The digital marketing experts at DirectMail2.0 hosted a 45-minute webinar with special guest Jim Richard, USPS National Political Mail Strategist on June 16th. In case you missed the live broadcast, you can view the recording below. Local campaigns are happening. Now is the time to be marketing your political mailing services with Political Power Up!
The 2022 Midterm Election Cycle is projected to hit $9 billion in political ad expenditures, more than doubling the amount spent in the 2018 cycle. In fact, the local races are even beginning to outspend the presidential races. Jim Richard also shares how their USPS post-election research with the American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) provides data that gives insight into how to use direct mail as part of a larger campaign strategy to reach people where they are, as they are, in order to inspire action.
2 in 3 Americans Trust Direct Mail vs. Other Sources
Jim tells us about some great facts regarding Americans’ trust in direct mail vs. other sources. 59% believe mail is more factual than other forms of political advertising. Direct mail gets more attention because it’s physically present and seen as more informative; it has the potential to be referred to immediately. 70% of political consultants with expertise in direct mail believe it’s the most effective type of political advertising for educating potential voters.
2 in 3 Americans Say Direct Mail Reinforces Info Seen on TV or Online
In USPS focus groups, several Americans said they use mail pieces as a starting point and turned to the internet to learn more about a candidate. 48% say the mail they received drove them to search online for more information about a politician or campaign. Jim calls this approach of tying all the platforms together — the physical of mail and the digital of other channels — the phygital world.
All Voters Want Connection with Candidates
It all starts with the connection. The challenges in 2020 combined with a dynamic election season, gave campaigns the opportunity to use direct mail in new, more effective ways to make authentic connections with Americans. 80% of sales are made between the 8th and 12th contact; with political mailings, the VOTE is the sale! The more channels that candidates are contacting the voter with are more ways they are connecting with them.
Why Political Power Up is the Omni-Channel Marketing Solution
Repetition and consistency are staples of successful marketing actions. People are immersed with multitudes of marketing messages on many channels. Political Power Up not only utilizes repetition in marketing, but it delivers a streamlined, seamless omni-channel marketing approach for pennies per piece mailed. It starts with direct mail as the activation point then utilizes digital channels to repeat that same cyclical messaging. This is not a replacement for digital marketing strategies. This is a MAIL CENTRIC product that utilizes digital platforms for maximum impact of direct mail campaigns.
How Political Power Up Works
Watch the webinar to learn in-depth details about each of the technologies that are employed to make Political Power Up so successful; such as SocialMatch, Mail Tracking, Informed Delivery, Call/Text Tracking, Social Media Follow-up, District Targeting, Discovery Ads, YouTube Ads, and LeadMatch. Best of all, we’ve designed one dashboard to see it all. Follow along with campaigns in real time to see the granular analytics and overall effectiveness.
Special thanks to guest speaker Jim Richards, USPS National Political Mail Strategist. If you have questions that weren’t answered during the live webinar, or you’d like to start a Political Power Up campaign, please feel free to reach out! For current partners, please contact your Marketing & Sales Consultant. If you’d like to get started with Political Power Up and aren’t a current DirectMail2.0 partner or client, please contact us at [email protected].
Transcript:
0:00
welcome everybody thank you again for joining us today we’re going to give you what i hope to be a very exciting
0:06
webinar i’ll introduce myself i’m brad coogler the ceo and co-founder of direct mail 2.0 i have my vp sales here
0:14
morgan de georgio and she is tried and trusted and knows all about mail and marketing and
0:21
has very quickly become quite a subject matter expert and jim richards who is
0:26
the usps national political male strategist uh i have to admit this is our first
0:32
meeting but we were chatting beforehand and he’s joining us from texas and
0:38
we want you guys to be involved we want you to ask a lot of questions i’m going to kind of be the mc and i’m going to
0:43
monitor the chat and the raise hand and i’ll be i guess for lack of a better word i’ll
0:48
be interrupting them and the presentation when needed to ensure everybody stays engaged
0:55
so i’ll start throwing the tomatoes if it gets boring too so but it will come in the form of a
1:01
question or an interruption but i won’t take up any more time i’m gonna let morgan get started and uh over to you mo
1:08
do your thing thanks brad yeah so if anybody has any questions throughout the webinar please just pop them in the chat
1:14
and uh hopefully brad will get to them and and hammer those out before we get to the end otherwise we will uh open it
1:20
up for q a at the end this is not my uh first interaction with jim um very
1:26
knowledgeable about uh political mail and i’m very excited to actually have him join us today um just in my uh you
1:33
know conversations with him he’s so knowledgeable in the political male and the political campaign space and he has
1:38
a ton of knowledge and education to provide us with today um so we’re going to actually kick that off with him um
1:45
but you know primarily what our webinar today is about is political campaigning
1:50
and the utilization of one of the most prolific marketing channels in the political campaign space which is direct
1:57
mail and then since we know that direct mail is a tried and true and trusted
2:02
marketing channel in the political campaign space um how do we make that even better right how do we increase the
2:09
results and the response that we’re getting from our political male campaigns and so jim is really going to
2:15
talk to us a lot about how we do that the power of mail how we enhance it
2:20
share a ton of data with us about some white papers that usps has undertaken um
2:26
and you know just to speak to the fact that if we have any of our existing uh you
2:31
know partners on the call today you know a little bit about direct mail 2.0 just real briefly you know
2:37
we have a suite of different products that specifically enhance the direct mail
2:43
marketing channel right to improve the response to the direct mail and also to help track um historically what has been an offline
2:50
marketing channel and so one of our products is geared towards political campaigns specifically and that’s what
2:56
we’re going to talk about today so um we do offer an opportunity for print
3:02
and direct mail service providers to license our products so that they can pass along value
3:07
uh to their existing direct mail customers and enhance their mail and and get their clients better results on
3:13
their mail um you know we’ve really got this down to a science and our entire
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company is really geared towards making direct mail uh the most valuable marketing channel that
3:25
there is so um you know to any of our existing partners on the call today
3:30
uh or anybody that might be interested in becoming a partner anyone that uh you know provides uh political direct mail
3:38
campaigns um there’s a ton of mar of dollars that are going to be gener spent
3:44
on political marketing right so there’s a lot of opportunity out there right
3:49
there’s a lot of opportunity and um you know there’s opportunity for you to go out and acquire more political mail if
3:55
you have products and services where you can set yourself apart from other direct mail service providers and add more
4:02
value to these political mail campaigns now for anybody on our webinar today that is a political campaign manager a
4:09
political candidate someone that is running their own campaigns we’re going to talk about how you can utilize your
4:15
marketing dollars in some of the most effective ways possible to drive results um as inexpensively as possible so
4:23
a lot of opportunity here uh and i’m going to go ahead and pass it off to
4:28
jim he’s going to lead the way with talking about the entire foundation of the political campaign uh and that
4:34
starts with mail so jim over to you
4:39
and um so you can hear me loud and clear more yes sir okay great you know
4:45
um i’ve been doing selling political mail probably for the last 12 years and
4:52
it seems lately you know typically we would really get our focus in the mid-year the presidential year
4:58
but you know what i’ve seen now is political is a season that lasts every year all year long
5:04
um now that first slide where we talked about the 2022 political ad spend is already
5:11
rivaling what was done in the 2020 presidential election um as a matter of fact in 2018
5:18
that was the first time that midterm spending outspent
5:24
an elect presidential election year and we’re on track to do the same thing this year
5:31
attended two conferences in the last month uh both digital and mailing related
5:37
and all the folks in the room are saying the same thing they are seeing more revenue spent now with them than they
5:42
did in the presidential season and you know it’s not the big races um
5:48
there’s plenty of those out there but the local races are starting to show up
5:53
more than they ever have before and as we look at some of the research that
5:59
we always conduct post-elections so we’ve been doing post-election
6:05
surveys analysis uh well before 2016. and so one of the things that we saw
6:11
after 2020 was voters really want to connect
6:17
with candidates with issues because if you think about what happened in 2020 because of the start of covid
6:24
and other concerns that was really the first year that you had so much vote by mail
6:31
you had all these different voting alternatives than just the general election
6:37
and it seemed like campaigns before what they strove to do was hey let me make it on election day
6:43
but you can’t do that anymore you’ve got to start planning out way before election day because there’s
6:50
early voting there’s absentee voting and connecting and educating your voters
6:56
is essential so if we’ll go to the next slide we’ll talk about what some of that
7:02
research revealed um over the right you can see that two two and three americans
7:07
trust direct mail versus other sources and it’s not saying don’t use other sources
7:14
i believe in a omni-channel approach to campaign advertising i mean you need to reach
7:21
people where they’re at but one of the things that mail adds to that campaign mix is
7:27
believability so it’s a great way to educate i mean it’s physically in your hands it’s in
7:33
your face and i know in our home um
7:38
we kept all of the and again i’m here in fort worth texas and so we just had our primaries that ended in may
7:45
and my wife and i just collected all of the mail pieces over a two-month period
7:52
just in a local school board election i’d gotten 20 mail pieces from one candidate i have
8:00
never seen a local race with that much mail but you know i think we’re more
8:06
politically engaged than we’ve ever been so regardless of where you are at in the country
8:14
no matter how blue or red or purple it could be people are definitely paying attention
8:20
politically to what’s going on you know even political consultants were
8:25
saying man male brought again that believability and that factual information i needed to
8:31
communicate to my voters when it talks about educating voters one of the things that i thought was really
8:36
interesting was here in texas we actually had um in houston
8:43
over 30 000 ballots could not be counted because uh they were absentee ballots and they
8:49
didn’t have a second signature on them one of the things that happened during covid
8:55
depending on what state you were in um they had different rules during a
9:01
emergency and as soon as covet ended you know state by state it reverted back to
9:07
original let’s say absentee ballot rules well in this county in texas people
9:12
didn’t really pay attention to that so my question is how do you educate well mail is a great way to do that
9:19
so educating voters who might use absentee ballot frequently you know again remember to get that second
9:25
signature remember to get it in by this date those type things mel has some great power for
9:31
we’ll go to the next slide
9:36
so males are not only great in building trust but it also reinforces your other forms of communication so two and three
9:43
americans said that the mail they received helped reinforce the tv ads or the online
9:49
ads they had put out there so let it be used to leverage your digital
9:56
approaches um i call the physical of mail and the digital of our other channels kind of the fidget world
10:03
so to be a part of that digital world you need to tie these things together
10:08
so i know at our house you know we organized our mail in different stacks and for those candidates that we wanted
10:14
to find deeper information about where they stand on certain issues we went online we went to
10:20
their different other digital channels to learn more about them so we’ll go to the next screen please
10:29
and you know campaign managers talking about it’s smart to integrate your direct mail with your other tactics
10:36
um and we’ll definitely see you know from direct mail 2.0 those opportunities
10:42
that all the multiple ways that mail can be used to tie those different channels in together
10:48
next one please so
10:54
you know if you think about mail the different things that you could use qr codes for
10:59
instance i know in a couple of the mail pieces i had the qr codes told you you know when the early voting was you know
11:05
go here to find out where your early voting location would be i haven’t
11:10
voted on election day in 10 years i’m one of those early voters so i’m constantly looking to see when that
11:17
window is so i can make sure i take advantage of it should go to the next one please
11:25
now again you’ve thrown out a lot of statistics and i could probably go on for an hour or just talking about the
11:32
different statistics or things that we see make a difference you know
11:38
in the last several elections and what we see moving forward our deliverthewind.com website
11:44
is a resource that’s open to everybody and it’s where we house all of our latest research so the things that we’re
11:51
seeing make a difference for example uh three new items that you see on there we have some direct mail videos that are
11:58
really interesting on um how is political mail different
12:03
versus bots how is it different versus uh facebook or social media our direct
12:08
mail effect with voters uh was done after the 2021 virginia election and that one was highly
12:16
contested so that was the one that uh governor younkin um had you know pulled
12:21
out of victory when it didn’t seem like he was going to be able to so there was a lot of great insight that we gathered
12:27
that on demographics on ages you know sexist ethnicities what made a
12:34
difference in that election and could we learn from it and we have a series of demographic profile sheets this one’s
12:40
out now we have one coming out on black voters we’ve got hispanic voters female voters so all these different
12:47
categories that if you’re a candidate or you’re working with one who’s able to identify
12:53
what their constituents look like or the voters that they want to tap into we’ve got a
12:59
lot of great information to help you make that argument so i
13:04
encourage you to visit our website if you wanted to reach out to myself or any of our team that does political mail
13:12
the contact page on our website leads directly to us so we see that several times a day so if
13:19
you wanted to reach out maybe have deeper conversations on some of this we would love to speak with you
13:25
so morgan that’s what i have right now unless you have any questions along the way you know i just wanted to to kind of
13:31
touch on something real quick because historically direct mail has been you
13:36
know one of the the highest uh yielding response rate channels in the
13:41
political campaign space it’s been one of the most effective channels and um it’s utilized and known to really work
13:48
in the space and um you know we were talking a little bit before the webinar about how you know i was curious about
13:56
the amount of political mail that’s gone through the mail stream you know this year uh as opposed to previous election
14:02
years and you were touching on the fact that your numbers are even up from just the 2020 presidential election i was
14:09
just curious i mean why do you think that is you because is it because you know mail is
14:14
just such a trusted source especially considering um you know everything that’s gone on politically and with
14:21
digital ads why do you think mail is being utilized even more so than before
14:28
um you know i think a lot of it has to do with the down ballot races of the local races um if you think about
14:35
you know the senate congressional races um they pretty much buy up all of the tv
14:42
ads or a lot of the visual ads if you will and it doesn’t leave
14:47
you know a down ballot campaign that much of an opportunity to compete for those dollars in this case but because
14:55
people are so actively involved now at the local level direct mail is a great way to target
15:01
that audience again all you need is 51 plus percent of
15:06
the voters so if you know who that audience is and want to persuade them mail is really the
15:13
only channel that can 100 target who you want to reach
15:18
um and again i’m not dissuading using the other channels but i think because of how actively
15:26
engaged people are now in politics um they’re seeing
15:32
what a difference male can make in these campaigns and again i use again my school board
15:38
races have never paid attention to those before and i couldn’t help but pay attention now
15:44
another interesting thing for me is there were two runoff races that i would have never known they had gone into
15:50
runoff until i received a direct mail piece so my school board election did go
15:55
into runoff and i’m like oh i had no idea but that was the channel that broke through
16:01
the clutter for me and i think that the candidates are seeing that absolutely it makes a lot of sense yeah
16:08
and it’s it’s fantastic because you know it’s also a channel that works for
16:14
all demographics as well you know whether it’s millennials um you know whatever it may be it’s a trusted source
16:21
and you’re able to get that tangible piece into the hand of that prospective voter and make that impression right and
16:27
so um there’s a lot to be said for utilizing the direct mail as that activation point
16:34
in your political campaigns um but you know what do we know about marketing
16:39
well i mean we know that marketing requires repetition right we we have to
16:45
nurture that prospect or that voter especially in campaigning because information changes so rapidly and
16:51
there’s so much mudslinging and you might have a prospective voter drawn in and they might be swayed and so we
16:58
really have to nurture them all the way up until election day right and so it
17:03
doesn’t matter what kind of marketing you’re you’re doing repetition is the key to success and statistically we know
17:09
about 80 of sales are made between the eighth and the twelfth contact we need to touch them multiple times and with
17:16
political mailing uh the vote is the sale that we’re trying to accomplish um
17:22
you know and all of that data that we’re seeing from the white paper that was put
17:27
together um you know why do we think that integrating digital
17:32
helps increase that responsiveness or the effectiveness of the mail well because it also ties into how people
17:39
respond to marketing right so if i receive a direct mail piece it reaches me in my home i have that tangible piece
17:46
it’s a trusted source and i’m interested in learning more about that political candidate i’m going to go online i’m
17:53
going to start doing my research right and so this is where we really get an opportunity to nurture that voter all
18:00
the way up to election day by utilizing digital channels to reinforce
18:05
that message that started with the mail it’s like the direct mail starts the party and we keep it going uh with that
18:14
digital enhancement and then of course you know i i definitely strongly encourage the utilization of the
18:20
repetition of mail in itself right um and so
18:25
you know like i i was saying at the beginning of the webinar um you know this is this is our our expertise you
18:32
know we build out uh marketing platforms that are comprised of uh different
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suites of marketing technology whether that be tracking or digital marketing technology that are specifically geared
18:43
towards enhancing the direct mail and so uh our product that is geared towards
18:49
political campaigns is something that we call political power up and um not only
18:54
does it utilize repetition in marketing but it utilizes an omni-channel
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marketing approach which is also a very integral piece to successful marketing
19:05
actions because in today’s time and space people are immersed with so many different marketing messages through so many
19:11
different channels and it’s overwhelming so when we can deliver a streamlined seamless omni-channel marketing
19:18
experience that starts with direct mail as the activation point and then utilize
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digital channels to repeat that same cyclical messaging um we are really able
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to drive a very high response we’ve been able to effectively deploy
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very successful political campaigns and you know the other thing that
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we have to consider in the political campaign space is that you know you’re essentially building a
19:45
relationship with the voter and the candidate right and so you know you have to
19:52
nurture that voter you know it starts with the mail and you know then you have to continue to build that relationship
19:59
through the utilization of those other channels and so with political power up um we have a suite of technologies where
20:06
we seamlessly track the direct mail campaign but we also re-engage engage
20:11
that voter um and continue to nurture them and build that relationship with them up till election day
20:18
so you know uh it’s very important to note that this product is not a replacement for your current digital
20:24
marketing strategy um most people are utilizing digital marketing uh uh a very high profile candidate
20:31
of course they’re they’re doing digital marketing right um some of the low uh lower uh ballot candidates maybe not
20:38
right like like you touched on their gym um and so an all-encompassing uh you
20:43
know turnkey product like political power is perfect for them they’re utilizing mail and you can add on um a
20:50
nine technology platform for just a few pennies per mail piece and take advantage of nine uh digital
20:57
technologies now for uh higher profile candidates that are utilizing digital marketing um are you utilizing an omni
21:05
channel marketing strategy do you have the perfect mix of technologies um you
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know that we have that we know is tried and true and is truly going to enhance the mail to drive that experience for
21:17
the voter um so our product is utilizing these nine technologies um we are experts in the
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space we also integrate all of our technology into our proprietary business analytics system so that we can help
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drive maximum response but it’s it’s that perfect mix of these different technologies that’s really helping to
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enhance the mail and really drive that message home that you activated with that tangible direct
21:43
mail piece so a little bit about these technologies uh the first one is something we call social match we are
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going to take your your mailing list and we actually find the facebook and instagram accounts of the people on your
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mailing list and we start serving up ads to them just before they get the mail so we’re
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warming them up to that mail piece right then they get that mail piece in their mailbox and we continue to engage them
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through their facebook and instagram news feeds um so this is a great way to enhance the mail and deliver that
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cyclical messaging and really create that familiarity with the candidate um
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and whatever that marketing message is that’s going out on the mail um tracking is super important right
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we’re signing we’re investing a significant amount of money into our direct mail campaigns and so we can give
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you peace of mind that what you’re paying for is actually being delivered you can see very granularly each
22:37
individual direct mail piece the date it was mailed and the date it was delivered we we
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actually integrate uh via api right with usps uh informed visibility so we can
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pull the mail tracking data right from usps and we can report it in a dashboard
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that you can log into and you can track and you can actually see when your meal is projected to be delivered in the
23:02
confirmation of delivery this can also help you more appropriately time other marketing
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channels right so maybe you’re running an email campaign you can more appropriately time an email to hit an
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inbox when the mail is hitting the mailbox so um taking advantage of some of this data that we’re providing in
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these campaigns is beneficial at improving your other channels that you might be using as well
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uh informed delivery so this is provided by the united states postal service um prior to
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again receiving the mail piece now not only will you get impressions through facebook and instagram to the prospective voter but anybody signed up
23:38
for the service um in the morning they get an email or they might use the mobile app and it shows them a grayscale
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image or you can use a replacement color image but it shows them all the mail they’re going to have in their
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mailbox later that day um and people are very responsive to this i’m almost
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embarrassed to say it but i open mine every single day i i’m just obsessed with what’s going to be in my mailbox at
24:05
the end of the day but the statistical data on this is is really astounding um
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on average achieving somewhere around a 65 open rate um on the informed delivery
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email so your chances of getting that additional impression are so strong um
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so that we can also embed a full color clickable ad right underneath the the scan of the mail this is giving them an
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opportunity now to respond to an offline channel which is that tangible mail
24:34
online right they can click on the ad and they can go right over to the candidates page they can learn more
24:40
about this candidate and continue that journey with them another very beneficial aspect of
24:46
utilizing uh our political power product is that it includes informed delivery which is
24:52
also eligible for four percent postage discounts this starts in august and it
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runs through december so you know there’s been a a few uh there’s been postage increase there’s another one
25:04
coming in july so um taking advantage of helping to get additional impressions
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which will not only increase the response to your mail and that engagement but you can also take
25:15
advantage of postage savings so um another tracking feature that we
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have is either call or text tracking so this would be where you can have a call to
25:28
action on your mail piece to call a telephone number uh to acquire more information
25:34
or even to text a phone number to receive something in return so you know
25:40
vote uh text vote gomez to this number to receive something in return right
25:47
maybe that’s a link to uh your campaign funding page so that they can contribute
25:52
to your campaign uh maybe it’s a link to your website to learn more about the candidate or um something that’s
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piggybacking on that direct mail piece uh a link to your your campaign schedule
26:04
whatever it might be right but utilizing uh things like call tracking or hoping that helping to show response to mail
26:12
and things like text are very important because it aligns with the way that people prefer to respond to marketing
26:18
right i can very easily pull out my cell phone and text uh something and then have
26:24
access to it on my mobile device at any time i want um and the utilization of qr
26:29
codes is very beneficial as well it’s something that we also uh have access to
26:35
in our dashboard we can thank coven for the resurgence of qr codes um
26:41
restaurant menus so many different things we’re utilizing qr codes and that
26:46
will also help to drive a response to the mail because people are you know
26:51
knowledgeable about pulling out their phone and scanning a qr code and going right to a website or wherever you’d
26:57
like them to go now uh typically in political campaigning
27:03
drilling into the data of who’s actually responding to your campaigns is very valuable information to the
27:09
campaign manager so whenever someone calls in or they text in the dashboard you’re able to actually see
27:16
the telephone number of who called in who they are their name their address uh
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the type of phone line that they’re calling in from we can record the calls
27:27
and you can export all of this data uh if you wanted to upload it into a crm or
27:32
or utilize it in your future campaign efforts okay
27:37
so social media follow-up um you know when people are responding and they’re
27:42
going online we now have an opportunity to retarget them on channels that they
27:49
are on frequently right so everybody’s on social media uh they’re on their facebook they’re on their instagram and
27:56
the best thing about a campaign like little political power up is that yes we are utilizing digital channels but this
28:03
is mail centric right we’re not taking over any digital marketing we want you to keep running all of your digital
28:09
marketing efforts because they are beneficial and they do drive results what we want to do is help enhance your
28:15
direct mail campaign and we want to repeat that same message that’s going out on your direct mail campaign so when
28:22
you start your your campaign with that that trusted tangible direct mail piece
28:28
and you are re-communicating that message that was delivered on that direct mail piece you’re reinforcing
28:35
that right so it’s also going to trigger that familiarity in that prospective voter’s mind uh here’s his candidate
28:42
again here’s his candidate again oh that’s right they’re they’re reinforcing this messaging that drew my interest in
28:48
the first place and you’re continuing that journey all the way up to election day
28:54
we also have an opportunity to target and and deliver that same message that’s
28:59
going out on the direct mail and enhance the direct mail through uh district targeting now
29:04
uh voting districts run a little wanky we we don’t necessarily want to just target uh certain
29:11
cities or states um so we can actually target specific voting district codes and we can also
29:19
target specifically for age or gender and you have an opportunity now to deliver the message
29:26
that’s going out in the mail in the same geo locations as you were delivering the mail and enhance the direct mail recipients
29:33
through the google display network okay
29:38
we also have found it to be very valuable to be able to enhance the mail through the discovery ads platform now
29:45
this one is a three for one approach and and on the campaigns that we were running in the primaries we were driving
29:51
astronomical engagement on these channels um the first thing that you get through discovery ads are gmail right so
29:59
in the gmail uh feed under the promotions tab it will be an email that looks like it’s coming from the
30:05
political candidate uh when they open it’s an email from the candidate and they have an opportunity to click
30:11
through on those ads additionally uh ads are displayed on the
30:17
youtube home page and then also on the discovery toolbar so
30:22
the discovery toolbar some some people that i speak with there are familiar with it some aren’t it’s only on your
30:28
mobile device so you have to be on your mobile device and also logged into your
30:34
gmail account and if you go to google.com they’re the ads that appear below
30:40
um the google toolbar right they’re typically based on your interest but this is where we can also display ads to
30:46
the direct mail recipients and other uh prospective uh voters so you know the
30:52
other good thing about running these political power up campaigns is that we also get to cast a much wider net here
30:59
digitally and not only enhance the direct mail recipients but also deliver
31:04
and start to create that relationship with your direct mail messaging uh to a much broader audience right so uh in the
31:12
same voting district codes you know maybe you only have a certain amount of budget for your direct mail campaign and we do
31:20
have an opportunity here to market digitally to a much larger audience in addition to enhancing
31:27
the direct mail recipients uh youtube ads are huge so um you know
31:34
harnessing the power of youtube in any type of marketing campaign especially political is very powerful uh for one
31:41
it’s the second largest search platform on the web um and the other thing about
31:46
it is that we’re harnessing the power of video so people we we typically get about i would
31:52
say around a one point eight four percent response rate on video as opposed to around a .007 on a still app
31:58
so any time we can use video it’s very beneficial at driving a higher response
32:04
and you can use video in the social uh channels on these campaigns as well uh
32:10
and you know it does not have to be some uh really fancy
32:16
very expensive highly produced video uh people do really well with a human
32:22
element especially in political campaigning because you are developing that relationship
32:28
right so the candidate can just pull out their cell phone and record a short selfie video you know
32:34
talking to the the prospective voters about what it is they want to accomplish right um and
32:40
one one thing that is very important too is to make sure that they start talking about themselves who they are and why
32:47
they should be voted for first because people do skip these ads so if you start
32:52
out talking about how terrible your opponent is that may be bad press for them but it’s the only thing they see
32:59
right it’s talking about the opponent so um
33:04
now last but not least is our lead match technology now lead match is a very
33:10
intuitive technology that really gives you the ability to tap into other
33:15
interested voters this is a technology that will give you a pixel that can be
33:20
placed on your website and you have an opportunity to identify who they are and
33:25
acquire 95 accurate contact information about them so primarily a residential
33:31
address now this is helping to build a mailing list of people that are
33:37
interested in that candidate this is helping you to more efficiently utilize
33:42
your future marketing dollars to mail to the people that are showing an interest right maybe they’re on the fence right
33:50
so they’re on the website they’re trying to gather more information about why they should show up to the polls and
33:57
vote for this candidate while reaching them again with mail to reinforce that message is very important
34:04
so you know in our political campaigns it starts with mail but it also ends with mail right because
34:10
the political mail like like jim was speaking about and all that statistical data from their white paper
34:15
is showing that the mail helps reinforce those other channels right so
34:20
you know maybe you are running other digital marketing right everybody that’s responding to your
34:26
digital marketing is going to your website right so
34:31
they’re not all reaching into you or asking questions and this is giving you an opportunity to identify who they are
34:38
and reinforce your messaging with mail now the interesting thing about this
34:43
technology is that after we identify these unique website visitors we also have an opportunity to instantly
34:50
match back to the mailing list so we can show you uh the direct mail recipients that actually responded and went to the
34:58
website as well right so tracking is very important you know in
35:04
our platform we have a few different technologies that can help you to effectively track the mail but we also
35:09
provide access to a dashboard a really intuitive dashboard in real time you
35:15
have access to at your fingertips log in and see the results of your campaigns um
35:20
if you’re a partner of ours or you’re considering uh becoming a partner and you want to provide these technologies
35:26
to your clients you would have access to this dashboard and the opportunity to track the results of the campaign you
35:33
can see how your marketing dollars are working what kind of uh impressions am i getting
35:39
what’s the engagement um you know things in the political campaign space
35:46
change very rapidly you know if you notice that something’s not working um you can change the ad right so having
35:53
access to all of that data at your fingertips the ability to export reports and analyze that and continuously
36:00
improve your marketing efforts going forward um is very valuable people love the dashboard so
36:07
um a little bit about uh you know the power of adding the political power product
36:14
onto a mail campaign so you know digital marketing is something
36:19
that is utilized in political campaigns but when we look at the engagement rates
36:24
that we were able to deliver uh through one of these campaigns that we ran through the primaries
36:30
we were achieving astronomical click-through rates for some of these technologies much higher than we
36:35
traditionally would see on a standalone digital marketing campaign and that’s because
36:40
we’re utilizing an omni channel marketing solution that’s employing everything that works in marketing right
36:47
it’s utilizing that tangible direct mail piece the enhancement through the digital repetition and the delivery of
36:54
an omni channel uh display right um they were also able to capture
37:00
um a new mailing list of website visitors and prospective voters that they were able to at the very last
37:06
minute uh deliver a direct mail piece to as well um now again this isn’t just for very
37:14
large high-profile uh political candidates uh this was a case study for
37:19
a really small election that we ran a down ballot candidate there was only one month left they were an underdog
37:27
and they mailed 14 000 postcards but we enhanced it with our political power
37:32
product and he won by the hair on his chinny chin chin with 17 votes but he
37:38
attributes it to the digital integration you know he had that additional push
37:43
above and beyond just the mail right and so it can get down to the wire sometimes
37:49
and you know why this works so well for him as well too is you know when you have a minimal marketing uh budget but
37:56
you’re able to add a nine technology platform onto your direct mail campaign for just a few pennies per mail piece
38:03
you’re harnessing everything that works in marketing very inexpensively you know so political candidates you know they’ve
38:09
been in this game a while you know they’re not new to marketing and what works in marketing they’re probably utilizing digital marketing but this is
38:16
providing them with a streamlined platform that’s tried and true is known to work and they have the opportunity
38:23
here um to take advantage of these nine technologies that we know will enhance the mail
38:28
while they keep running everything that works on their digital campaigns because again that’s not something that we want to
38:35
take over at all uh so we are experts in the space um we watch
38:43
very closely all the different trends that are occurring with the digital marketing aspect of our campaigns um
38:50
luckily we didn’t have any type of shutdowns or anything yet with the primaries um you have to be a little bit
38:56
more uh tactful i shall say uh when it comes to what you’re uh marketing in the digital space
39:03
you really can kind of put anything you want on a direct mail piece uh for the
39:08
most part it’s very hard to get something flagged uh in that regard but uh there are some ad restrictions in the
39:16
digital space or things that are sensitive but of course we can coach and guide you uh we can also help coach and
39:22
guide your clients um we know what will work what won’t work and we can help get creative and help you deliver the
39:29
message you want to deliver tactfully so that the campaign can keep running
39:35
uh you know these campaigns are time sensitive right it’s been my experience that
39:40
it’s a very instant last minute turn and burn type of scenario so
39:47
we are running a digital campaign there is some preparation here so we do have to get codes on a website um
39:55
for facebook accounts there actually has to be um an approval and identification of the
40:01
facebook account owners they actually have to receive in the mail a pin
40:07
that they go in and log in and identify themselves as the facebook owner but once the first campaign’s set up that’s
40:14
it you just upload a mailing list and change out the ads if you want um and it’s seamless and ready to go and you
40:20
can even start one of these campaigns after it mails so if you feel like gosh i’ll
40:27
never be able to meet this time frame because it’s the turnaround time is so quick um we can start these campaigns
40:33
you know two three four days after nails a week after it mails um you know we very successfully make that happen
40:40
all the time now one thing that you might miss out on and and this actually occurs very frequently is the informed
40:46
delivery piece because usps requires us to upload the informed delivery by 12 59
40:52
pm the day prior to the mail date if we don’t uh meet that cutoff time the mailing will
40:58
go out without the informed delivery but the majority of the candidates are okay with that you know if they miss out on
41:04
informed delivery and they they know that they may not uh meet that cut off time you know that’s okay too so
41:12
all right so um that’s all that uh i had for today you know if you’re interested
41:17
in learning more um there are so many resources available on that deliver the
41:23
win website so i i could go in there and and scour all those resources there’s so many
41:28
resources for any of our partners or prospective partners on the call to
41:33
put together marketing materials you can provide to your political male clients or to prospect for um or anybody on our
41:41
webinar today that is deploying your own political mail campaigns i i strongly
41:47
encourage you to tap into that there’s so much information or reach out to jim personally uh jim isn’t
41:53
there a contact uh portion on that deliver the win website to where they
41:58
can get in touch with you yeah and it’s it’s the link that says you know if you want to speak to a usps
42:04
consult political consultant that would that would reach my team yeah he has a whole team of people that
42:11
are ready to help you with your political male campaigns so a really great resource to tap into
42:19
if you’re interested in learning more about direct mail 2.0 or political power product
42:25
you can reach us at sales dm20.com you can also go to our website
42:30
at dm20.tech so um brad were you able to engage
42:37
everybody with all these questions actually well thank you very much morgan and jim that was fantastic i was
42:44
fielding questions because i figured we’d be running short for time we always will finish on time uh one of the first and most frequent
42:51
questions is always will there be a recording of this yes there will give us 24 to 48 hours we will send that to
42:58
everyone who registered and you can then review this at your leisure uh there was
43:04
a question about postage discounts that was covered by you morgan so thank you there was
43:09
another question about getting a copy of this deck that will also be included
43:16
someone asked about a rebrandable one we could make that available if you are a reseller partner otherwise you’re
43:22
welcome to do what you want with the deck we send you i mean i’m not going to chase you down for using our collateral
43:30
here but we’re not going to rebrand it for you unless you’re a partner that’s a privilege of licensing
43:36
another question that somebody asked and maybe morgan can expound on this
43:42
uh someone had asked on the eighty percent of closes happen between the eighth and the
43:48
twelfth contact the source for that and i gotta say
43:55
i honestly i do not remember the top of my head but i have it on my stat sheet who
44:01
was it that asked i can send it to them do you know let’s just send it to everybody
44:07
okay and the biggest thing that i know that no one specifically asked this but let’s
44:13
say i’m a mail service provider or i’m a i’m a digital agency or ad agency and i want
44:20
to get into this gold rush of political advertising or political mail and i’ll
44:26
put this to both you and jim to answer about 60 seconds each how do i get into this world if i want to start contacting
44:33
these candidates and getting some of this business and providing these solutions where do i start
44:39
sure jim do you have any resources well certainly if you go
44:45
each state at the secretary of state’s website you know they’ll have a list of the
44:51
candidates that you know have uh passed their requirements to be on the ballots
44:56
or those lists so i mean again if you’re only interested in local ones county ones those type things i would go to
45:02
that list and again you could certainly reach out to us from a
45:08
political mail insight and you know the business partners on
45:14
this call are so valuable i mean we’re not going to take it and produce it for you we understand how important it is you
45:20
know to have solutions like direct mail 2.0 and you know being able to bring all those pieces to the table
45:27
so from our side our website but also the secretary of state website
45:33
excellent morgan you’ve got some ideas on this too right yeah i mean there’s information it’s basically primarily you
45:39
know through establishing relationships you know you have to go to marketing events you have to really get your foot
45:45
in the door with these campaign managers most of the time they’re going to do business with someone they know someone
45:50
that’s referred someone that they like but there is always a ton of information on any of the government pages there’s a
45:57
lot of information on the usa.gov you can find current elections coming up in your area
46:02
the us vote foundation.org has a ton of information
46:08
but it’s mainly at your government agencies that you’re going to find contact of information that you’re going
46:13
to have to grassroots reach out to unless you get yourself immersed in some of these groups where you can start
46:20
networking right let me add to that in the last 30 seconds uh
46:25
if you’re involved in your community it’s undoubtedly that you’ve been asked to attend a political dinner fundraiser
46:32
gathering meetup go go and make some friends introduce yourself to the campaign managers or the strategists
46:39
they come to all these events and eventually you will make contacts and guess what
46:46
when the they’re looking for someone your name is now top of mind so go to those events go to those rallies sure
46:53
right yep all right well to keep with our time limit i’m going to wrap it up if there’s
47:00
any last comments or questions you’re free to email the sales at dm2o or call
47:05
the number below but again thank you so much for your time and attention and we will get this out to you within the next
47:12
24 to 48 hours all right take care guys have a great weekend thank you thank you
47:17
jim hello thank you
