raconteurmedia

Voter Mobilization during COVID-19

This is an award-winning example of using data and targeted digital advertising – during COVID – to do something. Using traditional tactics, this will take hundreds of people thousands of hours to canvas homes, register voters and turn out the vote. Raconteur did it with brutal efficiency and won the highest professional accolades from its peers in the American Association of Political Consultants.

The campaign began with 50,646 unregistered energy workers in Texas.  

We had a two-step plan to mobilize more energy workers to the polls this November in Texas. We combined technology that tracks devices and mobile phones back to physical addresses and built our client an audience that it could both persuade and mobilize into beneficial action. Our client did not have a roster of registered or unregistered energy company workers and contractors. 

First, we used device tracking and device ID mapping to physical addresses and the voter file to find the registered and unregistered oil and gas workers. We did this by making a list of energy sites – everything from gas wells to corporate energy offices across the state. We monitored smartphones these employees carry and tracked only those people with devices who regularly visit the sites. This allowed us to separate occasional visitors and one-time visitors so that we don’t mistake them as employees or stakeholders. We also used this method to prevent us from double counting one person who visits multiple sites regularly. 

After this monitoring, we came up with a dataset of devices matched to individuals in the Texas energy industry. We tracked these devices back to physical home addresses. Once we had their home address, we matched that to the voter file to find registered voters and non-registered Texans who could vote. 

Using this strategy, we developed an audience of 50,646 unregistered energy workers and 194,017 registered energy workers.

Then, we used device and IP targeting to deliver our OTT, banner and video advertising messages. We served the unregistered voters an average of 59 impressions per person. We served the registered voters an average of 20 impressions per person. 

We targeted 194,017 registered voters with digital advertising messages about voting, and 180,469 of these voters cast ballots in the 2020 general election.

The campaign registered 26,912 new voters from the Texas energy industry in the time after the primary runoff and before the general election, and 81.2% of these new voters cast ballots in the 2020 general election.

When is it ever a good time to guess how voters want to hear from your campaign?

I can’t think of a good time either. Especially, not now.

When is it ever a good time to guess if voters are hearing your message?

I can’t think of a good time, either. Especially, not now.

When you start campaigning, Raconteur knows you may need to pivot your strategy and adapt to the pandemic environment. We hope these survey results help you with your planning. Please let us know if there’s anything we can do for you.

“Thinking about candidates campaigning for the November 2020 general election, what methods do you prefer to communicate and learn about candidates who will appear on the ballot?”

Direct Mail – 35%

E-mail – 35%

Social Media – 24%

In-person gathering or event – 12%

Text Message – 8%

Someone from the campaign comes to your door – 3%

Phone Call – 2%

If you’d like to see the crosstabs or any related data to these results, contact Ryan Gravatt.

WPAi conducted the poll and its CEO Chris Wilson had this to say, “As head of Digital Strategy for Senator Cruz in his 2016 campaign for president I saw first-hand the impact of effective advertising on social media as we took advantage of the evolution of traditional campaigning. Governor Abbott further proved this in both 14 and 18 with an unmatched data-driven social media-heavy digital effort. Any campaign that ignores that evolution does so at their own peril and will ultimately fail to be competitive.”

Our clients are implementing our recommendations and they are seeing good results. We continue to see large swells of traffic and engagement across social media and Websites during the pandemic. Contact me if you’d like a consultation about how you can do a better job with your digital presence in these changing times.

The COVID-19 pandemic will change the way we campaign in 2020.

Your traditional tactics to contact voters in one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many scenarios will change.

Are you willing to change?

Are you ready to change?

Answer ‘No’ and you are risking the success of your next election.

Geofencing

Geofencing is an advertising tactic that draws a virtual fence around a location.  Geofencing ads can be seen by all individuals within this barrier.  This is useful for targeting people who are at an event, who are in a building or who come and go from a location. We can also use this to track individuals who visit a certain location so that later we can serve digital advertising to them.

Geotargeting

Geofencing Example

Geotargeting Example