eNilsson

Campaign data drives the voter lifecycle

Drive the Voter Lifecycle by capitalizing on your greatest ally: Campaign data. Campaign data helps you raise money, build a brand, and put the right people in the voting booth by allowing you to identify and target:
    •    Probable voters,
    •    Favorable voters (ones who will vote for your candidate),
    •    Potential donors, fundraisers, & motivators,
    •    Voters to be ignored

Data allows you to build a strategy that drives disengaged voters from supporters, to donors, to fundraisers, and finally to campaign advocates; a sequence BlueSwarm refers to as the Voter Lifecycle.

Unfortunately, most political organizations have difficulty using the data they have. The wide variety of disparate databases made necessary by the diverse data collection methods utilized by vendors (usually proprietary databases) and consultants (usually spreadsheets) are at fault. These databases collect campaign data without regard for diverse data collection methods causing overlapping or duplicate data for a voter, for a region or for an event.

These disparate databases and the data points they collect include:   

➢ Voters     Voter list generation     Voter direct mail     Paid-phone voter ID     Absentee voter/early voter data     Micro-Targeting     GOTV ➢ Volunteers     Volunteer phone lists     Volunteer preferences     Yard sign locations ➢ Favorable     Voter ID     GOTV     Direct mail surveys     Online surveys ➢ Fundraising     Bundling programs     Major donor programs     Low-dollar programs     PACs/527s     Events     o    Invite lists     o    RSVPs     o    Host reports     Direct mail solicitations     Email solicitations     Outbound telemarketing     Online donations

➢ Donors     Pledge tracking     Pledge management     Contribution tracking     Contribution management     Bundler management     Fulfillment     o    Thank you letters/emails     o    Pledge letters     o    Premiums     Donor relationship management     o    Direct mail     o    Telemarketing     o    Email     Inbound telemarketing ➢ Communications     Online     Phone banking/Robo-calls     Direct mail     Door-to-door     Email blasts

 No one vendor or organization can provide best-in-class services for all of the data listed above, which is why we see diverse data collection methods and disparate databases. However, by:

•  Housing all campaign data in a centralized database, and
•  Providing database access to all campaign vendors,

a campaign effectively develops a platform that can accommodate its widely varying needs while preventing the long-standing problems of overlapping or duplicate data. The campaign can then focus on analyzing and acting on data rather than aggregating and managing data.

The benefits of housing all campaign data in a centralized database and creating a standard set of web services for vendor integration include:

• Future-proof campaign data against a constantly changing technology and political world,
• Ability for the campaign to select vendors on a function-by-function basis,
• Reduction of the campaign’s cost to change vendors thus creating a competitive vendor environment, and, most importantly, reducing the campaign’s dependence on any single vendor,
• Allowing the campaign to emphasize action on data rather than synchronizing data between varying systems

But how do you determine what, exactly, should go in the database from this wealth of data? 

The answer to this question leads back to driving the Voter Lifecycle. The Voter Lifecycle focuses on each individual person’s conversion from disengaged voter, to supporter, to donor, to fundraiser, to advocate. Therefore, a centralized database should be configured to focus on contact records.

Increasing the Voter Lifecycle’s conversion rate is most dependent on a few core pieces of information that should be stored in a contact record:

• Name and contact info
• How a contact got into the database
• Current position in the Voter Lifecycle
• If and when a contact volunteers or how much they donated
• If they are part of another important group such as press or surrogates

This information empowers a campaign to identify and target their audience by defining Lifecycle Personas. Character profiles identifying a contact’s needs, desires, worldview, attitude, personality, and behavior define Lifecycle Personas.

The principle value of Lifecycle Personas lies in their influence on campaign decision-making processes:

• What language to use in appeal letters,
• How marketing strategies are implemented,
• How to coordinate GOTV and door knocks, etc. 

Obviously, the more robust your data is on each contact, the better prepared a campaign is to develop these Lifecycle Personas.

The key take-away here is that campaigns need to develop Lifecycle Personas as early as possible, so implementing a centralized database focused on contact records at an early stage is critical.

A campaign may only have one opportunity to capture information from a voter. Be sure your campaign is ready to seize that opportunity and capitalize on your greatest ally: Campaign Data.

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