Kunnect sells 100% cloud-based call center software to businesses and political campaigns. Our software, hosted in the Amazon platform, seamlessly manages all inbound and outbound calling for a flat rate of $125 per user per month with a flat deposit of $125 per user.
Every campaign, large or small, has the difficult task of figuring out how to make the most of limited funds. There’s almost never enough money to do everything you want, so that’s where prioritizing becomes invaluable.
If you’re strapped for cash – or just watching the budget – here are some simple ways to reduce the budget without killing the campaign. Most of these are best done in the early stages, but it’s never too late to shift the strategy.
Hire a Top-Notch Volunteer Coordinator
You might be better off investing in a top-notch volunteer coordinator than adding another five staff members. Coordinating volunteers is a tough job, but it is powerfully effective when executed well.
Volunteers are some of your strongest assets because they can speak to voters in their own language. They are typical voters, after all. They work for free because they care about the cause, of course. But they’re also a trusted source of information in the eyes of other voters because they’re not being paid to campaign.
A highly-skilled volunteer coordinator will be able to recruit the right kind of volunteers, train them to speak effectively and assign tasks that align with their skills and background. That 25-year-old volunteer might be a great person to help with social media, while the 75-year old retiree might be the perfect person to recruit donations from friends at the local senior center (or vice versa!)
Do More With Social Media
Political campaigns have widely embraced social media, but most are using it in addition to – not instead of – traditional forms of political advertising such as radio, TV and direct mailers. In some cases, social media can actually replace traditional advertising mediums. Social media allows for messages to be more personalized and targeted, increasing the likelihood that they will resonate.
The key with social media, as suggested by New Media Campaigns, is never to join social networks that your staff doesn’t have time to update and manage. An inactive social media page looks bad – very bad. It’s better to join a few social networks and keep them active with relevant content than to join 10 and let them sit there. You’ll seem like you don’t care – or worse, like a spammer.
No two campaigns will have the same social media strategy, and abandoning traditional advertising mediums isn’t always the best strategy. But as voters continue to move away from mediums such as live TV in favor of social networks, it makes sense to shift your strategy in that direction. You’ll be reaching voters where they want to be, and you’ll also be saving money.
Cut Back on Overhead
Shifting more of your messaging online is one way to do this, but there are plenty of other ways to cut back on overhead without hurting a campaign. Generally, experts say no more than 35 percent of campaign money should go to overhead, while the other 65 percent should go to field work.
Given that, do you need that massive campaign office with desks, computers and telephones for each staff member and volunteer? Modern technology such as cloud-based call center software allows staffers and volunteers to make calls, answer phones and access voter contact info at home or on the road. The need for huge campaign offices is quickly dwindling.
Cloud-based call center software for political campaigns is also less expensive than traditional on-premise call center software. There’s no expensive hardware to buy and everything is managed off-site by the vendor.