UK Government: The Missing Millions - giving expats their voice

Before the 2015 General Election, the UK Government set an ambitious target of increasing the number of British ex-patriates on the electoral register from about 23,000 to more than 100,000. The target group was among the most diverse and geographically dispersed imaginable, the media budget was a modest 330,000, and the timescale was exceptionally tight. The resulting campaign emphasized that ex-pats had a personal stake in the election result because they had UK-based relatives or were planning to return to the UK, and used messaging across digital, print and radio in key overseas markets. It proved more effective than communications simultaneously issued by the Electoral Commission. The voter registration target was exceeded at a lower cost per registration than in the previous election, with the campaign directly responsible for an estimated 21,151 registrations. Without the campaign, the Goverment would have missed its target.