One of the guiding principles of The Colibri Collective, the firm led by Democratic strategist Gaby Cardenas, is that outreach to Latino voters should never be an afterthought.
That’s embodied in a mail program the firm crafted last cycle: a bilingual voter guide that communicated in both English and Spanish, driving voters from mail pieces to online assets that furthered the campaign’s message.
Ahead of the mail campaign, Colibri deployed targeted digital ads using programmatic voter file matching technology and geotargeting households. The ads primed recipients for the arrival of the mailers, which included a QR code to help move voters to the digital environment.
“This program really was built to combat the misinformation in our state,” said Cardenas. “We had a lot of outside influences [in Arizona]. There was a lot of money being poured in, so we really had to empower this voter population.”
And when it comes to Latino voters, she added, it’s critical to communicate early and often about the process, ensuring key deadlines related to early voting and vote by mail are communicated effectively.
The mailer’s QR code drove voters to a landing page that included additional messaging and explainer videos to help voters properly fill out mail ballots. And utilizing the tech enabled the sort of analytics that helped optimize the program like page visits and time spent on page. That was followed by retargeted advertising.
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“We did find that by having a landing page and being able to measure the experience of the user really helped guide optimization,” Cardenas said. “We were able to see how the user was using the landing page, whether we had to update icons or how we had to really maximize the campaign itself.”
In 2020, over 27% of Americans visited a website based on a QR code or website link found on a mail piece and that number increased to over half for Hispanic Americans according to research conducted on behalf of the United States Postal Service.
Overlaying a larger digital component that included paid and organic social, as well as connected TV, helped create additional touch points “to really maximize each piece, each impression that went out to with this campaign.”
The takeaway for midterm campaigns, according to Cardenas: Start early when communicating with Latino voting populations, and make sure you integrate digital touch points into your mail programs. Voter suppression and disengagement are real concerns here, so messaging late in the game or with minimal resources simply won’t get the job done.
Watch our full interview with Cardenas above for more on tracking mail performance, the metrics that are most important, and how to get the timing of your mail programs dialed in.
To learn how you can better integrate mail and reach Hispanic/Latino audiences through authenticity, visit DeliverTheWin.com.
