Every Child Matters
Successful campaign motivates Ohio's under-served voters to Get Out the Vote in 2004
During the recent presidential election, Tuvel Communications and Every Child Matters (ECM) worked together to encourage parents and child advocates to increase their voting participation. This resulted in a high-impact, low-cost program that brought greater weight and visibility for improved child-policy initiatives, both in the targeted state of Ohio and throughout the entire U.S.
The ECM Education Fund is a non-profit, non-partisan organization headquartered in Washington, DC. Its mission is to establish smart policies for children and their families as a national political priority. Issues of interest include abuse prevention, child-care aid for working families, expanded pre-school education and after-school programs, and assuring good health care for all children.
"On behalf of everyone here at Every Child Matters, I want to thank Tuvel Communications for the terrific job you did for us. I can tell you that everyone here now talks about the importance of 'blogs' and viral marketing with every communication and initiative we begin. Our efforts to improve the well-being of children have been strengthened as a result. Thanks — and we hope to work with you again soon."
— Michael Petit: President, Every Child Matters Education Fund
Goals
ECM had three weeks in which to accomplish its primary goal of raising the visibility of Ohio’s children during the public-policy and issue debates of the 2004 presidential election. As part of this effort, ECM asked Tuvel Communications to increase its overall e-mail list-building efforts and use the Internet to establish a network of volunteers and children’s advocates who represented Ohio’s under-served voters. The state of Ohio was a focal point for electronic outreach efforts and distribution of collateral materials.
Since the campaign coincided with Halloween, which occurred only four days before the election, ECM distributed holiday-themed promotional materials "Get Out The Vote" (GOTV) materials, including colorful trick-or-treat bags and similar Halloween items to children at participating sites, who took the materials home to parents and other family members.
Strategy
ECM and Tuvel Communications used an integrated effort to drive traffic to the polls, locate volunteers, create awareness and add excitement to ECM’s Halloween-themed GOTV efforts. Internet marketing tools drove offline traffic, while a website built ongoing relationships. The entire effort was organized through a virtual command center connecting ECM’s main office in Washington, DC, with field staff in Ohio.
Tactics
ECM located groups of potential voters and mobilized to include those who work with Ohio's under-served children in locations such as computing networks, domestic-violence centers and homeless shelters. Communications planning included an easily understood message, which created a sense of urgency and an emotional tug at the heartstring for supporting children’s issues.
The ECM website succeeded in creating an electronic network of supporters who “spread the word” in a very short time period and drove traffic to the polls on Election Day. This made it possible to use the Internet for placing marketing materials and fulfillment orders. Online contests created excitement and awareness for GOTV events. Execution included both personalized communications and larger-volume e-mail marketing.
Results
Although conceived and executed in a short period of time, ECM’s GOTV effort was highly successful. By reaching out to 100,000 Ohio children from low-income families, ECM successfully educated and motivated more than 400,000 under-represented parents and professionals who work with children to vote for the betterment of children's lives on Election Day 2004. By providing a better understanding of the landscape of a fragmented field, Tuvel Communications put a marketing process for ongoing future communications in place as well.
By combining traditional and interactive efforts, ECM was able to distribute 800,000 GOTV marketing materials to 400,000 under-served voters through 100,000 children. Tuvel Communications created a database of 1,000 organizations and individuals from the Ohio children’s community to both enhance the 2004 effort and carry it into the future. A virtual GOTV network was formed that included 200 participating child-serving sites. The Ohio e-mail list saw incremental growth of 200 percent.
Thanks to the innovative use of the Internet, ECM met its campaign goals at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing. The campaign also resulted in developing an activists’ network that can be used for future voter-mobilization efforts.
Achieving Similar Success
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