Christian advertising and influencer campaign for Mike Pence's So Help Me God

In So Help Me God, former Vice President Mike Pence gives an intimate, detailed account of his time within the Trump administration, chronicling events that forged his character and changed history. The book highlights how Pence’s faith played a role in his life since he was a young man and influenced how he handled situations like the breach on Capitol Hill. 

FrontGate Media was hired to promote So Help Me God through a robust Christian advertising and influencer campaign. The goal was to generate book sales by driving people to click on the purchase link through various advertising strategies. 

Target Audience

Our advertising and influencer campaign focused specifically on reaching the Faith and Family audience. Because Pence talks in depth about his faith and belief in God, the goal was to engage Christian and Conservative readers with an interest in the intersection between faith and politics.  

Campaign

This campaign utilized Direct Email, Display Ads, Social Ads, and Influencer Marketing to reach and engage the faith-based and family audience online. FrontGate Media developed the advertising strategy, designed the ad creative, and wrote compelling copy to encourage readers to click to learn more and purchase So Help Me God. 

While the original plan included a significant placement with Facebook and Instagram, we quickly faced Meta censorship issues. We pivoted to shift the additional budget to their competitors GAB & Twitter during the first 20 days of the campaign and moved more into ads there, where they performed very well. Facebook finally started approving our ads after many rounds back and forth with their social issues team. In the end, Meta was a great contributor to clicks, but it is worth noting that this Christian and Conservative political book also performed very well on Twitter and, of course, on GAB–the Christian & Conservative alternative to Facebook.

We also used our proprietary Christian Influencer Group to spread the word about Pence’s book on major social media platforms and to bypass Meta’s ad censorship on Facebook and Instagram. Influencers received a free copy of So Help Me God and created original posts to promote Pence’s work on Stories, Reels, and within their social platforms.

Results

The advertising and influencer campaign for So Help Me God reached 16,485,504 people and generated 67,659 clicks to the purchase page! Below highlights the results of the direct emails, banner ads, newsletter ads, and social marketing campaigns. 

Direct Emails

Highlights from the direct email campaigns include The Washington Times’ outstanding 19.25% Open Rate and 8.81% Open To Click Ratio (OTCR) and Open Rates from NewsMax averaging 45-50%!

The Washington Times List

  • Subscribers: 1,000,000
  • Opens: 192,495
  • Open Rate: 19.25%
  • Clicks: 16,959
  • OTCR: 8.81%

NewsMax Breaking News List: Send #1

  • Subscribers: 578,234
  • Opens: 261,937
  • Open Rate: 45.30% 
  • Clicks: 4,351
  • OTCR: 1.66%

NewsMax Breaking News List: Send #2

  • Subscribers: 575,069
  • Opens: 286,090
  • Open Rate: 49.75%
  • Clicks: 5,175
  • OTCR: 1.81%

NewsMax Financial List

  • Subscribers: 155,530
  • Opens: 72,974
  • Open Rate: 46.92%
  • Clicks: 1,888
  • OTCR: 2.59%

Banner Ads

From the banner ads portion of the campaign, GAB stands out with a massive above-average click rate, followed by The Washington Times. 

GAB Social Feed Banner Ads

  • Ad Views: 852,773
  • Clicks: 4,347
  • CTR: 0.51%

Washington Times Above-the-Fold Ad 

  • Ad Views: 600,000
  • Clicks: 1,245
  • CTR: 0.21% 
  • Overdelivered! Delivered an extra 59,000 impressions at no charge.

NewsMax Copper Native Ad

  • Ad Views: 1,200,000
  • Clicks: 908
  • CTR: 0.08%

NewsMax Brass Native Ad

  • Ad Views: 2,200,000
  • Clicks: 1,549
  • CTR: 0.07%

NewsMax Display Ads

  • Ad Views: 500,000
  • Clicks: 608
  • CTR: 0.12%

Christian advertising and influencer campaign for Mike Pence's So Help Me God

Newsletter Ads

Excellent Open Rates for these newsletters ensured that the broad overall audience saw the brand repeatedly.

Washington Times Newsletter Ads: Send #1

  • Subscribers: 2,864,279
  • Opens: 711,422
  • Open Rate: 24.84%
  • Clicks: 591
  • CTR: 0.08%

Washington Times Newsletter Ads: Send #2

  • Subscribers: 4,245,785
  • Opens: 872,330
  • Open Rate: 20.55%
  • Clicks: 557
  • CTR: 0.06%

Social Advertising

While Meta’s Facebook & Instagram generated a substantial number of clicks, it’s important to note that Twitter also performed exceptionally well without any #BigTech religious or political censorship issues. By using both platforms and Gab, we were able to reach a broader audience.

Twitter Ads

  • Ad Views: 392,162
  • Clicks: 5,587
  • CTR: 2.13%
  • CPC: $0.42

Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram)

  • Ad Views: 905,456
  • Clicks: 23,894
  • CTR: 2.64%
  • CPC: $0.19

Christian advertising and influencer campaign for Mike Pence's So Help Me God

Christian Influencer Group 

  • Influencers: 24
  • Impressions: 416,216
  • Social Reactions: 4,531

For this campaign, the client used their own tracking link, so we can’t report purchase clients, but it’s evident that brand awareness and engagement were achieved.

The influencer campaign resulted in solid exposure for the book, reaching over 400,000 people and generating thousands of social reactions (likes, comments, follows, etc.). 

Summary of Success

Overall, the advertising and influencer campaign for Mike Pence’s So Help Me God was extremely successful, reaching over 16 million people and generating thousands of purchase clicks and sales for the book. 

By utilizing multiple types of ads (newsletter, banner, and social), along with direct email and influencer marketing, we achieved brand awareness, engagement, and, most importantly, clicks to purchase the book: sales! 

At FrontGate Media, we are Your Gateway to the Christian Audience. Do you have an upcoming book launch, product release, or giving opportunity to promote? We can help! Contact us today to develop a plan for getting your faith-based brand in front of the right people at the right time.