Arts & Entertainment, Business, Community & Government
Direct Mail
Lesson time 09:02 min
Karl breaks down why direct mail continues to be a valuable tool to reach voters during your campaign.
Students give MasterClass an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars
Topics include: How to Grab Attention • Make It Feel Personal • Using Mail for Attacks • Direct Mail for Fundraising
Teach Campaign Strategy and Messaging
Renowned presidential campaign strategists David Axelrod and Karl Rove reveal what goes into effective political strategy and messaging.
Sign UpPreview
Ironically enough, direct mail, which is one of the oldest technologies-- I have a collection of campaign covers featuring the images of John C. Frémont in 1856 and Abraham Lincoln in 1860. That's how far back mail goes in politics. It's an old technique, but ironically enough is one of the more durable ways to communicate in modern campaigns today for a couple reasons. First of all, for a lot of races-- state house, state senate, local races, even many congressional races-- it's really expensive to run TV. If you live in New York, for example, are you really going to be able to run TV on ABC, CBS, or NBC? Might be able to run it on local cable systems, but you're not going be able to run it on network TV. You live in Houston, Texas-- damned expensive. And when you buy Houston TV, you're buying probably 10 congressional districts besides your own. But mail can be targeted. And it can be targeted not only to your district, but it can be targeted to individual households inside your district-- people that you know you want to persuade, that you have a reason why you know you-- that you can persuade them. And you-- and you know lots of information about them that allows you to frame up the correct message. People like-- you know, they get a lot of advertising mail. Now, we all do thumb through it. So the question is, can you design your piece so when somebody sees it in the stack of mail it grabs their attention enough, through a headline or a provocative photograph of bright colors, so that they feel compelled to at least open it up and begin to absorb it? And you'll find this, that you're targeting right, you'll have a lot of people who will look at it because they want to know what's going on. And particularly if you give them information in a way that's credible-- you have specific facts, you have, say, footnotes so that you've got a link to where they can go online to find it, if you have a reference to an official document-- I've reprinted copies of documents inside a big mail piece. If there's, say, an import memoranda that my opponent is involved in and I put it in a big piece, I can reprint it down there so they can actually read it themselves. So you got to have it grab their attention. You've got to have it be attractive to the eye. This is a great opportunity to show your candidate at his or her best. But it has got to be credible, both in what you say and how you document what you want to say. Now, it's also got to be a number of pieces. Just like what-- seeing a TV ad once won't convince you, you've got to have a number of pieces go to the same household driving home the same narrative. Maybe you'd have different elements of it. But it's not unusual to have six or seven or eight or nine or 10 pieces of mail over September and October go to the same household that you're trying to persuade. Then at the end, we get to mobilization. And again, here your object is to help people vote. So, for example, if your s...
About the Instructor
David Axelrod and Karl Rove reach across the aisle to offer an inside look at winning campaign strategies. The respective architects of Barack Obama’s and George W. Bush’s historic election victories teach how to develop a campaign platform and reach an audience with consistent messaging. Find the inspiration and tools to get involved at any level, or simply become a more informed, engaged citizen.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
David Axelrod and Karl Rove
Renowned presidential campaign strategists David Axelrod and Karl Rove reveal what goes into effective political strategy and messaging.
Explore the Class