With 99% open rates, SMS marketing is the most effective way to communicate with senate campaign supporters and an optimal way to gather donations. This blog post discusses why senate candidates choose SMS messaging and how they use SMS marketing to win.
Why Senate Candidates Use SMS Marketing
Below are a few of the top reasons why senate candidates use SMS marketing to raise donations, increase votes, and win elections.
SMS Marketing Is Adaptable
Although senate campaigns have well-planned communications strategies, elections can be unpredictable. Communications technology must be easily adaptable and agile so a political campaign can quickly and easily send last-minute communications to its constituents. If funding isn’t coming in from other avenues as projected, a campaign must be able to pivot to increase donations.
SMS messaging is a highly adaptable method of communication. Email marketing is a great tool and has its place in the world of senate elections, but have you ever tried to send out a quick email about an urgent topic? Emails tend to take longer to write and set up in an email marketing platform. And due to the message length and the volume of recipients, the approval process can be tedious. Additionally, email marketing open rates are roughly 20%, compared to SMS marketing, where recipients read 90% of messages within just 3 minutes.
Senate candidates can choose between longer MMS messages (up to 5,000 characters of text plus multimedia) or SMS messages (up to 160 characters of text). Either way, text messages are shorter, simpler, and more widely than emails. SMS messaging is to the point, which is ideal for a busy senate campaign and a busy supporter.
SMS Marketing Is Streamlined
The Tatango SMS marketing platform enables senate campaigns to create messaging workflows and messaging automations that streamline the text messaging process. This ensures that senate campaign staff can easily plan their communications strategies and incorporate supporter data by using subscriber segmentation to ensure every message reaches the right individual promptly. For example, senate campaigns can create unique, automated campaigns with messages for frequent donors and special messages designed to entice first-time donors.
Tatango’s powerful API allows senate campaigns to integrate the software with other technology to create an even more streamlined SMS marketing experience. Additionally, Tatango offers an extensive library of established integrations to ensure supporter communication and fundraising are simple and easy.
SMS Marketing Is Safe and Secure
As many individuals and campaigns have learned in the past several years, social media can be an unreliable medium to communicate with supporters. Not only do social media algorithms determine what your followers will (or will not see), some senate campaigns may feel like they can’t speak openly with their constituents. SMS messages provide the perfect solution to this issue. There is no censorship, so senate campaigns can rest easy knowing subscribers will receive and read all their messages. Since SMS messages don’t have spam filters or folders, they’ll arrive on the subscriber’s phone like all other texts.
SMS messaging is heavily regulated by the CTIA and TCPA, and mass SMS messages are held in high regard for their safety standards. They’re so safe that many senate campaigns use SMS messages to gather campaign donations.
The Tatango SMS marketing platform integrates with fundraising platforms to create a safe and easy way for supporters to donate and for campaigns to receive those funds. Currently, Tatango integrates with all political SMS fundraising software and CRMs, such as ActBlue, WinRed, EveryAction, Anedot, NationBuilder, and others.
Winning SMS Marketing Techniques
As the leaders in political SMS marketing for more than 14 years, we see everything when it comes to SMS marketing techniques. Below are a few political SMS marketing examples to help your campaigns take the lead.
SMS Messages Can Be Personalized
Winning senate campaigns send their supporters personalized messages. SMS marketing software allows campaign communications staff to personalize mass text messages with minimal effort.
With the Tatango SMS marketing solution, senate campaign staff can use merge tags to easily include data from the subscriber’s profile in customized SMS messages. Additionally, campaign staff can segment subscribers to create a personalized communication experience for each supporter and ensure they receive information and communication that’s valuable to them.
The example above uses merge tags to include the subscriber’s first name (Jane) and the city she lives in (Tyler). Personalized messages will make supporters more likely to donate.
SMS Messages Can Be Issue-Specific
Winning senate campaigns focus on the issues that matter most to their subscribers, and they have open and honest discussions with their supporters about those issues. It’s important that your SMS messages don’t just ask subscribers to donate but also tell them where you stand on important issues and what your plans are. Data has found that subscribers who received SMS messages with information about a candidate or district-specific issues were 8.2% more likely to vote. Recent elections have shown that 8.2% can secure a victory in a senate race.
The Tatango SMS marketing platform makes it possible to add unique subscriber information to the subscriber profile, such as issues the subscriber said in a survey were most important to them. Additionally, senate staff can segment lists based on top issues to create automated SMS messaging campaigns that focus on those issues and the senate candidate’s stance.
SMS Messages Are Effective for Fundraising
Without proper fundraising, a senate campaign can’t secure a victory. Winning senate campaigns utilize SMS messages to gather donations from their supporters, and fundraising is integral to their SMS strategy. SMS messaging creates a safe and secure way to gather donations easily. As mentioned, the Tatango SMS marketing software integrates with all political SMS fundraising software and CRMs, such as ActBlue, WinRed, EveryAction, Anedot, NationBuilder, and others.
Integrations with fundraising software create a streamlined process for senate campaigns to gather donations efficiently and maximize the return on their investment. On average, Tatango’s political clients see a $5 donation return for every $1 they invest in SMS marketing.
Partner with Tatango to Help Your Senate Campaign Win
Tatango has been working with senate campaigns to help secure victories for over 14 years. In addition to powerful software, we provide each senate campaign with a customer success manager to ensure their SMS messaging is operating at maximum efficiency and results in the best ROI.
We’d love to hear about your campaign and show you how Tatango can help secure a victory. Schedule a time to speak with an SMS marketing expert today.
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