Case Study

US Senate Campaign Uses Micro-targeting Online to Win Senate Seat in Special Election

Human Values Targeting Drives Strong GOTV and Volunteer Response from Engaged and Influential Voters

Summary:
In January 2010, the candidate won a historic Special Election for Senate in Massachusetts. Resonate Networks worked with the campaign to reach highly engaged voters with micro-targeted messages to volunteer for the campaign and Get Out the Vote.

Precise targeting allowed the campaign to index 75% higher on influential voters, and also 24% lower on the opposing party composition to avoid mobilizing the competition.

Objective:

The campaign sought to mobilize voters and volunteers with Get Out the Vote messaging across Massachusetts in order to build momentum for the underdog candidate.

To be effective, the high threshold of the “Volunteer Now” messaging needed to reach an elusive combination of engaged and influential voters who were undecided or likely to vote Republican.

Strategy:

Using our proprietary Human Values Targeting methodology, Resonate Networks worked with the campaign to develop a custom audience profile comprised of hard to reach, highly engaged Republican straight-ticket voters, moderate Democrat split voters, and moderate Independent split voters across the state.

Resonate Networks then constructed a media plan comprised of sites with high densities of this targeted audience and delivered micro-targeted ads to reinforce the importance of voting for the candidate and drive the audience to the polls.

Results:

Resonate Networks delivered 5 million impressions in seven days, to a vitally specific audience unreachable through other forms of targeting online.

The campaign was highly successful in identifying and reaching the target audience, reaching a population 75% more likely to be “Influential Voters” and indexing 46% higher collectively on the top three political engagement strata. The audience also purposefully under-indexed Democrats (by 24%) to avoid mobilizing the opposition.

The candidate went on to win the election and claim the first Republican U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts since 1972.