Political campaigns standardise on Salesforce to revolutionise campaign management

Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the market and technology leader in Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service, has announced that nearly 30 political campaigns and advocacy groups have standardised on Campaignforce: Salesforce for Political Campaigns to revolutionise how they manage their operations. From the Ron Paul and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns to Senator John Kerry, Rep. Michael McCaul in Texas, and the Indiana Republican Party, Democratic and Republican political campaigns and advocacy groups large and small, national and local are using Software-as-a-Service from salesforce.com to bring the benefits of next generation Internet technology to their organisations.

These customers are part of the 38,100 companies of all sizes, industries and geographies that comprised the salesforce.com customer base as of October 31, 2007. Revenue and subscribers will be recognised as the service is delivered.

Already having achieved notoriety for using Internet technologies like YouTube and Facebook for grassroots fundraising success and building voter and volunteer support, the Ron Paul presidential campaign is also using Campaignforce from salesforce.com to manage its campaign.

"Our vision is to replicate the same success that businesses have achieved using Internet technologies such as Facebook, YouTube and salesforce.com with how we run our campaign," said Justine Lam, online campaign manager, Ron Paul for President. "Salesforce has played an integral part in our Internet fundraising success and in harnessing the power of our volunteers around the country during the primaries."

The Ron Paul for President campaign has integrated Campaignforce with its website providing an overall view of critical campaign information related to fundraising and volunteer support. For example, the campaign uses Campaignforce to analyse donation data coming into its website, including milestone fundraising days where the campaign has raised as much as $6 million over a weekend and almost $20 million in the last three months, potentially outpacing Republican rivals and putting the campaign's fundraising in league with Hillary Clinton's. The campaign has also used Campaignforce for "volunteer bombs" to manage the assembly of volunteers in advance of the primaries.

"Salesforce.com's Campaignforce is a powerful asset for campaign managers," said Wyatt Hull, creative director at Terra Eclipse and consultant for the Ron Paul for President campaign. "The on-demand nature of Campaignforce fits perfectly with the needs of today's campaigns – it provides immediate access to campaign information, is accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection for use in field operations, and can be implemented quickly without the need to buy and maintain IT infrastructure. The Apex API allows our web development team to leverage Salesforce's reporting tools to enhance the real time transparency of Ron Paul's fundraising success."

In addition to presidential candidates Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, Democratic and Republican campaigns and advocacy groups of all types and sizes are using Campaignforce to maximize fundraising, recruit and manage staff and volunteers, manage constituent relationships, optimize operations and spread and track key messages to their constituents.

For example, Rep. Michael McCaul in Texas uses Campaignforce as its central system for managing its organisation. Using the Force.com platform, it has customised Campaignforce to capture and track lead information from its website, communicate with its constituents, manage events and mobilise volunteers, and for tracking polls.

"In addition to the inherent benefits of Software-as-a-Service and the ability to manage all of our data in one place, the distinguishing factor in deciding to implement Campaignforce was the Force.com platform and AppExchange directory," said Brent Burns, campaign manager for Michael McCaul for Congress. "We were up and running in less than a week, and cut our database set up time in half with the ease of use of the Force.com platform which was critical with our November election."

Campaignforce: Salesforce for Political Campaigns
From the race for president to small town mayoral races, political campaigns of all types and sizes are standardising on Campaignforce to revolutionise campaign management. Campaignforce is the first on-demand constituent relationship management application that leverages next generation Internet technologies to put polling data, contribution tallies and campaign efforts at the fingertips of campaign managers. Campaignforce is built on the Force.com platform, the world's first Platform-as-a-Service, and is supported by the largest ecosystem of partner solutions available at www.appexchange.com, including industry specific solutions. For more information, please visit www.campaignforce.com.