Appropriate Contact With Names In the Database Leads To Increased Votes

After building up a list of names on the database, a campaign needs to ensure that it is appropriately harvesting those names to maximize votes while minimizing effort. The efforts of contact should be in a few categories:

• Identification of party affiliation. By identifying party affiliation, the campaign can quickly narrow down whom it should target with future contacts. This can be done earlier in the campaign and requires no hard selling on the part of volunteers. Therefore, it should be easier to get volunteers to make phone calls to identify party affiliation.
• Delivery of the candidate message. Having a short script with a few bulleted main talking points that takes less than a minute to deliver should help potential voters who are either on the fence or leaning towards the candidate. Again, this is not particularly taxing on volunteers, as they are not required to engage in much discussion regarding the positions.
• Harvesting of volunteers. Asking potentially supportive voters if they would like to help the campaign can multiply the hands on deck to do more work. This also saves money for the campaign--volunteers are much less expensive than paid workers, although they also have varying levels of dedication.
• Get out the vote. This is for both in the weeks leading up to Election Day and for Election Day. More on this in a subsequent article.
• General campaign news/support messages. This is a good use of e-mail, for sending out brief weekly blurbs with updates on the campaign, and, if necessary, asking for support at various events.

While the list of contacts is useful, it can be abused. Too many calls will turn off voters and turn potential votes into abstentions or even votes for the opponent. Too many e-mails will result in the e-mails being deleted, filtered into trash cans, or being marked as spam. Too many marks as spam will keep the campaign from being able to deliver high quantities of e-mails as the campaign will get blacklisted by major mail providers.

So, a campaign list is a valuable but finite resource. Wise shepherding of the resource will lead to more votes for the candidate on Election Day.