How The Democrats’ Leading Software Provider Is Planning To Win You Over

The next time a volunteer for Hillary Clinton or another Democratic candidate shows up at your door, they may know more about you than you ever imagined. NGP Van, the leading software provider to the Democratic party, is rolling out some new automation features.

They include: forms on websites that can automatically fill out volunteer information; automated generation of e-mails for voters; and even updates to their app that generate talking points for campaign volunteers depending on how a conversation goes. Using the script branching feature, volunteers can talk to voters door-to-door while referring to a smartphone app that provides what NGP Van calls "dynamic canvassing scripts" that contain talking points which change depending on the response given by the person opening the door. Another automation feature the company added to its SaaS (software as a service) web app automatically generates volunteer workflows, which trigger follow-up e-mails based on responses knocking door to-door, and creates single-click sign-up forms. This functionality takes advantage of 40 million "action profiles," similar to cookies, that the company has acquired from users. The e-mails are designed to be increasingly personalized as the election cycle goes on; these features are commonly found in commercial customer-relationship management software such as Salesforce, but are not as commonly seen in the world of politics.