Civic Nebraska + Effct | Powering Vote at Home

How We Partnered with Civic Nebraska to Contribute to a 80% Vote by Mail Turnout in the 2020 Primary

Before

The State of Nebraska operates a complicated Vote by Mail (VBM) election system. Voters can apply to vote by absentee without exception. But the application is not easily accessible for all voters across the state. Nebraskans must visit the archaic state website, navigate the not so user friendly pages to finally find the application. Then, the voter must fill out the form, print it and send it back to the Secretary of State’s office via mail.

After

Effct partnered with Civic Nebraska to simplify the process. We used a captivating explainer video to educate voters. We then designed a landing page, which voters submitted their info into. We then directed them to the Vote By Mail application, and continually followed up with automated emails to ensure they turned in their application.

On Primary Election Day 2020, the state of Nebraska shattered voting history due to more than 80% of all votes cast by mail compared to 25% historically. The COVID-19 pandemic played a huge factor in the increase in VBM. Still Effct and Civic Nebraska's partnership generated 400,000 impressions online, and nearly 400,000 Nebraskans voted by mail.

Civic Nebraska has been extremely pleased with our partnership with Effct. The Effct team brought political and technical expertise to our statewide Vote by Mail push. From start to finish, they have demonstrated a keen understanding of the Nebraska electoral process. Their passion for voter access for all Americans aligns extremely well with our vision for voting rights for all Nebraska voters. We are looking forward to our continued partnership and success through the 2020 general elections!

- John Cartier

Director of Voting Rights,

Civic Nebraska

By the Numbers

319,614

Total Impressions

~90,000

Voters Reached

$1.19

Cost Per Voter Registered

66%

Conversion Rate

Digital Tactics

Explainer Video

Effct began by created and designed an engaging explainer video meant to convey a clear and concise story to raise awareness about Nebraska’s Vote by Mail application. Together with other engaging supplemental videos we have garnered over 22,000 video views across the state.

Landing Page

We built a sticky landing page (civicnebraska.vote) meant to convert voter traffic into successful Vote by Mail registrations. The landing page is meant to be a trusted source for VBM applications and voter registration for all Nebraskans. In the month leading up to the Primary, we generated a total of 3,939 website visits and registered over 2,500 voters for early voting.

Targeted Traffic

By understanding our target audience we deployed hyper targeted ads through Facebook and Google to ensure we were able to reach voters searching for an easy and simple way to Vote. Through our successful Facebook traffic and lead generation ads we were able to draw a lot of visitors to the civicnebraska.vote site at a low cost of $0.53 per visit.

Automated Email

Instead of sending folks to the SOS website to access the VBM application we asked folks to complete an online questionnaire automatically enrolling them in the drip campaign. With the data collected through this website and our email platform, we are able to see exactly how many constituents are opening emails, which platform they’ve come to the website by, and whether or not they are actually downloading the vote at home form, which we offered directly on the website. This method allowed Effct to achieve a 49.45% open rate and led to more than 2,500 registrations through the landing page.

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