Got Money? Got Volunteers? Got Votes? You Will

Here are two things you must do NOW to be well positioned for the final campaign push:

1) Make your website work for you.

Take a critical look. Does it meet these standards? Is it graphically attractive and well designed? Take a look at the website of your opponent and others running for similar office. How does yours stack up? This is frequently the first impression voters will have of you. Make sure that the appearance of your website presents you well and inspires confidence in your candidacy. If your website needs some design help, now is the time to make those improvements.

Here's the rule for website text: Less is More. Get to the point quickly. Use bullet points and subheads to make it easy for people to comprehend your message. Don't make them wade through long paragraphs to understand what you stand for and why they should care - because they won't. How much time do you expect voters to devote to learning about you? Consider this: in California, a typical ballot will have 20+ elected offices (federal, state and local), 9 statewide ballot measures, plus at least a couple of local ballot measures. Is your state much different? So, how much time will a voter devote to any one candidate? Not much. Make it easy and quick for them to learn what they need to know about you. Go through your website content now and edit it to be most impactful.

2) Build your email list and plan to use it.

Need to reach more voters? Get the list of registered voters from your Registrar and put the list through email append. This is the quickest way to build a list. We can match email addresses to your postal address list and usually produce and email address for 15-20% of the names. For example, if you have a list of 50,000 voters, you will likely end up with 7,500-10,000 email addresses. How much money could you raise with greatly expanded outreach?

People need to see the same message multiple times for it to resonate. Plan now for the messages you will send over the next several weeks. Use the same rule as for website text: less is more. Get to the point and drive people to your website to donate and volunteer.