Does this bring in money or votes? Newsletter 16
Hello and welcome back to “Does this bring in money or votes?” -- the DNC Mobilization team’s newsletter. We’re Davis Leonard, the DNC’s Deputy Digital Organizing Director, and Anna Kelsey, the DNC’s Grassroots Prospects Manager.
We’re here to tell you about how we chase IWillVote.com users from their first visit to the website all the way to the ballot box.
Feature:
IWillVote.com is a one-stop shop for everything a voter needs to get ready to vote. Voters can learn about voting in their state, look up their voting locations, register to vote, and request a mail-in ballot all in one place. On the backend, IWillVote is an exciting repository of information about just where voters are in their journey to voting -- data we were excited to use to create a new style of program for the DNC Mobilization team that brings a personalized, customer-service style IWillVote.com experience directly to voters’ inboxes with specific, actionable emails. And while we’ll have to wait until all the votes are counted to measure the true efficacy of our program, we have seen that over 60% of voters who received a delivery notification email ended up returning their application!
THE BASICS
The three main goals of our program were to meet voters where they are, leverage the DNC’s data and tech tools, and to make sure we were matching an automated program with human backup to answer any questions -- so that when voters engage with this content and want help, we’re there to provide it.
At its core, the program has two “tracks” for visitors to IWillVote -- the “Friendly Follow-Up” and the “Application Chase.” The Friendly Follow-Up track is for visitors we don’t know much about -- we don’t have enough information to give them a specific action item, but we do want to make sure they know we’re here for questions.
The Application Chase is the more intensive experience -- for voters who use IWillVote to request a Voter Registration or Vote-By-Mail Application, we’re able to track when that application is shipped and delivered, sending them timely automated email notifications and helpful reminders about their state’s deadlines to return them.
Here’s how we did it.
THE TECHNICAL STUFF
Building a program that could do this for thousands of voters in every state-- each with their own unique and often changing deadlines and voting rules, was a big challenge. We utilized two powerful tools -- ActionNetwork’s Ladders and Movable Ink ---- to make our voter education as adaptable as the moment demanded.
The last thing we’d want is a voter referring to an email in their inbox with out of date information. We used Movable Ink to create dynamic images for each of our application chase emails, which meant that every voter received accurate, always-up-to-date information about their state’s deadlines based on the latest data from IWillVote.com, even if something changed after the email first arrived.
The next piece is sending the emails themselves to the right people, at the right time, based on the right IWillVote actions -- that’s where the Action Network ladder comes in. “Ladders” are collections of steps that can do different things, like send an email, and “decision points” that decide whether to send someone down one set of steps or another.
As applications are marked as shipped or out for delivery by USPS and synced into our system, voters are “triggered” into ladders, and receive emails on specific intervals as needed. For example, six days after the first delivery notification email, we send a follow-up reminder -- but only if the voter’s application isn’t in the mail or back at their election official’s office already and their state’s deadline hasn’t passed.
Here’s an outline of what all those decisions look like in the delivery notification ladder:
*For the people who want ALL of the details
THE FOLLOW-THROUGH
We knew it was important to make sure we weren’t only reaching out with the information we thought voters needed, but to provide them a place to seek out information too. In every email, we let them know they could get any questions they had answered by calling the Voter Assistance Hotline, or simply by hitting reply and sending us their question right within the email chain. Replies were sent to vote@dnc.org, a volunteer-staffed distributed voter education inbox.
We are all about lowering barriers to asking questions, being ready with more information in-stream when sending out voter education information, and meeting voters where they are!
Job opportunities:
This time, we’re asking for VOLUNTEERS!! It’s GOTV, and that only means one thing: voter contact! Make some calls, send some texts, and help us bring this home. Get started here.
🧵Thread we think you should read (and retweet) 🧵
Closing:
Thanks for reading! We’re excited to see just how effective this program can be, and use everything we’ve learned from it to continue to reach voters where they are! Huge shoutout to our team for their willingness to dive into the weeds of branching ladders, USPS codes, endless variations of Movable Ink, and their fierce dedication to helping voters.
If you enjoyed reading this newsletter, we hope you’ll share it with your friends, colleagues, or anyone who loves a good chase!
Thanks for being a part of this,
Davis & Anna