Direct Mail

How to save tons of money on direct mail

Reducing Mail Costs

Direct mail is typically a campaign’s highest expense, with over 70% of the budget in most campaigns going towards non-email physical mail. We do several things to minimize your political direct mail cost. We first try to reach voters with lower cost-electronic means such as e-mail, text, Facebook, Instagram and online display advertising.

This include emails that actually get delivered to the most current email address of a voter (and not in their spam folder), texting to voters’ actual cell phone numbers and posting to social media such as Facebook or Instagram (to actual voters, not followers) or even online display advertising. All of this is in a highly targeted manner. This is all done just before each voter is likely to vote.

Outreach With Direct Mail

That said, there are voters that are difficult to reach – those that do not use email, cell phones or social media. We allow you to select out those who you have not been able to reach electronically and use those as a starting point for direct mail. Then, we segment the list into when those remaining voters are likely to vote and allow you to send them direct mail in batches, so it arrives not too soon but not too late – just at the right time.

Efficient Mailing

Has your household ever received several copies of the same direct mail piece? We prepare address files for your direct mail printer (or help you find a good union or non-union printer). You can send just one mail to a household or multiple ones to those households with mixed political affiliations. This save you tons of money!

Track your direct mail outreach campaign

We track each piece of direct mail you sent so you can use this information to be sure each voter get the optimum amount of outreach. For example, if get an important endorsement, you can partially or totally exclude from your next direct mail run those that received direct mail from you in the past from the new mailing, thus saying money.

Better Direct Mail

We are using augmented voter data to curate a piece of direct mail unique to each voter. This will include personalized image, text, and color choices calculated to engage that individual voter. Stay tuned and contact us for more information!

FAQs

FAQ on direct mail

Direct (Physical) Mail is usually a campaigns biggest expense - how can you save us money?

The biggest item in a campaign is direct (physical mail). What we do is if we can reach the likely voter by either:

An email campaign.
A Instagram (or Facebook) campaign.
A text message (texting) campaign.
An online display ad campaign (coming soon).
Canvasing (we integrate with one of the leading canvasing software platforms).
A campaign to their targeted television that we know an actual voter is watching (coming soon).

We, as part of your plan (which has both a budget and timeline in it), will send direct mail only to those who were were not able to reach by one of the more affordable methods above. This approach will allow you to only send direct mail to those who you can’t reach otherwise.

Don't older voters want direct mail as they are not on social media or email?

The answer is NO. In a recent Pew Charitable Trust Study “Some 71% of respondents ages 50 and older reported using Facebook, up from 68% a year earlier. YouTube continues to be the second-most widely used social platform by this demographic.” Voter.Vote currently is in the process of being able to advertise on YouTube so check back soon).

Tell me how you prevent the same household from getting multiple pieces of my mail

We have pioneered advanced house holding technology. We produce an address file for the printer that finds only truly likely voters, aggregating those voters by household into one mail piece. That said, if you desire, we can still mail different messages to different members of a given household (among other targeting options).

Why is direct mail such a large percent of a campaign's budget?

Because it is the most expensive outreach method. This is because of the cost to mail first class mail and physical printing costs. Additionally some say this is because some political consultants get a “kickback” from the printer on direct mail.

How do you be sure that you have done less expensive electronic outreach first before sending someone direct mail?

We keep track of emails, texts, social media and the like we send to truly like voters. We then allow you to screen out those from your direct mail, thus reducing costs.

How do you know when it is the right time to send someone direct mail?

We use AI (Artificial Intelligence) based on past voting behaviors, what type of contest you are in and voter demographics to come up with a model when a voter is likely to vote. We then put this in your plan so you can prepare your direct mail at just the right time for the right voter..