The Campaign Workshop Blog

We had such a great response to our first blog post about innovative political direct mail campaigns that we are back for more. We have found three more creative political direct mail campaigns to inspire your next campaign and get your gears moving. Enjoy!

For campaigns, email is an important and cost effective means of communication. While I am not an email expert and do not have in depth knowledge of open rates, conversions, etc., I have worked with both the MailChimp and Constant Contact. In truth, both MailChimp and Constant Contact are fairly similar services and can both work within the confines of small to mid -sized campaigns. With that said, below is our assessment of which would work better for small campaigns, MailChimp or Constant Contact.

Tuesday night was the memorial service for Ross Bates in DC. It's only fitting that Ross' memorial service started right before the Democratic Presidential primary debate and the WWE Network's showing of WWE NXT.

Ross G. Bates was an original guy. Methodical and quirky, Ross plodded through life forging his own path. He was one of the originators of the California style of direct mail. For those who don't know what that is, the California style was the fusion of design and cutting edge (at that time) targeting. He was an original thinker.
 

If you are looking for a job in advocacy or politics, your search can seem daunting: lots of informational interviews, resumes to send out, and so much more. Staying organized in your search is key. My main tip is to focus on follow up after an interview. This is perhaps one of the most important parts of the job hunt, and something people frequently overlook!

Races are heating up, but there are a number of exciting opportunities for Democrats up and down the ticket. Here are some tips to jumpstart your Democratic campaign:

Building a political email list can be a daunting task, but with a few key tactics, you can increase your supporter base towards your path to victory. If you’re new to running for office, your email list will consist of your friends, family, and contacts you’ve kept through the years. This may be a relatively small list, but over your campaign, you’ll continue to add people to your list. Here’s how.

Candidate recruitment in many places is a lost art form.  Contrary to the popular myth, someone from the DNC does not appear on your doorstep one day out of the blue and proclaim that you should be the next state rep. from Omaha. The majority of candidates who run for office are never formally recruited; they recruit themselves.

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.

When thinking about whether or not you’re ready to run for office, one important step in the process is figuring out who will make up your team. A candidate’s campaign staff is incredibly important in not only making a campaign successful but also more manageable and fun for the candidate and everyone else involved. Obviously, larger campaigns will require a more robust team, but even a small campaign will need a few essential staff members.

Our third installment of our picks for innovative nonprofit marketing campaigns is here to inspire  your creativity. This time, we have chosen four creative advertising campaigns that incorporate direct mail, video, and print advertising to convey important messages.

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.

The USPS can be confusing on many levels. One area where mail lingo gets confusing for people in direct mail is in dealing with the USPS mail forms.

Employee retention is hard. When an employee is leaving your business, as the proprietor, there is an instinct to feel rejected and think “I must have done something to make them leave."  When people leave my business, I have these thoughts as well. An employee moving on is never easy, but having good employees ultimately means opportunities will come knocking. With that said, here are a few tips I have used over the years when an employee is about to leave.

Below, you’ll find a complete list of campaign job descriptions that you might find in a race of moderate size.

CAP, Urban Institute, the Economic Policy Institute, and others are well-respected organizations that have a lot of authority with the press and on the web. We can learn a lot from big think tanks when it comes to your non-profit web presence.