Did you know 95% of political text messages are read in the first five minutes of being sent? Personally, I read mine within the first 30 seconds. In addition, text messages have an average open rate of 98%.
As such, political texting presents a great opportunity to reach your target audience before your competitors who are using other forms of political advertising. This is especially important when time-sensitive information needs to be disseminated.
SMS (Short Message Service) & MMS (Multimedia Message Service) can be an extremely effective instrument for get-out-the-vote messages, rapid response, fundraising, or quick promotion of campaign materials.
Much like political email, political text messaging is a great way to stand out among the noise, but political texting has to be done the right way to be successful.
Political texting best practices
The spammy texting culture we live in is turning off donors, voters, and activists because it’s super intrusive. I’ve unsubscribed from many political text messages because I’ve received two, three, four and even five texts in one day!
Arena stands above the rest because of the transparent texting and opting practices we employ, which forgo the dishonest tactics we see too often. We do this by following these best practices:
- Apply proper 10DLC (10-digit long code) or short code verification
- Include direct calls to action
- Always announce who is sending the text
- Use proper/non-scammy language to avoid spam, blocking, or subscriber opt-outs
- When a user opts-out, we make sure they stay opted-out
Components of a great text message
You have about five seconds to keep a subscriber engaged. A great text message has a salutation, a short reason for texting, and a direct call to action to vote, donate or learn more. Anything more than that belongs in an email or on a linked landing page.
Here are some great examples of well-composed political texts:
We’ve launched hundreds of political texting campaigns that have helped our clients find success.
Case in point: Our team sent out over one million texts for Governor Dunleavy’s re-election campaign in Alaska that helped lead him to victory in a close contest.
Contact us and we’ll be happy to demonstrate how we can help you do political texting that works!
