What is text banking in politics? Quick guide for campaigns

By this point, most smartphone users have received a text from a political campaign before. Text messages have become an essential marketing channel across industries, and the political sphere is no exception. After all, the ability to reach thousands of voters and supporters instantly on a device in the palm of their hands is powerful.

With political text banking, your campaign can quickly reach target voters and mobilize the grassroots support you need to win your race. This quick guide will help you understand the basics of text banking, how it works, and how to amplify your reach with the right tools.

What is text banking?

Text banking in politics is the process of reaching out to voters, donors, and supporters via text message to garner support for a campaign. Political campaigns use text messages to spread awareness, fundraise, mobilize voters, increase event attendance, and more. Text banking is often conducted by volunteers using a political texting tool.

Text banking vs. phone banking

Text banking is very similar to phone banking, the process of calling voters, donors, and supporters to further campaign goals. However, these strategies have a few key differences.

With text banking, you can:

• Send hundreds of messages at once.
• Automate replies.
• More easily scale your outreach. 
• Spend less time training volunteers since they only type out replies.
• Schedule messages in advance so volunteers can make an impact outside of business hours.

These factors make text banking best suited for reminders, urgent appeals, Get Out the Vote (GOTV) outreach, and other quick messages.

Phone banking, on the other hand, involves:

• Lengthy one-on-one conversations.
• More time and volunteers.
• Conversations that feel more “human” than texts.
• Ability to more easily build trust with voters and donors.
• Opportunities to hear voters’ thoughts and concerns.

Because of these features, phone banking works best for collecting information, persuading voters, and building relationships with voters, donors, and supporters.

Importance of text banking for Democrats and progressive campaigns

More and more political campaigns on both sides of the aisle are using text messages to spread the word about their candidates. In 2022, Americans received more than 15 billion political texts, and nearly 12 billion of those texts were from Republicans. 

This makes text banking for Democrats and progressive campaigns more important than ever. If you want to get the attention of voters, donors, and supporters quickly and at scale, text banking is a must. Recent studies and statistics explain why this strategy is so effective for political campaigns:

• Text messages have an average 98% open rate. Recipients are much more likely to open and read political text messages than emails or social media messages, widening your campaign’s reach extensively.
• The average SMS click-through rate is 19%. This means that almost one out of every five people you text will click on the links you send them, driving traffic to your campaign website, donation form, and registration pages.
• Political campaigns see text message response rates of up to 18%. Text responses from recipients can help you learn about their voting preferences, answer important questions, and build deeper relationships. 
• Using texts for GOTV efforts can increase voter turnout by up to 3%. Convincing likely voters to show up at the polls on Election Day is a major goal of every campaign. Text messages enable you to send GOTV messages quickly, widely, and effectively.

Amidst all of these benefits and the prevalence of texting in the current political landscape, investing your campaign’s time and resources in text banking is an easy decision. You just need the right tools and strategies to make your text banking efforts a success.

How does text banking work?

The basic text banking process works like this:

1. Your campaign creates a list of target voters, donors, or supporters.
2. You collect opt-ins by asking supporters directly and advertising how supporters can get text messages from your campaign.
3. You write a script for text banking based on your goals (related to fundraising, canvassing, engagement, etc.).
4. Volunteers and staff members use your text banking software to text the contacts on your list and record their responses.

We’ll dive deeper into each of the steps you need to take below, but these are the essentials. To plan a text banking session effectively, keep in mind that most campaigns need volunteers, a texting platform, and a voter or donor database.

How to get started with text banking in politics

When you’re ready to start contacting voters, donors, and supporters via SMS, take the following steps.

1. Compile your contact list.

First, determine who you’re trying to reach for this text bank and why. As we discussed earlier, text banking can support a variety of different goals, like persuasion, fundraising, volunteer recruitment, and mobilization. You might conduct multiple text banks for each goal at different points in your campaign, but it’s important to focus on one goal each time.

To decide on the right goal and audience, reference your campaign plan and timeline. If you’re in the midst of GOTV, for example, you would want to text a list of voters who are likely to support your candidate and encourage them to go to the polls.

Whether you’re targeting registered voters, prospective or existing donors, or other supporters, compile a list of individuals and pull audience contact information from your fundraising or donor database.

2. Recruit and train text banking volunteers.

Next, recruit volunteers to text the recipients on your list. The number of volunteers you need will depend on the size of your contact list, so plan accordingly. Then, provide basic training on what to do (i.e., follow the script!) and how to use your texting platform. With the right text banking software, volunteers can participate in person, virtually, or on their own time once they’re comfortable with the process.

3. Write a script.

Your text banking scripts should be similar to the ones you use for phone banking but much more concise. For example, instead of starting a conversation by asking how the recipient is and whether or not they know about your candidate, you might start with a short message that asks if your candidate can count on their support. You should also prompt them to provide specific replies (“Reply YES, NO, or UNSURE”) to simplify data collection.

Just like you should clarify your audience and goal for each text bank, you’ll need to create a specific text banking script that achieves each purpose and targets the audience you’re texting.

4. Use text banking software to contact voters, supporters, or donors.

With your contact list, script, and volunteers ready, you can host your text bank and start contacting your target audience using text banking software. A quality political texting platform will facilitate this process with features like:

• Broadcast (bulk sends) and two-way SMS messages.
• Contact list creation tools.
• Customizable text banking scripts.
• Text automation.
• Integrations with your fundraising database, online forms, and other messaging tools. 
• Reporting features.

Volunteers should be able to easily access your script and contact lists, and then send texts directly within the platform.

5. Document responses in your database.

Finally, have volunteers record the responses that they receive while text banking in your voter or fundraising database. This way, your team keeps track of any new voter preferences or supporter feedback. 

Some texting platforms can simplify this process by automatically coding specific responses directly in your database so you don’t have to. For instance, you might set up your texting platform so that specific responses automatically mark voters with a 1 (strong supporter score) and add that information to your database.

Basic text banking script and guidelines

When you create a script for your text bank, there are a few essential considerations to keep in mind. 

First off, you must ensure that your script follows FCC guidelines along with any other regulations that apply to you (check with your relevant election authority if you’re not sure). This means identifying yourself and the campaign, including clear directions for opting out, and respecting any opt outs you receive.

Next, decide whether or not you’ll create a branched script (we recommend that you do). Branching scripts give volunteers different things to say based on the responses they get, leading to more tailored outreach and ultimately better results. Here’s what a branched script that includes all the required parts of a political text might look like:

FIRST MESSAGE: Hi, [Supporter Name]! I’m [Volunteer Name] with [Campaign or Organization Name], and I’m reaching out to supporters today to ask how they’re planning to vote! Will you vote absentee, early, or on Election Day?

• IF ABSENTEE: Great! Please request your ballot and send it in as soon as possible—the deadline is coming up on [Deadline Date]! Do you have any questions about voting absentee in [State, County, or District]? You can find a list of drop boxes here: [Link]
• IF EARLY: Perfect, thanks for doing your part! Find polling locations at [Link] and make sure to vote before [Early Voting Deadline]. Bring your friends so they won’t have to wait in line on Election Day, either!
• IF ELECTION DAY: Got it. If you want to skip the lines, remember that you can vote early from [Date Range] at any of the polling locations here [Link]. If not, we’ll see you on [Election Day Date] from [Time Range]! Thanks for voting!

No matter what your text banking script ends up looking like, make sure to give volunteers clear guidelines about what they should and shouldn’t do when text banking. For example, you might tell your volunteers during the training portion of a text bank to:

• Stick to the script.
• Address recipients by name.
• Record all responses you receive in your database (if your platform does not do this automatically).
• Not engage with any aggressive responses.

Additionally, make sure that you have someone from your campaign team available to answer volunteers’ questions and help them through any challenges that arise.

Using NGP VAN’s text banking tools

NGP VAN’s Mobile Messaging is one of the best tools you can use for political text banking. Our technology was developed by veteran campaign staff to suit the needs of Democratic and progressive campaigns at all Election levels. We provide you with the tools you need for any kind of text banking — voter outreach, donation appeals, info blasts, event invites, and more.

Our fully integrated Mobile Messaging platform comes with essential features, like:

Unlimited keywords

SMS keywords are specific words or phrases that trigger automatic, custom responses when texted to your campaign’s text banking phone number. For example, you might set up the keyword “DONATE” to trigger a message that shares the link to your campaign’s donation page. Or, the keyword “VOTING HELP” could trigger a string of messages that provide key voting information.

With Mobile Messaging, you can set up as many custom keywords and responses as you need. Just remember to let supporters know what the keywords are within your marketing materials.

Note: Unlimited keywords refers to the number of custom trigger words you can set up for your campaign, not the number of words or characters you can send within a text message.

Segmentation

Since Mobile Messaging integrates with your CRM, you can use the data you already have to easily segment donors, supporters, and volunteers. Create contact lists for each of your text banking goals, and house them all within our unified platform.

MMS and two-way messaging

Mobile Messaging enables you to send broadcast messages, one-on-one texts, and MMS (texts with images, videos, or gifs). Scale your text outreach with broadcast messages, then use two-way messaging to answer supporters’ questions and gauge their preferences. Or, send MMS messages that share compelling infographics, your latest campaign video, and more.

A/B testing

Compare the effectiveness of two different text messages with A/B testing. This feature allows you to send two versions of a message to different recipients, and then analyze engagement data to discover which one is most effective. 

For example, you might test if a donation appeal text is more successful if you mention one aspect of your candidate’s platform or another. 

Integrations

The best part of Mobile Messaging is that it’s integrated directly with other impactful NGP VAN campaign tools like NGP, Digital 8, and more. 

This makes it easy for you to pull data from your CRM to personalize messages (such as a donor’s most recent gift amount) and send new information back to your database automatically. Plus, you can create integrated, multichannel marketing campaigns to interact with supporters across texts, email, direct mail, and social media.

Want to see the benefits of using integrated NGP VAN tools for yourself? Watch our free webinar to learn how we power campaigns like yours. 

Compliance

Our text banking tool enables your campaign to be fully compliant with rules and regulations like the TCPA, FCC, and more. However, it’s ultimately up to you to ensure your campaign’s activities comply with all relevant laws and regulations — check with your relevant election authority to verify what those are.

Incorporating text banking in your campaign strategy

As the leading technology provider for Democratic and progressive campaigns and organizations, we know all about what it takes to succeed with text banking in politics. We have the tools you need to not only host effective text banks, but unify and improve all aspects of your campaign. Reach out to the NGP VAN team or request a demo to learn more.