There’s more to running a successful communications campaign than writing good copy. It’s just as important to choose the right channel, and target the right people at the right time! With this in mind, our team of developers designed Supporter Base with a powerful suite of communications tools, including 1:1 email and SMS, bulk email blasts, SMS blasts, targeting and scheduling tools.

Here are our top tips on how to make the most out of Supporter Base’s raft of communications tools:

1. Firstly, determine whether you should be sending an email or SMS. We’d recommend opting for emails when you need to share general updates with a lot of content, whereas SMS is best for short and quick reminders, or if you need to reach your supporters quickly e.g. to organise a snap protest.
2. Once you’ve drafted your copy, it’s time to choose your audience. If you’re sending an email blast or SMS blast via Supporter Base, you can choose to send it to all supporters in your group, or you could further target the blast to a specific cohort. This could be based on event RSVP or attendees, or you could set up an ‘Advanced filter’ to target blasts based on a particular set of matching criteria such as their names, postcodes or tags.
   
3. Once you’ve created and approved your blast, you’ll be given the option to send it immediately or schedule the blast at a later date. If you’ve used an ‘Advanced filter’, the system will actually capture all the people who match the filter at the time the blast is sent.
4. And finally, remember to monitor your inboxes! Building a strong rapport with your supporters is all about fostering genuine, two-way conversations. Let them feel heard and appreciated, and respond to them in a timely manner.

With Supporter Base, gone are the days of spamming your community with generic communications! By following our tips—choosing the appropriate channel, carefully selecting your audience, and scheduling your messages effectively—you can ensure your communications are both relevant and impactful, ultimately strengthening your connection with supporters and enhancing campaign outcomes.

We understand that when it comes to political and social campaigns, the privacy and security of supporter data is paramount. However, there can be challenges to ensuring data security when using multiple platforms across diverse data sources, along with the inevitable risks of human errors. This is why role-based data permissions are a fundamental feature in our community organising platform, Supporter Base.

There are three separate permission levels in Supporter Base - Admin, Captain, and Vice Captain (you can find a full breakdown of each role’s access levels here). Essentially, Admins have full oversight of all community engagement activity across your network and can carry out all activities. Captains can carry out all activities including sending bulk communications and publishing events without needing approval. While Vice-Captains can send 1:1 communications without approval, their draft SMS blasts, email blasts and events are always sent to the relevant Captains or Admins via the interface for approval before being published.

Having these role-based permission sets, as well as two-factor authentication, and a raft of other configurable settings can help to mitigate risk, safeguard your organisation’s reputation and importantly, meet the necessary GDPR compliance requirements.

Here are our key tips to using SupporterBase to protect your supporters’ data:

1. Navigate to your user profile and enable two-factor authentication.
2. Navigate to Settings > Configurations, and choose which settings you’d like applied across your Supporter Base by toggling settings on or off.
   
3. Invite new users as Vice-Captains initially and when you’re confident with them sending email blasts, SMS blasts and publishing events, change their role to Captain.
4. Keep your Supporter Base login details private. There’s no need to share your login details with anyone else, even if you’d like them to help out with activities on the platform. You can simply invite them as a Vice-Captain (there’s no cap on Captains and Vice-Captains per group) and they can set up their own login details.

Data privacy and security are crucial for political and social campaigns. Supporter Base addresses this with features like role-based permissions, two-factor authentication, and customisable settings to ensure GDPR compliance.

Call lists are an essential asset in nonprofit and political campaigns, offering a personalised approach to engage supporters. Supporter Base leverages call lists to facilitate direct, one-to-one communication with volunteers, fostering stronger relationships and deeper commitment. Personalised calls can significantly enhance volunteer retention and involvement by addressing individual concerns and motivating action. This method ensures a human touch in outreach efforts, making supporters feel valued and more connected to the cause!

Your organisation’s Supporter Base platform is linked to one single phone number, and that is the number that all your supporters will see when you and your fellow Supporter Base users are making calls. Many organisations using Supporter Base decide to send email and SMS blasts to their supporters from the outset, asking them to save the number to their contacts, so they know it’s the campaign team calling going forward.

See below how quickly and easily you can create and manage call lists using the Supporter Base interface, without ever needing to use your own data or share your personal mobile number.

Below are our key steps to running a successful calling campaign using Supporter Base:

1. Create your new call list and set the minimum number of hours allowed between calls, so the system blocks users from over-calling supporters.
2. Add supporters to your list based on names, filters, levels of engagement, RSVPs to events, or simply include all group members.
3. If you’d like to have several different Supporter Base users working through the same call list together, you can choose to create separate call lists and the platform will automatically divide the supporters up evenly into different lists.
4. Make sure your mobile phone is nearby (the platform will call your phone and then connect you to the first supporter on the call list)!
5. Hit ‘start calling’ and then work your way down the list, remembering to log contacts as you go.
6. We recommend following up unanswered calls with a quick SMS before you move onto the next caller, letting them know why you were calling.
7. Make sure to tick the “successfully answered” checkbox if your call is successful, and the platform will block you (and the rest of your calling team) from calling that supporter again in the same call list.

Calling campaigns are vital for nonprofit and political campaigns - and Supporter Base provides a powerful and simple solution to help you manage your call lists. With functionality like call frequency limits, distributing call lists among users and logging contacts and notes, your Supporter Base users will feel empowered and your volunteers will feel more connected to the cause!