Mobile Commons is an online platform for organizations to manage SMS (text message) based communications. Their web application helps non-profits, advocacy and political groups create, manage and report on SMS communication campaigns. The purpose of SMS campaigns is to quickly reach and elicit a response from a core group of supporters.
Organizations use SMS messaging to engage their audience quickly with relevant and important news or events. Compared to email, text messages usually take priority and are opened very quickly. A response rate over 70% from people receiving a broadcast is not unusual.
Candidates are using Mobile Commons to build creative and engaging campaigns that communicate their values to voters. For instance, Tom Udall, candidate for Senator from New Mexico, has used MC to build the Gas Price Texting System. GOTV with text messaging provides a significant increase in voter turnout with an amazing price per additional vote. The Student PIRGs’ New Voters Project and Working Assets, in cooperation with researchers from the University of Michigan and Princeton University, released a study in 2007 demonstrating the effectiveness of using text / SMS messages to mobile phones to mobilize young voters in the November 2006 elections. The study found that text message reminders to new voters increased an individual’s likelihood of voting by 4.2 percentage points. SMS increased turnout measurably at a cost much lower than other traditional methods of outreach.
Using Mobile Commons, candidates can segment their supporters based on area code, zip code, responsiveness or a number of different variables. SMS is built in relation to other media outreach and can be tracked. For example, candidates can opt in to an SMS list by texting in a certain keyword. With Mobile Commons, the organizations can set multiple keywords inside a campaign and then advertise each keyword in demographic specific channels. Candidates can also promote a certain keyword on the Youtube channel for women and then compare sign-ups with that keyword to other opt in paths. This allows the organization to track responsiveness of their media.
Soon, anyone will be able to text in a word and automatically have a donation paid through their phone bill. Moreover, response rates are easy to track with the software. With the extremely low cost of sending an SMS broadcast and the outstanding response and conversion rates, the ROI promises to be very high.
Fundraise from Women with Mobile Commons
Campaigns are already learning how to engage women through mobile technology. At the Democratic convention in Denver in August, using Mobile Commons technology, the Women’s Campaign Forum successfully obtained 150 nominations of pro-choice women who should run for elected office via text message for its She Should Run program in about five minutes. The Obama campaign has been successfully fundraising in small dollar increments through mobile technology, often rallying supporters to text in a donation at campaign events. Fifteen percent of online women donors currently subscribe to text messaging services and of the nearly 90% of online women donors who have asked other to engage in a campaign, 9% did so because they received a text message from a campaign asking them to take action. The potential for engaging women and their networks through text messages is enormous.
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