“Vote4Me” –“Vvote4U” Political Blog Campaign Services of “Vote4Me Inc.” by Kalki Gaur
(1) Vote 4 Me Blog and Text Messaging Changed Yankee Electoral Politics. (Blog: Vote 4 Me). The Deans 2004 presidential campaign, saw the great political blog campaign, Vote4Me Inc is talking about the great text-messaging campaign of 2008. Joe Trippi as Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign manager was a pioneer in the use of the Internet as a fund-raising and election campaigning and organizing tool. The SMS technology is right on the cusp of becoming very big.
(2) Text messaging has mobilized voters in elections around the world. This once teen-centric technology has significantly changed American and Indian election politics also. “Vote4Me Inc” Blog is looking to use Vote4Me’s large electoral voters list data base to help lobbyists and Interest Groups market their causes. Vote4Me would connect with young voters and young political activists and immigrants using a very Gen-X technology, the text message.
Voter4Me Blog will peddle political Client’s policy, encouraging people in its networks and in the political crowds to use their cell phones to send the text message to a special number, or short code. The phone numbers of text-messagers will be compiled with specialized software, and Vote4Me Action Group will follow up with those enthusiastic texters to enlist support for its Campaign, and lobby for specific policies aimed at getting is politician clients get elected.
(3) Vote4Me Blog professionals are way ahead of the tech game here in the United States, text messaging, or SMS (for Short Message Service). The political and election usage of SMS and Blogs is hardly new in many democratic countries of the world. Opponents of Philippine President Joseph Estrada mobilized their supporters via text message as early as 2001. A massive SMS texting campaign was credited with boosting youth turnout in Spain's 2004 presidential elections. Mexico's president-elect Felipe Calderon launched millions of text messages in the days immediately preceding his narrow win over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
(4) American political groups seem to be catching on the election usage of SMS test messaging and political blogs. Person-to-person text messaging was credited with rallying runaway support for the nationwide immigration protests this spring in USA. It was so successful that activist groups have expanded on the concept. Vote4Me Inc seeks to register young Immigrant voters, and would launch a nationwide text-message outreach program.
(5) Vote4Me would come up with the election campaign specific proposal, and Vote4Me does the homework. Vote4Me kids are texting in record numbers. This teen trend has turned into a election weapon of choice for politicos hoping to energize their constituents in a very cost effective manner as the television media has become prohibitively expensive and TV media is no longer election result wise effective. Many leading election campaign strategists are betting Vote4Me blogges can be very effective in voter mobilization in US elections 2006 and 2008.
(6) If this sea change does take place, Kalki Gaur is likely to be riding the wave and he is the president and CEO of “Vote4Me”, a blog company, which runs VOTE4ME Inc., a service aimed at helping politicians and interest groups tap the potential of the text message and Blogs. Vote4Me Inc., also engaged in political marketing using cell-phone services to promote the likes of Indian politicians such as Atal Behari Vajpayee. In one popular promotion, fans, supporters and voters could provide their phone numbers and pay to receive text messages and voicemails from Presidential candidates "Next time I have an Inauguration, you're digitally totally invited," the presidential candidate might say. The Vote4Me Inc has realized the political potential of this kind of marketing, particularly in its capacity to gather names, emails, IM and SMS. Names, emails are the new currency of political mobilization in the age of rising election campaign costs and reluctance of candidates to hire full time outbound telemarketers. The advantage of text messages when it comes to name gathering over, say, e-mail lies in the likelihood they will be opened. While 15-25 percent of solicited political e-mails are opened, the open rate for text messages is nearly 95 percent. When Vote4Me Inc., translated our model of text-marketing and blog campaign to the political circuit, it met with instant success. The lobby groups have found out that 25-30 percent of people asked to call their Congressman or Senators via text message of blog responded, as compared to the 2-3 percent success rate they had been getting with e-mail requests. Those kinds of numbers quickly drew the attention of many lobby groups, interest groups and political candidates. Over the course of a year, it's just exploded in popularity. As a number of clients point out, the value of Vote4Me lies in its ability to successfully gather information, as much as to disperse it. One can't send a text message unless one has a number to send it to; the trick for any political organizer, then, is getting people to hand over or text over their numbers.
(7) Getting that contact info is the key for the Vote 4 Me (blog Vote4Me). The Vote4Me was in the midst of an effort to petition governments on specific policy issues. People can find Vote4Me marketing and online campaigns found on Google. The Vote4Me online campaigns will ask people to text the message "Vvoted4U" to a specified short code. An automatic response, set up by Vote4Me would then asked respondents to forward along their e-mail addresses, their phone numbers having already been recorded in Vote4Me database. The Vote4Me would compile over 500,000 names in one year. When the US Congress and Senate is in session Vote4Me plans to send text messages to each respondent from the company HQ requesting them to contact their representatives at strategic times leading up to a vote.
(8) Then whenever there's an issue where Vote4Me want them to take some action, Vote4Me will say via text message, here's the number for a particular Congressman or Senator. Nor is the Vote4Me limited to text messages, if Vote4Me has their phone numbers, not only can it text them, but it can also call them. They could get a voice message from candidate for the Senate or Congress. Many high-profile politicians worldwide have undertaken similar texting campaigns and many are in touch with Vote4Me Inc. Many Senators and Congressmen will announce that they would be employing the technology in his uphill fight for re-election. Through the use of cell-phone text messaging, Vote4Me is ensuring that even the busiest of voters have access to information about its client candidates’ record where and when they seek it.
(9) With so many mass texting campaigns in the works, one inevitable question arises: Is this just glorified spam? Is the honeymoon of 95 percent open rates doomed to dwindle as more and more activists move into text messaging? People sign up for text messages voluntarily and spamming is unlikely, even if registries of numbers did manage to get into the wrong hands. Phone carriers like Verizon and Cingular have ultimate control on who sends bulk messages. If someone sends a spam via text, the carriers will just shut them down. Even so, the technology has limitations. The American telecom infrastructure is still developing, and a number of campaign managers say it will be some time before enough of their constituents use text messaging for the technology to meet its full marketing potential. Text messaging and blogging is an evolving technology. SMS usage is certainly not ubiquitous. In a few years, Vote4Me could, for instance, send people video messages, but we're not there yet.
(10) Blogging, of course, is free to anyone with Internet access. Text messaging is not. "Most vendors charge a setup fee and then a monthly maintenance fee. These fees have come down significantly over the past year, but they aren't nominal. Vote4Me charges $10,000 to license its software, and $500 to $1,000 a month in maintenance fees. The economics is still being worked out, particularly here in the United States. The most successful SMS campaigns abroad, including the ones in the Philippines and Spain, were essentially word of mouth, person-to-person messaging campaigns. That is, they were not coordinated by messages blasted from a central source. It remains unclear how well a blast model will translate, particularly given the fees.
(11) Vote4Me backing the technology are sanguine. The advocacy application of text messaging is going to get bigger and bigger as the US 2008 election comes up. Vote4Me plans to test the text-messaging waters. People are moving away from just television to blogs and text messaging, and Vote4Me will experiment with all of that. The political party and politician that doesn't master these techniques over time is going to falter."
Kalki Gaur President/CEO: Vote4Me Inc.
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