One of the dominant mail trends of the 2020 election cycle was increased frequency as campaigns spent more to supplement their programs once the pandemic cut off some other forms of direct voter contact.
Whether that sticks around for the 2022 midterm cycle was among the topics of conversation at C&E’s recent Creative Summit online, which gathered political creative professionals from a variety of disciplines. Chris D’Aniello of the Republican firm Axiom Strategies said he’s always a fan of increased frequency and has reason to believe campaigns saw the benefit last cycle of communicating more via mail.
In addition, voters spent more time with those mail pieces last cycle, which allowed strategists to stretch out the traditional seven-seconds-from-mailbox-to-trash-can rule of thumb. The increased use of QR codes of mailers also helped demonstrate that voters were engaging with pieces, moving targets from a mail to digital environment more easily.
Among the outside-the-box approaches direct mail strategist Erica Prosser tried last cycle given the pandemic: making mail pieces a bit more functional for parents by adding a coloring-book style page so recipients not only had a reason to consume the mailer’s message, but also to then retain the piece and hand it over to their stir-crazy kids.
Naturally, not everything from 2020 will translate as well to next year’s midterm cycle, but Aaron Evans of WRS said even if his firm isn’t replicating last year’s styles and techniques, the year was a good reminder that strategists should never be too rigid in the planning or execution of mail campaigns, always leaving some room for experimentation.
You can watch the panel’s full conversation, featuring D’Aniello, Prosser, Evans and Alicia Sisneros of Sisneros Strategies, above.
