Across the country, state legislatures are reconvening, and new Congress is already at work in Washington, DC.
Unlike 2020, this year’s legislative sessions will not be cancelled. In fact, newly elected leaders are making up for lost time. We expect record activity as politicians either try to make their campaign promises into law or break those promises with the hope that constituents do not notice.
In many states and at the federal level, lawmakers are looking under every proverbial “couch cushion” to find a few extra bucks to fill massive budget gaps.
If you do not want your members unfairly targeted for tax hikes or burdensome regulations, you need a strategy to make your voice heard.
In pre-pandemic times, you may have planned a trip to the Capitol or attended your lawmaker’s local townhall meetings. With the vaccine still months away for most Americans, personal access to lawmakers will be difficult, if not impossible.
You need a new plan to reach lawmakers and make sure the voice of YOUR PEOPLE is heard.
We can help you craft a creative, WINNING strategy!
The best way to get a politician’s attention is to mobilize constituents to voice their support or opposition to pending legislation.
One important distinction – not all contacts are created equal. Anyone on The Hill will tell you, calls matter. In a deeper dive on the issue, The NY Times noted:
“Activists of all political stripes recommend calling legislators, not just emailing — and certainly not just venting on social media….A phone call from a constituent can, indeed, hold more weight than an email, and far outweighs a Facebook post or a tweet.”
Patch Through Calls
CampaignHQ can help you generate these all-important telephone contacts with a smartly run patch through campaign.
Patch through calls empower YOU to identify like-minded people, educate them about your issue, and transfer them directly to their lawmaker’s office to make their voice heard.
To run an effective patch through campaign, our campaign experts will help you:
1. Target the Fence Sitters
There’s no need to waste limited resources on someone who is solidly in your camp or firmly against you. However, it can be helpful to send a few positive patches into an office to give backup to someone taking a tough vote on your behalf.
2. Keep It Conversational
Our script writing professionals will make sure your script is simple and straight to the point. Constituents are not immersed in the unique language of your industry. They want to know what the issue is, how it affects them, and how they can make a difference.
3. Coordinate Your Efforts
Patch through calls are a powerful tool, but they are even better when coordinated with your ongoing advocacy efforts.
Peer-to-Peer Texting
Peer-to-Peer texting isn’t just for campaign turnout.
To execute an effective P2P plan, our campaign experts will help you:
1. Mobilize Your Membership
Interest groups can mobilize activists to support the key legislation by sending a text message with an informative video or a link on how to engage their elected officials.
2. Connect and Converse with your Allies
The value of peer-to-peer texting is that a real human being is making a connection with another. Our team reads and responds to every text so the target audience is getting a real, two-way conversation.
3. Open a New Fundraising Channel
Engaging by text message can even be an effective way to raise money. Personalized messages, pictures, GIFs, links and videos help the audience buy in to what you’re selling and have the tool to donate right at their fingertips.
Telephone Townhalls
The vaccine may be rolling out across the country, but it will be a long time before people are comfortable with in-person events. If you’re an interest group, one way to mobilize your membership on important issues and keep them engaged is with telephone townhalls.
To run an effective telephone townhall, our campaign experts will help you:
1. Put in the work before the event
The most active and involved participants in any telephone townhall are those who proactively dial in to the event, so focus on contacting those who will be interested. We’ll help you with a text message, automated call, email, or social media post to help you get the word out.
2. Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
It’s important to approach a telephone townhall with the same level of preparation as any in-person event. CampaignHQ has the expertise when it comes to: planning the flow and structure of questions, producing a quality line-by-line, and even acting as a moderator.
3. Have an interesting conversation
We can help you to ensure you hold your audience with a conversation WORTH having by keeping the conversation fast and lively. We’ll also help you construct poll questions to keep your audience engaged.
4. Keep it going after the event
After your successful event, it’s time to take the most valuable segments of your interactive conversation and share them with an even larger audience by using a recording of your event and sharing it on social channels as well as sending peer-to-peer text messages sharing the event.
Politicians are always thinking about their next re-election. Hearing from one constituent after another on a particular issue is a way you can capitalize on that fact. Elected officials are good people who want to do right by their constituents.
Give us a call today and let us start delivering your message.
These tools aren’t just for advocating to legislators.
If you are a legislator, you should be utilizing these strategies to reach out and have real conversations with your constituents.
Now is the time to allow constituents to engage with you by asking their questions, meeting them right where they are, and building your lists for the next cycle.
Let us help you get started. 1-888-722-4704
