Challenge

Stand Up America (SUA), is a digital-first grassroots community focused on standing up to corruption and voter suppression, and building a more representative democracy. SUA wanted to use SMS and social media to increase voter registration, education, and turnout for the election cycle.

SUA needed to trigger custom conversations when a member sent in a keyword, depending on if they were new or existing. As members texted in, SUA would need to collect data and use this info to build a voting plan and determine the member’s nearest polling place. To convert voting commitments to voter turnout,  SUA needed a dynamic and powerful SMS tool that could engage voters at scale.

Keyword: A word or phrase that supporters can text in to your campaign to subscribe and start a conversation

Automation: A set of conditions that will trigger SMS messages. Automation conditions can be customized so only specific audiences can trigger a flow, such as if the subscriber is new or existing

Strategy

SUA identified 3 key phases to engage supporters: voter registration, lead up to the election, and election day turnout. Working with 107 celebrity activists, like Barbra Streisand and Nick Offerman, SUA created a set of keywords custom to each influencer to share on their social channels.

Each keyword would initiate a SMS automation that would prompt supporters to reply with their full address.

As keywords were shared at each phase, supporters could quickly trigger interactive message flows that would provide custom voter registration and polling place info. Using the data they collected on members, like voting plan, SUA targeted broadcast reminders for early and in person voting.

Solution

Stand Up America’s keyword strategy proved to be highly effective at reaching supporters over social media. As apps like Instagram crack down on sharing political links, keywords can seamlessly engage supporters from social post to SMS.

SUA found that when keywords included a service, like finding your closest polling place, engagement rates were even higher.

“Strive Messaging's cutting-edge features are unmatched by other broadcast tools. Our program used several key features in the platform for GOTV efforts, which enabled us to scale this national campaign"
-Kim Hall, Senior Director of Digital Campaigns at Stand Up America

SUA was able to launch a national GOTV campaign that reached millions of supporters.

Using Strive’s accessible user interface, SUA could easily coordinate dozens of automations that served custom messaging, depending on the keyword used. As members moved through each phase, SUA could target asks to members that were the most engaged.

To learn more about Stand Up America's recent advocacy work click here

Want to learn how Strive Messaging can help you grow your opt-in SMS list? Schedule a demo with a member of our Partnerships team.

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