Imagine an all too familiar and unacceptable scenario – certain state politicians are trying to limit the civil rights of particular minority groups, pushing for more restrictions, new laws, and abandoning protections for some of their most vulnerable residents. These states are making headway and spreading the message to their fellow like-minded politicians to gain traction around the country.

You need your supporters to act now and build power to stop these dangerous policies. To maximize impact, you need to tailor the tone of your message based on how different supporters are directly or indirectly affected so you can deliver the most motivating message and call to action.

Your first step would be to gather your lists so you know who you can reach and how to craft the most impactful message to bring about urgent change. Time is of the essence, so we know it can be tempting to blast the same message out to all your supporters, but we really don’t recommend that approach.

Different messages will motivate your audiences more effectively, so knowing how to best pinpoint your supporters with the most relevant call to action is half the battle. That means step one is creating targeted lists so you know just where to apply your messaging geniuses to spur action. These lists might look something like this:

1. Supporters living in states or districts directly impacted by active or impending discriminatory policies
2. Supporters living in conservative-lead states that are at risk of having similar policies discussed and enacted soon
3. Supporters that live in progressive states that want to protect others being impacted

Typically, isolating these 3 separate lists will take time since you’d need to go state by state, district by district, or even more time consuming, by zip code. Hence why it’s tempting to blast out one big, generic message to everyone.

Now, what if your mobile messaging platform could make the list generation step take a matter of minutes? Enter the new political filter categories within Mobile Commons.

No need to do the individual state, district, or politician research, and then create lists with multiple different filters, hundreds of zip codes, or big groupings of counties. Instead, you can apply simple filters based on political party or elected official that do all that behind the scenes work for you.

How to Use these Political Filters

Back to the three lists we mentioned above, with the new political filters you can streamline your list building down to a few simple selections that will drastically reduce your campaign building time:

1. For supporters living directly under politicians making these harmful policies, use the “state representative” or “U.S. congressperson” to pinpoint your message to the subscribers with the highest level or urgency.
2. For the list of supporters in conservative-lead states, use the filter for “political party” and select “republican”, and your entire list is done.
3. And for the list of supporters in progressive states, simply select the filter for “political party” and select “democrat”, and again, your list is done in seconds.

Concerned about double-messaging your supporters? Easily apply an exclusion filter to either exclude existing lists or specific filter conditions.

Now that you’ve shaved a ton of time off your list building step, it’s time to craft your messages. You need to exude urgency, build momentum, and drive supporters to act. Here are a few ideas, again, based on the three lists we’ve created:

1. For supporters directly impacted by new policies: get them to the nearest protest or volunteer event where they can make an impact in-person, or kick off a fundraising ask to help your organization combat the harmful effects of these new policies.
2. For supporters in neighboring states, spread the urgency to prevent the same policies from gaining traction. Flood the phone lines of their state rep, congressperson, or senator using mConnect to automatically route calls to the official’s offices. Better yet, throttle your messages so the calls come in all day long, rather than in a shorter spurt.
3. And for those in progressive states, share a message of solidarity and the immense need to raise donations to help those directly impacted and to stop the spread of discriminatory policies.

More Audience Targeting Tips

This is just one scenario where the new political audience filters can be put to work and why segmenting your lists is crucial. Here are a few more tips to get your creative juices flowing when it comes to targeting lists for your next mobile messaging campaign:

• Since change increasingly happens at the local and state level, use political filters to target supporters based on their individual politicians without having to segment lists based on zip codes, districts, or uploading static lists from other sources.
• Urgent and rapidly evolving situations are par for the course, but generic messages sent to your whole audience aren’t the most effective strategy. Think about what motivates different groups of supporters, find the filters that will isolate them, and then work your messaging magic to hit the right tone.
• Donation asks are most successful when they target what supporters care about most, rather than a blanket-statement about your cause. Make your asks relevant to the supporter’s location, current events impacting them directly, or causes they have expressed great interest in.
• Tailoring messaging and tone to your supporters shows that your organization knows them and is truly invested in the same things they are. If you want to retain your mobile supporters and keep them engaged, make sure you’re addressing them with motivating messages that matter to them personally.

Ready to put these powerful political filters, as well as other audience filters, to work? If you’re a current Mobile Commons customer, work with your dedicated mobile strategist to help generate ideas specific to your cause and organization. If you’re not yet a customer, speak with one of our mobile experts to see how you can kick your mobile outreach campaigns into high gear.