SMS Marketing Misc.

Text Message Fundraising for 2022

text message fundraising for 2022

Political candidates raised hundreds of millions of dollars through text message marketing in the 2020 election. In fact, political groups and organizations sent more than 5 billion political text messages in October 2020 alone. Text message marketing makes it easy for political candidates to communicate with their followers in real time and raise donations that directly impact the success of their campaigns. Although the 2020 election results are in, it’s never too early to begin preparing for 2022. Setting up your SMS marketing campaigns for success NOW can help you get ahead of your competition, grow your subscriber list so more people can donate, and maximize fundraising for a successful 2022 election season. In this blog post we offer a few tips for setting up your political SMS marketing for success in 2022.

1. Ensure Your Campaigns Are TCPA Compliant

Per the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) and Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), you must follow specific guidelines for collecting phone numbers to avoid suspension of your political short code or incur costly fines of up to $1,500 per unlawful text message, per recipient.

To comply with the TCPA and legally send political text messages, political organizations must have written consent from the recipients of the political text messages. However, written consent doesn’t have to be obtained the old-fashioned way with pen and paper. You can obtain consent via a web form or a mobile device. A political campaign or organization must disclose the following statement wherever it’s promoting its SMS campaign: “By participating, you consent to receive text messages sent by an automatic telephone dialing system.” This disclaimer must be visible to the subscriber as they opt into the SMS campaign.

To ensure a voter wants to receive your text messages (and someone didn’t just accidentally mistype their number when subscribing), we always recommend an SMS double opt-in. With a double opt-in, there’s no doubt that a subscriber willfully opted into your political text messaging campaigns, which ensures you are messaging someone who wants to hear from you and is more likely to donate.

What you can do now to prepare for 2022: Download our free SMS marketing compliance templates to ensure your campaigns are set up for success—in text messaging and on the campaign trail.

Election SMS Fundraising_Ensure You Meet Text Message Regulations

 

Integrate Your Political Fundraising Platform and SMS Marketing Software

Whether you’re on the left or right of the political spectrum, you’re likely using a political fundraising platform or customer relationship management tool (CRM). (If not, now is a great time to set one up.) A political donation platform or political CRM allows you to organize followers, track text donations, and segment your subscribers to send more tailored messages. Tatango integrates with all political SMS fundraising software and CRMs, such as ActBlue, WinRed, EveryAction, Anedot, NationBuilder, and more. That way, subscribers can donate directly from your text messages without having to log into a website on a browser or desktop computer. It removes any friction, increasing the likelihood that your constituents will donate to your campaigns and help you reach your fundraising goals.

What you can do NOW to prepare for 2022: Set up your political text message marketing integration now so you can begin fundraising for your 2022 campaign. Contact Tatango for an easy, one-click setup with your political SMS fundraising software or political CRM of choice. (We can also walk you through this if it’s new to you.)

integrate your political fundraising platform

 

Promote Your Short Code to Grow Your Subscriber List

To raise the most amount of money, you have to continuously grow your SMS subscriber list. The more subscribers, the more text donations you can receive from every text message you send. At Tatango, we’ve helped political campaigns add millions of SMS subscribers to their campaigns.

One of the most foundational ways to grow your political SMS list is to promote your short code everywhere. A short code is the phone number you’ll use to communicate with your subscribers. Promote your short code on all your campaign materials to encourage people to opt into your political SMS marketing campaigns.

What you can do now to prepare for 2022: Promote your short code on campaign materials, podium signs, website, social media, advertisements, campaign bus, and more. For example, you could place a sign saying “Text JOIN to 12345 for important campaign updates” on or behind your podium at campaign rallies or news conferences to encourage your most passionate supporters to join your SMS subscriber list.

Election SMS Fundraising_Choose an Opt-in SMS Incentive

 

Use MMS Messages to Boost Opens, Clicks, and Text Fundraising

While SMS messages only contain 160 characters, MMS messages can include multimedia like images, GIFs, videos, audio files, and subject lines. With Tatango, you can even send up to 5,000 characters in MMS messages, which gives you plenty of room to update your supporters and explain your position on key issues. Pairing eye-catching images with compelling copy in MMS messages helps you catch your subscribers’ attention and makes it more likely for them to connect with your message and donate through your text fundraising campaigns.

What you can do now to prepare for 2022: Begin saving campaign images to an image library so when the time comes to send an MMS message, you can access these images easily and quickly. Save images from the campaign trail and important events and of your candidate and causes. 

Election SMS Fundraising_Add Images and Videos

 

Personalize Text Messages for More Text Donations

An impressive 54 percent of consumers say they’re more likely to take action if a text message is personalized. In a political setting, it’s vital for supporters to feel a personal connection to their candidate, so the more you can personalize a political text message, the better. Craft text messages that include a subscriber’s name or city when possible to let your supporters know you care about them and their region. This type of personalization can be especially important for swing states where you can mobilize supporters of a certain state, region, or even zip code.

What you can do now to prepare for 2022: Create workflows that invite subscribers to reply with their favorite causes once they join your SMS marketing campaign. Also, set up segments of your SMS marketing subscribers based on zip code, city, and state so when you want to send a message to a specific demographic, everything is ready for you. Tatango political SMS marketing software has all these features and can make setting them up a breeze.

Election SMS Fundraising_Collect Data for Segmentation

 

Rock the Vote with Political Text Messaging

Ready to send winning political text messages? Tatango has been the industry leader for the past 13 years, helping some of the biggest names in politics win elections. Contact us today to get your 2022 campaign software set up for success.

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