Modern campaigns need modern workflows
How direct mail fits into modern workflows to drive voter engagement
In today’s unpredictable political environment, voter sentiment can change quickly throughout the election cycle. That’s why campaign agility is now critical to reaching voters with the right message at the right time—to make an impact that drives action.
However, condensed timelines with short windows of opportunity can make it challenging to pivot quickly and respond effectively—especially as voting deadlines near.
So what is the key to successfully navigating voter outreach to maximize your impact?
Modern workflows and direct mail.
Why modern workflows are so effective
This integrated approach leverages automated technologies and centralized data to build predictive models that can help your campaign identify when, where, and how messages should be deployed to voters across channels—increasing agility and reducing guesswork—with less time spent trying to determine which messages are most likely to resonate.
Orchestrating your campaigns through modern workflows can give you the real-time insights needed to help you:
- Understand how your campaign strategies are landing with voters and pivot if needed.
- Quickly identify opportunities to refine communications to reflect current issues and sentiments.
- Increase cross-channel performance to support more coordinated voter outreach.
Why direct mail is a key player in modern campaign workflows
THE MYTH
Direct mail is most effective as a standalone channel.
THE REALITY
When integrated into modern workflows, direct mail is powered by automation and data-driven triggers to help:
- Reinforce campaign credibility by amplifying messaging across physical and digital channels.
- Deliver timely communications based on campaign milestones or voter behaviors.
- Drive voter action as Election Day approaches.
Reason 1: Success is no longer measured solely by individual channel performance.
As the range of channels voters use grows—from AI-powered search to social to podcasts—so does the need for coordinated cross-channel messaging. This orchestration empowers your campaign to deliver a connected experience for voters—and can help boost channel performance.
Where does direct mail fit in?
By integrating direct mail into modern workflows, campaigns can target voters more accurately with timely, relevant, and credible mailpieces that can help drive supporters to the polls, sway undecided voters, and reduce unnecessary mail volume.
94% of leaders say direct mail delivers stronger results when integrated with other channels, such as CRM, marketing automation, and customer data platforms.”1
Reason 2: Modern workflows are only as good as the data powering them.
Without quality data, your campaign is flying blind. Integrating and centralizing your audience, engagement, and performance data in modern workflows not only helps you reduce manual effort, but it also gives you real insights to help you:
- Make better informed decisions on how and when to engage voters.
- Build targeted mailing lists.
- Measure channel performance.
- Pinpoint voter engagement behaviors that can automate communications.
- Motivate voters to take action
The following types of data are essential to help power your campaigns:
Proprietary data:
Information (first-party data) collected or maintained by campaigns that helps identify and segment target audiences.
- This can include data from voter records, names, email addresses, demographics, psychographics, geographic locations, event registrations, newsletter sign-ups, donation pages, etc.
Real-time performance and engagement data:
Data that captures how, when, and where a voter interacts with campaign communications, enabling messages to be tailored based on where they are in their journey.
- This can include QR Code® scans from a direct mailpiece, website visits, email opens, click-through rates, content downloads, or repeat interactions with campaign content.
How data-driven direct mail can boost voter engagement.
Voters who engage with a digital campaign ad but don’t follow through with action can be flagged within centralized platforms which then triggers automatic retargeting by sending the voter a direct mailpiece. This innovative approach helps reinforce campaign messages they previously engaged with online—helping increase recall and driving further action.
Reason 3: Modern workflows create efficiencies during the “Mail Moment®.”
The Mail Moment represents a short but critical window between mail-in ballots, early voting, and Election Day to reach voters when direct mail can make the greatest impact.
According to political consultants, direct mail is most impactful during the final weeks leading up to the election,2 and surveyed voters prefer to receive mailpieces during the last month of an election to help make their decision about a candidate.3
Preplanning and integrating direct mail into modern, automated campaign workflows better positions your campaign to capitalize on those all-important final weeks of an election to deliver the right communication to the right voter at the right time.
Ways to integrate direct mail into modern workflows to maximize voter outreach:
Plan:
- Leverage first-party data and campaign-owned data sources to help platforms categorize audiences and build targeted mailing lists.
- Use audience segmentation, such as geographic location, demographics, and voter history to align campaign messages and determine the appropriate volume and timing of outreach.
- Establish automated rules that coordinate mailing lists with campaign milestones, voter actions, or behavioral triggers to enable timely, automated direct mail outreach.
Deploy:
- Integrate USPS APIs including address verification within your centralized platforms to seamlessly validate mailing addresses and increase processing efficiencies that can help reduce costs, minimize waste, and avoid invalid mailings.
- Take advantage of USPS Informed Delivery® and Informed Visibility® to monitor when and where your direct mailpieces are delivered, and to generate notifications that inform the next stage of voter outreach.
- Include digital touchpoints, such as a QR Code® and Personalized URLs (PURLs) in your direct mail to capture and monitor cross-channel engagement and inform future communications.
The bottom line:
Modern workflows powered by centralized campaign platforms are key to helping your campaign efficiently collect, analyze, and activate voter data to better inform your decisions and outcomes. Integrating direct mail into your omnichannel workflows takes outreach to the next level by helping you maximize engagement, performance, and deliver real impact that can sway a voter’s decision.
Leverage USPS products and services to increase direct mail efficiency
Automate direct mail-related efficiencies with Informed Delivery and Informed Visibility. These innovative and complementary features can give you greater visibility into your direct mail campaign performance, delivery timing, and opportunities for stronger and better coordinated voter outreach.
