Direct Mail

Direct mail is mail that targets specific audiences and constituents on a specific mailing list. Broadly used in direct marketing of products, services, and ideas, in the political arena direct mail is used by political candidates, political parties, political action committees, lobbying groups, and other organizations for four major reasons: to raise money, to amplify pressure on public officials, to recruit new members into groups, or, most commonly, to sell a product, program, candidate, or issue. The first successful national use of direct mail for political purposes was by Dwight Eisenhower in the 1952 presidential election. In 1964, Barry Goldwater's direct-mail campaign raised $4.7 million, mailed over 12 million letters, and most notably, created a list more than 200,000 strong. These lists have seen sizeable expansions today. What might have been possible in the early 1960s only at well-funded national organizations like the Republican National Party became possible at much smaller and more diverse organizations, particularly in the late 1970s and beyond, so that by the mid-1980s direct mail became a dominant means of political fund raising.

There are advantages to direct mail that are not available with other kinds of fundraising, research, and publishing. In fact, it is the only activity that simultanously serves as fundraising, market research, and publishing. This triple advantage has translated into marketing gold for campaign managers. An organization can mail different letters to its recipient lists, letters that focus on different projects or agendas, and other letters that specifically target small demographic groups of people in scattered geographic locations. Direct mail offers advantages to politicians that are unmatched by many other means of political communication: repeat solicitations, market pretesting, personalization, concentration, and immediacy. Immediacy is a crucial factor for good direct mail. Urgent headlines like “THE BIBLE IS BEING THROWN OUT” tend to elicit fast and motivated reactions, donations, and overall mobilization.

It is common for the success of most direct-mail campaigns to make the group sponsoring the appeal seem powerful but not organizationally massive, savvy but not corporate, influential but still just a grassroots movement with intimate connections to its members. There are, therefore, abundant techniques for downplaying the mass-production of the letters themselves and emphasizing the person behind the personal appeal. Seemingly hand-underlined passages adorn most such letters. The short, telegraphic paragraphs make liberal use of bold-face, bright yellow highlighting, and machine-produced personal messages in the [Page 190]margins of the letters. The handwritten postscript, the faux post-it note with a personal appeal from the executive director, the bulk-rate sticker on the envelope as if it were a first-class postage stamp affixed with human saliva, the cursive type-font—all of these show the personal touches, the human-to-human bond simulated in the mass mailings.

The criticisms of direct mail are much more muted than its benefits. Some suggest that direct mail induces higher levels of voter apathy and cynicism by polarizing ideologies into extreme and adversarial groups. One concern is that mailers mostly consist of fear, guilt, and name-calling that can also push some to be less likely to even vote on an issue. Another concern is that those who cannot donate money will feel disaffected. They may be turned off by the money chase on both sides of a mailer campaign issue. Some argue that direct mail extends participation in government to people who otherwise would never have gotten involved. Direct mail, they say, enlivens government and extends democracy. Others argue that the extremist rhetoric of such letters and the splintering of the population into target groups encourages alienation, cultural fragmentation, paranoia, and violence. Although direct mail does use highly divisive and absurdly emotional claims, there is little evidence to support the contention that it pushes people away from all things political.

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