Have you ever wondered how much mail is
sent during a presidential election cycle? If your business
does not utilize direct mail as part of its advertising then
probably not, but if you do then it's something you want to
know. As we draw closer to the election the amount of
political mail in the US postal system will skyrocket but the
question is how high and just what effect will this have on the
rest of the direct mail response rates? It's a difficult
question to answer at best. There are companies
out there that claim to have a good handle on the amount of mail
being sent out for various industries but they are statistical
samples and extrapolated totals so the real answer is nobody knows
for sure.
The most pressing questions for our
clients now and moving forward to the election is what, if any
effect will the surplus mail have on response rates of existing
campaigns? Pinning a total on loss of response rate is a near
impossible task; there are so many factors involved.
Registered voters tend to get more mail from the republican side;
non-registered voters tend to get more mail from the Democratic
side. Each party will send absurd amounts of mail to their
respective party affiliated registered voters.
It's a tough question but we do have
some observations. We have observed the effect on response
rates is going to vary greatly by target demographic.
The high-end homeowner with mortgage a balance above
629k has shown a much larger drop in response rates than those with
lower balances. Response rates for debt offers to this
point have largely been unaffected, where as the non-profit mail
response rates have virtually come to a complete stop.
So to answer the question of how many pieces of political mail have
been sent in this election cycle: Our best guess based on our
volume and industry feedback is north of 160 million as of
September 17th. How has that 160+ million pieces
impacted the response rates on other mail? Our best
cumulative guess is about a 1/15th(.0015) of a
percent. We will have the overall data totals published in
the September entry on our Direct Mail Weather
Report so we may revisit this question again, but so far our
observations have suggested the affect is minimal unless you are in
the non-profit sector. We will post more numbers as they
become available and the election draws closer. There are
times when we advise clients not to mail. We are in the
direct mail business so advising clients to hold back is often a
difficult and painful one but there are times when the best
decision is not to do anything. Thankfully now (as of
9-17-2012) is not one of those times unless you are a
non-profit.
If you like what you have read
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clients to have the advantage so we don't disclose everything on
the website. Let us help you with your next campaign