John Fetterman

The Challenge

After incumbent Senator Pat Toomey announced that he would not seek reelection in 2022, Pennsylvania’s newly-open Senate seat became the center of the 2022 midterms.

John Fetterman had the advantage of significant name recognition following his successful 2018 Lieutenant Governor campaign and after repeatedly debunking Trump’s “Big Lie” after the 2020 election. But, with the prospect of a crowded primary field and an unfavorable midterm political environment, the campaign faced the challenge of converting that name recognition into a long-term operation that could win a competitive primary and general elections.

When Middle Seat came on prior to the early 2021 campaign launch, we faced immediate hurdles on the digital front. We had to rapidly scale up our entire operation both before and after John’s launch announcement, and there were some challenges.

First, we had to operate in an environment where political campaigns could not launch new ads on Facebook or Google (since those platforms had implemented a digital political ads blackout that was still in effect during our launch). Second, we had to re-engage John’s small but existing email list while also acquiring and attracting new supporters. Finally, we had to build a texting program from scratch, which requires large investment and strategy.

Then, as the campaign progressed, we were met with even more complications: a highly competitive primary field, the nomination of a multi-millionaire, self-funding, Trump-endorsed celebrity as our Republican opponent, and most unexpectedly, John’s medical emergency (which meant John’s digital presence became the center of his campaign for the entire summer preceding the general election).

Middle Seat rose alongside the campaign to meet all of these challenges. Read on to see how we did it.

The Approach

Fundraising Advertising

• Our list growth efforts started even before John officially launched his campaign (and it was amidst the 2020 Facebook and Google Political ads ban)!
  • Our team scaled out his small but existing email list of supporters through new channels and fresh sources – within a week of our soft launch, we hit a 128.5% ROI on our initial investments. 
  • The campaign ultimately invested $2.2M in email acquisition efforts and raised $22M from these donors, which resulted in an ROI of over 1,000% (not a typo!). 
• Since launch, we raised $12.4M from fundraising ads, giving our direct donate ads program a cycle ROI of 274%.
  • We created hundreds of engaging and eye-catching fundraising ads that stayed true to John’s unique voice, successfully appealing to donors across the web on Facebook, Instagram, Google Search, YouTube, and Verizon.

Persuasion Advertising

• Our team worked alongside the talented folks at WIN Company to build something close to a unified paid program. 
• For both the primary and general elections, we executed one of the cycle’s largest and yet still highly targeted persuasion and get-out-the-vote programs, reaching voters with effective and tested messages on social, programmatic, and connected TV platforms.
  • We partnered with Swayable to test persuasion and mobilization on several TV and digital ads to ensure the right messages reached the right people. 
  • For the general election, our ads reached roughly 3.6M people across Pennsylvania by running ads across 30+ Connected TV, premium video, and social advertising platforms. 
• Our team went into full gear leading up to the general election, raising millions via fundraising ads, executing an $8M persuasion plan, and creating rapid response digital and TV ads following John’s debate and Oprah’s endorsement.

Email

• We built a true-to-John, highly effective, and FUN email program to engage and leverage our rapidly scaled list of donors and supporters.
• Our emails raised nearly $16M — making email the campaign’s single largest digital fundraising source.
• We grew John’s email list from 54K people to more than 3M people throughout the course of the campaign, largely through paid acquisition.
• Thanks to maintaining top-notch deliverability and crafting timely, powerful fundraising asks, our top-performing emails raised more than $100,000 each.
• We not only remained true to John’s voice, but to his values — for example, we sent  emails that raised 100% for the UAW and Scranton Teachers’ strike funds, even while we were in the midst of a competitive primary.

Social

• Working with the campaign from launch, we leveraged John’s personal narrative and message to expand his social presence outside of his already popular Twitter account, focusing largely on Instagram and Facebook.
• We developed a social media tone and voice guide to ensure we stayed true to John’s voice, including his favorite phrases, punctuation style, and emojis.
• With authentic and engaging content that focused on telling John’s story, we grew his Facebook and Instagram audiences by 20% during the off-year.

Texting

• We built a broadcast texting program from the ground up, utilizing custom keyword paths to promote John’s priority issues.
• Over the campaign, we grew the broadcast list to more than 100K subscribers.
• We invested more than $1M in direct donate acquisition to engage prospective donors, immediately raising nearly $1.9M from these efforts. 
• In total, we raised nearly $5.3M via broadcast, owned peer-to-peer, and acquisition texting while staying true to John’s personality.

Creative

• We created an engaging website and brand experience using Fetterman’s clean logo and monotone black-and-white color scheme.
• We also brought Fetterman’s authentic and vibrant personality into the digital world by incorporating emojis and strong textures as we built out creative collateral through ads, email, social, and web.
• In addition, Middle Seat emphasized Fetterman’s western Pennsylvania roots by leaning into a bright yellow accent color (inspired by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Pirates).

Testimonials

When we decided to launch this campaign, my very first call was to Middle Seat. They helped us build an incredible grassroots army, and we would not have won the primary in the commanding way we did without the work they did early on to build our program and convert that army into donors. Their ability to capitalize on rapid response moments — like Dr. Oz’s infamous abortion debate moment — and their innovative, creative approach to fundraising were key to our success through to Election Day.

Rebecca Katz, Senior Advisor

Middle Seat played an integral role in our campaign, from pre-launch planning all the way through to an Election Day win. Every dollar counts when you’re competing for the most flippable Senate seat in the country, and every time we had to turn over the cushions to find a few more dollars, their team found a few more couches. It’s no coincidence that we set multiple fundraising records with their help, ensuring that we turned grassroots support into dollars raised and votes won.

Eric Stern, Deputy Campaign Manager