The Campaign Workshop Blog

In part one of this series we talked about the characteristics of a good printer for political direct mail printing and how to find them. This week we’re going to talk about schedules and paper.

Political Campaigns usually don't work alone. It’s highly likely that you are not the only political campaign being waged in your turf at any given time. Things can get especially dicey when you have to share a turf, and also run your political campaigns out of the same party headquarters.

Your organization has developed a strong campaign supporter list. That’s great news! Now let’s make sure we keep your campaign supporters involved with your campaign or cause. Email is undoubtedly one effective method of communicating with your campaign supporters. There are, however, a variety of other ways to engage with your campaign supporter list as well. Here are a few suggestions:

As someone who loves words, let me just say that I know how difficult it is to edit down a painstakingly written tome that’s full of all the knowledge and wisdom you want to share with the world. In political communication every word seems so vital to your message and to other people’s understanding of your issue or campaign. When it comes to communication it is especially important to make your point from the beginning.

I have heard the story many a time; "I am running down ballot in a state-wide primary, so I am only going to do television." Sadly, if you are still using a Television only strategy you may miss many voters you need to reach.

In a nutshell, franked mail is mail sent from congresspersons to their constituents to communicate official business. You might even say that franked mail is the original political mail. The history of the congressional frank dates back before the founding of the United States, to the English House of Commons in the 17th century. The frank was authorized by the American Continental Congress in 1775 and the first franking law was enacted in 1789.

Is Graduate School of Political Management worth it? In a word: Maybe. It depends on what your goals are, like just about everything else in life. There are ever increasing opportunities to get master’s degrees in non-traditional ways and, depending on what you want to do with this degree, it may make sense to devote the time and resources to school.

If you make use of USPS for political direct mail, there are some important changes happening with the United States Postal Service (USPS) beginning in January 2014. The biggest change is that Full-Service Intelligent Mail is now required for automation pricing (automation pricing gives you discounted postage rates) for First-Class and Standard letters and flat mail as well as Periodicals and Bound Printed Matter.

The recent off-year elections may not have gotten a ton of national press, but for people living in states where major offices were decided, they were extremely important. In some ways, a campaign is a campaign, and your online communications program should be reflective of that.  In others though, off-year elections are pretty different, and planning your digital strategy with those differences in mind can yield some great things.

We find it sad that as Democratic political direct mail consultants, the mail we see is often very un-democratic. It’s hard to get real engagement from voters or constituents if you don't even try. Here are some tips on how to increase engagement in your campaigns and make real democratic direct mail.

Democratic direct mail targeting used to be seen as a mysterious realm where political consultants pulled voter targets out from behind a magic curtain. With the advent of modern voter file software by folks like Catalist, NGP VAN, Targetsmart, NationBuilder and L2, you can have direct access to the voter data and models you need to make targeting decisions for your campaign. But if this is the first time you are running a campaign or working with voter data, here are some tips for Democratic direct mail targeting, these tips will also be helpful in developing your field and phone program.

I’m sure it’s no surprise to any of you that last Tuesday Terry McAuliffe won the Gubernatorial election in Virginia – though the Attorney General race is still too close to officially call – and Chris Christie easily won re-election in New Jersey. It also likely doesn’t come as a surprise that Bill de Blasio wrapped up a big victory in his election as Mayor of New York City and that Marty Walsh, a former Labor organizer, and current State Representative, won in the first open race for Mayor of Boston in over twenty years. But, I’m guessing not as many people were paying attention to the various ballot initiatives around the country, including the Tea Party-backed Question 4 in Cincinnati that looked to overhaul (read: destroy) the public pension system in the city.

Running a grassroots campaign is hard. There are always going to be grassroots volunteers who sign up for shifts and do not show up. That’s why when organizing an event, you can generally assume a 50% flake rate (percentage of grassroots volunteers who do not show up for their shift). More often than not, however, with the right coaxing, you can get a volunteer, who would have otherwise failed, to turn out for their shift. Below are a few suggestions to help you to mitigate your flake rate.

Before Election Day it’s important that you have a chance to test your campaign’s ground operation. After all, even the best-laid plans can go awry. Testing ensures that your organization can maintain its composure under pressure and gives you an opportunity to iron out any snags before the big day. The best way to test your operation is by creating an Election Day stress test that simulates your operation on the big day.

We teach a lot about research on campaigns, and most candidates see the benefits and try to make room in the budget for polling. But although many candidates will do research on their opponents, what many first time (and second and third time) candidates don’t do is get a self-research book done on themselves. Why one may ask, would I need research done on me? I know my background. Here are 3 reasons why self-research is much more important than it may seem.

Canvassing rural areas present a unique set of challenges. While you want to canvass as many homes in these areas as you can, as grassroots canvassing is the most effective method of volunteer voter contact, you also want to do so in a way that makes sense for both you and your canvassers. Below are a couple of suggestions for overcoming the challenges of rural canvassing:

Photos are a great way to enhance your communications. We work to use custom political photography and custom photo shoots for nonprofits and organizations whenever we can but based on budget and timing it is not always possible to do a shoot. So many time rights managed and royalty free photos are your only options.

These days, everyone is online. And if your nonprofit isn’t online, it should be! It’s easy, cheap and one of the best ways to stay engaged with your supporters. Here are five things we think every nonprofit should be doing online.

The advertising world is well-versed in using and exploiting the visual language of typography to convey messages that go beyond the overt, verbal language on the page Cal Swan, author of Language and Typography, says, “These two distinct areas often come together in practice as there is clearly a very strong relationship between the conception of the words as a message and their transmission in visible form.” Nowhere is this more important than in political messaging.

Over the last two Presidential election cycles, the Obama campaign has done some really innovative work online. There has been a lot of discussion in the progressive community about how other campaigns and organizations can take some of these tactics and apply them to their own causes.