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Ideas from Campaign 08: Use Mobile Message for Real-Time Results |
First, a confession. I prepared content for this blog series months ago based on the primary efforts and have been simply making tweaks as new strategies emerge. However, for this entry I'm going to scrap the initial idea for this post and focus on a brilliant new idea the Obama campaign has implemented.
Mobile messaging is hot, there's no doubt about it. However, many nonprofits are still grappling with the right strategies to use this channel, not to mention the technical hurdles (psst... check out Mobile Commons technology).
I must admit, I've been impressed so far with the marketing strategies of the Obama team but their recent plans to use mobile messaging to announce his VP choice is brilliant.
This strategy is something nonprofits should consider replicating. Here are some ideas that could be announced via text messaging:
- Announce the results of a legislative vote
- Announce a fundraising milestone
- Announce a key-note speaker for your conference
- Announce an urgent advocacy request to key super-activists
The key ingredient here is announcing something people who are already invested in your organization would want to know. Therefore it's important to take into consideration their involvement. For instance, only offer to announce the results of the above legislative vote to constituents who took action on the advocacy campaign and similarly with supporters who made a donation to help you hit that milestone.
Why do this?
Several reasons. The Obama campaign will likely add thousands of new supporters via this strategy, but that is not always the case. More importantly it provides valuable information to your key supporters, which strengthens your relationship and increases their investment in your cause. Additionally, by providing you with their cell digits you've just learned how invested they really are with your org. I mean, we don't just give out our cell numbers to anyone! So if an individual has yet to donate but provides their digits, there's a good chance they would be willing to donate or take further action in the future, and this is highly valuable information for your organization.
Resources:
- MobileActive.org- excellent source for activism strategies and news
- Mobile Commons- Convio technology partner with a super-cool integration using our APIs.
Nonprofit Examples:
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URL: http://www.mcommons.com/blog
Tompkins, thanks for the shout out. Melanie, I'm not sure what you mean by legal compliance. There are some requirements mandated by the US wireless carriers around opting-out of lists. Also, mobile fundraising can currently only be done by 501(c)3s. We just wrote a few blog posts on it. If you have any more mobile questions, never hesitate to reach out to us at info@mcommons.com.
URL: http://www.technology-blog.com
These and other online marketing lessons shared between political, advocacy and fundraising campaigns have been widely embraced by savvy marketers. Organizations that continue to narrowly define their online strategy as a way to simply open their donor database to the Web are having a difficult time justifying the technology investment.
URL:
Re: the 3:00 am thing. I've got multiple reactions, one - how ironic you received it at 3:00 am =). It was the "3 am call". To funny. Second, I did not receive it at all, and I'm 100% positive I'm on the list. I also did not receive the email for several hours on Saturday, well after I learned of the news from standard sources. Let's chalk this up to a tech problem trying to mass communicate to millions of folks. I'm sympathetic, but not getting the txt at all was anti-climatic.
URL: http://www.charitynetusa.com
Are there any legal compliance issues to be addressed in using mobile messaging? www.charitynetusa.com/blog
URL: http://www.connectioncafe.com
So they actually sent the text message at 3:00am Eastern time. Was this smart, or a mistake? I tend to think mistake.