🔱  Sign up for a free demo today to see how the latest AI and digital advocacy tools can transform your work.

3 Minute Read

Two Ways To Reach One Person

There are two tools to consider anytime you need to reach a single person, and these tools work best when combined together.

🔱  Home-by-Home Geofencing

With home-by-home geofencing, we use GPS location data to reach targets down to the individual residential level. We've covered this topic extensively in this newsletter, because it should be the entry point for any public affairs campaign. To be clear, this tactic not only captures the specific decision-maker, but also that person's family, friends, and other close influencers—all people you should also be trying to reach in a public affairs campaign. Home-by-home geofencing provides the foundation to then take your targeting even further.

🔱  One-To-One Matching

Now that you've captured every person in the decision-maker's home, you can take your targeting one step further. Through online signal matching, we can now isolate almost anyone personally, even within the household. This is a rapidly evolving area of ad tech. You've probably seen increasingly low match rates when you try to target a specific list of people, and most vendors can't even tell you who matched. This of course won't cut it when you need to reach a specific decision-maker. The low match rates are the by-product of cookies being phased out, a topic we've also extensively covered given its importance. But with largely cookieless signals, we can now reach virtually anyone down to the one-to-one level. Below are the primary signals we use to do this:

Combining home-by-home geofencing with one-to-one matching is a belt and suspenders approach to reaching the decision-maker. It also lets us set one ad frequency for family, friends, and other household influencers, while maximizing the frequency to the specific decision-maker.

So Why Don't More Campaigns Do This?

There are numerous reasons, but here are the most important ones:

🔱  First, there is confusion on the rules. Most ad tech platforms focus on the commercial and retail sectors, where various rules exist governing personally identifiable information for audiences. But those rules don't apply in political advocacy. Think about it. Countless campaign volunteers knock on doors every election cycle, and know everything about the resident's voting history and demographics from the voter file. This is far more invasive than any digital ad. But because most ad platforms don't appreciate the distinction, they won't let you target and report down to the individual level.

🔱  Second, most geofencing platforms no longer work, because they previously relied on Apple and Google for location data, which the companies no longer sell. Instead, we obtain the data from the tens of thousands of apps that we all share location data with. Virtually everyone shares location data. If you think you're not, check your privacy settings right now. 

🔱  Third, cookieless targeting is complicated. Most vendors accept the low match rates, and most clients think this is the best they can do.

🔱  Fourth, precision targeting is inexpensive. Reaching a specific household or individual doesn't require many ad impressions. Therefore, many vendors don't want to provide this service, even if they know how to.

But once you've overcome these issues, you can obtain your ad performance down to the individual level in reporting. The reporting also takes work. It means that each target must be in its own campaign setup, and these campaigns each need to be managed individually.

But if you miss the decision-maker, what's the point of your campaign?

Reaching a single target is not easy. But it is the most important thing you can do in any campaign.

Three Ways To Operationalize This Email

🔱 Review your current digital tools. If they can't ensure you are reaching a specific target, consider changes.

🔱 Review your campaign reporting. If it can't report down to the per-person level, also consider changes.

🔱 Review your last match rate on an uploaded audience. If you can't see that it matched your specific decision-maker, reconsider your approach.

🔱 If you're enjoying this content, please consider forwarding this email to a colleague or friend. 

🔱 If you're not already a subscriber, please sign up here to stay up to date on the latest developments in political technology.

🔱 If you have suggestions for future newsletters or any other feedback, we'd love to hear from you.