Great direct mail is a proven election winner, but not many people do enough of it. It is always a balance with the volume of universal literature, but direct mail brings several advantages. In this post we are looking at ‘white envelope’ letters, not ‘blue/cream’ letters, which will be picked up in another post.
- With Connect, we have a great tool for handling and managing our data for creating direct mail. We also have a superb service from Election Workshop, who regularly do Bulk Buy Deals.
- We also have a great new training video on doing direct mail, which will take you through the process in 10 minutes.
First, we can use direct mail to target specific groups of the electorate with political messages. The most obvious is the squeeze group – those voters who support the third/fourth party in any ward. Repeated contact with these voters by direct mail has been proven to make a substantial difference. Often this group are the voters who take us ‘over the line’.
Last night, we won a by election in Alperton on Brent LBC, holding the seat after a resignation. London Campaign Chair Pete Dollimore said;
“We made extensive use of direct mail in our successful campaign, including to postal voters, those we had previous data on and squeeze voters. Squeeze voters are vital and a real good target for direct mail.”
The party’s G8 funding, a programme for marginal wards, administered by ALDC, pays for two rounds of letters sent directly to squeeze voters.
Secondly, we can use direct mail to build up long term contact with different groups. Amongst these are postal voters and supporters. Both are key groups for us to build our relationship with. Got petition data on a big local issue? Send them a letter!
It is important, though, to point out that all this is dependent on good data. The more we canvass, the more effective our direct mail will be.
Using direct mail over time can build up your relationship with particular groups, including our regular supporters group. It helps to use the data to talk to them about things that interest them.
County and District Councillor Dan Boatright-Greene in Pershore, Worcestershire says;
“In my division, we have cornered the market in direct mail. No-one else does them and people now have an expectation that they will receive letters from the Lib Dems. One household had missed a letter because they had moved the letter box. They emailed me to complain that they hadn’t received one!”
“Many people don’t receive many letters anymore – it is just bills, bills, bills. We use them for positive messages, so a letter from us makes a nice change!”
One group for whom we have data without canvassing are postal voters. And they are a vital group. Typically being 40-50% of those who vote in a local election.
Cllr Stephen Giles Medhurst, the Leader of Three Rivers District Council, says that direct mail is key for them;
“Postal voters are an increasingly big factor in local elections and especially local by elections. Direct Mail gives us the opportunity to build our relationship to them,” says Stephen.
“We will target postal voters both as a specific target group through-out the year and in the run up to postal vote polling day.
“We want the last political contact a postal vote receives before the ballot pack drops through their door is a letter from us.”
Thirdly, direct mail can be very useful for particular geographic groups. For more remote housing, this can help make the most of a trip to them – you can deliver a leaflet and a letter together. Alternately – and in particularly outside regulated election periods – you can post the letters. This works as well for impossible to get into blocks of flats as it does for remote farmhouses.
It can also be useful if you use the marked register to identify those who vote in house of multi-occupation and similar. Many of us have come across piles of leaflets going back months (or years) in entry wells. Direct mail can be the only way to get to those particular people.
Cllr Caroline Leaver, Lib Dem Leader on Devon County Council and also a North Devon District Councillor, emphasised their use of direct mail in targeting and in rural areas.
“We use direct mail to target groups on issues and of course for squeeze. That does, of course, depend on plenty of canvassing to develop the data you need,” explained Caroline.
“In the recent by election In Instow we took a seat off the Tories. We used the opportunity of a by election to do a lot of canvassing in rural areas of the ward. We were then able to follow up with well targeted direct mail. This saved a lot time.
“One approach we used was to cut a MiniVan list for each delivery walk. We would provide the deliver with this, so they could easily find the houses they were delivering to on the app’s map feature. One activist described this as a game changer.”
ALDC provides a good range of template letters and insets, as well as letterhead designs.
- Check out the direct mail templates. This includes letters targeting the SNP, and both monolingual and bilingual Welsh templates.
- Working with Election Workshop, we do 15 rounds of direct mail bulk buys a year. These give excellent value for both hand-delivered and posted mailings.
- If you are printing your own, you can quickly order and print letterheads via ALDC Artworker.