What are The Benefits of Phone Canvassing?

In recent years, phone canvassing has come to the fore as a prominent method of conducting safe and effective canvassing. This method of canvassing allows you to reach more potential voters than door to door canvassing. Using your campaign voter files, phone canvassing will aid your campaign strategy in terms of political messaging, popularizing the campaign and informing your get-out-the-vote (GOTV) strategy.

Phone Canvassing

Wondering why you should consider phone canvassing in your political campaign strategy? Through phone canvassing, you can:

1. Reach a larger portion of the electorate, faster.

2. Save time on canvassing efforts by using assigned contact lists and pre-set scripts.

3. Understand the level of support a member of the electorate may have for you or your party.

4. Discuss your political policies and share your political messaging with the electorate.

5. Generate a pledge-to-vote list to help your GOTV strategy.

6. Recruit campaign supporters more effectively by offering phone banking as a volunteering option.

Types of Phone Canvassing

Phone canvassing is divided into text/ SMS canvassing and telephone canvassing. There are multiple benefits of each type of canvassing, each requiring consideration when deciding which method is best for your campaign.

Telephone Canvassing

Telephone canvassing involves campaign members contacting voters to have detailed discussions on your policies. Similar to door to door canvassing, phone canvassing allows you to engage in deep canvassing conversations. Members of the electorate are much more likely to engage during a personalized phone call than with other methods of electronic communication.

Text Canvassing

Text canvassing, alternatively known as SMS canvassing, is an outreach method that involves your campaign sending text messages to supporters who have agreed to be contacted by your campaign. This form of canvassing allows your campaign team to start conversations, send URL links to your political website or send informational reminders of upcoming political events. You may obtain contact information from commercial data organizations,  government records and previous voter files.

However, text canvassing can have limited engagement. People may open your political text message but there is a higher chance that they will not engage. Moreover, people will not actively respond to your SMS and may view it as spam.

Therefore, text canvassing is much more restrictive than telephone canvassing. This method of phone canvassing is often used to support GOTV strategy, for political event reminders, and on election day, instead of during early stage canvassing. Text canvassing is much more beneficial on election day as a final prompt to gain votes.

Phone Banking

Phone banking is an alternative form of phone canvassing.

Phone banking can be conducted by groups of campaign volunteers who blast through call lists. These volunteers have a set script, with drop-down response options. Similar to phone canvassing, phone banking allows you to reach thousands of voters in an efficient, data-driven manner. Alternatively, your campaign can outsource phone banking efforts to a call center.

Peer-to-peer phone banking can also be conducted by campaign volunteers. This form of phone banking is often referred to as relational organizing. This is implemented by volunteers who reach out to people within their local community or wider network using phone canvassing techniques.‍

‍Phone Canvassing Team

In order to run effective phone canvassing outreach, your canvassing team must:

1. Receive campaign-specific training and stay updated with political shifts within the community.

2. Strive to generate deep canvassing conversations when possible.

3. Have a well-defined script which will generate strategic, data-driven results to support your campaign goals.

Ecanvasser and CallHub

You can now sync across your list of voter contacts from Ecanvasser software to CallHub with the Ecanvasser and CallHub integration.

1. Seamlessly manage data between the two platforms.

2. Send tailored text canvassing campaigns to prompt engagement with the electorate. Retarget voters with follow-up text/ SMS campaigns post canvass or failed contact.

3. Run comprehensive telephone canvassing and phone banking campaigns. This allows your team to generate strategic insights based on the data collected during canvassing.

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Voter files and voter data are imperative to the success of phone canvassing. The Ecanvasser and L2 Data integration allows you to instantly download voter data into your Ecanvasser dashboard. Through segmenting your voter file and creating a data-driven strategy, you can maximize the impact of your voter files on your phone canvassing and door-to-door canvassing campaigns.

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