The Way Forward For Online Campaign Fundraising – Ken Mika (Politicoin)

Ken Mika:

Campaigns are a hundred percent ready, but we're having a specialized firm in fundraising. We've seen this take place with firms making just TV ads, even some for just knocking on doors.

Eric Wilson:

I'm Eric Wilson, managing Partner of Startup Caucus, the home of campaign tech Innovation on the right. Welcome to the Business of Politics Show. On this podcast, you are joining in on a conversation with entrepreneurs, operatives, and experts who make professional politics happen. Today we're talking with Ken Micah, c e o of Politico, a new digital fundraising firm. Ken was previously director of email marketing at the R N C during the 2020 cycle, and he's worked on a number of campaigns with a focus on fundraising. In our conversation today, we look forward to what's next for the fundraising landscape in 2024. Ken, our campaigns ready for specialized firms in digital. We obviously are familiar with some of the, the bigger firms that are, are full service, but Politico is seeking to be a very narrowly focused firm with an emphasis on fundraising.

Ken Mika:

Yeah, I think the campaigns are a hundred percent ready for having a specialized firm in fundraising. We've seen this take place with firms making just TV ads, even some for just knocking on doors. This is no different than any of those, and this is something campaigns 100% need. And, you know, spending a large amount through an umbrella digital firm is tough for some campaigns when we're right down to the point and our prices reflect that, that we're here just to help with fundraising.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, I think the, the timing is right. I, I think there have been some other efforts that we're, we're probably too early, but one of the things that I'm seeing here is that digital is, is really starting to mature. So when we talk about digital campaigning, that means different things to, to different people. But for the campaign managers, for the consultants, they start to see that there are, there are different pieces of it. And so if your digital firm is only focused on advertising, that means that they're leaving other aspects like organic social media fundraising. They're, they're leaving those unattended and they do require special skill sets. And, and just thinking of it from a management perspective, you need to have very clear goals and expectations for your, your vendors. To your point, door knocking firms, very clear objective there. We have finance consultants who focus just on fundraising. We know that most donors prefer to give online. So makes a lot of sense that we would have specialists in digital. How are people reacting to your announcement?

Ken Mika:

The response has been great, which is appreciated by all. We have proven success. So that's helpful and we're able now to show that and take that to those people who've reached out.

Eric Wilson:

So why do you think can, and, and I want to get your real thoughts on this <laugh>, why on online fundraising face such strong headwinds in 2022?

Ken Mika:

Yeah, so this has been unfortunate to see in the news, but I think there are a couple pieces that play into it. It's very tough to compare 2022 fundraising to 2020 fundraising, right? Just as you would do with the number of votes that come in. This is an off year cycle or not off year, but an off presidential year. So it's very tough to say, look at all this money that wasn't raised. But at the same time after that you see a lot of people popping up saying they can do this fundraising at least, and they don't have the skills or the experience to do so and don't understand what actually is involved in doing it

Eric Wilson:

So well. But we did see the, the gap continue between Republicans and Democrats. So I guess, let me refine my question to say, why do you think Republicans faced headwinds in 2022?

Ken Mika:

You know, that's a great question and I still don't think it was that bad for them. Yes, there's a, a gap, right? But there's the gap between the number of Democrat voters and Republicans as well. We are outnumbered. But when you look at how quickly win red picked up steam to catch up to act blue, the gap is a lot smaller there. And as you said earlier, we're maturing and we're getting to that point. So we're still finding our feet in fundraising and I don't think it was terrible. Like everyone's making it out to be, but we're getting there. Things are still settling, figured out.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, we did some, we did some survey work with people working in, in this field and we got a few responses and I'm, I'm curious to, and I think the, the real answer is like all of these con contributed. So, you know, obviously there was some economic uncertainty that donors were were facing, but I think more importantly, you had a lot of changes happening to our fundraising playbook. Namely Facebook ads are just not effective anymore for online fundraising list buildings. So it's not just political, but it's commercial as well with the iOS updates that that really just cause problems for Facebook. And then you add into that, you know, just the over abundance of campaigns now asking for money cuz we have been pushing Win Red and building successful online fundraising programs and then you add in the issues with email deliverability. So I think it did create this kind of perfect storm for campaigns that, that they had to confront. Obviously lots more work to be done, but it was a challenging environment.

Ken Mika:

Yeah. And with that challenge we did see a lot of success through some campaigns.

Eric Wilson:

So what are some of your bright spots from, from 2022?

Ken Mika:

From my bright spots at least, it was being able to raise money in a lot of districts that were Biden Plus. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. One campaign that I worked on was in a Biden plus nine, we did over $200,000 in small dollar donations, which in district I thought was incredible Wow. That these people were coming across the aisle to make a donation to see the change. They wanted to. Another huge bright spot that I saw was how much other campaigns were willing to help out. And even with the committees as well, through backend up sales, we were able to grow lists in places that were really difficult. And as you mentioned with Facebook kind of shutting down that lead gen and not being as successful as it's been in the past, that was extremely helpful for some of these candidates who one didn't really have the resources to spend on this building. And two were in areas where it would just be extremely ineffective when you have, when you're in a rural county in the middle of nowhere and you need to get more donors in.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. So do you, do you think 2024 is going to be different? Are, are republicans finally ready to tackle this challenge? Specifically around the, the, and I know you said it's not, not all all bad news, but we did face a gap when it came to hard dollars, right? And, and our candidates were not able to compete in the hard dollar space. Do you think republicans are ready to tackle this? I think we're already starting to see some signs of hope from the R N C with their debate requirements, but I'm curious to, to see if you have eyes on any other conditions.

Ken Mika:

I definitely think it will be interesting. <Laugh>, I hope there is some change, but after this past cycle, I think a lot of, a lot of effect will take place. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> what that will be, I don't know. But even recently reaching out to firms and trying to work with them or doing certain list building or rev shares, new requirements have come up for online fundraising. And we saw even with Google's pilot program now that that's taken away. What are

Eric Wilson:

These requirements? So that's that just for our listeners to understand. That's the Google had a essentially a spam filter bypass. It was a one-time thing for political candidates. They offered it as a pilot late in the game in 2022. Not many people took advantage of that. And they've decided that they, they aren't going to continue that this cycle.

Ken Mika:

And going back to your point on the hard dollars, which I think is a great indicator for these debate requirements, that'll definitely be really interesting to see how that plays out online. Because one way we look at this at our firm is the number of donors you have is the number of supporters.

Eric Wilson:

Mm-Hmm. Right?

Ken Mika:

So you can bring in a ton of money, but if it's only from one person, it's not a, it's great to have that money, but how far is that gonna go in support? So Right. It'll definitely be an interesting year to see what is said and what's come up. And especially with President Trump who has such an advantage over some of these people. We'll see what happens.

Eric Wilson:

You're listening to the Business of Politics Show. I'm speaking with Ken Micah, c e o of Politico about the outlook for digital fundraising after 2022. Ken, one thing we've learned from post-election polling is that digital fundraising solicitations are, are reaching far too broad in audience. They're going to people who are even donating to the opposite parties. So Democrats are reaching Republican donors and vice versa. What are some steps that campaigns could take to better qualify potential donors so they're not reaching far beyond where they ought to?

Ken Mika:

I don't think that's a bad thing that they're reaching a little further. However, I think it needs to be more clear why they're reaching across.

Eric Wilson:

Elaborate on that. This

Ken Mika:

Past cycle we saw a lot of people coming across the aisle because of one major issue, whether in New York we saw it be crime where a lot of people were getting fed up with what was going on and that was leading them to donate. The problem that I think you mentioned is that the solicitations are too broad. So when you're sending out an end of month email asking for donations to those people, they're not gonna donate and they're probably gonna mark you a spam cause they don't wanna receive that or they're gonna log at it or stop receiving your text messages, even go on social media and unfollow you cause they don't want to see that content. But when you're segmenting and really giving them what they're asking for is where you're gonna see the return. And I think that's how we can start to qualify these donors is seeing where they're coming in from, what ad they might have clicked to get to you, what keyword they've sent in or replied to.

Eric Wilson:

Got it. So rather than than just sort of a one size fits all program where, you know, everyone on your email list or text list gets the same fundraising message, you wanna be personalizing that, segmenting it and, and giving them more of what they, they want to hear

Ken Mika:

A hundred percent. If you're coming in only from merchandise and we're not seeing you convert on any other ask or anywhere else, well I'm only gonna start sending you just merchandise and stop wasting any dollars on anything else.

Eric Wilson:

And that saves the supporter, the potential burnout, the, the unsubscribe, that sort of thing. When it, it creates just a little bit more work on the, the campaign, which I think is is one of the challenges here, <laugh> is instead of hitting send on one list, you've, you've gotta segment it up, but, but your results actually end up being better, hopefully.

Ken Mika:

Yes. Nailed it right on the head.

Eric Wilson:

So what, what's another thing that campaigns can be doing to communicate their impact to donors and, and prospective donors? Because that's something that we've heard we, we heard a lot, lot in our focus groups and post-election polling where people said, you know, I, I wanna know why I'm giving money. Don't just tell me that there's a match. Don't tell me there's a deadline. But what are you doing with my funds? How do, how do campaigns answer that

Ken Mika:

Question? I think it's pretty simple with a clear message of just saying what the money's going to, right? When you, you see the asks for radio ad funds or TV ad funds, those are always great to see because, you know, most likely, or hopefully the money's going to that one test that we ran this past cycle was in our upsell flows, which after you make the donation is getting another couple asks for people to give, was, we were letting them know, if you give another $5, this is gonna go towards buying pizza for volunteers. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> or this is gonna go help knock doors, $20 equals three doors knocked. And we saw really great success with that because of what you mentioned, that it's being very clear of what this money is going towards. So the donor knows their dollars not being wasted on something.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah. And I think that a lot of that is just non-profit donor management 1 0 1 that we, we kind of got away from in, in politics got so focused on, on the, the tactical strategic side of things that we, we lost sight of that. And I think it is also really important to let donors know what it is that you're doing because I think, you know, this is an exercise I've gone through with, with several audiences over the last couple of weeks, which is take your average fundraising email, hide the disclaimer, hide the, the logo, any other identifying stuff and, you know, that could be sent really from, from any campaign on our side of the aisle. There's no no distinction there. There's no brand building. So I think communicating that is, is gonna be really important for campaigns going forward. Donors respond to those sorts of, you know, specific appeals like that or here's the TV ad you helped

Ken Mika:

Fund, I think so we see, we see it in the results, right? If you're not looking at what's working, you're probably not gonna run it. But we saw success with it and we continue to move forward with those, those that worked.

Eric Wilson:

So for our listeners today, who, who, who want to improve their online fundraising campaign performance, what is one thing that they should go out and do right now?

Ken Mika:

Call me <laugh>, but no really definitely work on segmentation. Make sure you know where your people are coming from. That'd be my biggest thing. Get your data in order. And two, take a look at what's working, follow through. You know, it's not just sending it out and seeing the money coming, it's seeing how much is coming, coming in, what's your average and a little bit more to what was the ask or even further where, where and wherever part of the world you are, is that money coming from?

Eric Wilson:

What are some tools or, or I don't know, processes that, that people can do to, to, to better understand that and manage their segmentation. You know, or even build segments.

Ken Mika:

Tough one to go through. It's very timely. There's not something that can very much help you. But if you have a basic C R m making sure you have as much information on that person as possible and taking a look at how you want to market to that person, whether it based on town area of the state that you're a part of, or what topic that you came in on and that you're really, that your candidate is gungho about. You know, seeing if your candidate's super pro-police, making sure you're aware of what they might have given to is correlating back to that and taking the time just to go through and make sure everything's in order.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, that's a, a good reminder. Just the, the power of a a strong c r m keeping your data organized and and talking to each other is, is, is the key. What's an application that, that would help you be more effective on behalf of your clients? It's sort of something we always ask as we've got startup entrepreneurs listening in and we wanna give them them good ideas. So what's the, the missing tool in your toolbox

Ken Mika:

That's really tough. Cause I still feel like we're in the communication between teams is I think one of the tougher, tougher things that needs to be figured out. And thankfully now with group messaging that's starting to get there, although it's staying relic in group emails of what we wanna talk about and how we go about it, but if there was a political Slack type channel, that would be great, even though kind of Slack is the answer. But not all campaigns have that, but just a better type of communication tool between the candidate and their teams or the GC and their teams is definitely something that would be more effective to help.

Eric Wilson:

Yeah, well I agree with that. And, and we continue to see the, the benefits of, of having strong communication within in teams. And, and people have heard me say this before, but we're not going to have a digital department for long. Just like we, we don't have a phones department. You know, it's digital's just going to be in everything that we do and, and communication is the key to that. Well, I wanna thank Ken for a great conversation. You can learn more about Politico in the link in our show notes. If this episode made you a bit smarter or gave you something to think about, all we ask is that you share it with a friend or colleague and you look smarter in the process. Remember to subscribe to the, the Business of Politics Show wherever you get your podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also sign up for email reminders on our website at business of politics podcast.com. See all of our past episodes and leave us your thoughts. With that, I'll say thanks for listening. See you next time.

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