We’re officially in the crunch time of the 2024 election season. Do you have a plan for texting and/or calling voters between now and Election Day? If not, never fear, we are here to help! Our organizing experts at Scale to Win shared these helpful tips for texting and calling campaigns.
This blog will walk you through the essential steps of setting up an effective outreach campaign, from segmenting your texting and calling lists to setting up your scripts. Additionally, you'll learn about the different types of phone and texting campaigns and how to set them up for maximum efficiency. Beyond the technical setup, this blog emphasizes the importance of helping voters create a voting plan, encouraging them to remind their networks, and maintaining consistent follow-up. Organizing phone and text banks for volunteers is another critical component, and we'll provide insights on planning, recruiting volunteers, and training folks.
Whether you're new to organizing or just need a quick refresher, these Get Out The Vote (GOTV) basics will equip you with the tools needed to mobilize voters effectively and drive your campaign to success. Read on or feel free to jump to whichever section makes the most sense for you.
Decide what type of outreach campaign you need
How to organize phone banks and text banks
Decide what type of outreach campaign you need
The possibilities are endless when it comes to phone banking or texting banking, but we recommend a few types of campaigns when it gets down to GOTV weekend and Election Day.
Help voters making a voting plan
Whether you are running a phone or text bank, the most important action you can take is offering voters precise, accurate information about when and where to vote. Encouraging them to share their specific voting plans can shape voting behavior into the future.
For voters who encounter barriers, it’s also crucial to provide access to a trusted voter protection hotline and resources for rides to the polls. And never underestimate the power of making a plan to vote to encourage regular voting behavior.
Texting and dialing tools can help make the voter outreach process even easier. Here are a few ways you can make the process easier:
- You can use custom fields to share precise polling locations with voters. Include columns for dropbox locations, early vote locations, or polling places in your CSV files to create custom fields in Scale to Win Text, the Dialer and Spoke (legacy texting tool). When referenced in your scripts, custom fields will auto-populate relevant information for each contact.
- With the Dialer, you can confirm someone’s polling place right during a call. Using the Dialer’s "IWillVote" integration, callers can use a lookup tool to help voters find their nearest polling place, ballot dropbox, or early voting location — while on the phone together.
- Share key voter information with callers. Turn on the "Caller Sidebar" feature to give callers access to relevant details about the person on the other end of the line — from polling place names to local voter ID laws. The caller sidebar helps make calls more impactful by keeping essential information in view, and the feature is easy to turn on and customize.
- Keep in mind that polling place data can change at the last minute, so make sure to take that into account with your scripts. When directly sharing polling addresses with voters via text, we recommend using open-ended statements, i.e. "If you still live at {address}, the polling place we have on file for you is at {polling_location}".
Ask voters to “vote triple” aka remind friends and family to vote
You can use Scale to Win tools to help voters share voting information with their personal connections. Vote tripling can be a great way to encourage active voters who’ve already cast a ballot to help turn out their friends, family and neighbors. Some features that make a vote tripling campaign easier include:
- Save names with freeform answers. Use calls or texts to encourage voters to commit to naming friends or family members that they will encourage to vote. Save those names using the Short Answer question type in your call campaigns or the freeform Contact Notes field in your text campaigns.
- Follow up using the names in a custom field. Closer to the election, you can follow up with committed vote triplers using a reminder call or text. By using the Scale to Win Text and Dialer custom fields, you can explicitly reference the names you saved for an even more personalized chase campaign.
Follow up with your voters
If you texted voters earlier this year or in previous election years, GOTV is a great time to follow up folks for a final reminder to vote.
Similar to the follow-up campaigns feature in Spoke (legacy texting tool) and Scale to Win Text, the Scale to Win Dialer makes it easy to build in multiple passes on your lists. You can even sign up volunteers for shifts right on a call.
- Add multiple passes to your Dialer campaigns. Turn on multiple passes to dial contacts on your list more than once, increasing the likelihood that your volunteers will get to have a conversation with each voter.
- Follow up with contacts you texted previously. With Scale to Win Text and Spoke (legacy texting tool), you can check in with folks who you texted earlier in the election cycle. The types of campaigns could vary, from voting reminders, volunteer asks, vote tripling asks, or event invites, among others.
Set up your campaigns
If you are ready to set up your first texting or calling campaign (or just need a quick refresher), check out this section. Your general to-dos to create a campaign are to gather your list, upload it, add scripts, add in specific details for each campaign, and launch! We’ll go over each step in greater detail below, and you can always read our in-depth tutorials.
Segment your texting and calling lists
Unless it’s your very first texting or calling campaign, we recommend segmenting your lists to better target your various audiences. Research shows that folks will respond to messages that are better targeted based on interests, geography, and demographics.
One way segmentation we recommend is based on voter status — early voters, mail ballot voters, and Election day voters. Or how consistent someone is with voting — folks who vote in every election will need fewer reminders than someone who only votes in presidential elections. New voters might need more resources on registration and how to navigate voter ID laws compared with someone who has voted in many elections.
The key element is to target each specific audience with tailored voting resources and reminders.
Gather and upload your outreach lists
Whether you are making calls or sending texts, gathering your list and uploading it is an important next step. Check out our tutorials on uploading your lists to the Dialer, Scale to Win Text, and Spoke. You can typically upload a CSV file or import contacts with one of our many integrations, including but not necessarily limited to ActBlue, ActionKit, NGP VAN/Every Action, Google Cloud Storage.
Suppressions are a crucial part of uploading lists. If you are doing a voting reminder campaign, you don’t want to include folks who’ve already voted or someone who’s told you they moved out of state.
Add scripts to the campaign
After you’ve written your scripts, you can upload them to Scale to Win Text or the Dialer. At a minimum, you’ll need an initial message, some basic responses to common questions, and an opt-out message.
- Initial Messages must clearly identify your organization as the message sender and include standard opt-out language such as "Reply Stop to Opt-Out" or "Stop = End."
- Responses are pre-written scripted responses that can be used when responding to your messages.
- Opt-out messages allow you to comply with applicable texting requirements. It's incredibly important to respect the wishes of any contact who doesn't want to be texted again. When a contact asks to be removed from your list, they must be opted out from further texts. You can use automatic opt-out messages for both Scale to Win Text and Spoke (legacy texting tool). You can mark someone as “Do not call” on a Dialer campaign.
For the dialer, you’ll need to write your follow up questions as well and decide which data you’d like callers to collect as they run through the script you’ve written.
Go over details of the campaign
Each type of outreach campaign requires additional details that we don’t have space to explain in full here, but you can see in our support articles for Scale to Win Text, the Dialer, and Spoke (legacy texting tool) for everything you need to know. We’ll cover some highlights here.
- For the Dialer, you will need to figure out what you want to use for your caller ID, how many passes the Dialer should make on each number, and if you want to leave voicemails for folks who don’t pick up the phone.
- For the texting tools, you will need to choose which tags you want texters to use, how you’d like to send the texts, if you’d like to use links, media files or custom fields in your initial message, among other options. When it doubt, keep it simple for your first campaign! You can also preview your messages before you send to the entire list.
Start sending or calling
After you click “Start,” you are officially ready to go! Be sure to examine your results after the campaign has completed and make any changes for the next one.
How to organize phone banks and text banks for volunteers
Are you ready to organize a phone or text bank for volunteers? You might be a new organizer, a friend helping someone run for office or a dedicated volunteer looking to help out a candidate. We’ll lay out what you need to know to make it happen.
Plan out the details of your phone or text bank
The first step of a successful outreach event is planning the important logistics ahead of time. Here are some essential questions and considerations as you plan:
- Choose a date and time that works well for your volunteers
- Will you host it in person or virtually? More people could attend virtually, but if you have a great local network, that can be even more fun. Consider doing one of each!
- If your event is in person, make sure to find a space that has plenty of comfortable seats, snacks and space for a group. Bonus points if your pet can come to provide emotional support.
- Consider how to make it as accessible as possible for folks: bring extra headphones and printouts of the instructions if in person. If virtual, make sure you have a great presentation that outlines all the essentials.
Recruit volunteers
Bringing people to help make calls or send texts can often be the most challenging, but also makes such a difference in the success of the event. With a dialer campaign, the more folks calling the higher the call rate per hour, which increases the chances of meaningful conversations. Here are some tips for recruiting volunteers (especially for making calls):
- Highlight the power of their action. Making calls can be scary for people, but it is one of the most impactful ways an individual can help a candidate or organization.
- Remind potential volunteers that they don’t have to be an expert in the policy and issues to make phone calls. The most important part is being authentic, showing empathy and building connections with the voters. The best answer you can have ready is: why does this election matter to you?
- Let potential volunteers know that the tools are easy to use and you will provide training for them at the beginning of the event
Train callers and texters
Before you have volunteers start texting or making calls, you’ll want to train them on the basics of the tools. We recommend giving them an overview of the software, explaining the most important parts and encouraging them to ask questions. Here are a few guidelines for an effective training:
- Show volunteers how the system works. You can show them an example text conversation and/or run through a mock call. Give them time to read through the script before they start.
- Explain the importance of honoring opt-outs with texts and calls and go through the most common responses they’ll likely encounter.
- Encourage folks to stick to the scripts and ask questions if they aren’t sure how to respond to someone.
- Go over basic dialer and phone etiquette, such as when to start talking (right after they hear the beep, knowing when to ask the next question in a series, and how to sound natural).
- Remind them to be empathetic with voters and don’t spend too much time with folks who are opposed to your candidate or cause.
Tips for making your phone or text bank a success
You are ready to host your own outreach event! We have some general tips for making sure your text or phone bank is a success.
- Celebrate your victories. Help keep volunteers motivated with a white board or digital dashboard of how many calls or texts everyone’s made. You could even set up a competition to see who can make the most calls or send the most texts. Encourage people to share the number of supporters they talked to or a really nice conversation they had. You can make this fun both virtually and in person.
- Make sure callers and texters are aware of the overall goal of the campaign. Are you IDing voters? Persuading them? Turning them out to vote? The goal of the outreach event will impact how people speak to voters.
- Use your Scale to Win tools to make the process easier. Use blast mode to send out initial messages and then have volunteers manage replies. Check out automated responses to handle the most common messages. Use the caller sidebar to give volunteers the crucial information they need when talking to voters (like each voter’s polling location). Use the texting integration in the dialer to send folks event reminders or a link to look up their polling location.
Getting going with Scale to Win tools for GOTV weekend is easier than you might think. You can make a big impact, even with a small calling or texting campaign. If you have any questions about how to get up your outreach campaigns, please reach out to our support team.
