Posted by Pamela Passman
Corporate Vice President, Global Corporate Affairs,
and Ravi Singh
CEO of ElectionMall.com
The 2008 presidential election showed how powerful the Internet has become in modern politics. From raising money to communicating with constituents to organizing staff, cloud computing is enabling incredible opportunities and efficiencies.
Candidates are increasingly using social media tools like Twitter to communicate directly with voters, and Facebook recently launched a new U.S. Politics on Facebook Page where people can track campaign and political activity occurring on the social networking site.
To help campaigns of all sizes leverage the power of the Web, ElectionMall.com and Microsoft have partnered to create Campaign Cloud, a customizable platform of technologies that simplifies the process of building and maintaining an online political presence.
Not surprisingly, campaigns have a lot of moving parts. There is fundraising, constituent and staff communications, and the ongoing tactical and strategic analysis necessary to adapt to a fast-changing political environment.
Campaign Cloud allows those running campaigns to spend more time focusing on winning elections and less time managing the technology. Using automated tools with simple step-by-step processes, ElectionMall help campaigns develop and host online resources in a centralized location. These tools include a Web site builder, a collaboration interface for communicating with staff and volunteers, donation pages for collecting contributions, event management applications, and promotional resources for connecting with potential voters through email, phone, text, online advertising and social networks. The Campaign Cloud Dashboard organizes everything using workflow tools and calendars, enabling leaders to properly allocate resources and track progress.
Anyone—from local school board candidates to those managing state and national campaigns—can access and customize these tools at ElectionMall.com. The cloud-based computing model enables organizations to scale up or down depending on need. Sign up is free, and as applications are added, there is a pay-as-a-service model.
Microsoft and ElectionMall have been working together for more than 10 years to help candidates and campaigns make the most of technology, and now these services are available in the cloud environment, with enhanced features involving Bing Maps, Skydrive and the Bing ad network. To view a demo of the solution, go to http://www.electionmall.com/microsoft/.
SOURCE
