In this Issue:

1. Letter from the President
2. Hot Tip
3. Case Study: Helping our Clients Succeed
4. FundRaising from the Ground Up

Letter from the President

Dear Friend,

Growing CompleteCampaigns.com is the biggest challenge I face everyday. At one point not too long ago, I was our one-man sales, support and development team, on top of making all of our business planning and product development decisions.

Recently, many of our clients have called our support line to be greeted by a very strange thing indeed - a new male voice. Yes, we've hired Zach to help out with customer support, and his presence has already dramatically improved the volume of inquiries we can support.

Now that we have the blessing of a hearty staff with a number of departments, we also face the the corresponding curse: a potential for far greater problems with sharing information and quickly responding clients. The challenge I face is ensuring that the larger staff translates into better service for our clients.

While I haven't figured out all the answers, I have found a few secrets:

1. Lots of inter-office Communication (especially between support and development)
2. An emphasis on client service, especially remembering that our clients are working on "campaign time."
3. Taking advantage of the variable skills of my staff.
4. Maximizing the economies of scale (how can this project we're doing for one client help out lots of clients?)

Most importantly, continuing to talk and work with our clients. Our clients are full of great ideas (and praise, complaints and challenges) that make CompleteCampaigns.com a great company.

-Ben
katz@completecampaigns.com

Hot Tip – FEC ID # Lookup

Jenny, I got your number.
I need to make you mine.
Jenny, don't change your number,
8-6-7-5-3-0-9...

Tommy Tutone made it easy for the whole world to remember Jenny’s number-- too bad he didn’t work for the FEC. With so many numbers to cram into your brain, what’s one more? We say it’s one more too many! That’s why we have the FEC ID # lookup.

Need the FEC ID number for that committee or candidate? It’s easy!

1. Click on Help and select FEC ID# Lookup.
2. You can search by committee name or candidate name. Fill in the appropriate field.
3. Click Search.

You should see a list of all the committees or candidates with that name. Now you can add the FEC ID number to organization and individual records without the hassle of calling around trying to find their number.

If only finding a good pizza place was as easy.

Case Study: Scott Walker for Governor (Wisconsin)

Matt O'Malley, Volunteer Database and Website Administrator

The Scott Walker campaigns began using CompleteCampaigns in the summer of 2003 and our experience has been nothing less than phenomenal. Every campaign operates differently, and CompleteCampaigns has been up to the task of customizing our database and web presence with extraordinarily fast turn around time. While many customization procedures have been completed for the Walker team, I would like to highlight two that have been vital to our success:

BackOffice / VoterManager nightly data transfer:

When Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker decided to run for Governor of Wisconsin we needed to upgrade our database to reflect a statewide voter outreach effort. In doing so we had to add the VoterManager function offered by CompleteCampaigns to keep track of our voter base in Wisconsin. We did however run into a problem, specifically, how would we be able to compare our volunteer/donor database (BackOffice) against our voter contact database (VoterManager)? This problem was solved by CompleteCampaigns quickly and without hesitation. The tech support team at CompleteCampaigns wrote a complicated code that would tell BackOffice and VoterManager to swap information nightly. Essentially, when we add a volunteer code, donation, note, phone number, or any piece of data to a record in one database, the same changes are made to that record in the sister product. This helps us to keep our data clean and up-to-date without the hassle of manually entering data on both sides.

Website Transformation:

After a somewhat sour situation with our former website provider the Scott Walker campaign decided it was time to head in a new direction with our web presence, and considering our total satisfaction with CompleteCampaigns we decided to dive in completely and manage our website with their SiteBuilder product. Although we’re very good at asking for the impossible, CompleteCampaigns is always up to the task.

Banners:

The "stock" banner provided by CompleteCampaigns was not what we preferred for our site so we had our in-house designers create a banner to use on the site. The problem was that we didn’t have just one banner – we had eight. After contacting CompleteCampaigns with this scenario they solved our problem by creating a script that would randomly select from the eight banners each time a page loads. This way users see a variety of banners as they explore our site.

Buttons:

Like the banners, we had an idea of how the buttons should look as well. Again, without hesitation, CompleteCampaigns custom built buttons that perfectly matched the theme we were trying to portray.

Blog Permalinks:

As many of you know, Blogging has become an internet phenomenon. CompleteCampaigns' SiteBuilder comes "Blog Ready." Interestingly enough, about two weeks after our blog launch we received emails from bloggers requesting PermaLinks. After doing some research we learned that PermaLinks are direct links to a specific article or entry in a blog. Since blogs tend to have many days of entries and reader comments all stacked on the same single web page, Permalinks are the key to referencing specifically relevant entries from elsewhere on the web. Although we initially did not have Permalinks we requested it from CompleteCampaigns almost immediately after taking our blog "live." Permalinks were a request that CompleteCampaigns couldn't have forseen, but nonetheless, not too long after we requested them, the permalinks were installed and our Bloggers were happy.

As I mentioned before, these examples are just a small portion of the solutions CompleteCampaigns has provided to our campaign. To say we recommend CompleteCampaigns is an understatement…I would be hesitant to work on any campaign that did not have CompleteCampaigns supporting its data and website functions. The team at CompleteCampaigns is top notch and their solutions are always acceptable to our campaign team.

If you have any questions regarding our endorsement of CompleteCampaigns I encourage you to contact me at matt@mattomalley.net or (262) 719-1562.

Fundraising

First, the obvious:  running a successful campaign is expensive.  The legitimacy of a candidate is directly proportional to the size of his coffers.  If you are the candidate, out of political necessity, fundraising is and should be your priority at the beginning, middle, and end of your campaign.  And at every stage in between. 

However, as most of us learn from our parents at a very young age, asking for money is not as easy as it sounds.  When designing a fundraising strategy, a candidate must consider 1) who to ask, 2) who should be asking, and 3) how to ask. 

WHO TO ASK

1. Friends and Family:  More likely than not, your friends and family are the ones who most understand your vision and support your objectives.  While you will probably not depend on them for the majority of your financial backing, your friends and family are a great resource to build your bank account, and by extension, credibility.  Because it takes money to make money, this group operates as an effective springboard to sell yourself to the next group you want to target.     

2. Issues People:  There are many types of issues people—labor unions, business groups, religious groups, women’s groups, ethnic groups, environmental coalitions, etc.  Start with the groups most aligned with your message—sell to them that their concern is your concern.  Then move to the groups partially aligned with your message—remember, no group of people is completely homogenous and politics often makes strange bedfellows.  Examine your campaign’s issues.  There just might be people you have not considered as potential supporters who share your concern on that one topic.  And do not forget one of the most important groups of people to target—the people who hate your opponent.  Whether they support your message or not, they very well might support you financially only because you are not him (or her). 

3. Influence Buyers:  These are people who like to win.  Investing money into a campaign is just that—an investment.  People don’t want to bet on the wrong horse.  This is especially true of the big donors.  They will wait and see if you have established yourself, your campaign and your assets.  If it appears you are a credible candidate, one with a chance of forwarding their objectives, they will put their money on you.  Again, you must establish yourself first by building your money with the first two groups so that when you decide to sell your message to the deep pockets and other influence buyers, you represent a winning commodity.

Read more in CompleteCampaigns.com's CampaignGuide.