Obama campaign finds success in SMS fundraising

Love him or hate him, one of the indisputable successes of the 44th President of the United States is his use of social networking and mobile media platforms. In his journey to the Whitehouse a few years ago, Barack Obama used MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter to drum up millions of supports from key demographics that most politicians have trouble reaching.

Now as the President’s team looks to raise money for his re-election campaign, they turn to mobile technology to make fundraising fast, convenient, and effective. Using the same technique that was used to raise money for relief in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, the Obama campaign sent out a text message on Wednesday to tens of thousands of previous donors.

The message read: “Support Pres Obama in less than a minute. Using our new secure system: just reply with the amount you want to give and we’ll charge your saved credit card.”

Those that wanted to participate simply had to reply back with the number of dollars they wished to send and their saved credit card was charged with the donation. An individual close to the campaign said the response rate was more than 20 times greater than any text message solicitation the Obama campaign has previously sent out.

Based on the success of this campaign, we expect to see more politicians leveraging their campaigns with mobile technology. As for Obama, who knows what his team is cooking up? A few days ago he signed up for Pinterest, so we’re guessing that the campaign team will be pulling out all the stops this year. Honestly though, we hope to see less presidential dessert recipes and more integration of phones and technology.

source: TIME