Campaign Mail

As I wrote a couple of years ago, political mailers haven’t gone the way of the dinosaurs – they’re still a very effective method of communication for both persuasion and GOTV efforts. Political mailers may not be as sexy as the world of digital, but here are a few reasons to hang onto mail a while longer.

A lot of people struggle to communicate with an artist to get the design they want for their project. Working with someone outside of your field can sometimes be frustrating for you and the person you’re working with. You may not feel confident in knowing what to ask for, or you may not realize everything that goes into designing something.

On February 13, 2015 the United States Postal Service (USPS) experienced an outage in its Postal One service. To the uninitiated, this is the service that processes mailings and postage payments. All postal documents for mailings are done electronically through this system. Luckily, this didn’t happen back in October, during the height of election season.

National Change of Address, NCOA, is a required process for all bulk mailing lists to qualify for bulk rates according to the USPS. NCOA checks the names on your mailing list against a current database of 160 million names and addresses maintained by the USPS.This process is actually of benefit to all especially your campaign.

Two things off the bat to consider are costs and timing. First, die-cuts add costs, so it's not something to suggest on every campaign. Second is the time factor, die-cuts do add time to the production of the piece, so this needs to be worked into the schedule. If you have the budget and time for producing a die-cut piece, then the issues become production related.

Although media consensus paints causes and candidates, blue for liberal and red for conservative, the USPS is color blind and regards all mail politically directed, motivated or otherwise, the same.  However, when the USPS sees RED (tags) on mail, it acts quickly on ALL political mail!

Democratic direct mail: What does a mail firm do? Admit it, this is a question that a lot of people have wanted to ask but were too embarrassed: Well, never fear, After doing  award winning campaign mail for over ten years The Campaign Workshop is here with the answer. Below is a very general, and in no way exhaustive, overview of the duties of a good Democratic direct mail firm.

“Nasty, brutish and short,” doesn’t just sum up Thomas Hobbes’ feelings about the state of nature – it also applies to the often-lonely life of a piece of Democratic direct mail. It’s tough to get noticed and stand out from the other items stuffed in the mailbox, and even if it does get noticed, it’s usually quickly tossed out and forgotten.