Webinar Wrap-Up: Quit Wasting Money on Your Election

Elections can be very expensive, especially when only a small percentage of the members in your organization vote. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

During a recent webinar hosted by Peter Westerhaus, SBS Vice President, and Tim Madsen, Senior Marketing Manager, we shared some tips to help you ensure your organization stops wasting time and money and maximizes your election efforts.

Response rates
Raising your election response rates is important because voting is a measure of how connected your members are to your organization. That said, response rate is just a surface measure. You’ll need to go deeper to get a return on your investment in elections. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

Voter database as census
Member data is a unique asset of your organization – that database is at the core of what you do. You can use the database to track year-over-year changes to measure member counts, new or lost members, members who have moved, etc. See how your member base changes over a period of time and see how your organization has evolved. You can then use this data for strategic planning and leverage it to strengthen the entire organization.

Study voting behaviors
Each election often comes with a new strategy – reaching out to a certain demographic, for instance. When you ask the proper questions and study voting behaviors, it can lead to vast improvements in election strategies for future years. How did voters login? How do they receive reminders? Do they use mobile technology? How many people unsubscribe from reminder emails, etc. When you’ve got the data, you can compare it to the industry average as well as how your organization performs year over year.

Geo-spatial mapping of trends
Instead of staring at long lists and spreadsheets filled with election data, geospatial mapping allows users to easily visualize election and member trends. A geographic representation of activity allows organizations and leaders to quickly recognize strengths and opportunities.

Eliminate waste
At each point of member disconnection, your organization is wasting budget and staff time.

Members who are “de-wired” from your efforts are not getting the message about your organization’s election. It’s a good investment to figure out why. No email address? Did the email bounce? Returned mail? It’s time to reexamine your database for a more complete picture.

“Softwired” members are getting your organization’s communications, but don’t have the right message, incentive or reason to get them voting. If the election is uninteresting, unpromoted or irrelevant members aren’t going to want to participate. Experiment with email subject lines and frequency of messages. Adjust the body copy of messages, make sure you have a compelling call to action and create urgency. These members are your biggest opportunity.

“Hardwired” members have submitted their vote or survey. All your hard work has paid off and now you can learn what’s working. Analyze what types of members are voting, what methods are most effective, where they’re located and more. Understanding this information can help you improve future elections.

By understanding what’s happening in your de-wired, softwired and hardwired groups you can get a better handle of what’s going on at each point of your election, improve your election process and limit wasted efforts.

At SBS, our mission is to improve elections. For a copy of this webinar playback, contact us and reference “Quit Wasting Presentation” to receive your link to the presentation. As always, let us know how we might be able to serve your organization with election services.