One lingering impact of the pandemic for direct mail professionals: voter expectations for the sort of communication they receive via mail may very well have increased. Many campaigns directed additional budget toward their mail programs last cycle and experimented creatively.
That opportunity will still be present next year, Democratic direct mail strategist Alicia Sisneros said in a recent interview with C&E: “A lot of people are still at home in many states so we still have all their attention at the mailbox.”
For her clients next year, Sisneros said she expects to focus heavily on the party’s legislative accomplishments, using mail as a vehicle to drive home how federal action is benefitting local communities and individual districts.
“That can be done with more imagery and maybe more flights of mail to sort of create a storyline for the voter to really take in what has been happening over the past two years,” she said.
As for what campaigns should be thinking about creatively with their mailers next year assuming higher voter engagement, Sisneros said finding ways to connect more authentically with voters and then move them from a mail piece to digital will be key. One piece of that will be the continuing use of QR codes, which saw a pandemic resurgence on mailers in ’20 and ’21.
“We are using it to tell more of a story,” said Sisneros. “We have such a small piece of mail and we are trying to really get a voter to engage with a candidate or an organization and their story and their history, so we can just really give them snapshots on a piece of mail. But if we can get them to move online, we can give them the bigger picture.”
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