In a world filled with digital clutter, political direct mail’s effectiveness in reaching voters gives your election campaign a powerful tool. Think about all of the distractions people face every day from email, pop-ups, Facebook and YouTube ads, texts, signs, TV and radio commercials, and other communications. Direct mail is the only channel delivered by print (and often with an assist from digital) to every household in America. When a printed mail piece arrives in the mailboxes and homes of citizens, it has the power to drive them to participate in our democracy.

Your political direct mail offers your campaign many opportunities to grab the attention of today’s voters, and keep them engaged. As with most mail, finding the right combination of messaging and form factors involves best practices as well as some trial-and-error.       

Of course you want to engage your audience – voters – with a message that resonates. With direct mail, you can base an entire mail piece on an important issue, candidate qualification, or a segmentation factor.

The headlines on a direct mail piece can speak to an individual voter directly and be generated with variable data printing (VDP). 

A political campaign email looks like any other email in an inbox. But a political mailer stands out when removed from a mailbox because it is tactile. The format – the headlines – the images – the call-to-action – even the social proof included on the piece – all capture a voter’s attention, inspire them to find out more, and hopefully, keep the piece around long enough to get them to vote for your candidate or cause.

As digital ad rates have increased and third-party cookies disappear, surveys show that direct mail enjoys a higher ROI than other channels. With economical options such as postcards and bulk postage rates, more and/or larger campaigns are affordable opportunities to reach voters. 

Direct mail is a proven, time-tested tool to attract the attention of voters, provide information about your candidate, build trust and support, and then, get them to vote. To accomplish all of these goals, these strategies will help you to get the best return on your investment in data, printing, and postage for your political direct mail.

This is one that campaigns somehow don’t always get quite right:

Don’t be subtle about your CTA. You and your candidate can’t afford it!

Just tell your voters what you want them to do next and keep it short. Some examples:

Also, show them how. Provide clear instructions, such as your campaign website or phone number for more information, or a map showing the physical location of their polling place, or deadlines for early voting sites or vote-by-mail.

Your audience is not all voters. It’s those people whose values and political beliefs align best with your candidate. Create a contact database starts with lists of registered voters; then supplement those with names from credible data suppliers. Additional data sets can segment voters by gender, age, income, education, and other criteria pulled from issue- or lifestyle-specific compiled lists.

Then, drill down into your voter contact database by targeting people using specific demographics, and build personas to help you visualize your different segments and help you sharpen your copy.

To be persuasive, your messaging should be to-the-point, focusing on how a candidate’s position or experience solves a problem or benefits the voters. Use short headlines, bullet points, and white space to guide the reader to your main points and the call-to-action. Also, with your text and images, tap into emotional drivers: guilt, fear, anger, salvation, exclusivity, flattery, and greed, to motivate action. Align facts and figures mostly as support for the messaging.

Great design plays an important role in the effectiveness of political direct mail. It grabs and then the voter’s attention on the candidate. For the most common formats, such as postcards, folded self-mailers, and flats, these tips make it easy for the reader to quickly scan:

Timing really is everything. Campaign mail first introduces the candidate, then reinforces their messaging, and finally, mobilizes their likely voters – and, you hope, others – before a primary or general election. The key is in reaching the right voters with the right message at the right time. 

To maximize the effectiveness of your political direct mail, keep in mind some important timing tips as you plan and run a powerful political campaign.

One of the most important ways you can analyze marketing performance – and improve your results – is to track your direct mail campaigns. With most political direct mail, effectiveness can be measured and improved through several approaches. 

A lot of political direct mail isn’t intended to produce an immediate, measurable response. Issue awareness, event promotions, nurturing campaigns, and GOTV (get-out-the-vote) efforts pay off with votes cast on (or before) Election Day. However, you can attribute which campaign pieces result in other actions. Call tracking, QR codes, promotional URLs, and PURLs are all trackable. In addition, matchback analysis can identify IP addresses for physical addresses that were mailed to. 

Also known as a split test, this technique tests response rates for one variable two ways for a campaign. In a political direct mail campaign, that could involve testing formats (e.g., flat vs. jumbo postcard), headlines, or images. The control group that was held back (not mailed) lets you determine whether groups that were mailed had a lift over it.  

Digital channels, such as email, text, social media, and display ads, can all be enhanced when launched in conjunction with political direct mail. Each has their own benefits, such as immediacy and reach, that can drive voter engagement when aligned with the strengths of direct mail. For example:

Your political direct mail’s effectiveness is directly related to the expertise of the company that produces it. Decades of experience in designing, printing, and mailing marketing and political  campaigns of all sizes and complexities gives mailing.com a distinct advantage over other candidates.

Among the ways we can help you win:

In the right hands, political direct mail’s effectiveness can be improved by the best fundamental practices that focus on the right audience and messaging, mail the most affordable and engaging formats, understand how to quickly get into the mailstream, and of course, get voters to act. 

At mailing.com, we look forward to being part of your winning political campaign team. Call or reach out to us to get started on the road to political campaign success.