Get out the vote Guide
Getting out the vote strategies and tips using peer to peer texting
Introduction
Every election is determined by the people who show up. That's what makes a Get out the vote campaign so important. Those couple of days before and on election day will be your only deciding factor, irrespective of any great campaigning you've done over the past year.
How does peer-to-peer or p2p texting fit into this? Getting out the vote is about reaching out to every supporter and either reminding them of their responsibility to vote or providing them with transport to get to the polling booths. In both cases, your campaign is typically talking to a voter who you are certain is a supporter of your candidate. The conversation with does not require the commitment of phone call or an in-person meeting. A short text, ( given you have their mobile number ), offering transport with responses being replied to as quickly as they can be and in a personalized manner, could be your game changer.
How it works
A quick run through of how a GOTV Peer to Peer Texting campaign works
How it works
Step 1
Gather your troops
Using Peer to Peer Texting by CallHub for a GOTV campaign is straightforward and simple. Sign up for an admin account for p2p texting. Depending on the number of voters you wish to text, recruit or assign as many needed volunteers for your GOTV campaign. The advantage with CallHub is that you can reuse existing phone banking volunteers for your peer to peer campaign.
Step 2
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These volunteers you've recruited are to engage in one-to-one text message conversations with the people assigned to them by CallHub. All they have to do is keep hitting ‘Send’ till all the initial texts are sent out. Once the texts are sent, the agents start conversations with the people who respond. The manager or the volunteers themselves can save frequently used replies for faster conversations. A Peer to peer texting campaign typically gets between 10 to 30% response rate depending on your audience and message. Come up with your text that is a mix of personalization and a friendly reminder of their support.
Step 3
Tag, survey, and report
A campaign is not just about sending your messages but also about tracking and measuring for success. Attach a survey to each contact that a volunteer can fill up based on the voters' response. Based on their answer on if they are voting or if they need transport, assign an appropriate tag. This tag syncs with your CRM like Nationbuilder, NGP VAN or Action Network. Segment and plan follow up campaigns based on these tags! On CallHub, you can export every conversation, track volunteer progress and reassign conversations that go cold on the volunteers end.
For a detailed guide on how these features work, go through our Starter Guide for Peer to Peer Texting.
Best Practices
Important points to keep in mind to help you make the most out of Peer to Peer Texting
Best practices
Training is a must
Leave no room for errors. Make sure each texting volunteer goes through a quick guide on how to text bank for you. The more confident they are of the process, the more effective and encouraged they will be. Give them a test at the end of training to make sure they know the procedure. If a training isn't possible in person, have them go through a document and then answer a short quiz before giving them access to Peer to Peer Texting.
Create an instructional guide
Before a volunteer starts a campaign, CallHub displays an instructional section that is populated by you, the manager. Use this space to drive home the importance of finishing a batch. Ask people not to do too many things at the same time as they may miss replies. Drive home the importance of the campaign and of their role in it.
FAQs
Voters generally have tons of questions. On the candidate, poll location, or general advice. Create a complete FAQ and build on it during the campaign. Share access to it through Callhub campaign instructional section, so that volunteers can refer to it during the campaign. Include the most common FAQ’s as saved replies.
Offer a ride
Create a system by which voters can mail or call or text into a number if they need a ride. Don’t let the volunteers handle it on a case by case basis. You will lose time.
Use tags and surveys
Integrate with your CRM and pull in those tags. Encourage texters to use tags to mark voters depending on their responses. It’ll make it easier to sort through voters that are looking for more information and plan follow-ups. Use the survey to have a more structured approach to your campaign. Once the survey is filled, volunteers can mark a conversation as complete. The associated tag with the survey syncs with your CRM.
CallHub Tips
Use this tips to tweak your campaign to optimize, maximize, and improve campaign results
CallHub Tips for your GOTV campaign
Number of volunteers
Depending on the type of volunteers, experienced or not, and their availability, assign between 1000 to 2000 conversations per volunteer. The more involved and experience a volunteer is, the quicker and more focused they will be in handling responses. If you assign fewer contacts, you may risk volunteers losing interest quickly as responses won't come in as quick.
Local presence
For a national campaign, texting voters from a local area number will make them more inclined to read and respond to the text. Take advantage of CallHub's local presence feature and rent separate numbers for the areas that matter.
Keep it light
Ever got a text from someone without an emoji and felt weirded by it? It's become such a big part of our texting behavior, it's almost as important as grammar. Use a healthy mix of emoji and SMS lingo in your saved replies and initial messages.
Customize
Peer to Peer texting lets you include not just a volunteers name, but ANY fields that you may have imported for the voter. Use them wisely to make your text a lot more specific. For eg: include polling booth location or city in the text.
Follow up with more outreach
Follow up a robust Peer to Peer Texting campaign with a Collective Calling one ( Manual Dialer ). Select a chosen few, possibly who asked for a ride getting to the polls or those that wanted more information about the ballot process. Use tags to group them into a list and assign them to a Collective Calling campaign.
Get started with Peer to Peer Texting. Create an account for free.
Sample text template
The text within { } are merge tags. When the text is sent, they will be replaced by the respective values stored in those fields for a contact.
First message
Hi {first_name}! It's {volunteer_name} from the Bugs Bunny campaign. This is it! Today is election day and Bugs who is running for Mayor needs your vote. Polls open till 7 pm. Bugs is a strong voice to represent the people of loony tunes. Can he count on your vote?
Reply
That's great! Do you need help getting to the polls? IF you do call 555-5555 and they'll find someone to take you to {poll_location}.
