Harnessing Election Energy: MPR’s Audience Development Approach During a Critical Season
As yet another election cycle comes to a close, news stations may be reflecting on their fundraising and engagement strategies during a season with potentially higher-than-usual interest as listeners seek to be informed leading up to and following Election Day.
Minnesota Public Radio began planning for this fall’s engagement strategies in July, at the start of their fiscal year. I spoke with Emma Sands Neal, Sr. Manager, Regional Fundraising, who is charged with the station’s digital fundraising and fundraising communications.
“We were talking for a long time about how we want our messaging to land this fall,” Sands Neal said.
This careful planning led the station to focus on a few central messages, and to set a tone that was optimistic, forward-thinking, and emphasized this being a critical time to advance MPR’s mission and vision for the state as a whole.
In collaboration with their newsroom and other communication partners, Sands Neal and the digital fundraising team maintained a focus on connecting communities throughout all of their messaging during the peak election season. This included a letter from MPR’s President, Duchesne Drew, sent through a mailing campaign, an email campaign, and culminated in their fall fund drive.
Their fundraising messaging focused on three clear calls-to-action:
- Make your first gift ever.
- Increase your support.
- Become a monthly donor.
This made it easy for every listener in their audience to find an action relevant to them.
In order to build connection with audiences, the digital fundraising team is focusing on key newsroom content focused on election issues. MPR hosted an in-person series called Talking Sense, aimed at helping people become better at having hard political conversations. Another relatively new initiative, Reverb, offers news for young (and young-at-heart) adults in Minnesota with videos shared on Instagram and TikTok. The newsroom also released a voter guide in the four languages most commonly spoken in Minnesota: English, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong.
“These initiatives were really helpful to highlight that we believe in connecting communities, and emphasize our message that we’re a healthier Minnesota when we connect with each other,” Sands Neal said.
This made it possible for MPR’s fundraising teams to point to the station’s content to get audiences excited about supporting the station, and emphasize the message of this being a critical time to invest in the service.
Their fall email campaign focused on this same messaging, and they used it to debut two new thank-you gifts for one-time donations. One was an enamel pin of the state’s “I Voted” sticker, offered for new gifts of at least $10, and the other was a t-shirt designed in collaboration with the newsroom that reads “Minnesota Needs Local News,” offered for new gifts of at least $20.
One of two new thank-you gifts for one-time donations: an enamel pin of the state’s “I Voted” sticker, offered for new gifts of at least $10.
The second of two new thank-you gifts for one-time donations: a t-shirt designed in collaboration with the newsroom that reads “Minnesota Needs Local News,” offered for new gifts of at least $20.
Both thank-you gifts spoke to the civic pride that MPR knows their audience has, and were meant to encourage listeners to know that the station values gifts of all sizes.
“We created highly relevant thank-you gifts at accessible gift levels to make the decision to give right now easy,” Sands Neal said.
Making the gifts available even for one-time gifts felt important considering the broader context for their listeners, who are receiving increasingly more fundraising emails and texts from political campaigns asking them to give small gifts.
As with even the best laid plans, there were some unexpected circumstances that required their team to pivot. Sands Neal said they had planned a broader web activation on mprnews.org and their social media channels for the new thank-you gifts, and they know from experience that putting an ask in multiple places and formats is more effective.
However, after Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was nominated to run for Vice President, the fundraising team decided to pivot and focus this campaign on their already known audience.
“With many new visitors on our website, we chose to reduce the scope of the campaign. We didn’t want to interrupt the audience as they searched for breaking news and important election information,” Sands Neal said.
They did leave the gifts as options on their donation forms, and Sands Neal said it was still a good experience.
“We wanted to make it clear that we value every gift, and every gift of every size is impactful,” she said.
Their message of connected communities was carried through their mid-October fund drive, which was oriented around a public participation goal as opposed to a more internal revenue goal. On-air they maintained the focus on the three clear calls-to-action they had set at the start of their fall campaigns.
“With those three concrete asks, people had been hearing that over and over. Once the case resonated with them, they knew exactly what to do,” Sands Neal said.
The station met their donor participation goal of 5,000 gifts during the fall fund drive, which they transparently shared with their audience.
“This time of year we’re able to say, ‘when we all come together we can do better, we’re just asking you to participate in whatever amount is meaningful to you’,” Sands Neal said.
Post-election, Sands Neal said MPR is shifting quickly to Minnesota’s Give to the Max day, a statewide giving day that she said their audiences are much more motivated by than Giving Tuesday. For this campaign, their team is committed to maintaining their forward-thinking tone and hoping to capture some of the new audiences gained during election season as members.
“We are really focused on having the same messaging – the notion of community and of coming together to accomplish great things,” she said.
MPR has found that this message has resonated with their audience particularly during election season, and will continue to be relevant moving forward. As election results roll in, they will continue to collaborate with their news and communications partners internally to be mindful of their tone and adapt as needed.
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