and easiest ways to gather small-dollar donations is by sending SMS messages to your supporters.

 

Voting Reminders

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Provide value for your supporters by sending them a CTA to register to vote and ensure they can support you on Election Day.

 

Events

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Help spread the word about your rallies by sending your subscribers location-based text messages about events in their area.

 

Partner With Tatango

Tatango has been helping political candidates win for over 13 years! We have dedicated client success managers that will help you get the best return on your SMS marketing investment. To learn more about our software, schedule a time to chat with an expert.


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