Effective Ways to Maximize Election Awareness and Engagement

Election engagement and awareness are essential components of any electoral campaign. They empower you to reach a larger audience while also motivating individual voters to participate and be represented in the election process.

Why Election Awareness Matters

From governmental elections to private organizational elections, election awareness is essential for multiple reasons, including:

1. Informed decision-making: Empowering voters with the right information helps them make decisions that support the success of your organization.
2. Improved voter turnout: When election awareness is lacking, voter turnout tends to decrease. People are more likely to participate when they know about elections and what’s on the ballot.
3. Greater voter confidence: When voters understand the election process, they feel more confident and are more likely to participate.

Next, let’s discuss tools and strategies you can use to increase voter awareness and engagement.

Capitalize on Social Media

When you incorporate social media platforms into your attention-raising and engagement campaigns, you unlock benefits like:

• Increased engagement: By using analytics to identify voters’ preferred platforms and using those platforms in your campaigns, you can easily boost engagement and build an online presence.
• Additional feedback: Maintaining an active presence on social media provides voters with a convenient means of communication. This approach allows you to receive more feedback, constructive criticism, and praise from voters.
• Better awareness: When used in conjunction with traditional reminders, social media campaigns are an effective way to increase awareness, ultimately leading to higher voter turnout.

Making Your Campaign Personal

Addressing voters personally and by name makes them feel seen and valued, encouraging them to participate in the election process. Some effective personalization techniques include:

• Creating specific content: When you understand your voter demographics and create content tailored to different groups of voters, it’s more likely to resonate with them.
• Personalized communications: Sending out personalized emails and letters that use voters’ names allows you to establish a connection with them.
• Using personal language: In addition to using voter names in your communication, you can use more personal language to improve engagement.

Using Election Analytics

Election analytics are a powerful tool that can help you engage voters and ensure optimal awareness and understanding. With election analytics, you can:

• Analyze member preferences: By reviewing data about voting methods, you can determine whether voters prefer mobile, online, or mail-in voting. You can tailor voting options to your members’ preferences.
• Identify target areas: From geographical locations to  department-level data and other factors, analytics allow you to identify areas you need to target with election campaigns.
• Understand popular choices: When you use voter analytics, you gain insight into every aspect of voter preferences, from their preferred browsers to which physical locations encourage more people to vote.

Using this type of information from past elections can help make your future elections more successful. 

Following Election Marketing Best Practices

Relying on proven strategies and practices can help breathe new life into your election proceedings. Here are three techniques you can implement to improve engagement. 

1. Develop a Strategic Plan

Stay on budget, on brand, and achieve results with a strategic marketing plan that uses:

• Email collection: Survey & Ballot Systems (SBS) can help streamline this process for both digital and paper ballots. In both instances, we prompt voters to provide an email address. If the provided address differs from the one in your records, we’ll send you the updated address.
• Email list verification: Identify members who cannot be reached via email and develop strategies to reconnect with them, such as using an email list verification tool. Our election management software, SBSHub®, helps ensure email validity by providing admins with a complete list of bounced and unsubscribed email addresses, making it easier to identify and address delivery issues.
• Voter surveys: We can help you conduct comprehensive voter surveys that provide insight into your voting demographics.

2. Create Relevant Content

Creating and marketing relevant content can help bring more attention to the campaign. A few options include:

• Website banners: Redirect members to the ballot login page by using clickable banners on your homepage.
• Election landing pages: Create a centralized page for all election-related information, including election dates, voting locations, and candidate details.
• Videos: Create engaging videos aimed at eligible voters to raise election awareness and encourage participation.

3. Employ Outreach Techniques

Distribute content to your voting members through continuous outreach using methods like:

• Social media campaigns: Promote election information across various social media platforms, tailoring your reach based on member preferences and usage.
• Get-out-the-vote (GOTV) messaging: Design consistent GOTV material to send a unified message to members about the importance of the elections and their participation.
• Email promotions: Send emails to members with actionable voting steps to help them complete their ballot. If the election is online, consider adding embedded login links to make voting more convenient and accessible.

Increase Voter Participation With SBS

No matter what kind of organization you’re involved in, you can rely on SBS to simplify the electoral process and support voter participation. 

Contact us today to discuss how we can assist you or request a quote tailored to your specific needs. Our team is ready to help you with your organization’s next election.