Political Text Message Best Practices Robocent

If you have been paying attention to the recent elections you would have noticed one thing, an increase in the use of political text message campaign service being used to send SMS messages to constituents mobile devices. It is not surprising that political text messaging is increasing as people get way too many emails on any given day. Imagine a politician trying to get to his constituents via email, that's just not going to work because people are so inundated with emails they quite likely will miss their email. But with a text message, politicians stand a better chance of having their messages read by their supporters.

Chances are if you conducted a quick survey of the voting population, especially young people by asking them if they opened the last text message that they received, their answer would be most likely be yes. As opposed to asking them when was the last time they checked an email. Quite likely they would tell you it depends on the email. This is because depending on the email it will get deleted without even being read. It is easy to ignore an email or to quickly delete it without reading it. But with text message it's right there staring at you waiting to be read.

Because these political groups know that their supporters are being overwhelmed with emails asking them for donations, asking them to be a volunteer, and sending them their talking points they’ve now turned to text messaging to cut through the noise. In fact, some of these groups now use political text messaging campaigns exclusively to get their message across to their supporters.

This CNET article goes deeper into the effectiveness of Political Text Message Campaigns

Much like Facebook Messenger Bots became a business's best friend due to their extremely high open and click-through rates so has political text messaging campaign services become the best friend of political candidates.

Sending political text message campaigns seems simple enough, just write a text message and hit the send button. But taking your SMS game to the next level to deliver your political messages can be confusing and not as easy as it appears to be. For instance, there are a couple of things that you need to think about:

When should you send a text message?
Who should you be texting?
What message should you send?

Let's take a look at some of the best practices that you should be using before you commence your next political text messaging campaign.

Begin by creating your Text Message Calendar

Sending a text is more personal than sending an email, so you need to be careful not to overload your supporters with SMS messages. Here's the challenge though, and where you need to tread carefully, you need to keep your supporters engaged without overcrowding their phones with SMS messages. It is recommended that you send at least one text message each month to your supporters. At most during the off-peak times, you can send a maximum of six text messages for the month.

Keep in mind that this isn't a hard and fast rule, as once the campaign trail heats up more text messages can be sent to your supporters. Just remember that the more messages you send the greater the chance that you will annoy your supporters so be careful with this. The aim of the game when sending out your political text messages is to keep your supporters informed and engaged without overwhelming them.

Segment your SMS list

This is something that email marketers know very well. However, it is something that political campaign managers might not be thinking about. In order for your political SMS messages to be effective, you need to understand who your supporters are and group them into segments so that you can tailor your messages to each group accordingly.

An example of this would be to make a note of your supporters who are really active on social media. So, if you send them a message that requires them to take an action you could tell them to share it on Facebook with the hashtag of your choice. You could even take this a step further by segmenting your list according to those who are active on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram so that when you ask them to share something you ask them to share it on the platform that they are most active on. This way you're getting more engagement and you're reaching your supporters with messaging that they will appreciate.

Check out this article that shares how you can Power Up Political Campaigns With SMS

Knowing When To Send Your Messages

In email marketing, it is so important to choose carefully the time of day that you send out your emails. Political text messages are no different. It is important for you to know the time zone of your supporters. Fortunately, SMS messaging companies such as RoboCent have data that can give you an idea of your supporters location so that you can send the right message at the right time.

The best time to send a text message is outside of business hours. Think 8 to 9 a.m. before your supporter goes to work or in the late evening. This might seem weird given that in email marketing emails are scheduled during the typical work day. But this is text messaging and it behaves differently, even though it shares some similarities to email marketing. Of course it is always good to experiment with a few different send times to track your data and improve your conversions.

Make Sure That You Are Always Testing

Email marketers already know this, they do what is called split testing to optimize their conversions. When you are running your political text message campaigns it is good practice to borrow from email marketers and test your SMS messaging campaigns to get the best results.

But is there a way to reasonably split test your results when it comes to text messaging campaign? Especially, given that the character limit makes running multiple variations a difficult task? Certainly. Sending an SMS message might be limited when it comes to the number of characters that you can use however you can create different variations of the same message by using images or using emojis. The aim of the game is to see which text message got the highest level of engagement. And to learn which set of messages got more conversions.

Make it easy for your supporters to engage

You want to make it as easy as possible for your supporters to get in contact with you. So, if your objective is to have them give you a call, instead of sending them to a link for them to click on that link to go to a website to get your contact number and then call you, eliminate the link all together and just give them a phone number to call. Make it super simple. This is because the easier it is for your supporters to take action, the higher the chances that they will take action.

Talk to your SMS messaging company to see if they have any tools that would allow you to build a campaign with a patch-thru number that your supporters can call.

Think Evergreen

So, you might be wondering if you should be texting your supporters even when you do not have a pressing policy issue or campaigning is not in full swing. Well, the short answer to that question is yes. You should still be keeping in contact with your supporters even when things might not be happening on the political homefront. This is because you're building your digital relationship with your supporters.

Something as simple as saying happy holidays or organizing a silly little holiday contest goes a long way with your supporters. There's really no limit on the amount of ways that you can engage with your supporters outside of the typical political campaigning times. You know what they say the best time to build a relationship is before you need it.

Make use of your live events

A super cool way to make use of your campaign Live Events is to send a text message to your attendees while they're at the event with a call to action. You could ask them to text a keyword or code to a specific number. This makes sense because your supporters are the most engaged while they're at your live event. This is good for not only showing engagement but you can also use it to get opt-ins to receive specific text messages and to capture the information of your supporters.

To make the most out of your live event make sure that you set up an SMS campaign sequence that takes certain information from your attendees so that you can segment them. You can use the information gathered to tailor your message to each specific group. Another approach is to create a sequence that connects them to their political representative. Whatever you think about just make sure that you keep it simple because if it's too complicated then no one will take the action that you want them to take.

#Say Thank You To Your Supporters

Finally, whatever strategy you decide to use for your political SMS messaging campaigns be sure to do this one thing. Say thank you to your supporters, advocates, and volunteers. In doing this you're acknowledging the critical role that they played in your campaign. You're also letting them know that you're grateful for their support.

Conclusion

At the end of the day as a political candidate you need to reach your supporters where they are. This could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even their mobile phones. Because people always have their phones nearby using SMS messaging in your political campaigns is now critical to your success.

Be sure to follow these political text message best practices for the best results. Just remember that at the end of the day you need to exercise good judgment. Mix these best practices with what you know about your supporters and of course, trust your intuition before you run your political text message campaign.

Political Text Message Best Practices

Chances are if you conducted a quick survey of the voting population, especially young people by asking them if they opened the last text message that they received, their answer would be most likely be yes. As opposed to asking them when was the last time they checked an email. Quite likely they would tell you it depends on the email. This is because depending on the email it will get deleted without even being read. It is easy to ignore an email or to quickly delete it without reading it. But with text message, it's right there staring at you waiting to be read.

Because these political groups know that their supporters are being overwhelmed with emails asking them for donations, asking them to be a volunteer, and sending them their talking points they’ve now turned to text messaging to cut through the noise. In fact, some of these groups now use text messaging campaigns exclusively to get their message across to their supporters.

Much like Facebook Messenger Bots became a business's best friend due to their extremely high open and click-through rates so have SMS Messaging for Political Campaign services become the best friend of political candidates.

When should you send a text message?
Who should you be texting?
What message should you send?

Let's take a look at some of the best practices that you should be using before you commence your next political text messaging campaign.

Begin by creating your Text Message Calendar Sending a text is more personal than sending an email, so you need to be careful not to overload your supporters with SMS messages. Here's the challenge though, and where you need to tread carefully, you need to keep your supporters engaged without overcrowding their phones with SMS messages. It is recommended that you send at least one text message each month to your supporters. At most during the off-peak times, you can send a maximum of six text messages for the month.

Segment your SMS list
This is something that email marketers know very well. However, it is something that political campaign managers might not be thinking about. In order for your political SMS messages to be effective, you need to understand who your supporters are and group them into segments so that you can tailor your messages to each group accordingly.

Knowing When To Send Your Messages

In email marketing, it is so important to choose carefully the time of day that you send out your emails. Political text messages are no different. It is important for you to know the time zone of your supporters. Fortunately, SMS messaging companies such as Robocent have data that can give you an idea of your supporters location so that you can send the right message at the right time.

Make Sure That You Are Always Testing
Email marketers already know this, they do what is called split testing to optimize their conversions. When you are running your political text message campaigns it is good practice to borrow from email marketers and test your SMS messaging campaigns to get the best results.

Make it easy for your supporters to engage
You want to make it as easy as possible for your supporters to get in contact with you. So, if your objective is to have them give you a call, instead of sending them to a link for them to click on that link to go to a website to get your contact number and then call you, eliminate the link all together and just give them a phone number to call. Make it super simple. This is because the easier it is for your supporters to take action, the higher the chances that they will take action.

Talk to your SMS messaging company to see if they have any tools that would allow you to build a campaign with a patch-thru number that your supporters can call.

Think Evergreen
So, you might be wondering if you should be texting your supporters even when you do not have a pressing policy issue or campaigning is not in full swing. Well, the short answer to that question is yes. You should still be keeping in contact with your supporters even when things might not be happening on the political homefront. This is because you're building your digital relationship with your supporters.

Make use of your live events
A super cool way to make use of your campaign Live Events is to send a text message to your attendees while they're at the event with a call to action. You could ask them to text a keyword or code to a specific number. This makes sense because your supporters are the most engaged while they're at your live event. This is good for not only showing engagement but you can also use it to get opt-ins to receive specific text messages and to capture the information of your supporters.

Say Thank You To Your Supporters
Finally, whatever strategy you decide to use for your political SMS messaging campaigns be sure to do this one thing. Say thank you to your supporters, advocates and volunteers. In doing this you're acknowledging the critical role that they played in your campaign. You're also letting them know that you're grateful for their support.

Conclusion
At the end of the day as a political candidate you need to reach your supporters where they are. This could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even their mobile phones. Because people always have their phones nearby using SMS messaging in your political campaigns is now critical to your success.

Be sure to follow these political text message best practices for the best results. Just remember that at the end of the day you need to exercise good judgment. Mix these best practices with what you know about your supporters and of course trust your intuition before you run your political text message campaign.

Menu

Begin by creating your Text Message Calendar

Segment your SMS list

Knowing When To Send Your Messages

Make Sure That You Are Always Testing

Make it easy for your supporters to engage

Think Evergreen

Make use of your live events

#Say Thank You To Your Supporters

Conclusion