What is Door-to-Door Canvassing?

Door-to-Door canvassing, alternatively known as face-to-face canvassing, is one of the most effective ways to enact community outreach and often supports the get-out-the-vote strategy and election day voting turnout.

Political canvassing is designed to deliver awareness of a candidate, alert voters to their campaign message and policies, and activate their get-out-the-vote strategy in the months leading up to the all-important, election day.  

Benefits of Door-to-Door Canvassing:

There are multiple advantages of door-to-door canvassing. These include:

1. Door-to-door canvassing offers your campaign exposure within the community. 

2. Door-to-door canvassing can increase your voter turnout on election day and boost your chances of winning the political race.

3. Collect data on the electorate to inform your political campaign strategy.

4. From door-to-door canvassing, your campaign can be seen as active within the community and prompt voters to consider you on election day.

5. Door-to-door canvassing can also help inform your political campaign strategy as well as your political messaging.

‍How to Effectively Conduct Door-to-Door Canvassing:

For effective door-to-door canvassing, you must have an effective distributed organizing method in place. Having distributed organizing in place will allow your door-to-door canvassing techniques to be more effective and leverage the power of grassroots organizing and encourage volunteer onboarding through this.

Once this higher organizational structure is in place, there are multiple ways you can effectively door-to-door canvass. These include:

1. Plan canvass routes that offers maximum door-knocking exposure. Supply your canvassers with a walk-list to navigate. Canvassers should have maps and list views of their canvass routes to improve their navigation and maximize voter outreach. 

2. Mobilize your team by supplying as much organizational information as possible. Equip them with surveys, data points and training on your policies and the issues affecting the electorate. Supply canvassing software to your canvassing team where your campaign manager can set up turfs, lists and routes for each canvassing team member. Canvassing applications like Ecanvasser help campaigns manage all aspects of canvassing. This allows you to organize your door-to-door canvassing team and also your data. 

3. Have a coordinated team of volunteers ready to regularly canvass for your campaign in the months leading up to election day. 

4. Use canvassing software like Ecanvasser to gather as much data as possible when door-to-door canvassing. Populate voter files on the go through Ecanvsser’s mobile app.

5. Create a list of voters who pledge to support you on election day. This will inform your data retargeting and get-out-the-vote strategy. 

6. Make every face-to-face canvassing encounter count. Have a predefined script and list of data points I.e. a list of questions, or a survey, that you want your door to door canvassing team to collect data on. ‍

How Ecanvasser is The Perfect Door-to-Door Canvassing Tool:

Ecanvasser helps campaign managers cover more ground, manage their teams and increase supporter engagement. 

‍Capture Online and Offline Community Sentiments:

Developing a greater understanding of community sentiments about key issues is one of the core objectives of door to door canvassing. The Go App enables your canvassers to quickly capture and log conversations and survey responses from their mobile devices. For door to door canvassing to be most effective, streamlining data capture and moving away from pen and paper is the way to go. This mobile app allows your door-to-door canvassing team to track all facets of their interaction, enrich your campaign databases and view their walk-lists assigned by their campaign manager. 

Plan and Track your Door-to-Door Canvassing:

Having a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and visual reporting dashboard will allow your campaign manager to track your door-to-door canvassing team activity in real-time. This will allow your camping manager to measure progress, respond to community questions and issues and make strategic campaign decisions based on actionable insights.

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