Case Study: DTLA Nation achieves 22% downtown participation and 7,468 textable residents with NationBuilder

Smart texting the data plan that builds community

DTLA Nation, a community initiative in downtown Los Angeles, needed a way to connect residents with local businesses to drive weekday traffic, manage RSVPs seamlessly, and avoid overwhelming people with irrelevant messages. They turned to NationBuilder’s platform to build a communications system that could create incentives for businesses and encourage local patronage.

Using NationBuilder, DTLA Nation matched resident interests to targeted deals, implemented keyword texting for RSVPs, and built smart tagging to automatically segment lists. The campaign delivered a 75% click‑through rate on texts (versus about 35% for email) and enrolled 7,468 textable residents—about 22% of the downtown population—in roughly a year.

DTLA Nation

Josh Gray-Emmer

Founder