Cedar Rapids firm to unveil Web-based campaign tool, SmartVote

A Cedar Rapids firm will roll out a new campaign tool next week at a Washington trade show, hoping to appeal to people running campaigns for everything from City Hall to the White House.

AdTrack Corp. will unveil SmartVote, a Web-based political campaign management system developed, tested and proved in Iowa, at a trade show sponsored by Campaigns and Elections Politics magazine Thursday and Friday. The show is titled: “Crash Course in Political Campaigns: What Republicans and Democrats Can Learn from the 2008 Campaign.”

“We hope to become the one-stop shop for voter data management,” said Marcia Rogers of Cedar Rapids, whose husband, Dan, has been with AdTrack since 1981 and owned the company since 2007.

SmartVote allows campaigns to work with voter information - party registration and voting history, for example - and other data to generate targeted communications that enable a campaign to deliver the right message to the right constituent at the right time, she said.

Rogers, who is active in Democratic politics, is quick to say SmartVote doesn't create the message. It is a non-partisan system.

“We help campaigns manage the way they deliver their message,” she said. “We're split right down the middle. We've helped both sides.”

She said SmartVote is the only Web-based data management system that directs all of a campaign's activities in one technology with the goal of reaching constituents more effectively and efficiently.

The system is based on AdTrack's SmartLeadPLUS, a Web-based lead management and sales force automation system that manages a company's sales, Rogers said. AdTrack's clients include Fortune 500 companies, she said.

“So to Dan, it made sense that this would be perfect for the political world, integrating voter information and helping campaigns turn prospects into voters,” Rogers said.

SmartVote has been tested in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and California. Rogers sees potential for the program in small campaigns, such as ballot initiatives, that are relatively short, often non-partisan and often operate on a shoestring.

At the same time, Rogers said, AdTrack hopes to be attractive to the presidential campaigns that will be coming into Iowa for the 2012 precinct caucuses.