Ballot campaign management is one of our specialties at Martin Waymire. Our team has staffed a bunch of ballot campaigns since the early 1990s, winning far more than we’ve lost (no one bats 1,000 in this game). Personally, I’ve worked on 10 ballot campaigns, posting 8 wins.

This year we were the lead on-the-ground agency in successfully defeating Proposal 5, the so-called “two-thirds” or “supermajority” constitutional amendment. We are proud to note that the NO on 5 campaign out-performed every candidate and ballot question on Michigan’s Nov. 6 ballot:

• NO on 5 got the most votes, by far, of any candidate or question on Michigan’s ballot — far more than even U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow and President Barack Obama.
• NO on 5 was the only ballot question or candidate campaign to exceed 3 million votes.
• While all six statewide ballot questions were soundly defeated, NO on 5 out-performed the next best “NO” campaign by about 260,000 votes.
• Our cost-per-vote was roughly 67 cents. While we don’t have exact spending numbers for the other five ballot questions, we suspect our campaign was possibly the most cost-effective of them all. And, we were outspent by the YES on 5 campaign better than 2-1.
• Coincidentally and ironically, Michigan voters defeated Proposal 5 by a better-than supermajority vote of 69-31, the largest margin of any of the questions.
• We won all 83 Michigan counties.
• Every Michigan newspaper in the state that editorialized on Proposal 5 said “VOTE NO.”

In terms of ballot question communications and campaign strategies and tactics, much has changed since my first ballot campaign in 1992. Here are some lessons learned on the 2012 ballot campaign management trail:

• Social media and other online communications channels are now essential to successful campaign management and execution. President Obama’s 2008 campaign pioneered the use of social media in political campaigns. In just four years, social media has become indispensable to all levels of political campaigns, including ballot question contests.  While more campaign ad and voter contact dollars are still spent on TV and radio, the time is coming when the lion’s share will go to online strategies and tactics. I would argue that our use of social media and online strategies and tactics (led by Martin Waymire’s Andrea Ness, Amy Morris and Naomi Burton) was the best, or certainly among the best, of all the 2012 Michigan ballot campaigns. More and more voters are turning to the Internet (search engines like Google) to get campaign information. For a campaign to win, it simply must rank highly in online searches. If one side is not there, chances are good the other side will be.
• Traditional forms of direct voter contact remain essential. Direct mail, radio, TV and print ads are still essential, despite the growing use of online. Perhaps sadly, voters still base most of their voting decisions on what they see on TV. And with more people voting absentee, it is critical to reach them before they turn in their ballots, which is often weeks before Election Day. That means targeted direct mail and other paid traditional and online contact tools.  In the face of a well-funded opponent who also is doing paid media, it’s almost impossible to prevail in a ballot campaign without these tactics.
• Legacy media still matter — a lot. With every major newspaper in Michigan opposed to Proposal 5, the YES side had to confront unfriendly media fire across the state. We also used excerpts from Republican and Democrat-leaning editorial pages in our voter contact communications and our social media tactics. In fact, Nolan Finley, editorial page editor of The Detroit News (“Michigan’s Republican voice”) and Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the more liberal Detroit Free Press, appeared together in one of our campaign “odd couple” videos. It was viral smash!
• A large coalition still matters — a lot. All six questions on the Michigan ballot were trounced. Yet, NO on 5 got the most votes — by far. The next closest was NO on 3, lagging by 260,000 votes. We attribute the margin to the breadth and depth of our NO on 5 coalition, which included a remarkable brew of odd couples — nearly every major business and every major labor group in Michigan; teachers, school boards and the PTA; hospitals, road builders, retailers and shopping malls; major religious organizations and churches; cities, counties and townships; most leading Republicans and Democrats; and even a Tea Party leader. With so many organizations saying “NO on 5” and using the same messages, it’s no surprise we got the most votes.
• Sometimes, it’s okay for politicians to be your ballot question messenger. Many ballot campaign managers shun using a politician as a messenger, ever. In the case of Proposal 5, however, our quantitative research showed Gov. Snyder’s favorable ratings were quite strong (back in September and October anyway) with independent and undecided voters.  His leadership was not only coveted, it was beneficial at that time.
• Research remains the foundation of effective ballot question communications. Research — quantitative and qualitative — still must drive the messaging. This will likely never change. We conducted two quantitative surveys, and had access to other superb quantitative research, on Proposal 5. Martin Waymire principal David “The Stat Man” Waymire took care of researching the experiences of other states that have “supermajority” tax requirements and how Proposal 5 would affect essential state policies and programs. We also did a deep dive look into the people funding Proposal 5. We merged all of our research findings together into a powerful three-message set that absolutely peeled away support. Early polling showed Proposal 5 passing with nearly 70-percent voter support. As noted above, it ending up failing 69-31.
• It’s not how much a campaign spends. It’s how strategic it is in resource allocation, coupled with the strength of its messages and messengers. We were outspent more than 2-1. Yet, we won because of strong messages, credible messengers, a large and engaged coalition, and effective use of social media. A ballot campaign can be outspent and still win, so long as it uses resources wisely and can at least be competitive.

Social media marketing for clients seems to be taking the forefront in communications plans these days — with valid reason. Using social media as a marketing tool is a great way to spread awareness and get your message heard in a fun and creative way, and pretty much instantly.

When social media sites first launched, there was no reliable way of tracking social media results in your marketing and PR campaigns, so companies were hesitant to jump on the bandwagon or include it as a budgeted item when there was no metric-based way to prove it was really working. Things have changed dramatically since then, large companies use paid services like Radian6 to track social measurement while new free services such as Facebook Insights are coming into play.

Today, metrics fans like yours truly were overjoyed to receive news of even more dramatic enhancements to Google Analytics, one of the key analytics tools we use at Martin Waymire Advocacy Communications.

New set of social reports for Google Analytics

Google Analytics is constantly upgraded to make sure the platform stays ahead of the curve, but the new reporting options now available allow the Martin Waymire team to better measure the full value of each social channel we use for our clients:

• Identify traffic value coming from social media sites and measure how they lead to direct or future conversations.
• Understand the social activities that are happening, on our sites and on social platforms, to better optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Help us and our clients make more efficient data-driven decisions in our social media marketing efforts.

Isn’t this exciting? I know for the data-geek side of me, this just made me jump out of my chair. To better explain what they are doing, let’s pull some graphic instruction into the mix.

Social Value in Goal Conversions:

One asset Google Analytics allows for is to set up your own goals for your site. When you set up goals, you also set a value of that goal. Goals can be “newsletter sign-ups” or “article downloads” or whatever you feel are important goals for your campaign and brand. Putting a dollar amount on your goals may get tricky, but a good way to value a goal is to evaluate how often visitors who reach that goal become customers. This could be a separate blog post in itself, or you can just contact us to help you out.

The new Overview Report now lets you see social performance and its impact on your goal conversions:

photo credit: Google Analytics

This report shows you the goals achieved through your site while comparing it to those that were achieved through your social interactions and the “value” it created from both. From the example above, it shows there were 20,358 total conversions made. Of those, there were 11,003 conversions made by Assisted Social Conversions (any visitor who comes via social media, then returns to achieve that goal) and 2,375 made by Last Interaction Social Conversions (referrals that lead to conversions immediately).

With the new Conversion Report, Google breaks it down even more by letting you see the value brought in by each social network. Holy cats!

photo credit: Google Analytics

The new Social Sources report shows behavior patterns of how people are interacting with your site from each social network.

photo credit: Google Analytics

You may need a couple minutes to breathe, so please take this time to do so…because it only gets better from here. [EDITOR'S NOTE: We think you'll be fine. Keep reading.]

Behind the Scenes of Social Sharing

The Social Plugins report has been around for a bit, and perfect if you have a site that publishes content all the time. This report shows which articles or posts are receiving the most social engagement and what social plugin buttons are being used most to share them. Here is an example I pulled from one of our client’s pages:

And possibly, the most exciting one of all is that now we can track interactions happening outside of our website all in one place. Google’s new Activity Stream shows how people are using our client’s content off of the site and onto the social web. This will be available in the next few weeks across all analytic accounts, and I’m happy to report I knew the day it showed up in our accounts because I’m #geekyandIknowit.

Currently, this report just shows content shared publicly over Google+and across a number of other platforms that include Reddit, Delicious, Digg, etc. Here’s to hoping they let in friendly competition and start reporting on Facebook and Twitter too.

I hope I didn’t scare most of you away with my geeky, data-loving side. I absolutely am addicted to data, among my other responsibilities here, and I’m happy to help clients see results to their marketing and PR campaigns. If you’re interested in learning more or would like to start using analytics for your company, feel free to contact me.

Andrea Ness is Martin Waymire’s director of graphics and new media services. 

As a full-service strategic communications firm, we love the challenge of building new websites when our clients’ projects call for it. If you’ve read any of the in-depth journalism produced every week by the team at Bridge Magazine, you’ve seen our website handiwork. If you’ve visited the Michigan Truth Squad’s website to read more about a foul called on a politician’s commercial or news release, you’ve seen the product of one of our campaigns. 

• Unlikely industries rocking it out on Pinterest. 
• How one of our staffers gets his Tigers baseball fix via Twitter.
• What to know about free newsletter platforms such as Constant Contact and MailChimp.
• What’s new with this year’s well-loved Greater Lansing Food Bank’s Empty Plate Dinner.
• A Michigan public policy update.