by Dinesh Ravishanker, CEO

From the video:  “CallFire is in the virtual call center business. This puts our software at the forefront conversation for Political Phone Banks in the United States.  During each election season we experience double, sometimes triple the virtual call center usage we see at any other point in the year.  Moreover, our solutions team consults with political marketers to design powerful telephone surveys and notification campaigns critical to campaign managers interested in voter preference and geography relevant analytics.  These campaigns also provide less educated voters with digestible information required to make a next-day voting decision.

Over the course of 6 years in cloud telephony consulting, my team and I have participated in countless confidential conversations with technologists and campaign managers.  Often we discuss the marketing and advertising strategy used to garner support for their candidates.   Time and time again, we find political advertising strategies are not terribly different from a good brand advertising strategy.  Here are a few political advertising strategies that I have seen used over the last few years.”

Political advertising strategies

• Creativity – differentiate your candidate by developing a persona
• Use fresh voter registration data lists and don’t annoy voters
• Market your candidate in search results on Google and Bing
• Place site-targeted ads for your candidate on Political Websites
• Use Voice Broadcast target geographies with tailored messages
• Accept campaign contributions online, via phone & snail mail
• Enable volunteers to make voter-outreach calls from home
• Use data from phone or social media surveys for targeting
• Tailor communication by age, location & political affiliation
• Use a “Google surge” or “Network blast” in the days before an election
  
• Partner with an experienced Political Technology company (references below)
  
• Read our entire blog post on Political Marketing Tips in the Cloud

Keep It Simple Stupid

CTA (or Call-To-Action) & KISS (or Keep-It-Simple-Stupid) are probably the most overused acronyms board rooms and marketing meetings around the world.  But lets face it – most politicians have a lot to say, so it is extremely important to distill your candidate’s values in a clear and concise manner.  In the case of telephone marketing, a 30-40 seconds message works best, with the option to learn more if the listener desires.  In the case of social media advertising, some Twitter studies indicate that clickthrough rates are largely affected by CTA.  Advertisers who push products or services often use CTAs like  “click here for a Free Trial”, or “Learn more.”  In the dozens of political sound files I have personally listened to, almost all of them had a similar CTA.  Namely, “Vote for me, [candidate name] on election day” or “Press-1 to Donate Now”.   If you’re interested in optimizing a voice campaign, read the top 5 methods to making a successful Political Voice Blast.

Study historical data

There exists a plethora of political data on the web in the form of case studies, blogs and raw data.  So, why make the Political Advertising mistakes someone has already made for you?   Although this advice seems elementary, remember to DO YOUR RESEARCH.  We assume that’s why you’re reading this blog now.  Here are a few links to get you started:

Case studies
MoveOn.org uses Cloud IVR to collect voter data (LINK)
Equality California uses Cloud Call Center to harness the power of volunteers at home (LINK)
Thomas Kennedy wins Citrus County using Voice Broadcast (LINK)

Professional references
Patrick Michael Kane – Technology driven political advocacy expert, CTO & founder.  Former lead technology consultant for MoveOn.org, One.org, OFA and ActionKit.com clients.  Website: http://www.actionkit.com
Brian Donahue – Political Consultant & Founder of Craftdc.com Mr. Donahue has managed 4 Federal election campaigns and served on 2 presidential campaign staffs and Headed national 72-hour Task Force for RNC. Mr. Donahue also served as the Executive Director for Bush-Cheney ‘04. Website: http://www.CraftDC.com

Media
Dan Siroker Video – “How We Used Data to Win the Presidential Election” Stanford University & Dan Siroker – the former Data Analytics Manager for the Obama campaign.

Video: Brian Donahue – Political Strategist: http://www.gspm.org/brian-donahue-video -
Election Assistance Commission – Data from the 2008 election. Download the full report as zip.

A few days ago, we got an interesting email from Thomas Kennedy, the newly elected Citrus County (FL) School Board  Member for District 1.  It read “CallFire got me elected!” It turns out that Kennedy’s use of voice broadcasts helped his campaign  win by a landslide, in 60 out of 61 precincts in his county.

Why Voice Broadcast?

Kennedy, who had never before run for elected office in Florida, was faced with the challenge of reaching out to voters in the most financially prudent way.  His political opponent, armed with a bigger budget, was outspending him four to one. What’s more, his opponent focused on direct mail marketing, which typically costs $0.85 per piece of mail, versus $0.035 per call on a voice broadcast. Additionally, his opponent was also of the opinion that volunteer phone outreach was not going to have the consistency in the message he wanted to relay.

After considering costs and available features for a range of options, Kennedy chose to use the CallFire Voice Broadcast. product to contact his local registered voters list. With no prior experience using voice broadcast products, he uploaded the list he received from his local elections office, scrubbed it carefully, recorded his own one-minute message, and sent a test call to his phone. “We were a grassroots operation. CallFire was scalable and we couldn’t get over the speed that our calls were processed,” recalls Kennedy.

Advice for future political campaigns

Kennedy has several tips for other campaigns. He recommends, first and foremost, to put the “call-to-action” in the first 20 seconds of the message. Second, he recommends utilizing the option to leave messages for  tailored for live answers and answering machines, respectively. He also stresses a diverse outreach strategy –don’t just rely on social media or print marketing. According to Kennedy, ”It was the phone calls that stuck in voters’ minds.”

In the spirit of election season, we’re releasing 8 tips for developing an online Political marketing strategy or GOTV campaign in the Cloud. We’re not experts in Political Marketing but we manage our share of virtual phone banks and polling around this time of the year. These tips are based on research and conversations we have with our valuable political clientele. This is not an attempt at defining an all-encompassing online political marketing campaign – instead we hope you find a strategy or two for your political campaign that you haven’t yet executed. We left out the more obvious suggestions like, “make decisions using data and analytics,” “design a great website” and “respond to email.” Instead we attempt to highlight trends in online political warfare specifically in the 2010 election cycle. We’d love to hear your feedback!

#1 Market your candidate in search results on Google and Bing

Around election time people will be searching these and other search engines by candidate name. (ex: “Barbara Boxer”, “barbara boxer ca”, “barbara boxer vs”, “barbara vote california”). Your search result should appear for similar queries and any relevant permutations. If your budget permits, consider showing your candidates ad whenever someone searches for the names of political opponents. This isn’t considered poor form – we see it as a public service to voters. Consider using multi-variate testing to determine Ads that drive the highest clickthrough from the cloud. http://adwords.google.com

• Pros: National reach, highly targeted
• Cons: Expensive, $1-5/click

#2 Place site-targeted ads for your candidate on Political websites

Content match advertising allows you to place video or text ads for your candidate across various websites and mobile devices. Consider targeting geographically relevant local news websites and the political news sections of nationally read publications like HuffingtonPost.com, Politico.com, NYTimes.com and WSJ.com.

• Pros: Less expensive than search advertising, target the long tail.
• Cons: Untargeted.

#3 Accept campaign contributions online, via telephone and snail mail

Make it blatantly obvious how supporters can donate to your campaign. Services like Google Checkout, CampaignPay.com and PayPal.com allow you to build web-forms to accept online donations. Use variant testing to measure the efficacy of different email designs, landing pages and call-to-actions for each donation push. Just a few days of A/B testing can reveal small percentage differences in donation levels and clickthrough rates. Seemingly simple variances in ad-copy and your call-to-action text can result in considerable (in some cases double-digit) percentage changes in your collections efforts. (Fast forward to minute 18:00 to watch Dan Siroker discuss how small changes in user interface design can change donation outcomes. )

• Pros: Inexpensive to set up, collect more donations than ever.
• Cons: More money, more problems. Just kidding, none that we can think of!

#4 Enable volunteers to make voter-outreach calls from home

Lets face it, some volunteers (like some employees) prefer to work from home. In 2008 and 2010 we saw an increase in on-demand Virtual Call Centers usage by political folk. Solutions like CallFire’s own Cloud Call Center and Five9′s Virtual Call Center software allow groups to enable the long-tail of their volunteer base who may live in geographically distributed areas of the United States. Cloud power dialing solutions like these allow volunteers to work from home, the beach or phone banking location with just a cell phone and laptop – and allow real-time telephone targeting in the areas your campaign needs it most. Because it’s web-based, you can change the script for your volunteers and collect statistical data in real time that can change the outcome of an election.

• Pros: Low cost because volunteers use a cell phone & their own laptop (no hardware or software), harness more volunteer hours, allow volunteers to work from home.
• Cons: Volunteer training is required.

#5 Survey your population via telephone and social media

Make calculated efforts to collect data on your voting population with online & telephone surveys. For example Facebook and Twitter support applications like RealPolls which provide easy tool to survey Facebook users. Short, fun surveys provide an interactive way for voters to find friends with a similar political lens while providing your campaign team invaluable data on voter preferences. Toll Free feedback hotlines can easily be set up using a Cloud ivr system like CallFire or Angel. Advertising an anonymous feedback hotline allows voters to freely voice their opinions, giving them the opportunity to be heard.

• Pros: Analytics galore, survey dozens or millions instantly, low cost, send automated outbound surveys or inbound toll free hotlines.
• Cons: Tough egg to crack, multiple survey types and iterations may be required.

#6 Tailor communication by age, location & political affiliation

If you’re mobilizing volunteers for phone banking, ensure voter-lists are paired with volunteers of similar backgrounds. Similar backgrounds creates an ethos of trust with the recipient and increases the chances they will discuss issues of mutual importance. For email campaigns, be sure to address issues important to that specific voter. We’re not suggesting you create 100 different variations of your email blasts – but splitting them up by major 2-3 age groups and 3-5 political affiliations may allow your team to leverage key issues that are more important to one demographic than another. For example, you might want to target a 25 year old male voter with an email describing your candidate’s Gov2.0 transparency initiative – but on that same day a 70 year old female voter might receive an email regarding women’s rights issues. Electronic communication affords you relevance and micro-targeting like never before – take advantage of it!

• Pros: Connect with voters on a personal level, make outreach relevant.
• Cons: Time consuming and resource intensive.

#7 Try the “Google Surge” (no, it’s not a dance move)

• Pros: Network surges are highly effective at getting last-minute eyeballs on your candidate.
• Cons: Extremely expensive

#8 Partner with an experienced Political Technology company

Experience trumps all, so if you’re late to the game and don’t want to architect your Cloud campaigning solutions in-house, we suggest you find a great technology partner. We recommend a company like ActionKit.com or an experienced creative political consultancy like CraftDC.com. If you can’t afford one – a good start to your cloud campaigning efforts should include the implementation of a hosted CRM platform to manage your outreach efforts. Consider Salesforce.com or Leadmaster.com. For those of you with in-house techies – consider an open source option like SugarCRM, VTiger.com and OpenCRX. Remember, to accurately measure your outreach efficacy you must first define quantifiable success metrics!

The modern political campaign seeks not only brand awareness, but also requires interaction and voter education for a big win. Always question your assumptions, rely on real-time data feeds and create innovative ways to connect with potential voters.

Good luck from the CallFire team! 877.897.FIRE

For your reference

Patrick Michael Kane – Technology driven political advocacy expert, CTO & founder. Former lead technology consultant for MoveOn.org, One.org, OFA and ActionKit.com clients.
Website: http://www.actionkit.com

Brian Donahue – Political Consultant & Founder of Craftdc.com Mr. Donahue has managed 4 Federal election campaigns and served on 2 presidential campaign staffs and Headed national 72-hour Task Force for RNC. Mr. Donahue also served as the Executive Director for Bush-Cheney ’04.
Video: http://www.gspm.org/brian-donahue-video
Website: http://www.CraftDC.com

Dan Siroker Video: “How We Used Data to Win the Presidential Election” Stanford University & Dan Siroker – the former Data Analytics Manager for the Obama campaign.
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71bH8z6iqSc

Election Assistance Commission – Data from 2008 http://www.eac.gov/News/press/eac-releases-data-from-2008-presidential-election Download the full report as zip.

What is Voice Broadcast?

Voice Broadcast messages serve an important purpose in the field of notifications. Voice Broadcasts, otherwise known as robo-calls, often have a negative connotation associated with them. They were widely used in marketing campaigns, sending pre-recorded messages to potential consumers/  However, this type of Voice Broadcast dialing has been illegal since September 1 2009. For more information on these laws, see our previous blog on the subject.

While this portion of Voice Broadcast is largely dead, there are many other applications of Voice Broadcast that may not be apparent. Emergency notification, Get-out-the-vote reminders, communication between local organizations, and more!

For customized appointment reminders or notifications, an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) can be used using text to speech.

CallFire is pleased to announce the launch of its International Voice Broadcast service.  CallFire listened to client requests and developed arguably  the largest new feature since its founding.  Previously, CallFire campaigns only supported valid US and Canadian phone numbers.  Now, CallFire supports nearly anywhere in the world.

Here’s how to do it:

• Go to settings, then account settings and set the international  to “true” and submit
• All phone numbers in your spreadsheet must include country code (including the US and Canadian country code “1″) without any preceding zeros
• CallFire will dial the international Voice Broadcast campaign as if it were any normal campaign
• Check out the Voice Broadcast tutorial for details on setting up a Broadcast campaign from scratch.

Rates vary based on the destination of the calls, and begin at 3.5 cents per minute.  To find out the rate of a given country, go to the rate lookup page and click on the country, search by the country name, or type in an actual phone number.  To learn more about International Voice Broadcast, watch m0re from the project’s lead developer, Pete Shah:

What is changing on September 1st, 2009?

See detailed information on FTC website

Beginning September 1st, 2009 FTC enforcement policy regarding pre-recorded voice calls utilizing autodialers will change.  The FTC will begin its ban on pre-recorded telephone calls for solicitation purposes unless the solicitor has received a prior, written and signed agreement from the call recipient.  Some exceptions for pure information (non-solicitation) calls are permitted.

What does this mean for CallFire ?

ALL CALLFIRE USERS MUST ENSURE THAT FOR ANY TELEMARKETING CALLS THAT SOLICIT BUSINESS OR SERVICES OR NEW DONORS, THAT THE USERS HAVE PRIOR, EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT TO RECEIVE PRE-RECORDED VOICE CALLS FROM THE PROPOSED RECIPIENT. Detailed information can be found on the FTC website.

a) No changes for Call Tracking (inbound) & Cloud Call Center (live voice) customers.

b) No change for Businesses who use CallFire to notify current, written opt-in for pre-recorded voice customers.

c) No change for Customers using Voice Broadcast for opt-in business notification (non-solicitation calls).

d) Customers using CallFire’s Voice Broadcast for solicitation/outbound lead gen MUST ENSURE data lists are Opt-In to receive pre-recorded voice from the particular company in the form of written consent, including the person’s phone number and signature. The written consent must be specific to agreeing to receive pre-recorded voice calls from the particular company. Written consent obtained in compliance with E–SIGN will satisfy the requirements of the law. For example, agreements obtained via an email or website form, telephone keypress, or voice recording. Any agreement obtained pursuant to E–SIGN must be sufficient to show that the consumer: (1) received clear and conspicuous disclosure of the consequences of providing the requested consent — i.e., that the consumer will receive future calls that deliver prerecorded messages—and (2) having received this information, agrees unambiguously to receive such calls at a telephone number the consumer designates.

What can I use as an alternative?

The Cloud Call Center with Power Dialer is the perfect alternative to using Voice Broadcast for your lead generation. CallFire’s Power Dialer will connect your sales agents to live people, while sending pre-recorded messages only to answering machines that promptly disclose at the outset a toll-free number that a consumer can call to assert an opt-out request. This is consistent with the FTC’s stated policies.

Remember to use the CallFire Do-Not-Call list

Companies are also required to keep their own Company-Specific do-not-call list.  This allows consumers to opt out of future calls made by the organization. The CallFire system allows you to add numbers to the internal DNC list, and then scrub against them before running future campaigns.

Who is required to access the DNC Registry?

Any company engaged in telemarketing to the public is required to maintain its own SAN number to gain access to the DNC registry and to update the scrub list every thirty-one days. The few exceptions are non-profits, a pure market research survey company, political organizations, or companies with an existing business relationship or written agreement to call. Exempt Organizations that still wish to access may access it for free.

More Information

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ALL INCLUSIVE OR PROVIDE LEGAL ADVICE.  YOU SHOULD CHECK WITH YOUR OWN ATTORNEY PRIOR TO ENGAGING IN TELEMARKETING UTILIZING PRE-RECORDED VOICE OR ENGAGING IN ANY TELEMARKETING CAMPAIGN.

Please visit: https://telemarketing.donotcall.gov/

The CallFire team will be manning booth # 319 at IT Expo West next Tuesday Sept 1 – Thursday Sept 3 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Come by, talk to us, learn about our products, and get to know the team.  We will also have give-aways, so come by and see what we have!

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 6, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — 8×8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT), provider of Internet Protocol (IP) communications solutions for business and residential users, today announced it is providing voice trunking services to cloud telephony solution provider CallFire. CallFire began offering its hosted power-dialing services to small business, call center and enterprise customers over 8×8′s established VoIP network last week.

The agreement between the two companies links 8×8′s enterprise-class SIP trunking service together with CallFire’s cloud telephony platform, currently in use by over 14,000 businesses.

“CallFire and 8×8 are collaborating in order to stay at the forefront of innovation in cloud telephony services,” said CallFire CEO & Co-founder Dinesh Ravishanker. “8×8 has become a critical component of our relentless commitment to increasing voice quality for our customers. We are pleased to say that 8×8′s service quality has been exceptional. Our solutions are not only complementary, but together create a best-of-class service for SMBs and the enterprise.”

Initially a customer of CallFire, 8×8 noted that CallFire’s voice quality could benefit from 8×8′s superior VoIP network. By powering a substantial portion of CallFire’s underlying VoIP network, 8×8 was able to combine its enterprise quality VoIP with CallFire’s innovative Hosted Power Dialing platform, and now uses CallFire’s broadcast services exclusively in its call centers.

“We experienced the features and benefits of the CallFire solution firsthand in our own outbound call center and can attest to the simplicity, affordability and effectiveness of this valuable sales, marketing and customer service tool,” said 8×8 Chairman & CEO Bryan Martin. “8×8 is very pleased to bring a better business voice network to CallFire to provide reliable, high quality digital voice service for CallFire’s cloud telephony solutions. In addition to being a valuable partner, CallFire is also now a valuable customer.”

About 8×8, Inc.

8×8, Inc. (Nasdaq:EGHT) offers voice, video and mobile communications solutions for business and residential customers. These solutions leverage existing broadband Internet connections and cellular networks to deliver advanced features and digital quality phone service at a fraction of the cost of legacy, copper wire alternatives. Businesses of any size, configuration or geographic location can benefit from the cost, performance and operational advantages of VoIP technology. All 8×8 communications solutions carry little or no upfront investment, no maintenance or upgrade fees and no change in user behavior. For additional information, visit www.8×8.com.

About CallFire:

CallFire is an industry leader in cloud telephony services that makes using VoIP simple. CallFire specializes in providing high-availability systems, beautiful user interfaces, furious developer support, and unparalleled customer care. Our products include hosted power dialing for agents, voice broadcast, toll free numbers, call tracking analytics and voice APIs. Our tools help developers, carriers & publishers build useful telephony applications. CallFire is located in Downtown Los Angeles and is comprised of a friendly group of intellectuals with aspirations to revolutionize how companies do business.

CONTACT: 8x8, Inc.
         Joan Citelli
         (408) 687-4320
         jcitelli@8x8.com

         CallFire.com
         Rebecca Siegel
         (213) 221-2218
         becky@callfire.com

[originally published by globenewswire.com]

CallFire’s Answering Machine Detection technology (AMD) just got a little better! We worked with schools, emergency service companies, and even automobile dealerships to improve our detection algorithm.

When your campaigns use a sound file longer than 15 seconds, Callfire automatically switches to the newer engine. We hope you are able to experience the difference our beta customers have.

So, what changed?

Old AMD:

Callfire would listen to the customer as they picked up the phone. During the first few seconds, AMD decides whether it’s listening to an answering machine, voicemail box, or live person. In the case of an answering machine or a voicemail, CallFire AMD would wait until after the beep and leave your recorded message.

New AMD:

While playing your message, AMD listens for a voicemail or answering machine. Any such indication will interrupt the playback of the live answer message, and start the answering machine message after the beep. To ensure accuracy, CallFire’s AMD engine requires a 15 second message, or longer, to make it’s decision.

The result?

In some cases, the accuracy of Answering Machine detection jumped to 95%!   This is staggering compared to the 90% accuracy in prior revisions of CallFire’s AMD.  I hope the new engine increases your ROI as it has for our alpha clients already.

For you API developers there’s a way to switch your campaigns to the new answering machine detection as well! Take a look at the “useAnsweringMachineDetectionType2” function in the CampaignService API.