Est. reading time: 8 min. Campaign Deputy’s guide to run for state senate provides aspiring candidates with valuable info & resources to run a successful campaign, from eligibility requirements to raising money.
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10 Important Items on a Political Campaign Checklist
Running for political office is a complex and challenging process. There are many factors to consider, from fundraising to voter outreach. To help you get started, here is a checklist of 10 important items to keep in mind:
1. Research the political landscape
2. Register your campaign
3. Open bank accounts and purchase insurance
4. Choose a voting audience
5. Draft a campaign message
6. Fundraise for your campaign
7. Recruit campaign staff
8. Build a public presence
9. Hold public outreach events
10. Participate in candidate debates
By following these steps, you can likely increase your chances of winning your political campaign.
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Learn how to run for Mayor and make a difference in your community. This article covers everything from filing for candidacy to fundraising to building a strong campaign team.
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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.
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.
Interested in running for office in Kentucky? Here is a helpful guide to highlight the information you need if you are a first time candidates.
In Kentucky, State Representatives run every two years. Just like the US House of Representatives. Kentucky State Senators run every four years in staggered terms. Senators from districts with even numbers run during the Midterm elections. Senators with districts that have odd numbers run during Presidential election years. Statewide candidates run in “off” years, the year before a Presidential.
Members of the US House of Representatives are elected every two years. US Senators are elected every six years in staggered elections. Kentucky’s next US Senate Race will be in 2020.
For a Kentucky campaign, you would file your Letter of Intent with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance. They have a helpful guide located here. For local races, City Council, Property Value Administrator, etc, check with your local County Clerk as you may have to notify both agencies. You also should check that you qualify to run as each office has residency requirements.
For Federal races, you can file with the Federal Election Commission and submit Form 1 – Statement of Organization here. The FEC requires that U.S. House races must file electronically.
It is best if you have already registered a domain name before you announce so others do not register a domain name for you. Use a .com domain, and if you want to run again in the future, do not use a date in the domain name. Hard to spell domains are tougher to remember, you may want to register common misspellings as well. If you register you domain with Google Domains, setting up G-Suite Email is easier later on.
Next, you should start the core components of your campaign.
In Kentucky, you have to report any contribution over $100 with their First and Last name, Address, Occupation, Employer and date of the contribution. If someone gives twice and exceeds $100 in total, you must report that as well. You could keep track of this in an Excel or Google Doc, you don’t want to when the Kentucky Reports are due 30 days and 15 days before an election when you are out knocking on doors! Campaign Deputy can help generate your reports in one-click, sign up for a free trial today!
