Political Text Messaging Service

During the 2022 election cycle, Americans received more than 15 billion political text messages. While we don’t have the data from the 2024 cycle yet, the whole country is aware that the volume of political texts exploded leading up to the presidential race. It’s clear that SMS is an essential communication channel for today’s political campaigns, but how do you do it right?

In this blog, we’ll explain the basics of political texting services, how they can help you send engaging texts, and what you can do to transform your campaign’s SMS strategy with NGP VAN.

What is a Political Text Messaging Service?

Political text messaging services allow your campaign or organization to send texts to supporters, voters, and donors, encouraging them to take action. Whether you’re hosting a text bank or sending reminder texts to volunteers, a political texting service lets you easily send and track your text messages.

The best political texting services enable you to segment supporters and send personalized messages for greater impact. Some platforms allow you to send both SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) messages, which can contain images, emojis, GIFs, or videos. Many services also leverage automation to streamline message creation and reporting.

Why should campaigns use political texting services?

Texting voters and supporters has become one staple of campaign outreach for a reason — SMS messages are an incredibly powerful way to reach people. Political SMS is so effective because because of the channel’s:

High open rates: Text messages have an average 98% open rate, much higher than traditional channels like email. This means more eyes on your texts and more attention for your campaign.
High response rates: One study found that SMS messages see six to eight times higher response rates than emails, increasing the potential for engagement and successfully inspiring action.
Flexibility: Texts are highly versatile and can help you further various campaign goals, from fundraising to supporter outreach.
Two-way conversations: Because texts are seen as more casual and are easy to respond quickly to, they naturally encourage donors and voters to engage in conversation. Supporters can ask questions, respond to surveys, and more in minutes.

These benefits are especially true if you encourage supporters to opt-in to receive campaign texts early in the election cycle. While political campaigns sometimes don’t need explicit consent to text people (more on this below), your supporters will be much more likely to engage with your messages if they’ve already signed up for them.

How is political SMS regulated?

Your relevant election authority has certain rules and regulations associated with different types of political text messaging that you must know and follow. Before launching a political texting strategy, review your local laws, check with your relevant election authority about any other regulations, and brush up on the FCC rules and regulations.

Typically, any text message sent on behalf of a campaign or political organization must identify who the text is from and how users can stop receiving future messages.

Some political text messaging services provide example language and guidelines for you, but you should double-check text message requirements with your relevant election authority before finalizing your language choices. Your campaign is ultimately responsible for knowing and adhering to all relevant campaign laws for your race, so it’s up to you to comply with any texting laws or guidelines.

Common ways to use SMS for politics

You can leverage text messages throughout all stages of a political campaign. However, campaigns and political organizations often use SMS to further goals related to:

Fundraising

SMS messages can encourage supporters to give, particularly for urgent or rapid-response campaigns. Including URLs makes it easy to direct supporters to your website or donation page, and the natural urgency of text messages means recipients are likely to read your messages right away. Further your fundraising goals through text banking, personalized text appeals, and thank-you texts to your donors.

Engagement

Texts make it easy to send campaign updates to your subscribers as they happen. Thank recent volunteers for participating in an event or share important information they may have missed in an email. Even if you’re used to promoting events with email and social media, you can get more eyes on your invitations with SMS. Use your political text messaging service to increase attendance by sending invitations directing supporters to your RSVP form.

Additionally, every organizer knows the importance of confirming attendees and registered volunteers, and you can do so easily with text. You can also use SMS to deliver additional instructions, such as directions, that volunteers can access anytime.

Whatever message you’re sending, broadcast SMS messages (also called mass messaging) are the fastest way to get information to the supporters on your opt-in list. With broadcast messaging, you can send a single message to a large number of supporters. Peer-to-peer texting, on the other hand, involves one volunteer texting one supporter to start a one-on-one conversation.

Surveys

Survey voters and collect feedback from supporters with automated text surveys. Voters can easily answer questions with yes or no answers or respond with more detailed feedback for your campaign via text. If the terms and conditions of your political text messaging service allow it, you can even use surveys to determine voters’ support scores and record them automatically in your database.

Again, gathering opt-ins is an important consideration here. Be sure to check your platform’s terms and the relevant election laws and guidelines for your race before sending messages to voters who haven’t explicitly signed up for your texts.

GOTV

Text messages can also be a helpful way to remind supporters to get to the polls during Get Out the Vote (GOTV). For instance, on the day before the election, you could send texts to your opted-in supporters to remind them when and where they can vote on Election Day. Along with reminders, send texts to prompt supporters to verify their polling location, participate in early voting, and more to boost turnout.

How political texting works with NGP VAN

To elevate progressive and Democratic campaigns, NGP VAN created Mobile Messaging, a powerful political texting service available in NGP that helps you quickly reach opted-in supporters and engage them as activists, donors, or volunteers. With Mobile Messaging, you can easily build and launch text messaging campaigns to inspire action, generate donations, and more.

Mobile Messaging helps you achieve your campaign goals with essential features like:

Segmentation and list creation: Capture numbers using Online Actions forms and store them with supporters’ contact data in NGP to easily create mobile message campaigns and segment your universe.
Text message automation: Our easy-to-use interface helps you quickly build lists, send and automate messages, and pull reports on your results as you increase event turnout, build relationships with supporters, and raise money.
Mobile-optimized forms and payment options: When payments are easy and secure, you’ll inspire more people to give. Direct supporters who click on links in your fundraising texts to dynamic, secure forms made for mobile devices.
Integration with multichannel campaigns: As part of NGP, text campaigns can easily integrate into multichannel campaigns to maximize engagement and fundraising results. Align your emails, texts, and social media messages for more touchpoints.
A/B testing: Compare the effectiveness of two text messages with built-in A/B testing, helping you choose the best strategies for engaging voters, donors, and supporters with texts.
Integrations with peer-to-peer texting platforms: We offer hundreds of integrations that empower Democrats and progressives to run sophisticated, multichannel campaigns, including multiple peer-to-peer texting platforms like Tatango.

At NGP VAN, we’re committed to growing alongside the progressive movement and equipping campaigns with the tools they need to win. These features and our robust integrations ensure campaigns can coordinate and execute outreach as efficiently as possible.

Peer-to-peer texting integrations work with all NGP VAN products, including VAN, Digital 8, and NGP 8, while our Mobile Messaging add-on is only available in NGP 8. Schedule a demo to get started or learn more.

Best practices for using political text messaging services

SMS messages can be a valuable tool for political campaigns, but can also quickly overwhelm supporters if you’re not careful. Your messages must be engaging, specific, and clear enough to drive donations and sign-ups rather than opt-outs. Follow these best practices to send more effective political texts.

Craft engaging short messages.

Not only are you typically limited to a short number of characters via text, but you also need to capture supporters’ attention quickly so they understand why they should keep reading or take action. Long, drawn-out texts will cause recipients to skim or fully ignore your messages. Aim to stick to 160 characters or less, or 1-2 paragraphs at most.

Include clear calls to action that communicate urgency.

Tell recipients exactly what action your campaign needs them to take — phrases like “Donate $10 now” or “Give $50 before midnight tonight” make it easier for supporters to understand what you’re asking them to do and when you’re asking them to do it. Include everything they need to take action in the text, whether that’s a link to your donation page or the address of their polling location.

Limit your calls to action to just one per text message. Complex or multiple calls to action can confuse and potentially overwhelm your recipients.

Use your political texting service to personalize messages.

If you use a political text messaging service that integrates with your fundraising database (like NGP VAN’s Mobile Messaging), leverage your existing donor data within text messages. In Mobile Messaging, you can use merge fields to automatically pull data from NGP to easily personalize texts with first names and other information. Our system can also pull donation data, like a donor’s highest and average donation amounts, for future engagement.

Ask for a specific donation amount.

If you’re asking a supporter to give for the first time via text, ask for a small amount. Or, calculate your campaign’s average donation using your CRM and ask for that amount from prospective donors (if it’s a reasonable amount).

For supporters who have previously donated, base your requests on their highest previous contribution. You can also use Donor Target Scores to personalize asks based on individual donors’ likelihood to give and giving potential. Tailoring your asks to each supporter can help you raise more than asking for a generalized amount across a wide group.

Example political text messages

Using all the best practices we discussed, optimized texts sent via a political text messaging service might look like these:

“David, early voting is about to end. Can we count on you to cast your vote for Senator Smith before Friday? Your polling place is 123 Jefferson Rd. Click here to check their hours. Text STOP to end.”
“Allison — Mayor Gonzales needs your support to win! Can you donate $75 today to help us reach our goal? Text STOP to opt out.”
“This is Dan with the Meyer campaign, and I share your concerns about the future of education in North Carolina. Will you join us for a rally on 9/24 so we can work together to shape our future? RSVP here. Text STOP to end”

These are only a few examples of the wide range of texts you can send to support your campaign’s or organization’s goals. When in doubt about what kind of messages work best with your unique audience, refer back to your SMS engagement data.

Text your supporters and get results with NGP VAN software

Text messages are essential to any modern political campaign, and the political text messaging service you choose to launch your SMS strategy will determine how effectively you can reach supporters with texts. Raise more money, mobilize supporters, and drive action with Mobile Messaging from NGP VAN. Request a demo to get started.

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