Here we are: the last few days and weeks before the election, and every second counts. All of the calls you’ve made, doors you’ve knocked, miles you’ve driven, and the thousands of difficult decisions you’ve made all come down to this.

So we’ll keep it brief: here are three ways you can maximize your time, boost turnout, and finish strong using your campaign CRM and the contact data you’ve collected.

1. Fundraise

You probably already know this but it bears repeating: most campaigns raise as much as 60-70% of their total contributions during the last two months of the election. All that call time before Labor Day was just preseason. Buckle your chinstrap — this is game day, and it’s time to capitalize on all of your hard work.

A good CRM can do two things for you in this crucial moment for campaign fundraising success.

First, your political CRM helps you organize all of your contacts, including donors and prospective donors, in one place. All of your campaign’s contact data should be organized in one place so you can quickly sort, filter, and view the most important people.

Second, once you have a single source of truth for all of your campaign’s important stakeholders, your campaign CRM should make it easy to segment that data so you are contacting each person with an ask optimized to their ability to give. Here are a few lists you should communicate with for a specific ask:

• Max-out donors: While you can’t ask max out donors for another check, you can ask them to lead and recruit other donors. They are already all-in on your campaign, and you should ask them to organize events, call other potential donors, and more.In ContactDrive you can even create call lists for major supporters where they can login and quickly call a list of potential donors. Nothing more powerful than getting a call from someone who has already done what they’re asking the prospective donor to do.

• Prospective donors: You already have the list of people you want to give, but who haven’t taken action yet. Now is the time to encourage them to step up (and based on data, now is the time you are most likely to have success).In ContactDrive, you can use filters to create a list that auto-updates to remove contacts once they donate, so your prospecting list is always fresh and clean.

• Event hosts: What are you doing for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Coffee? If the answer is anything other than “meeting with donors and voters” then you’re doing it wrong. Especially if you are in a high profile race, you’ll have a lot of surrogates coming in to stump for you over the last few weeks of a campaign. Maximize every chance to get a group of supporters together, especially with a surrogate in town.In ContactDrive, you can geotarget CRM contacts to quickly find contacts in a specific area so that you can invite them to events — and don’t forget to encourage them to bring everyone they know.

2. Recruit volunteers

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Another certainty is that canvassing and phone banking are a lot more fun when you have a team. Not only do you knock out more doors with more volunteers, but also you have a lot more fun doing it, especially as colder weather starts to set in towards election day.

Use your campaign CRM to recruit, schedule, and re-engage volunteers. In ContactDrive, you can connect your website’s volunteer form so that you can immediately find your volunteer contacts and which activities they are most interested in doing.

Down the stretch, volunteers start to show up just as frequently as new donors. They are just as valuable. Campaigns are won based on message, money, and manpower. Don’t neglect the manpower you need to successfully campaign up until Election Day, and then celebrate with on Election Night.

3. Prepare to serve

Don’t take this as an excuse to take your eye off the ball. 50% + 1 is all that matters right now. However, with a win under your belt, the right CRM will serve you well in the months ahead as you serve your constituents.

Use your CRM to keep track of everyone you meet with, and the issues important to them. Take note of the conversations at the grocery store (“I’m sorry, we don’t deal with potholes in the legislature, but thank you for letting me know about that spot on Highway 52…”).

Here’s the great part: as you and your aides take note of these conversations in your CRM, you build a repository of contact details, including the issues most important to them. There are vast ways to creatively use this data, including:

• Build a coalition of support for key legislation
• Organize listening tours in your district
• Promoting your accomplishments — personalized to the issues important to each contact

Some legislators use ContactDrive to keep personal notes on key stakeholders over time, so when they meet with someone again they have some notes handy to build a better relationship (“Last time we met your grandson was starting little league. How did his season turn out?”). These are powerful tools to help you build stronger relationships.

In ContactDrive there are lots of ways to track issues and interactions, including activity, tags, and custom fields.

Wrapping Up

What’s the point of all of this? If you are going to win, you have to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. The purpose of any political database should be to help you build a list of contacts, and then add context to those people in your list. With that information, you can determine who the right people are — whether they are voters, donors, volunteers, media, coalition leaders, or constituents — and deliver the right message using the right channel.

When you do that, you build relationships.

Better relationships builds loyalty.

Loyalty builds action.

Action builds momentum.

Momentum leads to winning.

Therefore, winning starts with good data.

And it’s not too late to start.

—
ContactDrive is a CRM built for the unique needs of conservative campaigns and advocacy organizations. With a number of political integrations — including WinRed, i360, Anedot, and more — it’s never been easier to connect your data to get rid of spreadsheets and have a single source of truth for your contacts. Start your free 14-day trial at https://www.contactdrive.io/signup.