Let’s play a quick game. First, imagine you open your phone to this text:
Now, instead imagine you get this text from a friend:
Which one are you more likely to read? Which one are you more likely to respond to? Does anyone know a good dog trainer?
Persuadable voters are inundated with political ads, texts, and mail in the months leading up to Election Day.
We’ve seen over the past few weeks how hard it is to break through all of that noise.
Politics is both local and personal. Local events, meeting a candidate, and conversations at a voter's front door remain the most effective ways to deliver a campaign's message and drive turnout. The challenge is that those interactions don't scale.
That's where relational organizing comes in. It combines the trust of personal relationships with the scale of modern campaign technology.
What is relational organizing?
Relational organizing is one of the fastest-growing forms of voter contact.
It is a structured voter-contact program that asks campaign supporters to reach out to people they already know.
The concept itself is not new. Campaigns have always encouraged supporters to talk to friends and family.
What has changed is the ability to use data and technology to make those conversations targeted, coordinated, measurable, and scalable.
How does relational organizing work?
Build the voter universe. The campaign identifies the voters it needs to persuade or turnout.
Recruit supporters. Volunteers are recruited through the campaign.
Connect personal networks. Supporters securely upload and sync their phone contacts.
Match contacts to voters. The platform identifies people in each supporter's contact list who are also in the campaign's target voter universe.
Send the message. Supporters then text or call people they know using campaign-approved messaging.
Measure engagement. Many programs reward supporters based on verified outreach or completed conversations.
Does relational organizing work?
Yes.
It has consistently proven to be the most effective channel for convincing voters to turn out and vote.
The Center for Campaign Innovation and Numinar conducted a 2024 field test with low-propensity Republican voters in Florida.
Voters who received a text from someone they personally knew were 8.6% more likely to vote than voters in the control group.
In campaign terms, an 8.6-point increase in turnout is enormous.
The organization also sent 100,000 traditional peer-to-peer texts from unknown senders to a separate voter universe. Those texts produced no measurable turnout effect.
Who delivers the message matters.
How large is the relational organizing market?
The market is currently held back by two items:
Volunteer recruitment. Recruitment rates are as low as .02%. Campaigns must convince their strongest supporters that reaching out to friends and family is one of the highest-impact things they can do.
Technology platforms. Few platforms have successfully combined contact matching, messaging, verification, and measurement into a scalable product.
How large will the relational organizing market be in 2032?
$400M, a 65% CAGR.
As campaigns look for more measurable ways to increase turnout, personal outreach is becoming a larger part of the overall voter contact mix.
We expect leading campaigns and issue groups to invest heavily in relational organizing over the next several cycles, with the largest acceleration likely occurring during the 2028 presidential election.
What does this mean for political advertisers?
Voters are people, not data points. Campaigns that leverage trusted relationships and personalized outreach will outperform high-frequency, commoditized creative that blends into the noise.
Advertisers cannot forget about on-the-ground political strategies. Ground campaigns work, and voter contact strategies should work together to reach voters more effectively.
Relational organizing should be part of every campaign strategy. Even a small percentage of the overall campaign budget can have a meaningful impact.
Welcome to the family, Numinar!
Cross Screen Media’s parent company, 1903 Group, announced the acquisition of Numinar, a leading voter contact technology platform. The Numinar team has built an impressive suite of tools designed to make voter contact easier and unite campaign data in one place, including a leading relational organizing platform.
Reply to this email if you’re interested in learning more.