This guide to political campaign call time highlights the importance of calling donors to build meaningful connections, effectively fundraise, and ask for specific amounts. It explains why asking for specific amounts can significantly impact the donor’s decision-making process and provides strategies for developing effective ask amounts.
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Phone call tracking is a popular way for businesses to gain insight into customer behavior. By using a unique phone number in their marketing campaigns, businesses can track where leads are coming from and how customers are responding. Analysis of this data helps businesses optimize campaigns, track call volume, and improve customer service. It’s now possible to use technology for this purpose, making it easier than ever to harness the power of phone call tracking for businesses looking to improve their overall ROI.
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Like it or not, phone calls are still the most effective method for reaching out to people.
Email, text messaging, direct messaging on social media, and other forms of outreach are still important – but contacts still have the option of ignoring your messages a lot of the time.
A phone call on the other hand is difficult to ignore, and once you get them on the line you’ve got their undivided attention.
Unfortunately, phone calls are very much a 1-on-1 form of communication. Forcing you to manage your time effectively.
In this article, we’ll look at the 10 call time management tips for increasing your productivity when making phone calls.
Get in touch to see how Campaign Deputy can help you manage your call time more effectively.
Making more phone calls every day will improve your chances of success.
Use these 10 time management tips for an effective daily call routine:
It’s important to stay focused when making calls, these tips reduce distraction and help you consistently reach your daily call targets.
Remember, staying on task will make achieving your result of getting more donors to give to your campaign far more likely because you’re focusing on what you can control.
Rather than hoping to reach your goal without a proper call time management system.
Let’s look at each of these tips in more detail.
Before you even start making calls, you need to ensure your contacts are well organized.
The last thing you want is to go searching for details when you’re meant to be on the phone making calls.
Keeping a well-organized, and easily accessible database of contacts will make your life far easier.
The simplest way of doing this is to use a spreadsheet, but these can also become disorganized over time.
So use a platform like Campaign Deputy, which keeps your data organized and stored in a centralized database to avoid sending spreadsheets back and forth with colleagues.
Scrambling around for the necessary information while you’re on a call not only affects your ability to get through the call in a timely manner, but it also gives an impression that you’re unprofessional.
Before jumping on a call, make sure you have everything you need to complete your conversation.
Whether that be information about previous conversations, information about your campaign, or anything else you might need.
Ensuring you’re properly prepared will make your calls run far smoother, meaning you’ll get through more of them in a day.
Getting the response, “you have the wrong number”, can be frustrating and time-consuming.
Speaking to the wrong person on a call will significantly increase your time between calls.
Make sure you have the correct details for the person you’re contacting, so each interaction you’re having is productive.
This comes back to keeping your contacts well-organized.
Keeping your database of contacts updated on a regular basis will significantly reduce the issue of calling the wrong number.
Keeping track of if and when you call people is important.
Often you’ll be asked to remove someone from your database, or the person might say they aren’t interested.
When this happens, it’s best to remove them from your list to avoid contacting them again.
As this wastes your time and makes you seem like a spammer which could negatively impact the perception of your brand or cause.
So track your calls to make sure you aren’t wasting time on people who aren’t likely to want to hear from you.
This point is closely related to the previous tip of tracking your calls.
Keeping detailed notes in your database specific to a contact helps when you’re skimming through your data and trying to decide who to call next and what was discussed previously.
Understanding where you left off with the person the last time you spoke to them shows you’re properly informed when you speak to them again.
It also helps to move your conversation forward rather than repeating what was discussed the previous time.
The best way to do this is by keeping detailed notes of each call. The time it takes to make the notes will be far less than trying to remember every detail the next time you speak with them.
Trying to squeeze calls into your day between other tasks is guaranteed to reduce the number of calls you’re able to make.
Rather, have a set block or multiple blocks of time throughout your day dedicated to making calls.
This way you aren’t jumping between meetings, emails, calls, and the various other activities you’re required to do throughout your day.
Not only will this allow you to manage your call time more effectively, but it’ll also make the other blocks of work more productive because you’re not splitting your attention having to make calls.
Multitasking isn’t recommended when you’re trying to be productive. Instead, focus on one set of tasks at a time and you’ll see a significant increase in your productivity.
Often you’ll call someone and find you’re left speaking to their voicemail.
This might be because they’re busy and simply aren’t able to answer the phone at the time, or they’re avoiding your call because they don’t recognize your number.
Either way, use the opportunity to leave a friendly but detailed voicemail of the reason for your call.
So when the person wants to know the reason you called, they aren’t annoyed and might even respond positively to your message.
Something you should always do is include a straightforward call-to-action in your voice message.
Asking the person to “call you back” or “email you at” will be a hug time-saver for you.
They’ll appreciate the clarity and often saves you a lot of time, so you don’t have to call them again if they’re truly interested in what you have to say.
Apart from phone calls, text messages receive the highest open rate of any other form of communication.
This is because text messages need to be opened to remove the notification from your screen.
Interestingly, not everyone listens to their voicemail messages, so even if you leave one they might not listen to it.
So if the person you’re calling has a mobile number, use the opportunity to send a thoughtful text message explaining the reason for your call and once again, including a straightforward call-to-action.
This is a great, non-intrusive way of getting your message across and will help you effectively manage your call time by reducing the number of call-backs you need to make.
Especially if your text does a great job at generating interest. So always be testing different content in your text messages to increase your chances at success and reducing time spent on repeat calls.
If you’re managing your call time in order to increase your daily productivity, then tracking your workload is a must.
Understanding how much work you can complete within a given window of time will allow you to set realistic expectations of yourself.
This way, if you’ve had a particularly slow day, you’ll understand why and attempt to optimize your day a little better moving forward.
This will be impossible to do if you’re not effectively tracking your workload, and uncovering where these inefficiencies are in your day.
Just like we’ve said you should be separating your day into productive blocks of time, rather than trying to multitask your way to effective call time management – the same goes for separating personal and business tasks.
Being distracted by personal calls can derail your productivity and affect your overall efficiency in your work.
It’s also important to keep the business and personal aspects of your life separate to maintain a healthy work/life balance.
Rather than risking an overflow of work frustrations into personal issues which might negatively impact your relationships outside of work.
When you’re making business calls, put your personal device on silent or switch it off altogether.
This way you can effectively manage your call time, but also not allowing work to influence your emotions outside of work hours.
Especially if you’re encountering particularly difficult people during your blocks of work calls.
Call time management is extremely important if you’re trying to achieve measurable success in your campaigns.
Fortunately, there are platforms built specifically to help you achieve these goals.
Over at Campaign Deputy, we’ve spent a lot of time and money researching the most important call time management tools to bring you a platform that does it all.
Try our call time management platform today for free to better manage yours or your staffs call time without using excessive spreadsheets or ineffective business practices.
Choosing the right software for your campaign from the start is important.
You want a platform that works well, so you don’t have to change technologies halfway through your campaign.
In this post, we’ll look at the 8 best tools you should look for in a software for political campaigns.
Click here to start your free political campaign software trial today.
With all the campaign softwares on the market today, the most advanced ones focus on fundraising.
Requiring a high-level of data security, combining multiple technologies for contacting donors and capturing contributions, and should be easy enough for all your staff to use.
Here are the 8 things your political campaign software should do:
Some platforms will have fewer features and others will have more, but these 8 tools are crucial to your campaign’s success.
Let’s look at each of these tools in more detail.
If you’ve run any sort of campaign, you’ll know how difficult it can be to effectively track calls.
Instead of asking staff to track their call activity manually and risking incorrect or lost information, your political campaign software should do this all for you:
Tracking calls will help you better understand exactly how much time staff is spending on the phones while making their lives easier by centralizing all important information.
The purpose of using well-equipped software for political campaigns is to keep things organized, especially as your contact list grows.
It’s not uncommon to have lists as long as tens or even hundreds of thousands of people.
Storing all contact information in one centralized location makes tracking donors and pledges far easier.
It also helps when you’re speaking to contacts via email or on the phone because you can keep additional notes about the person to inform future points of contact.
With call tracking, your contacts list becomes a rich source of donor data to tap into.
Using custom submission forms, you can populate contacts with whatever information you find useful when generating reports.
Turning your contacts list into a priceless source of data and helping you make important campaign decisions.
Text messages have the highest open rate of any form of communication, with an open rate of about 99%.
This is because recipients typically need to open a text to remove the notification from their screen, unlike an email that might get trapped in a spam folder or drowned out in an inbox.
Your campaign software should have a feature allowing you to text recipients directly from the platform itself.
Text messaging donors is great for reminders, encouraging donors to give again, letting them know about local events, and much more.
On average, 97% of text messages are opened within 15 minutes of being received. Making them great for getting urgent messages out to your members if necessary.
The embedded texting tool should also let you broadcast a message to your contacts all at once.
Email is still one of the most effective ways of removing barriers to communicating with voters, donors, and volunteers.
It’s an extremely scalable and cost-effective form of communication.
Unlike social media accounts vulnerable to hackers, algorithm changes, and changing platform policies – a growing email list of contacts is your most valuable asset.
No one can throttle your reach or cut you off from your email list.
You’ll use email to send donation request letters, thank you letters, campaign updates, and more.
Combined with the ability to manage contacts and track calls, emailing donors is another core function you should expect to see in most good political campaign software.
Advanced platforms will offer a drag-and-drop email builder to help you create the best-looking emails for your campaign.
Gathering information from donors and volunteers is vital and should be easy.
The best campaign platforms allow you to create custom submission forms with your own styling to suit your needs.
Like the email builder, your campaign software should give you an easy drag-and-drop form builder for data capturing.
More advanced form builders allow you to create forms using conditional logic fields.
Meaning, that you can create custom questions and responses based on input from the user. A very flexible and powerful tool for any political campaign.
Not only can you use this data to stay in touch with contacts, but advanced reporting lets you turn an almost infinite range of data into useful campaign insights.
The secret to your success is understanding the thousands of data points gathered throughout your campaign.
More importantly, being able to extract and use data based on your own specific requirements.
The most advanced reporting tools will let you filter and organize data by demographics, contributions, and contact history.
For example, if you’re hosting a local event, you can extract data for people based in a specific area who recently contributed to your campaign.
Your data becomes infinitely more useful when you arrange and present your reports in a way that informs your campaign strategy.
Only the best campaign software will offer a feature for accepting donations.
Rather than requesting donations using unreliable or expensive bank transfers, making administration a nightmare – you can use a built-in payment gateway letting you instantly process contributions, track donors, and produce detailed reports.
You can also create custom contribution forms with preset or flexible payment options so donors can decide how much they want to give.
These forms are hosted at your own branded domain, so you can link to them from your website, and send them to donors using email, or via text message.
They make receiving donations easy, so you don’t have to worry about bank transfers which are notoriously costly and take ages to complete.
When fundraising for a political campaign, it’s important to have all your compliance reports in order to stay on the right side of state and federal finance laws.
Campaign finance reporting can be tricky and takes up a lot of your time.
The great thing about using a political campaign software that handles payments for you is it can quickly generate these compliance reports for you, saving you loads of time and unnecessary headaches.
This is easily done by entering campaign contributions online and using custom algorithms to match donors.
Ensuring you’re compliant both federally and across multiple states, avoiding any reporting or compliance issues.
There are many softwares for political parties, but the kind every campaign needs is a fundraising platform.
Without a proper fundraising strategy and technology to support it, your party is going to struggle to stay afloat.
Over at Campaign Deputy, we understand what it takes to run a successful political campaign.
We’ve created tools specifically for people like you who need help finding donors and getting them to contribute to your cause.
Click here to start your free political campaign software trial today.
Raising money for an election campaign can be daunting if you’re not sure where to start.
Fortunately, there are steps you can take today to start getting donors through the door and contributing to your cause.
Whether you’re new or experienced, these steps will help you create a scalable fundraising process.
In this post, we’re looking at how to raise money for a campaign.
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There are many ways to raise funds for your campaign, some more effective than others.
Here are the 7 steps we’d recommend based on our research:
This is the most scalable way to raise money for a campaign, especially if you have a small team or limited resources.
Avoid strategies that don’t scale well, because you’ll soon reach your limits and your systems will break down.
No campaign is complete without a website explaining your policies and showcasing your success stories.
It doesn’t need to be very fancy or have hundreds of pages, as long as it clearly states your objectives and explains how people can get in involved. Most campaigns only need a single page website with a budget of $1000-$2000 if you need one built.
Information your website must include:
You might be tempted to overload visitors to your website with information, but try to avoid this. Websites typically get less views than social, email, or your donation page.
The clearer your message with a clear path for donors to follow, the better your website will perform.
This is normally the tricky part, getting donors to your website.
Since most people won’t be searching for ways to donate to your campaign (ruling out search engine optimization), you’ll need to use organic social growth and disruptive paid ads to generate interest online.
Be sure to add your website link to all your social media profiles.
Regularly sharing official views on current events, case studies of your efforts, latest success stories, and interacting with your community on social platforms is a great way to organically generate website visitors.
Especially if you can create viral moments online, like sharing positive news or discussing contentious topics.
The larger your online community grows, the more traffic you’ll push to your website.
Using paid ads on social media is a great way to support and even accelerate your organic social growth. Facebook, as of 2022, still allows political ads. You will need to go through a verification process which can take days or up to a week.
Ads on platforms like Facebook let you target donors based on a wide range of criteria, including:
This lets you test your campaign ads with different groups of people, seeing what resonates better and optimizing your ad spend.
This helps to raise awareness of your campaign beyond your current audience.
Another great option is to work with influencers who appeal to your ideal donor, especially if they’re widely liked and trusted.
We suggest taking advantage of both organic and paid social growth because both play an important part in raising money and awareness for your campaign.
Everything we’ve discussed until now is about getting in front of donors.
Remember, your goal is always to capture the contact details of visitors coming to your website – referred to as “de-platforming” your audience.
This is in case something happens to your social media accounts, like if they’re blocked or hacked.
You always want to ensure you have either an email address or contact number for your potential donors.
This way you always have direct contact with them no matter what.
There are 2 main ways to capture visitor contact details:
The most obvious way to capture visitor details is by asking them to sign up for your newsletter.
Often people want to stay up to date with what your party is doing, so they’ll be more than happy to receive regular updates from you in the form of an email newsletter.
Another proven method of gathering visitor details is by offering a free resource in return for their information.
It might be a detailed document discussing your policies, a voters guide, or anything donors might find interesting.
Getting access to the voter file is a great option if you want a large list of contacts to reach out to immediately.
This can be a very effective method of attracting new donors as you’re speaking directly to a much larger group of people. Using this list during Call Time is an excellent way to connect.
The only downside of this method is you’re speaking to an audience who might never have heard from you before, decreasing the overall effectiveness of your outreach.
However, it’s a great addition to any campaign if you can afford it. Contact your local or state party for more details.
Now that you’ve attracted and de-platformed your visitor, it’s time to request donations.
Remember, you shouldn’t always be asking for money.
It’s just as important to raise awareness of your campaign as it is to raise money for it, so be strategic about when you ask for donations.
There are 3 main ways to request donations:
Emailing donation request letters is a great outreach strategy, and perfect for staying in touch with members.
Use a service like Campaign Deputy to regularly bulk-send emails to your members, some of which can be requests for contributions to your cause.
Email is very cost-effective, so it scales extremely well.
Fundraising for campaigns using SMS has been a proven strategy for many years.
Text messages have an extremely high open rate, so you’re guaranteed to get your donor’s attention.
You wouldn’t use SMS to communicate as often as you would with email. Texting should be reserved for important messages, like raising money for your campaign.
The most effective way to get in touch with your donors is by simply picking up the phone and calling them. Not every candidate enjoys call time and for down-ballot races it’s a large part of your fundraising budget.
This is the least scalable method, but you can’t argue with its effectiveness.
Once again, calling members should be reserved for important communications only or you risk irritating your members.
Believe it or not, collecting contributions is the easy part.
Campaign Deputy can get you set up and ready to accept donations within an hour of your announcement.
It’s as simple as sharing your donor link with members, and they can donate using their credit or debit card.
No need for direct bank transfers anymore, with extended waiting times and high transfer fees.
Since you now have a website, it’s not difficult to implement an e-commerce store on it.
This way you can sell campaign merchandise like t-shirts and mugs to help raise money for your political party. You can find print-on-demand vendors so you do not have to manage the inventory.
Often supporters of your campaign will want to advocate for you, so it simultaneously spreads the word about your party while raising funds.
It’s like having volunteers canvassing on your behalf.
The most effective long-term strategy to raising money is growing your online community.
This includes your audience spread across:
The larger your community grows, the more advocates and donors you’ll attract.
Larger donors are also more likely to work with you if you have a large community of supporters.
Now you have our 7-step strategy to raise money for your election campaign.
These strategies have proven effective for both the commercial and nonprofit spaces, and it’s sure to work for you.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one service provider, look no further than Campaign Deputy.
We have all the tools you need to run an election campaign, from growing your community to gathering contributions from members.
The first donation you get from someone is often the most difficult.
Donors are taking a leap of faith when agreeing to contribute to your cause, especially if they’re new to your organization.
Getting someone to donate again is far easier, so you should always send thoughtful thank you letters to your donors to keep them informed and engaged in what you’re doing.
In this article, we’ll look at why and how to write donation thank you letters as well as what you should include for increasing their impact.
Book a call with Campaign Deputy and see how you can automate your Thank You emails.
Writing thank you letters to donors is as important as the donation request letter itself.
By acknowledging someone’s donation, you’re showing your gratitude and increasing their likelihood of giving again.
In addition to showing gratitude, here’s why writing thank you letters is a good idea:
Writing thank you letters is also good practice for a fundraising organization.
It’s something donors have come to expect when giving to a cause because it’s their way of keeping track of contributions and how they’re impacting the world.
Now, let’s look at exactly how to write your donation thank you letters.
It’s always best to keep any communications with donors short and to the point.
They’re already giving their hard-earned money, you don’t want to take up more of their time than necessary.
The first section of your letter is your introduction.
Your introduction is where you connect with your donor once again.
You should make your thank you letters feel as personal as possible, and you do this with a good introduction.
What to include in your introduction:
Keep your introduction short but impactful.
Here are 2 examples of good introductions:
Example 1 (first donation):
Dear Jessie,
Thank you for your generous contribution of [amount] towards [your cause]. We truly appreciate every bit of help we receive from amazing donors like yourself. Since this is your first donation to [your organization], we wanted to reach out and tell you exactly how you’ve impacted [your goal].
Example 2 (multiple donations):
Dear Sam,
Thank you once again for your generous contribution of [amount] towards [your cause]. With your continued support, [your organization] can keep working towards [your goal] knowing we’re backed by the most amazing donors who want to see us succeed. Your donations are changing lives.
Once you’ve got a short and succinct introduction, it’s time to create the body of your thank you letter.
Here you’ll go into more depth, explaining how your most recent donations have been used.
The goal is to give your donor a more complete understanding of how their contribution has impacted your cause, and what it’s allowed your organization to achieve.
Be specific, referencing an individual case to make the benefits as tangible as possible.
Here are 2 examples of how to do this:
Example 1:
Thanks to you, we’ve been able to [help/provide] [benefactor/s] with [benefit]. This means [benefactor/s] can now [achieve goal], this would’ve been impossible without your continued support.
Example 2:
With your help, more [benefactor/s] are able to [achieve goal] without fear of [disadvantage]. Your donation has [helped/provided] [benefactor/s] with [main benefit], which is only possible with continued support from donors like you who believe in [your cause].
The more specific you can be about the goals achieved because of their donations, the more invested and valued your donor will feel.
Remember, your thank you letter should be short, but nothing is stopping you from linking out to a blog post about your organization’s most recent accomplishments.
This gives your donor an option to read more without the intimidation of a long email.
Now that you’ve thanked your donor and explained how their contribution has helped your cause, it’s time to move to your conclusion.
Your conclusion should focus on dealing with any remaining uncertainty your donor might have, and it’s a great way of getting some feedback or input from them (should they have any).
You do this by giving donors a direct contact person in your organization who can answer any questions or concerns they might have, as well as including any relevant links to your website.
Here are 2 examples of how to do this:
Example 1:
Should you have any questions or would like to know more, feel free to contact [person’s name and title] at [email address]. Or call [him/her] at [phone number] and [he/she] will be happy to speak with you.
Example 2:
Want to know more about [your cause], our friendly [title], [person’s name] is always available to speak with you. You can contact [him/her] at [email address] or call [phone number].
You’ve now successfully thanked your donor, explained how valuable their contribution is to your cause, and how they can get in touch if they’d like to know more.
Remember, all your thank you letter should be doing is thanking your donor.
Here’s what NOT to do in your donation thank you letters:
Thanking people for their donations is one of the most overlooked aspects of fundraising.
If you can do it effectively, you’ll increase the chances of building a good relationship with your donors and getting them to give regularly.
Book a call with Campaign Deputy and see how you can automate your Thank You emails.
Using email to appeal for donations has always been a great way of connecting with potential donors.
It’s a non-intrusive and very scalable outreach technique allowing you to get your message across clearly and easily.
In this article, we’ll give you the perfect framework for writing donation request letters with a few examples to inspire you.
Interested in a demo? Sign up for a short demo.
The AIDA writing framework has been used successfully in the commercial space for many years. Allowing consumers to understand the value of an offer and getting them to take action.
We can use the same process when gathering donations for your campaign.
Remember, keep your letters long enough to get your message across but short enough to avoid losing their interest.
You’re not trying to explain every aspect of your campaign, you’re trying to get them to take a specific action – to donate.
Avoid using high-level language that would disconnect your reader from your message. Use a conversational tone so your letter doesn’t sound like a mass-produced corporate newsletter.
Now, let’s get into the only writing framework you’ll ever need for writing amazing donation request letters.
The AIDA framework consists of 4 main parts:
The first step of any donation request letter is capturing your donor’s attention.
You do this in the subject line of your email.
Remember, if you can’t get your donor to open your email then it doesn’t matter how good the rest of it might be. They simply won’t donate to your cause, because they have no idea it exists.
The perfect subject line should be short and intriguing to justify opening your email.
Here are 5 examples to get you started:
What to avoid when writing a subject line:
Once you’ve got your donor’s attention and they’ve opened your letter, you move into the interest-building phase.
Here you start building the narrative of your letter.
Interest is built in the first 1 or 2 paragraphs of your letter.
When building interest in your cause or campaign, it’s important to think about how this appeals to your donor and what might stop them from donating their own hard-earned money.
The 4 main reasons people DO NOT donate to a cause are:
Overcoming these objections is the key to a successful donation request letter.
Here are 2 examples to get you started:
Example 1:
We’ve spent the last [number] years recruiting the most amazing volunteers, and kindly received [products / services / donations] from local businesses like [company name]. However, we need to do more and with your help, we can [your cause / campaign].
We understand it’s not easy giving, especially in a climate where fewer a fewer organizations are backed by good intentions. We aim to change this view by [being transparent / regularly reporting], so you’ll know exactly where your contributions are going.
Example 2:
We want to acknowledge all our volunteers who’ve kindly given their most valuable asset of time towards [your cause / campaign], and companies like [company name] who’ve so generously given of their [products/services/donations] to move our campaign forward.
But now, we need your help. Giving can be difficult, especially when you don’t trust the organization you’re trying to help. We get it, and we’re making efforts to increase [transparency / reporting] of all donated funds, so you’ll never need to question where your contributions are going.
The only purpose of your introduction is to get donors to read the rest of your request letter.
By overcoming objections you know they already have, you’re earning their attention and eventually their contribution to your cause.
Avoid moving directly into your request or telling them a motivating story.
Nobody opens an email to read a novel, you must get to the point as quickly as possible to maintain their interest.
Once you’ve piqued your donor’s interest, it’s now time to build their desire for giving.
Now that we’ve overcome the objections donors might have, it’s time to start building their desire for your cause.
You do this by outlining what you’ve already managed to do, or what your vision for their contribution might be. Desire is created when the person reading your donation request letter wants to feel part of what you’re doing because they can see the benefit of it in their own mind.
They want to feel like they’re an active participant in the change you’re bringing about, and the best way to do that is by outlining exactly what you’ve got in store for their contribution to your campaign.
When listing these benefits, avoid using large paragraphs of text. It might seem logical to explain each benefit in detail, but you’re more likely to lose your reader’s attention and they’ll close the email.
People don’t like reading large blocks of text, instead, use a skimmable format like bulleted points or numbered steps.
The clearer and to the point you can be, the more likely your donor is to finish reading your message.
Here are 2 examples to get you started:
Example 1:
We appreciate how busy you might be, so we’re not going to ask you to read about every aspect of our campaign right now. However, we’ll be happy to provide more details should you want to know more.
In summary, here’s what your contribution will be supporting:
With your help, we can [your cause] and make our combined dream a reality.
Example 2:
Our campaign has a lot of moving parts, and we know you’re not interested in reading an essay right now. However, should you have the time and want to know exactly what you’ll be helping us achieve you can read more here.
In summary, here are the steps we’re taking to [your cause]:
We can only achieve these steps with contributions from kind and giving people like yourself.
Donors will value your succinct message and appreciate the option of requesting more information should they need it.
Remember, to goal is to take up as little of their time as possible because in their eyes this is their most valuable asset. If you value their time, they can be sure that you’ll also value their money.
Now that we’ve successfully captured the interest of our donors and built their desire for getting involved, we need to ask them to take action.
When asking your reader to donate, you need to be very specific in your request.
People get confused when they’re presented with too many options, or when the request is to vague.
But how exactly do you ask for a donation in an email?
Make the next step as obvious as possible by instructing them, rather than simply including a link.
Here are 3 examples to get you started:
Make sure the only links you include from your donation request letter are to your website to provide more context if they need it, or to the contribution page where they can donate.
Don’t include links to your social accounts or pages that might distract your donor from your message.
Your goal is to get their attention, generate interest in your cause or campaign, build their desire for getting involved, and finally get them to take a specific action.
Nothing more and nothing less.
Use the AIDA framework for writing letters to your donors and you’ll see a much higher contribution rate because you’re respecting their time and have a clear path for them to follow.
Interested in a demo on how to create a donation request in Campaign Deputy? Sign up for a short demo.
With the recent privacy changes with iOS 14 and Facebook we have a solution to track your conversion events with Facebook using our Forms.
Now edit the Thank You Page with your custom message and add a HTML Block with the Javascript code below. Make sure you have already added your Facebook Pixel ID in your setting.
Copy paste the code below in. The /100 is from ActBlue as they pass the value over as total Cents not as a dollar amount, so $21.21 would be 2121 as the amount.
function() {
const actblueParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);
fbq("track", "Purchase", { currency: "USD", value: actblueParams.get("amount")/100 });
})();
For the Javascript developers, we poly-fill the URLSearchParams for Internet Explorer users which makes the code a lot easier to read than parsing out the location.search parameter by hand.
Now redirect your http://act.campaigndeputy.com/thankyou/{formname}?amount={{amount}}&refcode={{refcode}}&name={{name}}
Glad you asked, talk to your account manager to get the DNS entries needed. Depending on your account there may be a small up-charge. Someone from your team will need to apply the DNS entries. If you are using SquareSpace, Wix, Weebly or Campaign Partner the DNS change likely will need to be made in those systems. If not, ask who registered the domain at a place like Name.com (preffered), Google Domains, Godaddy, 1&1 or Gandi.
Political Campaigns ask us “How can we get an open rate higher than 40%?” Segmenting your list, sending to the right audience and sending engaging emails should be part of your long-term strategy. “Batch and blast” emails are no longer effective because email providers will delay, flag and trap senders’ messages and because batched emails are often filtered by users’ smart inboxes.
Start by segmenting your email lists into two groups: high engagement and low engagement. Send an email to your high engagement lists thanking them for their support before sending it to supporters with lower engagement. Every 90 days, you should further segment your lower engagement list. Remove the email addresses of people who never open your emails. Curating your list will help you achieve a higher open rate.
When spam started to become a problem, email providers looked at IP addresses to block spammers and then examined common words/phrases. Now, email providers look at your overall email health based on IP, Domain, and Open Rate. What does a spam email to 5,000 people advertising generic pharmaceuticals and a campaign email to 5,000 disengaged people have in common? They both go to spam. With Machine Learning and A.I. being introduced into Spam Filters, more nuanced details will start to affect email.
Bounces happen. People get married. They change jobs. The change internet service providers.. What is important, is starting off with the lowest possible bounce rate. AOL and Yahoo shut off email accounts after 12 months of inactivity. It’s important to check your email list if you haven’t sent to it in a while. An active list from 2 years ago may be a mediocre list today. There are several services that will check your list before you even begin your messaging campaign. Target a bounce rate below 2% for the first email.
How do you start an email campaign if you’re a first time candidate? It’s easy, start with your friends and family. They are already on your call sheets, send them an email to help them quickly give online. Do not buy an email list. People will want to contribute to your campaign if they know you and your message. An email from a candidate they’ve never heard of is very similar to an email from a Nigerian Prince. Get a voter file, buy digital ads, and create a “Call To Action” to get capture email and contact info organically from voters who want to hear from you. Use Pixels to re-target website visitors with a “Call to Action”. Build surveys and ask for email address.
Email Marketing for Political Campaign is similar to Nonprofit Email marketing. For more information, check out Wild Apricot’s The Essential Guide to Nonprofit Email Marketing.
Campaigns have similar needs to some companies, scaling out their one-to-one communication across a team, and from one common contact point. Here at Campaign Deputy, we have internally been testing a new tool that allows us to provide Live Chat, Facebook Messenger and Text message support from one tool, and we did not have to build this one, just integrate with it. We have been using Rocket.Chat with Twilio for text messaging, and Facebook Messenger for our Facebook page. We looked at a lot of tools, and with prices approaching $20/user/month, we couldn’t find one we liked until we stumbled upon Rocket.Chat. We Self-Host, because we have the server space, you could to while their plans start at $4/user/month, it makes sense for a campaign to let someone else deal with the hosting.
We of course love the built in live chat, we can trigger custom messages per a page, if they spend more than a minute on a page, you can start to send them custom messages. Maybe a voter lands on your healthcare policy page, you could trigger a message to ask if they had any other questions about health care 2 minutes after they open the page.
Text Messaging is built in with Twilio. You can register a local phone number and integrate it into Rocket.Chat. Volunteers come and go, with one central platform you can keep the conversation going from one phone number and assign your team to built in queues, departments and more. If you are on the go, their mobile web app works great. We did have some issues with their Mobile App for Android, they are aware of the bug, so we encourage anyone to use the app in their web browser until that bug is fixed. A small price to pay for a tool that is 75% cheaper than most competitors, or free if you have an IT team. You do have to pay per a text message, and rates are $0.0075 per a text per Twilio’s pricing guide on January 2019.
This was just another tool we were impressed with and could see the potential for a campaign to use in the age where a strong digital strategy is needed for most campaigns.
Facebook support is easy to setup too. You can follow their documentation to setup the system, we had it setup in about 3 business days.
With the Midterms right around the corner, now is a perfect time to fine tune your digital strategy. Below are some quick tips to get your digital campaigns going.
Sending the same email to all subscribers mixes your message in with those who want to hear it, and those who may put off opening the email. If your open rate is not high enough, this could drag down your engagement metrics in the future. Send separate emails to those highly engaged subscribers, and send it before you send to your larger list.
#govoteonthursdayat8am may not be the best subject line. Keep it short, 3 words are best and personalize it as well to get higher engagement. Mobile phones have small screens, so you won’t get a lot of text out of your subject line before it gets cut off.
If I had a dollar every time a candidate emailed me to vote in their state primary, I would have tacos. Make sure to target your audience to those who can participate. Asking someone to go out and vote in a primary in a state they do not live, is a message that just looks bad and could increase your spam rate.
Keep the number of images low, this helps with Google’s inbox filtering as they use this as part of their algorithms to determine which label to apply and helps the email to load for those on the go mobile users.
Everyone sends at the top of every hour, or 15 minutes before or after. Those times could cause delays in getting your email to the users inbox and cause a “traffic jam” at your subscribers email servers. We see the highest open rates from 9PM-11PM EST on Tuesday with 9PM-11PM on Wednesday of each week. Everyone looks at their phone before they go to bed and clearing out an inbox to start the day fresh. We looked at this data from over 3 million data points, and we were shocked at the numbers too.
With both Political and Non-profit campaigns, running an effective digital campaign requires knowledge of a lot of areas to have a good digital presence. Here is a list of the Dos and Don’ts of Digital Campaigns.
Don’t
Do
At Campaign Deputy, we provider email marketing, email hosting, web hosting and a SSL certificate all as part of every package we offer. We monitor everything 24×7 which includes email and phone support. Contact us today to learn more!
