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While it's no big surprise that, as reported earlier last week by both NPR and The Atlantic, Facebook's "I'm a Voter" and "I Voted" features have the power to affect election outcomes, a host of companies are leaping at the chance to create their own skew in favor of candidates who use their services. Among them is VoterTrove, an Austin-based service that's similar to a customer relationship management application, but which is instead used by candidates running for political office — specifically, and perhaps surprisingly for a company based in the most famously liberal city in Texas — Republican ones.
As VentureBeat reported in October after being introduced to VoterTrove at Capital Factory Demo Day in October, "The platform provides analytics on the best groups of people to target in order to get more votes, gain attention for a candidate on a particular issue, and more."
The company's site explains, "VoterTrove allows conservative campaigns to store, organize and merge data from all corners" of a campaign, and the service offers conservative candidates eight ways to connect with voters: phone banking, robocalls, patch-through calls, text message blasts, email blasts, walk lists and Facebook integration.
Founded two years ago with its first client in Florida, VoterTrove has since claimed to have touched 23 states in 24 months. This week, CEO Justin Gargiulo said, "In the last 12 months we've had paying customers in 25 states. With campaign season coming to an end on Tuesday, our focus moves to building a larger customer base among trade associations, corporations and non-profits engaged in issue advocacy."
In the partial list of clients shared on its website, it boasts relationships with U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), Texas Attorney General candidate Dan Branch (R-Dallas), Congressional candidate Pete Sessions (R-Texas), and six other clients in Colorado, Connecticut, Mississippi, New Jersey and New York. The company currently has three employees.
