Does this bring in money or votes? Newsletter 6
Welcome back to the sixth edition of “Does This Bring in Money or Votes?” — a newsletter brought to you by your very own DNC Mobilization team! We’re Patrick Stevenson, the Chief Mobilization Officer, and Heather Reid, the Deputy Chief Mobilization Officer here at the DNC. We spend most of our time writing and responding to emails (powerful) — but *also* overseeing the great team you’ve heard from so far and all the work that’s still to come.
Like many of you, we’ve spent the past few weeks socially distancing, working from home, and trying to do our part to help flatten the curve. We’re also getting ready to put plans into action that we’ve spent over 3 years building — plans that are going to help us put Joe Biden in the White House, send Donald Trump packing, and elect Democrats everywhere.
Feature:
The last time America had a presidential election, the DNC Mobilization team didn’t exist — or at least, not like this. One of our biggest changes since then has been combining our traditional digital and direct marketing programs into a much more efficient Mobilization team. It means we can be more strategic with our resources, see and respond to trends faster, and make sure our supporters have an experience with us that’s holistic and rewarding — all while raising more grassroots money than ever at this point in the cycle.
But what does that mean, really?
Here’s what the Mobilization team at the DNC has been building for 2020:
An integrated, high-performing grassroots fundraising apparatus that’s firing on all cylinders. In 2016, our grassroots fundraising channels functioned independently of one another, but we’ve integrated online fundraising and direct marketing to build an omnichannel fundraising strategy that’s paying huge dividends. One example? Our online fundraising team is raising 49% more money while sending 42% less email than at this point 4 years ago (psst, you can sign up to get those emails here) — and it’s leading to historic numbers:
Our most efficient direct marketing program ever. By running an integrated program, we’re able to be more strategic about our investments than we’ve ever been. We’ve cut most telemarketing (except for the audiences where it’s wildly profitable), and gotten tighter on direct mail, which remains an incredibly high-performing channel for us. As a result, we’ve increased our direct marketing program’s net revenue by 31% over the past four years:
A focused, thoughtful program to recruit, engage, and retain grassroots sustaining donors. Our friends at ActBlue have analytics that show that the most important thing we can do to increase the long-term value of a donor is talk to them about why it’s so important to become a regular sustaining donor. So rather than pay lip service to these super-important donors, we've hired dedicated staff to recruit, retain, and support their needs, all while growing our sustaining donor base to its largest point ever. Being able to build off this foundation has set us up for our success this year:
In general, we’re able to use all of our channels to smartly complement each other. For example: texting a supporter after we’ve sent them a direct mail piece increases revenue by *22%* according to our testing. Simply being on our direct mail house file increases the amount online donors give online! Sending a blast SMS to highlight our big email sends increases revenue over both channels! Having all your grassroots fundraisers on the same team is the move, guys.
The DNC War Room. Together with our communications and research teams, we’ve launched a rapid-response-focused program and brand that’s focused on holding Trump accountable for his ineffectiveness and broken promises, especially in battleground states. Since April 2019, we’ve increased the War Room’s engagement rate by 120% — you can follow the War Room here on Twitter or here on Facebook.
A broadcast SMS list that’s nearly 9 times the size it was in 2016. We’ve spent the last 3 years building an SMS program fit for 2020 that’s focused on growth in battleground states especially — and it shows. (You can sign up to get texts from us here!)
An in-house ads program that’s more nimble and more cost-effective than ever. We brought our ads program in-house in May of 2019. Since then, we’ve not only grown our lists, but we’ve dropped CPAs by 62% and increased immediate revenue by 65%, all while doing all amazing design and video creative in-house. You can take a deep dive into our ads program here.
That led to the biggest investment in online acquisition in DNC history. We know that we need to reach more voters and supporters than ever before, and to do that, we’ve made a historically large investment in online acquisition. Through just 3 months of 2020, we’ve spent more on online acquisition than we did in all of 2016 and 2017 combined. I mean, just look at this:
And nearly $22 million in general election advertising already reserved, too. We know we’ll need a robust, omnichannel strategy to mobilize voters this November, and we’ve come out swinging with our largest investment in YouTube digital ads ever.
A solid, battle-tested voter registration and polling place lookup tool that’s open to anyone (yes, you too). IWillVote.com is *the* place for supporters to register to vote, check their registration status, and confirm where they vote. We’ve supported over 3.2 million polling place lookups since October of 2018, and we’re ready to support voters and campaigns in 2020.
A fresh, clean brand that works for 2020, and a new democrats.org to match. We scrapped the old, clunky DNC website in favor of a mobile-first approach that makes it easy for any supporter to take action — whether that action is donating, volunteering, or learning more about what we stand for.
You can see that new brand in everything we do. To support this new site and all our work, we also refreshed the DNC brand to put the faces of our movement front and center and modernized our brand colors and fonts.
A badass digital organizing program that’s meeting the moment we’re in. Beyond building communities online, our digital organizing team has had nearly 7,000 sign ups for digital organizing trainings in just the past few weeks. And they’ve texted over 2.8 million voters in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Nebraska to encourage them to register to vote by mail since April 1.
Dedicated, passionate groups of supporters and volunteers across battleground states — and beyond. We’ve spent a year building supporter Facebook groups where fellow Democrats can not only find community, but take action.You can find a group of your own here!
A smart social media strategy that prioritizes reaching voters who *aren’t* always on Twitter. We know that Twitter is full of a lot of high-information, high-engagement individuals — but it’s not the whole conversation. That’s why we’ve invested in growing our audiences on Instagram and Snapchat, including a nearly 600% increase in Snapchat subscribers since July 2019.
That means a video team that meets the moment, every time. From sounding the alarm on GOP voter suppression, to paying tribute to those who paved the way for this moment, to telling the world what we’re fighting for, we’re ready to lead with our values in 2020 (don’t forget to hit the subscribe button here, too).
Job Opportunities:
There are plenty of cool openings at the DNC! Check out democrats.org/jobs
🧵Thread we think you should read (and retweet) 🧵
Closing:
We’ve made huge strides, but make no mistake — we know the work is just getting started. We’re ready to head into the general election and use all the tools and resources at our disposal to help Joe Biden win. We want you to be a part of it, too — text JOIN to 43367 so you don’t miss a moment between now and November 3!
Patrick & Heather