With so much at stake even in the smallest elections, knowing how to communicate with supporters during a campaign is essential. Obama used SMS as part of his campaign, making him one of the first presidential candidates to reach out to his target audience through text messaging. With more and more people communicating almost exclusively on mobile devices, reaching voters through SMS is a necessary component to any political campaign. Barack Obama was able to mobilize his base to get out and vote using mobile marketing strategies, winning two elections for President of the United States.

Mobile Keywords Can Encourage Support

Market to your crowd effectively by using the power of the mobile keyword. When you are trying to grow your political base, a mobile keyword makes it possible for supporters to reach out and opt-in to your text messaging campaign. Your keyword should be easy to locate on advertisements, on your social media platforms, and on any printed material that you create for your campaign. During a speech, get more supporters by announcing to text your keyword to receive updates from your campaign.

Once you set up a keyword and begin to receive messages, you can use the sign-up process to gather information about your audience. When supporters sign up to receive text messages from your campaign, you can ask demographical information so that you can learn more about who is supporting your platform.

Raise Campaign Funds Through Text Messaging

Money makes your campaign possible. You can’t run a successful campaign without solid funding from your supporters. When you implement text messaging to increase exposure and reach out to your followers, you will have an easier time raising money. You can share links to a donation page and share why you are running for office in the first place. Once you begin fundraising, you can share similar links on the social media platforms you have created to support your campaign and provide your supporters with another way to engage with the campaign.

Use SMS to Gather Information From Supporters

When you want feedback from your supporters, SMS is the answer. You will be able to make decisions based on the feedback from your supporters, without having to depend on generic polls that aren’t going to provide you with a ton of information. SMS surveys are answered frequently, and you will get feedback from your supporters within minutes of sending out a survey through SMS. Ask your supporters what is important, how they feel about specific issues, and you will have a better understanding of why your base is following you.

Save Money through Automation

When your volunteers are already working too hard for your campaign, there are SMS solutions that can automate certain tasks for you. Automation can be used to share updates automatically with your supporters and can be set up to help a new volunteer to sign up to help your campaign. The system is interactive, and automatic links can be sent out depending on the keyword or phrase the recipient texts into your campaign.

Use Text Messaging to Speak with Supporters

In order to reach out to supporters and receive text messages, you can have your landline number text-enabled. Donors will be able to call you or send a text message to the same phone number, even though it’s not a mobile device. Your system can then easily be used to send out a message to all of your supporters at the same time, or a target demographic of supporters.

Texting is going to revolutionize how you manage your campaign and reach out to donors. Save money by automating processes and reach a wider audience with keyword implementation. Follow great campaigns like President Obama by using SMS to gain support and motivate voters.

Author Biography:
Joel Lee

Joel Lee is the SEO marketing specialist at Trumpia, which earned a reputation as the most complete SMS solution including user-friendly user interface and API for mobile engagement, Smart Targeting, advanced automation, enterprise, and cross-channel features for both mass texting and landline texting use cases.