Several weeks ago I went through “15 Questions You Must Answer Before Running for Office” (here, here, and here). Kimberly Scott, writing in Politics Magazine, gives another perspective on “25 questions that need answers before you can begin a campaign…”

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In campaigns, the three most precious resources are these: money, time, and the attention span of voters. That last one–voter attention span–makes each contact you have with a voter important, especially in an age in which it is easy for voters to shut you out. In an ideal world, you’d want to know each voter well and tailor a personal message to deliver. But in the real world, you are forced to make a best effort to narrow down a mass message.

Good thing there’s list segmentation.

List segmentation is the simple practice of breaking down your contact list into sublists. These sublists are based on criteria you choose, e.g. people in the 27705 zip code. You can then send more focused and more relevant emails to the people on these sublists. This tactic is not new, but it is newly simple thanks to the advent of affordable commercial marketing services.

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In this electronic age, email remains the killer app of campaign communications. It’s efficient, it’s targeted, it’s cheap, it’s designed to go viral, and it works. Email is the topic of discussion this week on RunSmart2Win. Today we will look at 10 Tips for Maximizing the Effectiveness of Email Campaigns:

1. Keep your messages short and focused. People have short attention spans. Emails must grab the reader’s attention early, make one point, and conclude with one action step. Not only does this mean keeping the email short, but breaking your message into short sentences with headings for easy skimming. If you say three things, you say nothing. One point. One action step. That’s it. Remember the Five B’s of campaign emails: Be Brief, Baby, Be Brief.
2. Don’t just ask for money. Email is a great campaign fundraising tool, but you shouldn’t overdue it. Even your most avid supporters will spam block you if all of your emails are contribution requests. Mix up the topics you cover: campaign announcements, volunteer mobilization efforts, special event invitations, letters from the candidate, and yes, the occasional fundraising email too.
3. Don’t flood inboxes. Just as you shouldn’t ask for money in every email you send, you also shouldn’t send emails everyday! If you do, you will quickly discover that people have tuned you out. One email per week should be the upper limit. The exception to this is the last week of the campaign when you are turning out supporters and voters.
4. There is a time for urgency. On the heels of point three, the reason you shouldn’t flood people’s inboxes is so you can grab their attention when you really need it (for example, the last week of the fundraising quarter, the 72 hours prior to Election Day, etc.). By not spending your email capital too early — and not crying wolf with too many urgent pleas — you retain your right to implore your supporters to act, contribute, or volunteer with emotional appeals, deadlines, and countdowns.
5. Use the candidate wisely. Obviously, you want some of your messages to come from the candidate. But not every email should be from the man or woman in charge. If every email is from the candidate, people may assume that he or she is not the person behind it. It’s true that the candidate is the standard bearer of the campaign message, but use him or her wisely. Have the candidate author some of the emails, but include the candidate’s spouse, campaign staffers, and endorsements from members of the community.
6. Ask supporters to tell their friends. The most powerful method for starting a word-of-mouth epidemic over the Internet is friends emailing friends emailing friends. Encourage activists to edit messages from the campaign, then send them on to friends and family members. Ask supporters to remove “FW:” from the email subject line and personalize the message.
7. Link to online videos. Take a screenshot from a campaign video, making sure it looks like a video player. Then provide the link to the actual video (and embed code for people to place the video on their own blogs or social networking pages). Use your organization’s stories to bring people in, and then connect it to an “ask” at the end of the email. Capture their attention with video, then take them to a next-step — like contributing, volunteering, calling a radio station, or sending in a letter to the editor.
8. Be interesting and relevant. Don’t live in a bubble. Piggyback on the most talked about issues affecting your race. Is there a local corruption scandal or hot button issue that everyone is talking about? Don’t ignore the elephant in the room. Talk about what the voters are talking about. Address their concerns. Capitalize on grassroots anger. Relate your message to the day’s headlines. Talk about why your issue matters now.
9. Test and improve. Measure the success of your email campaigns by tracking open-rates, click-throughs, and forwards. Is there is an issue, action, or layout that people respond to more than others? Use that information to improve on future emails.
10. Say “Please” and “Thank you.” Mama was right: you should always ask politely, saying “Please,” and show appreciation, with a “Thank you.” Acknowledge the effort your supporters are making on behalf of the candidate and the campaign. Never take their time, effort, money, or support for granted.

The most important part of fundraising is making sure that you’re abiding by applicable campaign finance laws. Here we’ll provide a broad overview of North Carolina campaign finance laws. Nothing can replace the advice of an experienced lawyer or treasurer, so take this as it’s intended: a starting resource for further investigation, not the end-all of the intricacies of campaign finance.

1. Know who to ask for help. When in doubt, contact the people who do this for a living: your County and/or the North Carolina State Election Board. They will either know the answer or direct you to someone who does.

2. Research what laws apply to you. You are running as a candidate at the municipal (e.g. Town Council), county (e.g. County Planning Board), state (e.g. NC State House), or federal (e.g. US House) level. There are different rules at every level,  so be aware of them. This determines your main regulatory body throughout the campaign.

3. Find a good treasurer. Every candidate committee must have a treasurer, and it can be anyone but your spouse. The treasurer is responsible for maintaining your financial records and filing required reports with the Board of Elections. Your treasurer must be trained by a Board of Elections course within three months of his/her appointment and once every four years after that.

4. Know when you have to file forms. North Carolina has deadlines for filing forms for your candidacy as well as filing campaign finance reports throughout the year. (As a fun fact, the filing fee is 1% of the annual salary of the office for which you are running; for the State House or Senate, that’s $207.) Know these dates. Don’t be late.

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Once you have been (rightfully) convinced that you should begin fundraising online, the next question is how to select an online contributions system. This system is a web-based solution that processes credit cards to transfer money from your donors to your campaign account. The number of these systems, though, is staggering. This post will hopefully be a quick overview with some general questions you should ask about every system, and then a more specific comparison of three major contribution systems on the base of price.

General Questions to Ask
1. How much will this cost? Online contributions systems generally make money in two ways. They charge a per-transaction fee, always less than fifty cents, on each contribution processed through your site. They also take a percentage of all your donations, usually less than 5 percent though oftentimes soaring to as high as 10 percent. Additionally you will find myriad fees for set-up, processing, and the like.

2. How will secure data be stored? You do not want to be responsible for keeping credit card numbers secure. Find out who will be responsible for secure data, where it will be stored, and who will address a security breach should one occur. Generally, online contributions systems process and store the credit card data on their end and then credit your account with the money.

3. How often will I be paid? The internet has made everything instantaneous, including the transfer of money. Many online contributions systems will deposit money in your campaign account as soon as the credit card information is processed. However, others will oftentimes distributed checks on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly basis.

4. Will I be able to collect the data I need? Check local, state, and federal campaign finance laws to determine the information you need to collect from donors. For example, candidates for federal office must collect the employer of every person who donates more than $200. Make sure that you will be able to customize your donation form to collect the necessary information to comply with campaign finance laws.

5. Will I be able to brand my donations portal? This is often a question for your technical team as it is for the contributions system you select. You want the transition from your website or online presence elsewhere to your donations portal to be as seamless as possible. The branding, graphics, colors, and other stylistic elements should remain as consistent as possible. Donors want to know that they are donating to the candidate they have selected. Additionally, sending them elsewhere is simply jarring, like inviting friends to a BBQ in your backyard only to traipse over to the neighbor’s living room.

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We’re kicking off another focus week on RunSmart2Win. This week we’re tackling fundraising.

As the famous saying goes, money is the mother’s milk of politics. While technology has leveled the political playing field somewhat, money is still one of the best predictors of Election Day success. How do you go about raising the funds your campaign needs to win? Here are 10 essential fundraising principles:

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We’re wrapping up  “YouTube Week” on RunSmart2Win. Today I’m going to introduce you to YouTube’s powerful, yet relatively unknown reporting and analytics tool: YouTube Insight.

I know we’re venturing deep into the strange and mystical world of Geekdom with this post, but stay with me for a minute. Think about the level of detail and strategic value a high-priced media consulting firm would give you for your 30-second TV spot — suggestions for improving your campaign’s message, theme, delivery, and numerous other factors — all supported with empirical data from expensive focus groups, polls, and field tests.

Now imagine those benefits in real-time — continuously updated throughout the campaign — free of charge.

That’s what you get for your online campaign videos with YouTube Insight. Here is the introduction to YouTube Insight last year on the Google Blog:

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We’re continuing our discussion on the value of incorporating YouTube into political campaigns. Today we’re looking at the elusive “it” quality that all YouTube users covet when they upload new videos: the irresistible essence of viral videos. Here is an interesting article from Kevin Wallsten in Politics Magazine on a YouTube video from the 2008 election that elevated the “going viral” concept for campaigners into the stratosphere:

The “Yes We Can” music video was the most popular online political video of the 2008 election season. This “supporter-generated” video, which included cameo appearances by celebrities such as Herbie Hancock, Scarlett Johansson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, featured black-and-white clips of Barack Obama’s concession speech following the New Hampshire primary set to music written by hip-hop artist will.i.am. Initially posted on YouTube on February 2, 2008, “Yes We Can” quickly spread across the Internet and, by the time Obama secured the nomination, the video had been viewed over 20 million times.

It is easy to assume that the video’s popularity was preordained by its combination of celebrity cameos, emotive imagery and a memorable refrain. A careful analysis of the dynamic relationship between online viewership, mainstream media coverage, blog discussion and campaign statements about the video, however, reveals that the video’s success was driven, in large measure, by the active support of the Obama campaign and by the eager enthusiasm of bloggers.

While “Yes We Can” was undoubtedly unique, it is possible to distill two general lessons about “going viral” from analyzing it.

Campaigns should follow their presence on YouTube closely and act quickly if their supporters upload content. When campaigns send emails and post messages on their official blogs about a supporter-generated video, Internet users, bloggers and journalists are likely to take this as a cue that the video is something worth paying attention to. Politicians seeking to make a big splash online, therefore, can do much more than keep their fingers crossed and hope that their rhetoric will inspire will.i.am et al to record a song in support of their candidacy. They can serve as effective midwives for viral videos by promoting them with their existing online tools.

Online political video makers should cater to the interests of bloggers. If you want to attract a large audience in both the online and offline political worlds, look to bloggers. Journalists, who use blog discussion as a heuristic for determining which events deserve coverage, are likely to report on videos receiving widespread attention in the blogosphere, and the links provided in blog posts can drive up viewership statistics by making it easy for interested readers to locate and watch a video online. Put simply, without the support of bloggers, online political videos are more likely to die in obscurity than to go viral.

To recap the two concepts in the article above, plus a few other necessary pieces, here are Five Ways to “Go Viral” on YouTube:

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How much would you pay for a two-minute spot on a station accessible to the world? How does nothing sound? If it sounds good (and it should), then it’s time to prepare a campaign introduction video for YouTube.

Campaign introduction videos are usually done as the first television ad a politician airs, and as their name implies, they are meant to introduce the candidate to the voters. Such television clips are thirty-second biographies that sets the general theme of the campaign. (I’m Candidate X, a leader. I’m Candidate Y, and I will bring change. I’m Candidate Z, who fights for the everyday citizens.) The ad below is from Congressman Bob Etheridge; it bills him as the common sense congressman from rural North Carolina.

But as with everything in politics, the introduction of the internet has changed nothing and everything. The principles of a campaign introduction video are the same, but YouTube’s technology and general attitude make the rules a bit different. Below is your general guide to introducing your campaign to YouTube, and later, you’ll see video examples with commentary and some advanced tips.

1. Craft your message. The introduction video should provide a one-sentence takeaway for viewers. When viewers recall you, they should say something similar to this: “You know who I’m talking about. John Smith, the guy from Greensboro who fought against tax hikes in the General Assembly.” Your task is to create the one-sentence takeaway and then to convey it throughout the video.

Do include personal biographical details if they are relevant. For example, in North Carolina it seems particularly important to establish your ties to the state. So whether you were born here (or are just a naturalized native like me), do mention the time you have lived in the state or, even better, the town or district you will represent.

Do not try to say too much. Viewers will likely watch your video once and then try to recall it days, weeks, or even months later. Thoroughly convey one message. Add extra information and supporting details to this message, but ultimately, that one message will be the one-sentence takeaway that will determine if your video did its job.

2. Act naturally. On the internet, authenticity is everything. Television ads are highly polished productions with glossy images, text overlays, and scripted voice-overs. Online videos, in contrast, are more personal to the candidate. Overwhelmingly, online introduction videos feature the candidate sitting down and talking directly to the camera. It’s no wonder. That camera is your entryway into a voter’s home or office. So behave as you would if you were meeting the voter in person. Be relaxed, be natural, and be genuine. If you are speaking directly and believe what you are saying, people can tell–even from a computer screen.

3. But film professionally. The viewers’ focus should be on your message, not your technical difficulties. You don’t need an expensive camera to film a high-quality web video provided you pay attention to the basics. Keep the background minimal and muted, and keep yourself looking fresh and presentable. Make sure the audio is clear and make sure that your delivery is consistent. Above all, keep the camera still and, if you plan on doing multiple videos, invest in a tripod. (more…)

We’re talking about YouTube this week on RunSmart2Win. Our goal is that by the end of the week, you will be sold on this campaign necessity for engaging today’s voters. We’ll discuss the concepts of introducing your candidate on YouTube, going viral, improving and targeting your message with YouTube Insight. Today we’ll begin with some incredible statistics about the changing electorate, the mass exodus from television to the Internet, and the reason YouTube has become so critical to modern campaigning. We’ll conclude with a final bullet-point list of the advantages of politicking on YouTube. Tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday we’ll delve into some “how-to” suggestions; today we’re selling the undeniable value of YouTube…and the reasons your campaign should be on it!

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