April VoteSource Newsletter

Welcome to the April edition of the VoteSource Newsletter.

Missed our last edition? Catch up by clicking here.

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Introducing the brand-new Member Services Team

We are pleased to introduce the new Member Services Team, a merging of three departments into one, creating a one stop shop for Party enquiries, here to help, or find you colleagues to help, on whatever issues you might be having.

This will mean a more conjoined approach, leading to quicker resolutions, more staff available to help on a variety of questions and better tracking of tickets raised by Members, the Voluntary Party and CCHQ Staff.

The new department will consist of 7 colleagues, with expertise in VoteSource, Membership, Member Governance and Campaigning:

• Will Mayne – Head of Member Services
• Lyall Ainscow – Deputy Head of Member Services
• Stacey Ingram – Member Services Officer
• George Sanderson – Member Services Officer
• Basim Basit – Member Services Officer
• Courtney Dalton – Member Governance Researcher
• Jude Richardson – Member Governance Researcher

This new team should be your first port of call for all VoteSource related queries and replaces the VoteSource Helpdesk team.

To contact us for any support, please email member.services@conservatives.com or call us on 020 7984 8036, Monday – Friday, 9am to 5pm.

A Local Elections update from the VoteSource Team

With Poll Day for the Local Elections (1st of May, 2025) swiftly approaching, the VoteSource team would like to make you aware that Election Alteration files have started to arrive from the Local Publishing Authorities with elections this May, and have been uploaded to VoteSource by our Register team. We should expect to receive further updates in the following weeks, as well as updates to Postal Voter information in your area in the lead up to Poll Day.

This means that VoteSource is getting election ready, and you should be too.

If you have local election campaigns this year we would - with this in mind - advise that it is the opportune moment to start creating your Control Rooms via the GTV section of VoteSource. This will allow you to make use of this updated electoral data for your election campaigns, and easily run new target audiences from within these campaigns when new data reaches our system. Adding to this, as Postal Votes will have now landed on the doorstep of your constituents, getting your GTV activities set up on VoteSource is particularly necessary as in order to record a constituent as having voted once canvassed you will need to be making use of the campaigning activities available through your GTV control and committee rooms.

If you need any assistance with this process, please do not hesitate to get in touch with the Member Services Team. The relevant user guides for this process can also be seen below:

Fundamentals - Activating your GTV Campaign: https://votesource.uk/support/helpcenter/viewarticle/420

Fundamentals - The Three stages of the GTV cycle - Stage 1 – GOTPV: https://votesource.uk/support/helpcenter/viewarticle/362

Fundamentals - The Three stages of the GTV cycle - Stage 2 – GOTV: https://votesource.uk/support/helpcenter/viewarticle/363

Fundamentals - The Three stages of the GTV cycle - Stage 3 - Polling Day: https://votesource.uk/support/helpcenter/viewarticle/364

Please keep an eye out for further updates and information regarding VoteSource and your Local Elections.

Using Polling Districts to build your Campaigns

On VoteSource, the fundamental building block of all of our electoral geography data is Polling Districts. All forms of geography are assigned to these units, and so making best use of them will allow you to build exactly the campaigns you need.

This is particularly on show through Target Audiences; VoteSource’s dedicated campaign selection building tool, which will make up a key part of your local election campaigns.

When you come to create a target audience, your first consideration would – of course – be the criteria you need for this audience. But making sure you reach the right constituents is just as fundamental to your campaigns. This is where polling districts come in. Once you have decided on the name and franchise for your campaign, in most audience types, you would be taken to an electoral geography page which includes boxes available for you to select the polling districts you need for your campaign. In here you would be able to combine multiple polling districts into one audience from the different areas you need (something not possible through simply selecting a ward or electoral division) and so build an audience that is totally unique to your needs.

Please see the guide below for further information on this process:

Fundamentals – How to create a basic Target Audience: https://votesource.uk/support/helpcenter/viewarticle/357

This ability to build your campaign and its geography from polling districts allows you a level of flexibility for your campaigns that is unparalleled. It also allows you to campaign on any electoral boundaries needed, which is something that is particularly useful for our users who are expecting new electoral boundaries to come into effect in 2026, but we are yet to receive the updates necessary to make these changes.

As they are so fundamental to the way VoteSource operates, polling districts should always be at the front of your mind for building your campaigns. The most successful campaigns always come from the ability to target your constituents in the most flexible and appropriate manner; the customisable nature of VoteSource campaigns that correctly make use of polling districts will always bring about this success.

Refreshed Third Party Data

We are excited to announce that some new and very useful data for campaigning has been applied to all people in your area. This includes the latest Mosaic codes, Tenure, Household Income Band, Age, Mortgage and Employment Status.

Approximately 200 million records have been updated with this data to date!

This year we have added the data slightly differently. Data such as this arrives to us from Third Party Companies, who try their best to match it to all records we have. However, this is not always possible, as not all companies are able to achieve the incredible match rates we do when new data has been applied to the VoteSource system. Therefore, this time we have added the data only to the level that we have been provided. This is useful, as we now have the data for each postcode and property, so as people change, you will still have useful information about a household from the minute they move in. Thus, the following enhancements can be seen:

• Each Person has the data and the level we have used the data for, such as ‘Mosaic Code (from Postcode)’ for when the Mosaic code is from the postcode level.
• The Mosaic code now displays the description next to it, so you no longer must know you A01 from your I35

To see this new data across your area you can use the Metadata Distribution Report. This is under Campaigning > Reports. This will show you, for each value, the percentage who have been canvassed, the number of C’s and P’s and the number of roads, properties, telephone numbers, etc., you have for people with this value in your area; this will allow you to target your campaigns based on this new and exciting data.

These mosaic codes are still exported when you do target campaigns, and you can see a brilliant breakdown from a Target Audience; when you create Online Surveys you can also see what groups are responding based on this data too.

Exciting New Features; Making VoteSource work for you

The VoteSource team are always hard at work to bring about essential maintenance and improvements to the VoteSource system in order to offer the most complete experience on VoteSource.

As well as a large amount of performance enhancements to the system, we are pleased to announce that we have also released the following new features:

• Some Target Audience Activities will now start automatically after they have been enabled: We’ve streamlined the user experience by introducing a new feature that automatically enables certain activities within the Target Audience activities section as you toggle them on. This update simplifies the workflow, making it faster and more intuitive to activate activities as you can now do so with a single click in most cases.

This has been applied for the following: Doorstep - Canvass Cards, Delivery Lists, Canvass Data Entry, and Mobile Data Entry; Mail - Data Entry; Email – Digital; Phone - Connect Calling.

• Connect Calling sessions now feature an ‘Are you still there’ modal: this will assist you in running your connect calling sessions even more effectively from now on.

Both of these new features will enhance your campaigning experience on VoteSource, and allow you to campaign more effectively, so why not give them a try today?

We hope to be able to update you on more new features as they arrive and so showcase how we are consistently aiming to improve what is an already essential tool to offer you the best support possible.