Why Multilingual Texting Won 3 Gold Pollies

Effective voter contact means speaking the audience’s language.

On Thursday April 20th, the American Association of Political Consultants awarded RumbleUp three Gold Pollies for our client's exceptional use of multilingual Unicode texting on their campaign: Best Phone Campaign, Best Use of SMS, and Best Innovation for Voter Targeting.

The campaign's use of peer-to-peer (P2P) texting to reach voters in five languages helped drive them to victory on election day. Here's how multilingual Unicode texting became a pivot tool for our client in 2022:

The Challenge 

Campaigns often miss the opportunity to effectively communicate and engage with voters who do not speak English as their primary language. This translates to fewer opportunities to persuade and turn out supporters, specially critical in swing districts where a few hundred of votes may determine a race. 

Our client, who made history as the first Korean American woman elected to Congress in 2020 with a narrow victory, faced a new challenge in 2022. She faced one of the most divisive races in California in 2022, running in a new district that tilts slightly toward Democrats and with a unique diversity of languages spoken by voters.

To effectively reach her supporters, our client needed to contact voters in their preferred language. This was particularly challenging because many of the languages spoken in her district don't exist in the traditional English alphabet, making them difficult to include in mass texting efforts using existing software versions.

The Solution

We built the functionality to send diverse Unicode characters via text, utilizing a robust encoding system that supports a wide range of languages (character sets). This allowed our client to connect with voters in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, and English.

Using our Untechnology, the campaign segmented their voter universe based on key demographics such as language preference, past actions taken, and age range. This precise segmentation ensured messages reached the right voters. Additionally, a custom tagging feature enabled them to automatically label contacts based on predefined demographic parameters, streamlining the outreach process.

To further enhance the campaign's ability to engage with voters, we equipped them with the ability to create custom preloaded replies in all the needed languages. These replies, built using Unicode characters and covering a wide range of code points, matched the language of the original text sent. This allowed volunteers to send a fully written reply with a single tap, significantly increasing their response speed. Fast replies were essential to capture the recipient's attention within the text conversation and ultimately engage voters successfully.

We also equipped the team with the functionality to embed pictures, videos and graphics along with their language- optimized text messages, which our data has shown to increase response rates by up to 50%. 

We are proud to have revolutionized the texting medium with the development of high quality video text messages, which are accessible to campaigns regardless of their size.

How RumbleUp Made the Difference

Using our platform to text in multiple languages allowed the campaign to connect with voters in a personal way that they would not have achieved otherwise. By sending messages in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino and English, they could engage with a broader audience and ensure they captured every possible vote on election day.

Without our multilingual language functionality, thousands of people who lacked native English speaking skills would not have received vital voting information. Overcoming the language barrier helped more people exercise their right to vote. 

In competitive districts, individualized outreach makes the difference between winning and losing an election. P2P texting allowed our client to reach voters in their preferred language and engage in two-way, personal communication. These interactions were incredibly powerful and turned potential voters into strong supporters that showed up to the polls. 

Bottom Line

Our platform allowed our client to engage with voters they otherwise would have been unable to connect with. Ultimately, our client won by 7.6%, or 14,472 votes, showing how much her dedication to genuine connection resonated with voters.

Ready to connect with your multilingual audiences? Sign up for Rumbleup to start sending award-winning texts today at rumbleup.com or contact our sales team to talk about how texting can best work for you: email us at sales@rumbleup.com or text us at 833–530–4400!