Does this bring in money or votes? Newsletter 32
Hey all! I’m Keegan Gallery, the DNC’s Digital Ads Director, and I’m here to bring you installment #32 of ‘Does This Bring in Money or Votes.’ In 2022, the DNC’s ads team set new fundraising records, raising more money through ads than any other year in DNC history! Today, I’m here to talk to you about how we accomplished that, in addition to the work we did to tell the story of the Biden-Harris administration’s legislative wins ahead of the midterm elections.
Shifting our goals
The DNC has been laser focused on growing the number of supporters and donors on our email list over the years. These investments have paid off many times over. But, as our list continued to grow in size this cycle, the cost per new lead acquired also started to climb. We partnered with our analytics team on some analysis around our acquisition strategy and concluded with the rising costs and little time left in the election, we needed to change course and do it fast.
We quickly shifted our focus from broad list acquisition goals to a narrower strategy built around ads platforms, campaigns, and audiences that would yield immediate returns. We leaned heavily into Google Search, Facebook and Instagram Direct Donate, and YouTube, and immediately saw gains in our return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) and immediate revenue. In the months following the shift, we consistently raised twice as much money, at three times the previous ROAS.
Testing and iterating our creative
It’s no secret that Facebook and Instagram feeds are competitive places to run ads. We knew that our ads were constantly running up against that viral video of a dog reuniting with its owner, that TikTok dance trend that finally made its way to Instagram, and the wedding pics from the friend of a friend who you met that one time, and of course, other ads. And with Meta increasing the number of ads in feeds, stories, and other placements, the creative we use is more important than ever.
We were (and still are!) constantly testing and launching new campaigns to see what works best. And when we find a winner, we iterate.
A great example of this process is our iPhone “notes-style” creative, which we ran on Facebook. This style of ad became a quick winner. It doesn’t look like a typical ad you might be used to seeing in your feed. It looks like the iPhone notes app, a place where you might jot down a to-do list or even a long apology letter to bypass Twitter character limits. And we think it works because it looks different.
We also successfully used direct-to-camera videos from President Biden, Vice President Harris, and many other surrogates like Elizabeth Warren, Gretchen Whitmer, Chris Murphy, and Howard Dean to generate donations from folks across the country.
Using Legislative Wins to Reactivate Supporters: Inflation Reduction Act
But, as you know based on the title of this newsletter, our team is not just focused on bringing in money. We also wanted to tell the story of the Biden-Harris administration and Democrats’ legislative wins.
When historic pieces of popular legislation pass—like the Inflation Reduction Act—more people across the country tune in to the happenings in Washington. In these moments, we have the opportunity to tell our story. To maximize the amount of our base reached, we communicate with our supporters across as many channels as possible. When the Inflation Reduction Act passed, we immediately moved to share the positive impact the bill would have on folks across the country.
We targeted two buckets of supporters through this campaign: a voter bucket and a donor bucket. We worked with our analytics team to identify a universe of likely 2020 Biden voters in key battleground states who might not vote in the 2022 midterms. We aimed to increase the awareness of this important Democratic accomplishment, making sure folks knew that President Biden and congressional Democrats were making progress for American families.
We also prioritized reaching people we couldn’t contact via email or SMS, either because they hadn’t engaged with the DNC’s programs in a while and had become inactive, or because they had unsubscribed.
This campaign reached hundreds of thousands of otherwise unreachable supporters and voters, telling the story of Democrats’ accomplishments at a time when they are more likely to tune in to political news.
Integrating organic and paid social
One of the many benefits of being on the DNC’s Mobilization Team is that there are talented and creative people churning out top-notch content – content that often does big numbers. Whenever a social post takes off, it’s a sign that something about that piece of creative connected with our supporters and that we can learn a lesson and apply that insight to paid social ads.
We successfully used this strategy of repurposing high-performing social creative multiple times throughout the cycle to maintain a steady stream of profitable ads campaigns with a low lift on our creative team, freeing up their time to continue to create more content.
Conclusion
I’m so proud of the work we did to break DNC ads fundraising records and communicate the wins of the Biden-Harris administration to folks ahead of the midterms. We learned a lot and will continue to build on these successes to raise more money and win more votes.