Burrowes enjoys landslide election victory with voiceREACH technology

David Burrowes, MP, has been enjoying a surprise landslide 1,746 victory following the recent election, after deploying the latest voice and email messaging technology to help the Conservative Party keep in touch with local constituents in Enfield and Southgate, London.

Faced with the task of overturning a long-standing 5,546 Labour majority in the constituency, the local Conservative Party embarked upon a new marketing campaign using voiceREACH and messageREACH from Premiere Global Services, making David Burrowes the first UK political candidate to use voice messaging as part of his campaign.

David Burrowes commented: "We were keen to keep in touch with our local constituents, but rather than follow the usual route of traditional direct mail campaigning, we decided to use technology and the results were fantastic. Voter turnout was increased by 2.6 per cent in the area and we saw an 8.7 per cent swing which was the largest Conservative swing victory of the entire election."

Local constituents were initially contacted as part of a constituency survey in 2004. A simple message was recorded by Burrowes’ campaign team asking four key questions about local issues. voiceREACH was then used to distribute this message to the local constituents, playing the message upon answer or if an answer machine picked up.

Daniel Pearce, Sales Manager for Premiere Global Services, explained: "The telephone survey proved very successful with 25 percent of people responding to the message they received, proving just how effective voice messaging can be for political parties. It is important that marketing campaigns are timely and voiceREACH allows messages to be created in an instant and delivered to thousands of constituents."

Following the success of the 2004 telephone survey, the campaign team decided to use voice messaging in the run-up to the 2005 election to encourage the local electorate to use their vote. Emails were also sent to members of the local conservative association using messageREACH, providing fast and up-to-date event news up-to and beyond the election and cutting down wasted paper.

Simon Bushell, Premiere Global Services, UK General Manager commented: "We are delighted that voiceREACH and messageREACH have been proved in the political arena as a highly effective means of communicating directly with the electorate. These services complemented the more traditional polling and canvassing techniques, but also allowed them to be far more focussed as a result, and at the end of the day, the 1,747 majority speaks for itself."




About Premiere Global Services (formerly Xpedite)
Premiere Global Services (formerly Xpedite) is a leading global provider of innovative business communications and data services. Customers use our ASP platform to process and deliver large quantities of individualized, business critical information via enhanced Email, Fax, Voice and SMS. Premiere Global Services offers outsourced document delivery, data capture, alerts/notifications and campaign marketing solutions that automate customers’ business processes and improve efficiency levels enterprise-wide. We also offer a full suite of VoIP-based collaboration sessions and conferencing solutions, including automated, operator-assisted and Web collaboration services that enable customers to communicate real-time via our advanced, open standards global conferencing platform.

Premiere Global serves more than 46,000 corporate accounts in nearly every business sector, throughout 19 countries worldwide. Our corporate headquarters is located at 3399 Peachtree Road NE, Suite 700, Atlanta, GA 30326.

Additional information can be found at www.premiereglobal.co.uk or contact our local office in the United Kingdom on +44 (0)20 7444 0700.