Pacific Campaign House partnered with She the People to build a digital home and community for women of color
She the People
She the People elevates the political voice and leadership of women of color as part of a new progressive political and cultural era
the brief
She the People is working to build a political home for women of color at a scale never before seen in electoral politics. At the center of its mission is developing community — both on and offline. But during a pandemic, that task largely falls to digital platforms like email. For an organization who’s mission focuses on bringing together often-ignored voices, namely those of women of color, developing a vibrant and engaged email program was a priority.
the challenge
She the People had the ambitious goal of building a powerful and engaged email list composed primarily of women of color. For most broad national political or social- issue-based marketing campaigns, we expect the cost-per-acquisition to be between $1.25 and $3.00 on social media, depending on the campaign’s audience and message.
With She the People’s goal of building a list of almost exclusively women of color, our available audience of likely email activists narrowed significantly. With a smaller pool of potential names, we projected our cost per acquisition (CPA) to be between $1.75 and $4.00.
This campaign not only targeted a very specific demographic, but was further complicated by the unprecedented amounts of money being poured into Facebook for political and social-issue-based campaigns ahead of the November election.
our strategy
When deciding which issues would be the most salient with women of color across the country, we tested a broad range of topics including celebrating Kamala Harris as the first Black/Asian American female VP, as well as immigration reform, stopping the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, and joining beloved women of color like Michelle Obama, Beyonce, and Jennifer Lopez in voting.
we ran 99 ad iterations to women of color across the country.
Since we were serving our ads on social media, there were two additional important factors at play: the creative needed to be visually appealing and share-worthy. In order to break through the noise of a busy electoral cycle, we wanted to create compelling visuals that our audience would be excited to share with their own networks — a tricky goal with email acquisition ads.
If we could convince our audience to not only join our list, but also share our ads with their own networks, it would help drive down the CPA as well as create a greater sense of social proof that would encourage others to take action.
the results
Our client absolutely achieved its goal of building a women-of-color email list! Shortly after launching our first ad set, we saw that our ad creative was outperforming our projections. We’re pleased to report that our average CPA was $0.69 per name, with our lowest CPA coming in at $0.39 per name.
What was especially remarkable was that our ads saw organic engagement far above the norm that we’re used to seeing across political and social-issue advertising. Our acquisition ads were shared organically over 20,000 times, had over 140,000 positive post reactions, and over 12,000 positive comments (many of which tagged friends to sign).
Furthermore, even though this campaign’s objective was not fundraising, we were able to generate 14% in post-sign up donations with 29.5% of those donations recurring monthly.
results, by numbers
Average
Cost-Per-Name
69¢
Organic Post
Shares
20,000+
Immediate
ROI
14%
this acquisition campaign won 3 pollie awards, including the coveted best national acquisition campaign award
the
impact
She the People leveraged this engaged community of women of color to organize and mobilize ahead of the historic 2020 election, paying particular close attention to Arizona and Georgia.