The Campaign Workshop Blog

Measure Your Impact with Direct Mail Testing

Direct mail testing can strengthen your voter contact efforts in the long run by revealing what works and what doesn’t through concrete data. If you want to glean insights from your program, setting up an experiment is worth the time and resources, no matter the size or scope of your campaign. The worst-case scenario from testing is that your results are inconclusive—that’s a pretty great outcome when the alternative to testing is learning nothing at all. So, let’s talk about why you should test,…

Pollster Ruth Bernstein Talks About Getting Real-Time Feedback Through Membership Surveys  

Ruth Bernstein is president and CEO at EMC Research, a national polling and opinion research firm. Ruth leads polling on a wide variety of political, policy, and marketing projects. She is especially proud of her work helping to elect women and people of color to office and securing voter approval for education, transportation, minimum wage increases, and environmental protection. We asked Ruth 7 questions on membership surveys and how they can benefit…

How to Find and Hire the Right Campaign Manager for Your Campaign

Hiring the right campaign manager may be the most important choice you make as a candidate. Your campaign manager is the lifeblood of your campaign. He or she doesn’t need to always be out front or be the face of your political campaign, but he or she does need to be prepared to do anything for you to advance your run for office. The first thing to look for when hiring a campaign manager is competence and the second is a personal connection. You really need to ask two questions…

Becoming a Political Candidate Is No Small Undertaking

Before any runner steps up to the starting blocks, there are months and months of preparation done to ensure they are ready. The same goes for a political candidate deciding to run for office. Here’s a self-assessment guide that’s a follow up to our e-book Are You Ready to Run for Office? and can help potential first-time candidates make a thoughtful decision. We admire anyone who is willing to…

Six Tips for Winning Political Campaign Photography

Political campaign photography is a critical element for getting any candidate elected to office. A picture is worth a thousand words, especially in the world of political communications, where space is limited, and readers’ attention spans are minimal. This means that the images you choose for your campaign are critical and will likely require some level of…

Why do you want to run for office? Do you have a good answer?

Once you’ve decided to run for office you will need to answer the question “why are you running?” For some it is an easy question to answer because you’re running to solve a particular problem and have a passion for the work that needs to be done in a particular office. For others, the answer may be murkier. Knowing the reason(s) behind your run for office and what your goals is once you’re elected is critical to being a successful candidate. Having a generic, canned answer to the…

Your Political Direct Mail Can Be Eco-Friendly 

Political direct mail is one of the most effective ways to reach voters, but I’ll be the first to admit: all that paper takes a toll on our environment. At The Campaign Workshop, we’re passionate about protecting our natural world—luckily for us, so are a lot of the printers we work with. I won’t get lost in the weeds here on the eco-friendly certifications print shops are pursuing, but I’ll give you a quick low-down to put your mind at ease. TL;DR: You can run a direct mail program for your…

 * © Photo by Stacy Beck

What Resources and Direct Actions Can You Take for Racial Justice?

This past week we've seen folks across the country come together, demanding criminal justice and police reform. Here at The Campaign Workshop, we stand with those fighting systemic and institutionalized racism in our country. We are taking a critical look at ourselves to change and grow into better advocates for Black lives. There is a lot of work to be done, but police violence against Black communities must end.  We need to elect government officials…

What Metrics Should I Care About for My Digital Advocacy Campaign? 

Every digital advocacy campaign is different and has unique goals. Therefore, there are a variety of metrics that you should focus on depending on your goals. There is not a one-size-fits-all benchmark or metric to track the success of every digital advocacy campaign. For example, if you are running a donations campaign to raise money for your cause, the metrics you track will be very different from the metrics you would track if you were running an accountability campaign. It’…

How Political and Social Movements in 1978 Transformed San Francisco

Lincoln Mitchell is a political analyst and writer based in New York and San Francisco. In his book, San Francisco Year Zero: Political Upheaval, Punk Rock and a Third Place Baseball Team, Mitchell explores how San Francisco became a city of contradictions as one of the most socially liberal cities with some of the worst income inequality in the United States. As a native of San Francisco, he explores 3 key events from 1978 from a personal and political lens to explain how…

Online Petitions Can Build Your Email List 

You don’t need a clipboard for online petitions, but you do need a strategy. Online petitions are a great way to bolster your supporter base around an issue. You can use a digital action as a hook to get folks involved with your campaign or cause in the long run. List building isn’t always easy, quick, or cheap—make sure you plan ahead so you can do it right and make the most out of your new supporters. How do online petitions work? There are a couple different reliable, cost-efficient ways to go…

Five Tips to Win Your Down-Ballot Race

Down-ballot races are great for first-time candidates or folks who want to start working on campaigns. Getting involved in your local or state government is an important and noble task. State and local governments combined spend more than the federal government and some county governments are bigger than state governments.  There is a lot of opportunity for public service in down ballot offices.  Although there can be many to choose from and it’s a great opportunity to get involved, you’ll want to keep…

Political Printing: 8 Tips for Checking a Printer Proof

So you send your final political direct mail file off to the printer and breathe a sigh of relief—until you get your printer proof. Now what? The political printing process continues long after you finalize designing and proofing your direct mail file in-house. After you send off your final political direct mail file, the printer will send you back something called a print proof that you need to approve. A print proof is an exact mockup of what your piece will look like when it prints so…

What Is a Vote Goal? What is a Vote Deficit? Why Do I Need Them?

When you’re thinking of running for office, one of the very first things you should do is bust out your trusty calculator and calculate your campaign’s vote goal. Simply put, your vote goal is the number of votes needed to win your election. Your campaign has one goal: to convince enough voters to show up to the polls on Election Day (or to vote early) and vote for you. To achieve that goal, you’ll want to know how many of those voters you need to actually be successful. Knowing…

Storytelling Tips to Strengthen Your Campaign Communications

Storytelling in campaign communications can have a powerful impact on your advocacy campaign, member outreach or political communications. There are many ways to bolster your message, from numbers and statistics to expert testimony to eye-catching visuals, but one tactic that sometimes gets overlooked is storytelling.  An effective advocacy campaign communications program will work to foster its supporters who have personal connections to issues and organizations into storytellers.…