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This nonpartisan campaign was a national calling effort that
targeted three groups of minority women urging them to go to the
polls and vote on Election Day. The message stressed the importance
of women voting for the betterment of women, their children, and
their community. The women of color targeted for these calls were
minority groups that historically have had low voter turnout in
13 pre-selected major metropolitan areas across 11 states. Primarily,
the recipient demographic was finely targeted in that a minority
(ethnicity) within a minority (women) was selected by voting history.
Specifically, this Get Out The Vote effort was conducted across
5 days, including Election Day, to Hispanic, Asian, and African
American women. In addition to ethnicity, women were selected
by voting history such that they must have voted in at least one
election in the past 8 years.
The rationale for the "Women of Color" Get Out The Vote effort
was to increase minority women turn-out at the polls by motivating
a larger percentage than usual of the "infrequent" women voter
base to vote. The crafted Get Out The Vote message was delivered
using a strategic blend of live and automated, and in some cases
bi-lingual, messaging to optimize the persuasiveness of the message
by ethnicity, to improve production, and to maximize the number
of women contacted overall.
A detailed process was followed for selecting the targeted women
groups and ensuring maximum persuasiveness of the message obtained
by carefully matching the targeted women groups with that of the
professional women telephone operators delivering the automated
and live messages as outlined in the next two subsections.
Targeting the Demographic
Census data was used to cumulate a demographic breakdown for
the three targeted women minority groups within 13 pre-selected
cities. From this information, the percentage of total calls to
be made into each geographic location was determined for each
ethnic group. This was achieved by analyzing the proportional
distribution based on population size and ethnicity mix. Ethnicity
was determined using information obtained from voting records
within the 13 cities. However, in areas where this information
was not available, records were pulled by gender within pre-selected,
ranked Congressional Districts and voting Wards to maximize targeting
by ethnicity. Then, the telephone list was secured and a 20-second
GOTV message was developed that addressed the importance of women
voting.
Blended Live to Automated Calling Strategy
A live to automated calling strategy was utilized that allowed
optimum production rates to be obtained by blending automated
calls within live telephone calls dependent on fluctuations in
the live answer rate in any given region. Primarily, answering
machine pick-ups were filtered by the dialing system so that only
live answers were passed to the women telephone operators unless
the number of live answers per hour began to decline. Then, a
pre-recorded message was delivered to answering machine pick-ups
only, with live answers still being handled by women telephone
operators.
Persuasiveness Messaging Through Matched Demographics
Live Messaging: Live calls were conducted almost exclusively
by women telephone operators of the same ethnicity as the targeted
group of women voters. Specifically, calls to Hispanic women voters
were made by bi-lingual women telephone operators and the automated
message was also recorded by a bi-lingual Hispanic woman. Based
on how the telephone was answered, telephone operators determined
whether to use English or Spanish. Similarly, calls to Asian and
to African American women voters were made exclusively in English
by women telephone operators of similar ethnicity.
Automated Messaging: As with the live calls, three versions
of the pre-recorded automated message were recorded using targeted
voice-overs dependent on ethnicity. The message for Hispanic women
voters was recorded in both English and Spanish by a Hispanic
woman while the messages recorded for Asian and for African American
women voters were recorded in English only by Asian and African
American women, respectively. The automated message delivered
to answering machine pick-ups indicated specifically that the
call was intended for the woman of the household.
Using targeted voice-overs by selecting women operators of the
same ethnicity to record the automated message, as well as for
live messaging, helped to ensure the persuasiveness of the message
within the three ethnic groups. Also, delivering the pre-recorded
automated message to answering machines brought maximum consistency
and control over call quality and had the added benefit of being
savable and therefore repeatable. Because the automated message
specified the importance of ensuring that it be heard by the woman
of the household, the likelihood of it being listened to by several
household members then resaved before it was finally removed from
rotation was increased significantly.
Incorporating the technique of blended automated calls to live
calls not only resulted in good production in terms of completed
calls per hour, but more importantly it delivered a 26% increase
in the phone list penetration compared to an average penetration
of 65%. Combined, the three calling lists were penetrated 88%,
with a penetration of 85% for the Hispanic records, 88% for the
African-American records, and 91% for the Asian records. Finally,
inclusion of the automated pre-recorded messages to answering
machines blended with live delivery to live answers resulted in
the message being delivered successfully on a vast majority of
the calls completed. Overall, across the three ethnic groups,
the Get Out The Vote message was successfully delivered on 84%
of the calls completed.
The care and detail taken in the research helped make this Get
Out The Vote campaign an outstanding effort. A calling strategy
was put forth that matched the ethnicity of the callers to ensure
that 1) the desired women demographics were effectively targeted
within each of the 13 cities, (2) the message had maximum impact
in terms of persuasiveness across the three women minority groups
and (3) the message would be delivered successfully to as many
minority women as possible across the three calling lists.
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