Revolution Messaging

SMS List Growth at Your Conference

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy nonprofit, engaged their membership through mobile in a unique way at their annual conference. The program helped build relationships with their members, a community that uses mobile as a main part of their communication. The mobile strategy was an effective way to engage and begin a dialogue with the Latino community through an eight-question straw poll, clipboard signups, petitions with a text ask, palm cards and signage throughout the expo hall, and numerous text asks from on stage and in workshops. This effort grew NCLR’s mobile list by 14%, as well as generated national media from the results of the straw poll that was taken in collaboration with President Obama’s keynote speech at the main luncheon of the conference.

Palm Cards

Since the conference layout was split up into two main sections – an expo center and a more typical conference atmosphere with workshops, town halls, and keynote speakers– the mobile plan had to take this into consideration to make sure no text message ask was lost. NCLR and Revolution Messaging workers handed out palm cards outlining how to take the straw poll, and circulated clipboard sign-up sheets to collect cell phone numbers. At NCLR’s action booth, located at the entrance to the expo, people who signed any petitions or pledge to vote cards, were always asked to join the text list and list their cell phone number. No conference goer was left unasked.

SMS Straw Poll

Revolution Messaging was seeking an effective way to reach out to the Latino community at one of NCLR’s largest events using the form of communication that NCLR’s membership uses most. Capitalizing on President Obama’s speech at the conference, it was the perfect opportunity to mobilize the targeted demographic around an issue – telling President Obama what a coveted voter population, in the 2012 election, thought. There are countless polls done the “old fashion way,” but a straw poll through SMS would attract media attention and utilize the main source of communication the Latino community uses in their everyday life.