Objective

Senator Thom Tillis partnered with Campaign Inbox to build him the online fundraising powerhouse he needed to win the “bellwether” Senate race of North Carolina.

Challenge

Democrats recruited Cal Cunningham – a U.S. Army veteran with a celebrity following among liberal donors – to run against Senator Tillis, a Republican incumbent who lacked a strong grassroots following.

Campaign Inbox needed to execute an email and SMS fundraising program for Senator Tillis that could rival Cunningham’s record-shattering campaign.

 

Approach

Equipped with only an unengaged email list from Senator Tillis’ 2014 race, Campaign Inbox used creative ways to build excitement, energy, and urgency to donate to the Tillis campaign.

We used Senator Tillis’ seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee to highlight the role he was playing on key issues that fired up grassroots donors such as impeachment, sanctuary cities, defunding the police, the Supreme Court, as well as the fights he waged against Kamala Harris, who also served on the committee.

With Cal Cunningham raising more than $46 million on ActBlue, Campaign Inbox also took advantage of all of WinRed’s available features like conduits, upsells, and money bombs to maximize Senator Tillis’ fundraising potential.

Conduit donors who had contributed to Senator Tillis by way of other campaigns were segmented out of the ordinary housefile. While the housefile continued to receive messaging specifically about Senator Tillis, conduit donors were sent tailored messaging more broadly about protecting President Trump’s Senate majority.

Results

Conclusion

Our strategy was a huge success: we raised more than triple what Senator Tillis had raised in grassroots donations in 2014. In fact, we raised more just in October of 2020 than he did in the entire 2014 election cycle, giving the Senator a much-needed cash-on-hand advantage over Cunningham for the final month to ultimately win the race.