Drive the Vote
Target Audience: Our primary target audience for the Drive the Vote campaign was everyone age 18 and older eligible to vote in the 2020 election.
Strategy Objective:The strategy was to use a multifaceted approach to reach our target audience with a focus of leveraging partnerships with Sacramento County and the Sacramento Kings NBA basketball team to help drive community members to vote. And so the campaign name "Drive the Vote" was born. We started by creating a web page that linked our transit service with polling centers and drop box locations to help customers find the closest location. We then created a series of joint digital messaging with our partners to broaden the reach on all social and electronic media platforms. We created rack cards, mini-posters, flyers and sent joint email blasts and a digital toolkit. We partnered on a socially distanced, press event at Golden 1 Center, the largest Vote Center in Sacramento County.
Situation Challenge: Many people who want to exercise their right to vote often cite the lack of safe, reliable transportation to Voting Centers and Ballot Drop Box locations as a barrier. We wanted to find an effective way to help make voting easier and more accessible to all Sacramento County voters by offering free rides system-wide on the first day of early voting and on Election Day. We also offered free rides on our SmaRT Ride on-demand shuttles with a free ride flyer from October 26 through November 2, 2020, to provide even more opportunities to vote. The primary challenge was how to communicate the free ride offer to a diverse population of over one million people living within our 400 square-mile service area during a pandemic.
Results Impact: During our two system-wide free ride days for the Drive the Vote campaign, we experienced a significant increase in ridership. On the first day of early voting, we carried over 16,000 passengers, which was a 3% increase over the prior Saturday. On Election Day, we carried over 30,000 passengers, which was over a 17% increase from the prior Tuesday. Media coverage: there were more than over 95 stories on the Drive the Vote campaign with a reach of more than over 1.6 million households. There were 15 social media posts. On Twitter, we had 265,074 impressions, 1,887 engagements and 261 likes. On Facebook, we reached 11,393, had 586 engagements and 138 likes. On Instagram, we had 4,309 impressions, 340 likes and 93 shares.
Why Submit: Keeping in mind our ridership numbers had been typically flat during the pandemic, the Drive the Vote campaign was a tremendous success in not only increasing ridership and engagement when it is most needed, but helping the Sacramento community overcome the transportation barrier to vote. It also helped further reinforce the important social role that we play in the community.