5 Keys To Relevant, Intentional Campaigns

Written by Tomás Quiñonez on December 9, 2020.

“Is there a Latino vote?”

In the wake of the 2020 presidential campaign, this is a question being posed by pundits, pollsters, and politicians grappling to make sense of the turnout results. This year was a watershed moment for the Latino electorate, turning out at nearly twice the rate as compared to 2016 in early voting. The extraordinary growth of Latino voters underscores the truth that there is no path to the White House without the Latino vote. So does it actually exist?

The answer, not surprisingly, is both yes and no. Certain shared experiences do certainly bring the Latino community together in a broad cultural plane. Yet the expansive range of experiences and backgrounds breaks down any notion of a monolithic Latino identity, as no single issue nor political affiliation unites all Latino voters. This diversity within diversity means that Latino support of any party or policy cannot be taken for granted. It requires a constant investment in time and resources during and also between elections to build lasting, strong connections. Politics is personal and the key to mobilizing Latino voters is messaging that speaks to their lived experiences.

This guiding focus on meeting voters where they’re at is second-nature to MAF. In fact, a client-centered approach within a community framework is how we’ve built all products and services over the past 14 years. We’ve recently applied this same rigor to our mobilizing campaigns and have been building on this approach most recently in our GOTV campaign to 105,000 clients. Here’s what we’ve learned are the 5 keys to running a successful campaign for a diverse electorate:

1. All voices are needed for a culture of belonging

Mainstream political campaigns tend to only focus on voters most likely to vote. They disregard those unlikely to vote. They ignore entirely those ineligible to vote. Ignoring those ineligible to vote is both a mistake and a missed opportunity.

What, instead, we know to be true is that every voice counts. This recent election demonstrated many states won, lost, or were sent to recount based on incredibly small margins. While there was a record voter turnout, participation still could have and should have been higher. We believe that all people, regardless of their immigration status, should be engaged in campaigns that shape our future because not only can their voices tip the scale of individual elections, but because it creates a broader culture of engagement. And it is this culture of engagement that will be the key to safeguard the soul of our nation as we build toward a more equitable future.

2. Segmentation requires humility

After 2016, the DNC realized the importance of segmenting their voter files to craft more targeted, relevant messaging to “sub-ethnicity voters.” In this way they were able to peer under the broad Latino umbrella and target Dominicanos, Mexicanos, Tejanos, and Cubanos with more relevant messaging. While this is a step in the right direction, it still assumes too much about the lived experiences of voters simply by their family’s nationality.

People should also have agency in the segmentation process by self-selecting based on their lived experiences. In our GOTV campaign, we sent out an initial survey that allowed clients to do just that. After receiving their responses, we were able to follow up with each audience segment that they opted into in order to speak to them at a deeper level.

3. Create messaging for each segment group based on values

Even further than audience segmentation, thoughtful, relevant messaging to audience groups is imperative. We found that culturally relevant, emotionally engaging messaging around values of inclusion, belonging, and community was more impactful than standard, transactional rhetoric because it speaks to the heart.

4. Test your assumptions and messaging

As a learning organization, we remain disciplined in always testing our assumptions. In the context of a campaign this discipline translated to running experiments with samples of clients to determine which message most resonated with each segment. As a rule of thumb, we would create 3 messages for each audience segment, and test each message with 200 contacts. This willingness to learn during each campaign produced insights that enable us to improve our messaging with each subsequent campaign as we continue developing our relationship with clients.

5. Reach clients where they’re at

When it’s finally time to launch the actual campaign, the last crucial step is to design multi-channel campaigns that meet people where they are at. While it may be more of a lift for the campaign organizer, it is imperative that the messages that have been so thoroughly prepared are ultimately delivered in a meaningful and impactful way.

For this reason, we designed our GOTV campaign to include both email and automated SMS because we learned previously that English and Spanish-speaking clients have different communication preferences. The industry standard response rates for SMS are an impressive 22%. The Spanish-speaking clients of our GOTV campaign doubled that number, responding to our crafted, targeted messaging at a rate of 44%.

Despite the immediate successes of this campaign to demonstrate the impact of outreach to communities largely left in the shadows, the major victory of our effort was its contribution to a broader culture of engagement. This cannot happen overnight, nor through transactional activities, because culture doesn’t just happen. It has to be built, we have to build it, celebrate it, and feed it. A culture of belonging is an ongoing process, ever bending the moral arc of history towards justice.

These insights will continue guiding our work as we invest more heavily in mobilization moving forward. And we hope you join us on this journey to fight for a more just and equitable world for all.