Here's 5 Things You Should Know About Relational Campaigning

We at Campaign Lab have been hard at work researching the most innovative and effective campaign strategies. Last week we hosted an event with Evie Monnington-Taylor, Director of Research at VoteRev, which highlighted some effective tactics in relational campaigning, understood as the act of mobilising one’s personal contacts and relationships with the purpose of campaigning. Based on her valuable insights and on our further research in the field, here are 5 things any campaigner should know about relational campaigning:

1. Be personal

The main characteristic of relational campaigning is that it adds the human factor to campaigning, engaging personal relationships as opposed to widespread general messaging. Therefore, be personal! Avoid transmitting rigid and monotonous information and instead leverage personal experience, natural conversation and making each interaction tailored to the individual. When using mobilisers, trust them to communicate to their peers however they normally would. This will make your message warmer and more approachable and, as an effect, easier to take on board!

2. Pay extra attention to compliance

The downside of letting conversations flow naturally between your mobilisers and their peers, however, is that they might not happen at all. Talking about politics to your friends can be socially awkward and therefore some mobilisers will actually not pass along your message at all if they do not feel like it. That is why you need to come up with mechanisms to better enforce and check compliance among mobilisers. You could maybe try asking to be witness or see proof of the conversation, or making it as comfortable and easy as possible to carry out the campaigning, or even contacting the subjects yourself for a follow-up, depending on your campaign and your capacity.

3. Timing matters

Apart from how and from whom people hear about your campaign, when they do is also crucial. Most campaign tactics can be divided into early cycle and late cycle, depending on when they are deployed relative to your target (i.e. election day). Therefore you need to be very clear as to what the purpose of your relational campaigning is, what you would like your subjects to know and to do and, based on this, organise your mobilisers accordingly. For example, if you want your mobilisers to convince their peers to volunteer during your campaign, you might want to gather people as early as possible into the cycle in order to get as much time as possible from the new volunteers. However, if you want your mobilisers to convince their peers to turn out to vote, telling them 2 weeks before an election might mean that most of them forget to actually turn up on the day.

4. Don’t be afraid to use technology

Relational campaigning focuses on real human connection as a means to propagate your message. That being said, you can always make your life easier by making use of the latest technology! Having a mobiliser sit down with their friends and chatting about your campaign takes time, on both your side and theirs. Why not ask them instead to text their friends, post on social media, or send them a personalised quick video? Tech and AI can help you streamline your processes and make campaigning for yourself and your mobilisers as easy and appealing as possible, so that everyone is more prone to doing it.

5. Use it to get to hard-to-reach audiences

There are certain people that campaigners have always struggled to get through to, such as people who never open the door to canvassers, never pick up calls from unknown numbers, and generally do not want to engage with politics. Relational campaigning can be particularly useful in this case! Such individuals are much more likely to at least listen to someone they know and, who knows, even be persuaded by them! Using someone in their network will make hard-to-reach individuals more open to hearing out what a campaign has to say, since it is now coming from a trusted source and has a personal touch, so you should definitely make use of that!

There are many more things at play when it comes to relational campaigning, there can never be a one size fits all. However, these 5 tips will ensure that your campaign uses social networks as efficiently as possible in getting your message across!