Political Direct Mail

An 8.5 x 11 piece  of direct mail may not sound like a thrilling medium for relaying your campaign message to voters at first blush, but direct mail leaves a lot of room for creativity. In fact, if you’re running an independent expenditure (IE) campaign, mail can be one of the most effective ways to make a difference for the candidate you’re supporting. What’s more, your mail doesn’t have to be disconnected from the digital sphere—mail and social media can be the perfect complements to make your messaging stand out.

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.

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!

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.

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.

On April 10, 2014, the United States Postal Service (USPS) implemented a new policy called Load Leveling on standard (bulk) mail drop shipped to the DSCF level. This new policy changes the way mail enters the DSCF level and moves through the postal system. The new policy is meant to “allow a more balanced distribution of DSCF standard mail across delivery days.”