Behind every successful political campaign, a plan reaches out to the most voters possible. So after every election year, political strategists have turned to political telemarketing to put their platform in front of voters and make sure they know the issues at hand.
Not just any telemarketing firm can handle a political campaign. You have telemarketers specializing in lead generation and those who only go after direct sales. Some telemarketers might help you with your campaign but rely on robocalls or overseas agents who cant thoroughly impress stateside voters why a particular candidate or issue deserves their vote. You want a full-service telemarketing agency with stateside agents to get the job done for you.
Equally important is that the telemarketing agency has a campaigning strategy process that fits your needs. In most cases, this will require a fairly clear set of goals laid out before you at the onset; it’s difficult for a telemarketing agency to help you when you don’t know exactly what you want. In addition, you will need to know your target audience, whether it’s a club, party-line voters, independent voters, etc.
Related: The Truth About Telemarketing
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Telemarketing: An Enhancement for Your Political Campaign
Not every campaigning effort begins with a clear message, which a professional, comprehensive telemarketing agency can assist you with. In some cases, you need to fine-tune your language, which telemarketers excel at.
Don’t settle on the first agency you come across. You’ll need to set up interviews and consultations with multiple agencies to ensure you get the right one. Ask for referrals and do background checks on your finalists. Some telemarketers are prone to complaints, so look at their records and see where they stand with the FCC. Since we’re talking about political campaigning here, you will want an agency with access to voter data, which can help you adjust your call list and hit the most viable prospects during your campaign.
While it’s important to ensure that your firm has agents who can communicate with your targets, it’s also essential to consider the Hispanic vote that is increasingly becoming an issue with political campaigns. If your campaign relies on this demographic, your telemarketing firm should have bi-lingual agents ready to reach out to them.
Your campaign will likely spend every penny it has gained through fundraising. Insist on getting the best return on investment with your telemarketer. ROI is not an easy thing to ascertain. However, all you need to concern yourself with is looking at the telemarketer’s past performance. Do their candidates win? Do the issues they help push get a passing vote? Pick the telemarketer with a history of success, and you will be confident that your ROI will be positive.
Telemarketing and Politics: A Powerful Marketing Move
Marketers can learn much about connecting with people by watching politicians work their current and potential constituents to vote for them. There are more channels today than ever when getting a platform message across to many voters. Therefore, a political campaign must use many to reach broader, including telemarketing.
For marketers, looking at how politicians and their team of professionals get out in front of as many people as possible provides lessons in what to do and what not to do in marketing. So let’s take a look at a few ways they make powerful marketing moves:
They Create a Narrative
Political teams will take their candidate’s most exciting and unique qualities and create a narrative around these qualities. It’s what makes voters feel a connection and eventually gain them enough trust so that come to Election Day, the vote is cast in their favor. Any industry should use the same technique to push their products and brand.
Cultivate and See Conversion
Frequent and consistent contact with your target audience produces results. The more donations a campaign can garner for a political campaign, the stronger their campaign will be. What influences one person to donate might be completely different from the next. However, with a consistent message and frequent use in several channels, including telemarketing, the better chance they have of seeing results.
Bring in New Technologies With the Old
A productive political campaign embraces the latest trends and uses platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook as important parts of the mix. This is integrated with older methods proven to be successful, like telemarketing. Just because it is decades old doesn’t mean it’s lost its place in pushing a brand, a politician, or a product.
Give Power to Constituents
Empowering the people you are trying to reach can work in your favor. For instance, in a political campaign, taking content created by the constituent and using it in your campaign message gives your target audience a voice that is heard by everyone within earshot of your campaign message.
Telemarketing is among the most proactive methods of interacting with voters and consumers. You can only deliver stump speeches so many times a day in so many cities. Still, telemarketing can push the gist of that stump speech to people throughout the district, whether local, statewide or national.
The Benefits of Political Telemarketing
Political campaigns rely on quick, effective, and pointed delivery of information to the electorate. What better way to connect to the audience than through the personal touch that telemarketing offers?
It’s through outbound telemarketing that many successful political campaigns have relied on to connect their message to their constituents or prospective constituents. Whether it is soliciting donations or simply conveying the platform, telemarketing provides the proactive approach that politicians need to make an impact.
Did you know that when President Obama began seeking election for the nation’s top office, his campaign dropped a cool $3.3 million in the first six months on telemarketing, which was more than they spent on postage for direct mail?
Why is it so important to utilize telemarketing in political campaigns? Let’s take a look at the advantages that call centers to have:
Reputable call centers are staffed with people who have been extensively trained, not only on the subject of the campaign but also on how to communicate effectively, listen empathetically and help the campaign in an efficient manner.
Call centers have the latest and greatest technology, which not only helps to keep costs per call as low as possible, it also helps to deliver a message with greater efficiency. This same technology is used for accountability purposes as well. For instance, call monitoring and call recording processes help add visibility into how your political campaign is being run.
If you partner with the right telemarketer, you’ll also get access to their voter rolls, campaign donor lists, and other information that can help you connect to more people. Politicians like to use the phrase hit the ground running, and when you connect with the right telemarketer, this is a true statement.
Not only do telemarketers make calls to solicit donations or get the word out about a candidate’s platform, they can also offer polling and/or statistical analysis services. Look for one that can give you multiple services at a reasonable rate.
Your telemarketing firm can also lock in tightly with your campaign staff, ensuring that the message is on track throughout the campaign, that constituents are getting an earful of useful information instead of political spin.
Not all telemarketers are the same. To make sure you are getting the best one for your campaign, ask for referrals and do background checks on your finalists. Look at what technology they have in their operation and whether or not they’ve worked on political campaigns previously. Will there be any conflicts of interest in working with a particular telemarketer due to past affiliations? If so, look elsewhere.
Key Advantages of Political Telemarketing
One area where telemarketing faces little restrictions in the political space. And political telemarketing is useful for a variety of purposes. Two key advantages include:
Get More Out of Your Campaign Fundraising
This benefit is a huge one for any political campaign. Almost all campaigns use calls to gather information from voters. They also look for like-minded individuals to help them raise funds. And this doesn’t apply only to politicians running for office—political telemarketing can also help political action committees looking to raise funds and charities that work towards a political cause.
At Blue Valley Marketing, we have years of experience helping organizations run political telemarketing campaigns for all sorts of purposes, including fundraising.
Get Better Information From Your Surveys
Another reason many campaigns turn to political telemarketing is to conduct voter surveys that get better results. Campaigns need to gain a sense of how well their cause is performing in various markets. Candidates rely on polls to make strategic decisions, qualify for debates, etc., and those poll outcomes determine which states and counties are the best to post advertisements.
Related: Who Is Your Message Reaching?
With modern political telemarketing technology, campaigns can run better surveys with much higher accuracy than traditional methods. As a result, organizations can use this strategy to gather valid data and interpret it accurately to give their candidate the best chance.
Choosing the Right Political Telemarketer For Your Campaign
Every political campaign strives to reach as many potential voters as possible, sell them on the qualities of the campaign, and have them turn out to the polls in favor of the issue or candidate that is the focus of the campaign. This is a historically difficult task. It takes extensive amounts of time to look through the voter lists and find the right message to impact those voters. How do you figure out what makes a voter undecided on an issue without speaking directly to them? How is this most effectively done? It’s not a new method and it sometimes gets overlooked, but it’s telemarketing.
If you have a political campaign that needs some assistance, you should consider hiring a telemarketing service, but where do you begin? Try starting with some housekeeping that will streamline your campaign process and help you find the right agency to handle the job.
You have to remember that not all telemarketing agencies are the same. Some have offshore call centers while others use only U.S.-based call centers. Many agencies specialize in industries that have nothing to do with political campaign-related work. Even before you start making a list of agencies that can be of service, you need to develop a strategy that helps you narrow your focus on a target audience.
Tips For Choosing a Political Telemarketing Partner
Start by asking yourself if you will be going after independent voters, businesses, left-wingers, right-wingers, tea partiers, clubs, organizations, etc. Can you develop an effective method to reach your target audience or will you require the professional services of a telemarketing agency, because that will make a difference when you narrow your list of finalists not all telemarketing companies can help you build a script? Having the answer to these questions can significantly help you choose the telemarketing agency that will benefit your political campaign.
Your next task is to see if you can establish a good relationship with the telemarketing agencies on your list. Set up a meeting where you’ll lay out all your political campaign goals to make sure the agency can handle what is expected of them. For instance, does the agency have referrals you can contact? The referrals should be closely aligned with your campaign needs. Ask what other services they offer aside from a well-equipped call center. Can they provide you with all the data you need to access your voters?
Cost is always a consideration, but that doesn’t mean you need to choose the cheapest, because they are not always the best. Be sure to ask how they will bill you if it is per minute, an hourly rate, or other. Just be sure you are not going to get hit with hidden fees.
When it comes to political campaigns, we have an impressive list of credentials. We also offer full-service calling capabilities for Voter ID, Robo-call, Town Hall Meetings, and Live Operator interactions. We promise to be at your disposal to run the most effective campaign possible.
Identify Your Potential Targets
There are various types of political telemarketing agencies, like direct sales agents using robocalls to full-service marketing agencies, that can help guide you through the process.
Most importantly, when choosing a political telemarketing agency, you should already have a strategy in mind regarding who you intend to target. Ask yourself questions like:
- Do we want to target specific organizations, party-line voters, businesses, independent voters, or a combination of them?
- Do we need the help of a political telemarketing agency to help draft fine-tuned messages for our targets, or will we handle the messaging?
- Does our political campaign need proactive tools like direct mail, text, email, and live call centers? If so, what do we already have available?
After determining your needs, you can begin searching for a political telemarketing partner to help you fine-tune your messaging, capture crucial voter data, feedback, and more to net positive results.
Schedule a Consultation With a Telemarketing Agency
Once you’ve planned out your needs, you’ll want to start gathering a list of potential political telemarketing agencies that can provide you with the right services. You can consult with multiple agencies to ensure you find the right fit for your campaign requirements.
Once you set up your consultation, outline your objectives, goals, and any questions you want to be answered, like:
- Does the agency have referrals that your campaign can talk to? It’s a positive sign if the political telemarketing agency can provide you with referrals that are similar to the campaign you want to run.
- Other than typical telemarketing services, what else can the agency provide for your campaign? Can they provide valuable access to accurate voter data? What’s their pricing method? Depending on the agency, some might bill per hour, minute, or service for political telemarketing. Ensure it fits within your budget and campaign operation philosophy.
- Where is the agency located? Overseas locations can have some issues with direct communication. However, having bi-lingual agents is a positive.
- Will they help train your staff on some of the political telemarketing duties? While uncommon, some companies may have a program to help you set up an in-house call center.
- Do they have access to set up telephone meetings in Town Hall that will connect you with thousands of potential voters?
Choose the Political Telemarketing Company With the Best ROI
Measuring ROI can be a challenge in any industry, but when it comes to managing a political telemarketing campaign and retaining the right company’s services, ROI is simple to define. Find the agency that produces positive results for your campaign, and stick with them. With fewer people donating to campaigns these days, spending your budget wisely is crucial, especially on gathering voter data. Ensure that the political telemarketing agency you choose has a positive track record managing similar campaigns.
Our clients have consistently come back to us for their political campaigns, in part because they know they can count on us for reliable services that impact many facets of their campaigns. For a list of references, contact us today.
Many successful ventures have a couple of things in common: structure and organization. Working with the right political telemarketing company that offers vast experience in managing similar campaigns will bring you a higher chance of success in reaching the most valuable voters. You’ll also reduce the stress of managing any campaign, no matter the size.
Blue Valley Marketing – Your Political Telemarketing Partner
Reaching potential voters is a complex undertaking, no matter the campaign you plan to run. From creating a platform to run on to taking the time to create detailed voter lists, the campaign processes that managers deal with to capture undecided voters are a full-time task.
Without question, one of the best ways to handle that task and get positive results is by working with the right political telemarketing partner. They can help save money, streamline time and processes, and plan, activate, and manage your targeted political campaign.
Related: Why Telemarketing is Irreplaceable
However, to find the best political telemarketing partner for your specific campaign, ensure to ask the questions listed in this article to help you choose the right one.
When it comes to political campaigns, we have an impressive list of credentials. Blue Valley offers full-service calling capabilities for Voter ID, Robo-call, Town Hall Meetings, and Live Operator interactions. Blue Valley makes a promise to be at your disposal to run the most effective campaign possible. Book a call with us today to find out if we’re the right political telemarketing agency to help with your campaign.
Last Updated on April 5, 2022 by Ronen Ben-Dror