The Mast for Congress Campaign won their primary in Florida’s CD 18 using RumbleUp to connect with voters and get out the vote, and they did it in style.
Other campaigns, take note!
Their team used simple messages to get out the vote and remind people about absentee ballots. Not only did they end up seeing record turnout on election day (see below), they were also able to connect with their constituents in some surprising ways:
“We were able to build our volunteer base, raise money, and not only make contact with 15% of our text messages but also set up future events for the Congressman.” said campaign manager Rocco LeDonni.
Their team started out with five volunteer agents sending out texts, but soon they started receiving responses from people expressing their support and asking how they could help send messages as well, as Rocco shares:
“After the first round of texting, we had a number of people inquire about volunteering for the campaign. We gave them the email address of our political director who emailed them about our next texting event a week from that day. The next week we had 4 new volunteers join us from our original text program.”
They also received responses from people expressing how much they had always wanted to meet the Congressman. The campaign took this opportunity to invite them to an event going on the next day, as Rocco explains:
“We were able to invite those people to our primary watch party where they got their picture taken with [Congressman] Brian Mast.”
The Mast campaign took advantage of the best part of peer-to-peer texting: the ability to have real one-on-one conversations with the people they were texting.
One person asked if the Congressman could attend their non-profit fundraising event to raise money and awareness to prevent children from drowning. More from Rocco:
“We connected with her the day after our texting event and we arranged for [Congressman] Brian [Mast] to attend the event on Sept 29th.”
They even had some people text the campaign back asking how to make donations and Mast’s team was able to direct them to their website where they saw donations being made.
This demonstrates that when interacting with constituents, convenience is key!
These were people who wanted to donate to the campaign, but hadn’t yet because they didn’t know where to go or hadn’t got around to it yet. They just needed to receive a quick text that made it easy for them to act.
“All in all, the texting program through Rumble Up was a huge success. The feedback was incredibly positive and best of all our volunteers enjoyed texting and will continue to come back for future events” — campaign manager Rocco LeDonni
The campaign sent a total of 15,918 texts leading up to the primary. 98% of all text messages are read (including those sent by Mast’s team) and 90% of those are read within three minutes of sending.
The final turnout on the day of the primary was 71,500 when typical turnout for primary elections in this district was between 60,000 and 62,000.
This is a textbook example of how effective P2P texting can be!
Now they are already communicating with the new supporters they discovered via P2P texting in the primary to help out the campaign for the general.
They will soon be able to coordinate their canvassing and live call programs with RumbleUp P2P texting to ID voters, send absentee ballot reminders, raise money, and of course, help get out the vote!
Learn how P2P texting can bring your campaign to the next level with RumbleUp:
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