The phrase every vote counts is synonymous with election time, and this notion certainly proved true during Tina Smith’s senatorial re-election. In 2020, Smith won her re-election 48.8% to 43.5% (by a margin of 170,000 votes) and partnered with Impactive to help cement her victory. 

Creating a Foundation for Organizing Success

In 2020, Tina Smith was running to secure her seat as a U.S. Senator for Minnesota. Smith’s campaign was powered by volunteers helping to gather the support of constituents, but volunteer coordination and training weren’t as simple as inviting people to campaign events during the height of the pandemic. 

Organizers for Smith’s campaign recognized two things: they had volunteers who preferred texting over calling, and online communications through tools like Slack could streamline the process of training. Digital communication was particularly important since most people could only volunteer from home. 

The knowledge that texting was a valuable way to contact voters prompted Smith’s campaign to partner with Impactive. Impactive's Peer-to-Peer Texting and Friends and Family Messaging allowed the campaign to successfully mobilize and inform voters in the months leading up to Election Day. 

Targeting Voters with Curated Text Messages

Smith’s campaign staff streamlined volunteer training and support for Impactive by providing necessary information in Slack. For example, volunteers could easily find responses to common questions about the platform in Slack and use this information to text bank more efficiently. 

Additionally, ‍The Young Minnesotans for Tina leveraged Impactive's ability to import personal contacts to the app, which allowed them to conduct friend-to-friend outreach with ease. Previously, they were performing outreach by sending direct messages on Instagram, which took a lot of time. 

Campaign organizers used texted campaigns effectively by planning curated messages for special events, like Women’s Day of Action. On this day, the campaign texted women voters with messages about voting by mail and voting early in person. They also encouraged them to commit to vote tripling, in which they could prompt three other women in their life to vote by mail. Additionally, the campaign used Impactive to send messages informing voters about returning ballots to a ballot box or returning ballots by mail, along with other urgent news.

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For their most successful texting campaign, the campaign seized an opportunity for voter mobilization when Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court. The staff sent text messages to their full contact list, then targeted those who hadn’t returned their ballot yet. They contacted over 100,000 people in just 18 hours! 

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Smith’s campaign successfully re-elected their candidate through an impressive focus on curated messaging. Impactive is proud to have been a part of their success.