Politics is deeply personal. Between candidates, causes, and local. resolutions, a human touch is needed when talking about and asking for participation in the electoral process. rumbleup understood that, and found a way to help candidates and causes reach a wide audience without sacrificing that important personal touch.

Scalable communications in the political world

Reaching voters is a daunting task. Whether you’re a candidate asking for their vote, polling potential voters, or just making them aware of the issues, reaching out to the electorate in a way that’s effective while still connecting with them on a personal level can be extremely challenging.

rumbleup understood that challenge, and launched their platform to make political outreach scalable while still maintaining the personal connections that are so crucial to winning over new supporters, donors, and voters.

A reliable partner

Finding a partner that can provide the throughput that’s needed while helping to maintain the personal touch is a tall order, but rumbleup delivers on that every day, which is why their customers keep coming back to them, campaign after campaign.

“We’re probably too available,” said Thomas Peters, CEO of rumbleup. That availability comes from their desire to never let their clients fail, their flexibility, and doing the impossible, every time they’re asked.

“We punch above our weight, and have a deep bench of features,” Peters added. That deep feature-set comes from listening to their customers. As requests for features come in they take those ideas, bake them into the software, and then make them available to all of their clients. In that way, their platform has the best ideas of the 150 companies that have used it in the past, and continue to use it.

More than politics as usual

Political outreach isn’t all just asking for votes and making voters aware of the issues. It’s also about compassion and providing a human touch in difficult situations. When Hurricane Michael ravaged the Florida panhandle, rumbleup clients in Florida were able to send messages to those living in the affected areas, providing them information on FEMA contacts, where they could get small loans to help rebuild, and what they needed to do to submit absentee ballots or find their temporary voting locations if their usual polling place had been destroyed or moved.

Through all of these messages, these outreach programs were able to maintain a personal, compassionate touch, thanks to the rumbleup platform’s ability to send personalized texts at scale, while tracking each conversation, and making it easy for volunteers to text with hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just one reason why rumbleup’s customers love them so much, and why they’ve flocked to them, with more than 150 clients signing up in the first year to contact more than 20 million voters.

Bandwidth helps with the final push

While it’s true that politics has become a year-round sport, the biggest push is in the final 72 hours before an election. This was especially true in the 2018 midterm elections, when rumbleup’s customers were sending upwards of 5 million messages per day.

To ensure that this outreach was effective, rumbleup needed reliable message delivery. While many in the industry use a single CPaaS provider, rumbleup didn’t want to be reliant on a single downstream provider at crunch time. When it came time for the final push, that would serve them well.

In the 72 hours before the midterm election, rumbleup’s CPaaS provider experienced a significant service outage, and was unable to provide MMS services. rumbleup’s customers never had to worry though. rumbleup was able to switch all their traffic to Bandwidth, which provided 100% uptime during the final push, ensuring that all messages were sent in that crucial period and their clients could stay focused on other time-sensitive tasks.

Giving businesses the personal touch

The partnership between rumbleup and Bandwidth starts in a shared place — going the extra mile for our clients and providing a human touch that isn’t always expected, but is always appreciated.

“We’re the ‘press 0’ to speak to a real person for text messaging. Bandwidth shares that mentality,” said Thomas Peters.

Both rumbleup and Bandwidth take that personal approach to interacting with clients seriously. And it’s that approach that has helped rumbleup’s clients be so successful in the text messaging space. rumbleup is now excited to be expanding their services to new markets including trade associations, higher education, government, non-profits, and for-profit.

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