124. SPN: Before Election Week Make These Shifts

Budget, Channels, Audience, and Creative considerations

Oct 27, 2024

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In this week’s SPN:

Reader Question and why getting into market early for Cyber/GT Week pays dividends
How to maximize your Orgs digital performance during this election period
Budget, Channels, Audience, and Creative considerations
Explore: Build Your Tech Stack (link)
Lots of Jobs that took my fancy this week

“Should I keep it simple or try a variety of strategies to learn what works best when it comes to Giving Tuesday?”

Received this question in my SPN inbox this week. Here’s the crib notes version of my reply:

Keep it simple: During Cyber/GT Week, donors are bombarded with endless promotions. Make sure your call to action is strong and loud. Send reminder emails and make the CTA crystal clear across all channels. Many Orgs make the mistake of being too timid with their campaign positioning and asks. When I’ve sent three to four emails per day during Cyber/GT Week, I’ve seen the best results. There’s no such thing as promoting too much when trying to compete against every business serving up offers during Cyber/GT Week.

Don’t reinvent the wheel. If you’re running a Match and a media mix that you know works from past Cyber/GT Week’s, think about remixing and augmenting this vs totally re-inventing the wheel. You don’t need to change everything in every way. You just need to update it and reskin your ads, LPs, emails, and Matches to win again.

Introduce your CTA early. Share your Cyber/GT Match offer or CTA significantly ahead of time. Building anticipation early helps win you some valuable real estate in the donors mind at such a competitive time.

Going early also ensures your donors know when the Match will start and what they can expect, and that means you’re creating a smoother donor experience and more FOMO to want to hop on board. This isn’t technically difficult. It just involves planning and deploying ads and content a few weeks in advance.

Jobs & Opps 🛠️

Save the Children Global Ventures: Associate Director, Nature-based Solutions Portfolio

Remake: Director, Development & Impact ($100,000 + bonus)

Grateful Giving: Fractional CMO (pro bono)

Safe Passage Project: Development Manager ($75,000 - $90,000)

charity: water: The Experience Lab Director

Save the Children US: Head, Media and Communications ($154,000 - $210,000)

New York Hall of Science: Chief Advancement Officer ($250,000 - $300,000)

American Cancer Society: Intern, Marketing & Communications

COMCAST: Director, Community Investments

UNICEF: Volunteer Engagement and Strategy, Generation Unlimited (Consultancy)

American Heart Association: National Development Lead, Impact Campaigns ($120,000 - $130,000)

Salvation Army UK: Senior Website Officer (£38,289)

Gates Family Foundation: Director, Strategic Communications and Informed Communities ($135,000 – $162,000)

→ More jobs updated daily to SPN’s sister website: www.pledgr.com

Explore: Build Your Tech Stack (link)

Searching for new tools or trying to trim down your tech stack? Play around in this infographic. I add to it most weeks.

How and What to Shift in Your Paid Media Strategy Before Election Week

This US election cycle won’t completely end on November 5^th. There’ll be plenty of residual ads floating about from all quarters of the market. But most Orgs will benefit from not turning off their paid media.

That said adjusting your Orgs current in-market strategy is a must.

Multiple news outlets have shared that the last nine days before this presidential election in the US will account for 25% of a whopping $12B total spent in this election cycle. The total size of the digital advertising industry in the US this year is $298B, with an average 9-day spend of $7.3B.

Political ads will bring this up to $10B, making every impression 40% more expensive – and every donor 40% more fatigued from seeing ads online.

Here’s how you can maximize your Orgs digital performance during this period →

I broke down my approach into the following buckets: Budget, Channels, Audience, and Creative categories. Each of the tactics I list can be implemented in the next 2 days.

If you haven’t prepared for the election, there’s still time. Just move fast.

Budget

Pause campaigns in Swing States now - even if they’re the best performers for your Org. The economics won’t work, with more than half the political budget spent on these 7 states, you’ll be blowing costs for every impression by 2x, 3x, more in some cases.

Even though most political ads will be further targeted to reach only swing communities instead of entire states, any potential gain isn’t worth the risk.

SPN Tip: Don’t restart campaigns in Swing States until 11/7. The platforms will need at least 24 hours to adjust to the reality of new, lower-price auctions.

Lower spending on donation-driving campaigns and retargeting campaigns at the bottom of the funnel by at least 50%. And reallocate half of it to prospecting campaigns with no immediate donation ask.

Conversion rates and average donation values plummet during the days leading up to the election, with people fatigued from being asked for money. At the same time, the average conversion window length for Orgs is ~80 days.

Continued spending on prospecting campaigns during the election cycle will build much-needed awareness ahead of EOY donations. Reserve the remaining budget reallocated away from retargeting campaigns for the last week of December.

Switch to Daily Budgets in all paid media platforms. With significantly higher prices, weekly or - even worse - monthly budget settings are almost guaranteed to exhaust your entire November budget in the first two weeks.

Create a spreadsheet and set the daily export of actual spending amounts across all channels to monitor the dynamics. The daily budget settings might still be overwritten by settings such as “maximize conversions” in Google Ads and other platforms - maintaining a daily spreadsheet will allow you to catch this early. No day before 11/15 should account for more than 4% of your monthly budget for a platform.

Channels

Shut off all Video campaigns - YouTube, CTV, and DRTV. These channels account for 50% of political spending. Plan to restart your video campaigns no earlier than 11/7, only targeting existing and past donors – easing into video prospecting in the second half of November.

Shut off all Audio campaigns, including podcasts and digital radio. These carry a lower share of the political budget anyway but they don’t usually tend to be strong donation drivers even during regular times - so they won’t be worth the inflated price tag between now and the election!

If your Org is running ads on X, shut it down for the whole month of November. X is the most politically charged social platform where conversation is certain to go well beyond the Election Day. Pair this with the weakest brand safety settings of all popular social media platforms and the risk of your ads appearing next to divisive political content for 3x the price isn’t worth any gain.

Also, Rumor has it (also, it’s just where my head went - such a good song) Meta is expected to launch paid ads on Threads before the end of the year. Reserve the budget reallocated away from X to test the new platform’s capabilities in December. Gonna leave my reco of no testing of new platforms during EOY at the door on this one ;)

Reallocate money away from Facebook and TikTok to other social platforms for the first half of the month. LinkedIn and Pinterest don’t allow political advertising on their platforms and are better suited for soft prospecting messages during this time.

TikTok doesn’t allow political advertising either but allows organic content on related topics. Its algorithms prioritize divisive political content to boost engagement, presenting the same brand safety issues as X.

Email is the least efficient channel during election week. Lower Email frequency to 1/4^th of what it currently is and stop emailing prospect donors altogether. The best way to email is to keep nurturing cadences for existing donors running with no donation call to action, instead focusing on impact messaging.

Restart the donation ask in the second half of November, easing in with lower amounts referenced on the landing page. 20% lower than your usual asks. Increase back to average amounts after Thanksgiving, ahead of the Cyber Week/GT surge. There’s time this year too, given GT is later.

For Display, tighten your website inclusion list. For the first two weeks of November, your list should include no more than 200 websites, focusing only on the ones that have driven donations for your Org in the last 3 months – since the start of the political season.

Additionally, implement the “above the fold only” targeting to avoid overpaying for subpar impressions.

Audience

Increase the frequency of digital ads for current donors and those who donated to your Org during the last end-of-year.

“Known” donors are a core asset for a successful EOY. Increasing the frequency by 50% for the next 2 weeks will maximize the chances of them seeing your Org’s message despite the cacophony of noise going on.

SPN Tip: Serve them with creative without a direct donation. On November 7th, replace creative with a 50/50 split of donation-oriented and not – returning to your regular mix after 11/15.

In platforms that allow political targeting, add an overlay to target Democrats and Republicans – and explicitly exclude “unknown” audiences.

This can be done in most programmatic platforms by “category” targeting or overlaying third-party audiences. Similar to pausing ads in swing states, most political advertising targets the “unknown” and “undecided” voters. Unless your Org serves a particular political cause, you will benefit from only targeting “solid blue” and “solid red” voters.

Creative

To differentiate from most political ads, add more non-white / red / blue colors in Display and Paid Social creative assets.

If bright pink, green, or yellow is in your Org’s brand book – bingo! Most political ads include the American flag one way or another – the more your Org uses a different color scheme in these next 2/3 weeks, the more it will stand out. Even black on white is going to stand out.

Prepare two versions of non-political but politically relevant assets to launch on 11/6. Regardless of whether you serve a political cause, you can tap into the post-election attention cycle by staying relevant.

I’m seeing plenty of Orgs running “hurricanes over politics,” “children over politics,” or “pets over politics”-type messaging. Take it one step further. Create 2 sets to go live when the winner is known: 1x around the angle of “current agenda supports emergency relief. Join our team!” and 1x resembling the opposite message, such as “those facing emergency today need our help more than ever.”

Monitor the conversion rate. The goal is to increase it by a higher percentage than the average donation amount decline. Modify the donation amount daily by 2% up or down until you hit that sweet spot.