With the primaries behind us and the general election ahead, I took a peek at how the Connecticut candidates for high-profile races–Governor and U.S. Senate — are using mobile texting as a campaign tool, and to what ends. Have local candidates taken a page from the Obama playbook and adopted his groundbreaking mobile strategies? Are there lessons for issue advocacy groups?
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ned Lamont and Republican senate candidate Linda McMahon were early adopters of mobile texting, and, in fact, the only candidates for state office to set up text message systems for their campaign. (Both, incidentally, were among the wealthiest candidates running for state office.) Each had prominent content on their websites urging supporters to share their cell phone numbers with the campaign, and to opt-in for text messages from the campaign. McMahon went a step further, adding her mobile text sign up code to her campaign signs (see photo).
Two years ago, President Obama used mobile texting as a powerful tool to fundraise, provide campaign updates, announce his vice presidential choice, and get out the vote. In fact, Mobile Marketer wrote that Obama’s text announcement of Joe Biden as his running mate was, at the time, the single largest mobile marketing event in U.S. history, reaching about 2.9 million mobile subscribers.
The New Haven Independent reported that Lamont’s campaign hired Revolution Messaging, the same firm who crafted Obama’s social networking systems. The campaign had canvassers collecting cell phone numbers from Connecticut residents, and even created a YouTube video urging folks to “Text Ned.”
[Full disclosure: I consulted to the campaign of Lamont's opponent, Dan Malloy.]
McMahon won her race and Lamont lost his, so mobile is not a panacea. Let’s face it: you’ve still gotta have a message. But it’s an effective tool in electoral politics and is here to stay.
And mobile texting is not just for the candidates with deep pockets. With vendors like Text Marks and EZ Texting, basic mobile text campaigns can be set up for as little as $20/month, plus set-up costs. Club Texting is an inexpensive vendor that targets political campaigns.
Why turn to mobile phones? Scott Goodstein ran Obama’s mobile communications campaign operations. He said, “262 million Americans are using mobile phones. That’s roughly 84% of the total population. It’s one of the fastest-growing industries in the U.S. And with the decline of TV viewership audiences, I think it’s a must for campaigns to be using mobile technology. It’s the only device that’s truly with people for 15 to 24 hours a day.”
Another plus: mobile is a spam-free zone. One has to opt-in to receive texts, and a whopping 92% of text messages are read by the recipient.
I’m guessing that it won’t be long until we see local candidates for state rep, state senate or even municipal offices lining up to use mobile to get out the vote.
One of the early studies of mobile texting as a campaign tool found that those who received a reminder in a text message one day before an election–4,000 mobile phone numbers chosen at random from a pool of over 8,000 mostly young people who had completed voter registration applications–were 4.2 percent more likely to vote. And it was extremely cost-effective.
Those kinds of results could swing an election. Big-time.
Nonprofits and advocacy groups would do well to start thinking about a mobile strategy now. Nonprofit Tech 2.0 has a terrific list of mobile marketing best practices.
