Since 2018, Reach has been empowering some of the most successful and impactful campaigns and organizations. From grassroots progressives who changed the dynamics of the party like AOC and Zohran Mamdani to activist groups like Fair Fight and Progressive Turnout Project, to Labor Unions like UNITE HERE, to DNC and the Harris/Walz campaign. We’ve got the tips and tricks that have helped them succeed with Reach!
Most importantly, campaigns that have the most success with Reach incorporate it deeply into their organizing strategy, mobilizing their volunteers to use Reach to collect data every day. Like with any other organizing tactic: persistent, meaningful outreach and follow-up are key! The more your volunteers use Reach the more your campaign will get out of it so we are here to talk through strategies to get folks excited about utilizing Reach as much as possible!
Consistent On-boarding: Reach should be your volunteers’ first and primary way they remain connected with your campaign. Have every volunteer who walks into the office or shows up at an event download the app and get trained on Reach. Holding a big rally? Put a QR code up on the screen and ask all attendees to download Reach! Hosting a meet up for folks to go out canvassing? Have them download Reach and sync their contacts before they head out. Then have them upload a photo of themselves canvassing a newly persuaded voter in Reach!
Frequent Training Opportunities: Host frequent in-person and online group Reach trainings. And before folks leave, have them use Reach to invite some friends to the next training! Focus on use cases for different features of Reach to ensure your volunteers are up to speed on best practices before they are out in the field.
Pro-tip: Use our templates to help create your customized training materials!
3. Keep your Volunteers in the Loop: Did you know that Reach offers a (free!) direct channel for you to communicate with your most committed supporters? The Push Notifications admin screen in Reach lets you compose, schedule, send, and monitor custom “Campaign Announcement” Push Notifications that will land right on your users’ devices. Use these Push Notifications to keep folks engaged and coming back to Reach. Notify your users about upcoming campaign deadlines, organizing goals, breaking news, or exciting volunteer opportunities just around the corner!
Pro-tip: Push notifications can be targeted to specific user groups and each one can link to anything you want, either in Reach or anywhere else online!
Announce that Your Campaign is on Reach: Spread the word via email, text, and chats. Send a mass email to your in/near district list announcing that you’re using the app and giving them some basic instructions, a link to download it, and a campaign key link.
Action Cards: Use one of our eight Action Card types to set up actions you’d like your users to take – everything from sharing a specific piece of content to sharing campaign scripts with friends! Action Cards can automatically send out push notifications when you publish them to alert folks to the new content and get them back in the app and they can automatically expire if their relevance is time-limited.
Pro-tip: Make your Action Card a “Task” so when it’s completed, it moves off the main feed into “Completed” to keep the Action Feed up to date for your volunteers.
Friendly Competition: Share a screenshot of the leaderboard periodically, congratulating the people who are at the top. Develop incentives to cheer on more activity, like a piece of merch or personal call from the candidate for folks at the top of the leaderboard.
Pro-tip: On the Campaign Settings admin screen, you can set the default timespan and metric for your Rankings screen.
Community Canvassing Reach Shifts: Schedule community canvassing shifts at high-traffic, in-district events like Farmer’s Markets, sporting events, and festivals. Have folks talking to everyone they see and using Reach to collect IDs, register new voters, and collect information about issues folks care about. Consider replacing door-knocking or dialer shifts with Community Canvassing shifts.
Reminders: Any time you hear from a volunteer that they had a positive interaction with a voter or met someone excited about the campaign, ask them if they connected with that person using the app. That uber driver? That person in line at Starbucks? That neighbor who said they like your yard sign? Your hairdresser? If it didn’t make it into Reach, it doesn’t count!
Galleries: Create engaging content as a low-barrier entry point for volunteers to share your content with their friends. Keep the content fresh so your volunteers have a reason to keep coming back for more! You can even utilize shared galleries from other campaigns for additional content!
Pro-tip: Make some Content Collections so supporters can share your content without even needing to create a Reach account! Once they start sharing, help them expand into doing more by using the app.
Reach Chat: Building an active vibrant community in Reach chat is one of the best ways to boost engagement in the tool. When your supporters are getting push notifications about great conversations happening in Reach, they’ll want to open the app. Utilize an announcements-only chat channel to help get the word out about key updates to all your volunteers. Use chat channels for User Groups so your volunteers can build community with each other and have additional reasons to come back to the app! And make sure campaign staff and even the candidate themselves are very present in Reach chat, answering questions and engaging with the community.
Pro-tip: Teach volunteers to use per-channel notification controls to get only the updates they’d like. This is especially useful during Reach Shifts where focus matters.
Choose the tactics that will work best for your campaign. By combining these and other practices, you’ll get Reach in the hands of your whole team to make the most of your Reach subscription. If you have other great tactics we should add to this list, hit us up or leave a comment below!
Want more ideas on how to effectively reach folks? Check out our article on Five great ways to use Reach.
