Targeting the right voters, with the right message, at the right time

Using a bifurcated mail program to reach Election Day and early voters

By Jeff Roe

The conventional wisdom in the Kansas City media was that Kansas Sen. Julia Lynn (R-Olathe) and U.S. Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) faced uphill battles holding onto their seats in the Democratic wave of 2008.

Their problems were similar, but the political strategy employed in the neighboring states couldn’t have been more different before Election Day. We crossed state lines with a novel mail strategy that had rarely, if ever, been employed in either state—and never on such a large scale.

The Kansas City area media believed the races would respectively be “competitive” and some of “the hottest” in the country. We won both campaigns by significant margins because of hard working campaign volunteers and our mail strategy that reached more of our voters in a cheaper, more targeted way.

To win these races, Axiom Strategies employed a bifurcated mail program that separated voter universes into early/advance voters and Election Day voters. The messaging components in the two universes were similar, but the more advanced targeting method allowed us to reach more voters for less money.

By separating the two universes our campaigns targeted voters more effectively by following their progress through the system, removing those who had already voted and pursuing the voters we knew would support Lynn and Graves on Election Day.

The Strategy

Three steps were employed in both Julia Lynn and Sam Graves’ races.

First, the campaign collected as much voter data as possible through volunteer work and paid IDs. Second, Axiom Strategies developed a mail plan that separated early voters and messages from Election Day voters. Third, Axiom integrated volunteer and paid voter ID’s into two discrete universes to conserve resources and avoid overlap and waste.

The first step of the strategy is done by the hard work of the campaign. Whether it’s walking neighborhoods, holding phone banks or paying for voter data, the campaign collects as much voter ID data as possible and incorporates it in a master database.

Second, while the voter ID program was ongoing, we spent our time developing mail plans for each district. The districts presented a unique challenge in that each had different rules for absentee/early voting. It was essential to understand the key dates and design a program that would hit the right voter at the right time.

Finally, the volunteer and phone data was integrated into our mail plans for both campaigns. One of the common complaints about direct mail programs is that it doesn’t incorporate volunteer and paid ID data that is collected through the course of a the campaign and, many times, simply ignores it. The result is wasted time and money, both for the ID program and for mail that misses its target.

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