Q&A: Taryn Rosenkranz on digital persuasion tactics

‘How can organisations use influencers and social media to raise money for campaigns?’ Taryn Rosenkranz, CEO and Founder of New Blue Interactive, held a presentation answering this question at the Polaris Leadership Summit on 21 June. Before her session, she sat down with MediaCat Magazine’s Content & Social Editor, Svilena Keane, to discuss the most effective digital persuasion tactics and the biggest mistakes in digital campaigns.

Hi, Taryn. Could you please introduce yourself and New Blue Interactive?

I’m Taryn Rosenkranz. I’m the CEO and founder of New Blue Interactive. We’re a full-service digital agency. We focus primarily on digital advertising and provide social media, strategic communications, design, development, and digital fundraising services to Democratic candidates, nonprofits, and political organisations. We’ve been in business for 13 years, and we’ve worked with candidates and campaigns of all sizes and budgets, up and down the ballot in every state in America, and internationally as well.

At New Blue Interactive you call yourselves ‘persuaders’. How do you define digital persuasion and what techniques do you find most effective?

It’s funny because we’ve been doing this for 13 years, and I can say that the tactics evolve almost daily at this point. We definitely do a lot of testing to see what persuades the most and what’s going to be the most effective.

I think this cycle, in particular with digital advertising, the micro-targeting that we’re doing is what’s become the most effective. Finding voters where they are becomes the most important persuasion advertising that we’re doing, making sure that we’re finding the right people with the right message. We are doing some new and evolving tactics with influencers and social media, incorporating more of that.

I definitely think that the social pressure we’re seeing persuades people more. It’s building that community because people feel and trust more when it comes directly from someone they know and feel connected to. That’s why influencers have that power, whether it’s over marketing a product or brand or a candidate. But it’s also when they can hear that message from where they are; we’re finding them and we’re finding the right people so they can hear the message the right amount of times and at the right places.

Your session at Polaris will explore how to use influencers and social media to raise funds for campaigns. What will be the key takeaways from your presentation?

We will look at how this is a growing trend and how you can use this to help your campaigns to grow digital fundraising. I think one of the things that we found most important is trying to expand how you raise money. Years ago when digital fundraising became popular as a way to raise money, we would tell people that you can’t treat them like an ATM. You can’t just keep asking people for money over and over and over again.

I think you saw a lot of that start to happen where people were just bombarding folks with emails and now with emails and text messages. It just was a constant storm or barrage of these messages over and over again, asking them — and even using language like ‘I’m begging you, please’ — over and over again. People got really sick of it. We needed to find a way to rebuild trust so that the message was not just, ‘I’ve cried wolf too many times, and I’ve told you the sky was falling, and it wasn’t falling, and I need you to believe me when I say that I really need the money’. And so because influencers have trust in the community, they can help you do that. It also is another way to find people where they are.

So, if more and more people are looking to these people, listening to them, and watching their videos, if that’s where they are, then we want to be there too. If we need to be able to ask them for money, we need them to hear it from the people they listen to.

It was really important for campaigns to evolve into finding ways to reach out to people where they are. Otherwise, we are in an entirely different place trying to ask them for money because maybe they’ve stopped looking at their email or their text messages because they were just too inundated with political messages asking them for money.

You spoke about the need to rebuild trust. Can you expand on this?

It’s an endorsement when the influencer gives their seal of approval to the candidate and says, ‘Give money to this person. I believe in this person. I have vetted this person and they’re okay.’ And so, because people believe in what that influencer is saying, they’re going to feel the same way when they endorse that candidate. I think that that naturally lends itself when you’re already believing in that influencer, that you would believe in who they believe in. I do think that it does need to feel relatable.

Maybe it’s because they’re from the same state, or because there’s an issue they have talked about before, or you know that this influencer is really into environmentally friendly makeup, and this candidate is really into the environment. The influencer should be someone that has some quasi-connection that you can build upon, and that’s what we try to do with folks. Then, the money and the fundraising makes sense.

‘I’m really into women’s rights, and I talk about them in some way as an influencer, and thereby, I’m endorsing this candidate who is a woman who cares about women’s rights. Abortion is on the ballot in my state, and thereby, I am asking you to come and help.’ You’ll see a lot of that as ways that we use that connection.

A lot of people think that influencers speak only to 18 to 24-year-olds, is this correct? What demographic do influencers actually attract?

I actually think that belief is changing daily. It’s the same way that years ago when we were talking about Meta, formerly Facebook, advertising people would say, ‘Oh, it’s just for young people’. Really, the growing demographic back in the day was people over the age of 65, so that was just a myth.

I think you’re now seeing the same thing. The biggest user of TikTok in my house — and I have two teenagers — is my husband, who is in his late 40s watching cooking videos and other ridiculousness. It’s not just dancing videos as it was in the pandemic. People are really interested in how someone’s going to smoke their brisket outside on the barbecue, because that’s what he’s watching. He’s fascinated by that. Don’t be stuck in this idea that it is a certain thing for teenagers, when in reality, many times it is a growing dynamic of people over the age of 30. And many times that’s exactly who you’re looking for.

Finally, what are some of the most common mistakes you’ve seen in digital campaigns and how can they be avoided?

One is taking the donor or supporter for granted. When you’re talking about digital campaigns or fundraising, the biggest mistake is always that. So, asking them for money too much, not testing volume tolerance, and using disrespectful language such as ‘Are you listening?’. That’s always a bad idea. When it comes to the digital persuasion advertising that we talked about, I think the biggest mistake people make is having a set-it-and-forget-it mentality. You see that a lot, where people spend their money on digital ad campaigns and put their money out there and then they don’t look to optimise. They don’t go back to change anything.

I find it incredibly frustrating when I see folks do it because I see that there is so much micro-targeting we can do. There’s so much we can be doing to help people not make it a linear television ad buy.

We can be customising this in so many different ways to go after people where they are. We can stop things. We can move things. We can be really agile. I think sometimes people forget that, and they set it and forget it, and don’t use all of the pros and advantages of digital that they can.

Featured image: Taryn Rosenkranz / Polaris Leadership Summit