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CallFire Compiles GOTV Organization Guide for Political Campaigns Based on 2012 Election

By Colleen Lynch
TMCnet Contributor

Online voice broadcasting company CallFire has announced its new telecom best practice guidelines for political GOTV campaigns.

By combining its portfolio of political clients, CallFire has created a 2012 “Post Mortem Guide” for organizing campaigns for the GOTV circuit.

The guide concerns issue such as how to allocate resources in the late and crucial stages of campaigns. This is the time when certain choices can alter the entire outcome of a campaign, and can decide the difference between a win and a loss.

Marketing director for CallFire, Daniel Tawfik, said of the new offering, “We are extremely excited to release this best political organizing best practice guide.”

Tawfik added, “The 2012 campaign cycle taught us a lot on telecom best practices for the political space. It’s time campaigns start thinking about their telecom strategy, in addition to what they’re doing in the field and with direct mail.”

Campaigns are often not strategic enough when it comes to which specific audiences to target, and CallFire, among others, urges the importance of paying attention to this point.

Most often, a voter retains information about policies, plans and details about a candidate based on how many times they have seen an ad on television for that candidate, especially for what are termed “passive” voters. Not every voter is going to look up the differences between candidates online and vehemently follow each differing detail.

This is where GOTV mobilization is vital, and often becomes a deciding factor for some voters on the line and undecided, even at such a late point.

Be assured, says CallFire, that these voters do exist, and certain decisions can and will sway this demographic. These are the decisions the guide addresses directly.

One topic in the guide is how a campaign can leverage cookies from sites a voter frequents online, including search history data, in order to decide which ads to show to which users. An example of this would be a pet-lover who visits pet-related sites. A campaign can learn this information, and then later this user will see more ads like “Pet Lovers for Obama,” for instance.

In addition, the guide suggests campaigns use voterfile data to target their ads, not only to stray voters, but to voters in certain important demographics and areas.

CallFire compiled its list because the last election proved the growing power of online and technological resources when running a campaign, and the influence GOTV practices can hold.