Pacific Views

From The Wilderness

This week, I received in the mail a scathing indictment of the Democratic party's political competence. Sadly, it was from the Democratic National Committee, in the form of a voter survey.

Having supported such causes as Greenpeace, Planned Parenthood, Amnesty International, and the Nature Conservancy, I appear now to have gotten on the mailing lists of every progressive cause out there. For those that haven't gotten to me yet, I'm sure it's only a matter of time. And this last week I got four mailers from groups I haven't contributed to trying to get me to either petition my representatives, or to request that I tell them what I think on the major issues.

I have survey or petition appeals from the Feminist Majority, Public Citizen, and NARAL Pro Choice America. Oh yeah, and one from the Democratic National Committee. I'll get to theirs in a minute. I thought it might be fun to compare all four in regards to ease of reply and marketing design, so here goes:

The Other Guys

All of the following mailers came with a letter explaining why it's terribly important for me to help these organizations. They were in the usual size range for these letters, and in this sample of fundraising effort, all three of these were two doublesided pages long. Each of them was informative enough to crib a good post from, and I may yet do that.

The Feminist Majority had a short survey requesting a yes or no on supporting several issues, demographic data, whether I'd supported feminist causes in the past, and what I thought of federal spending priorities. It was on an 8 1/2x11" unperforated sheet, with contribution information at the top. They sent it with a standard issue business reply envelope, and a polite request to increase my contribution by providing my own stamp anyway.

They'll learn about that last thing. None of the others made the mistake of letting me opt out of mailing it back on my own dime.

Public Citizen provided an 8 1/2x11" perforated sheet with petitions to both of my senators protesting civil liberties abuses codified in the Homeland Security and Patriot acts. Which they have promised to hand deliver if they are not detached from the contribution stub at the top. Having reminded me in two places of the Bush "[I] don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation" quote, that plain, self-addressed yellow envelope may see some action from the base.

NARAL sent an oversized perforated sheet with three petitions in favor of protecting reproductive choice to my DC representatives. Which they, also, have promised to hand deliver if they are not detached from the contribution stub at the top. The sheet doesn't quite fit in the yellow pseudo envelope, because the glued together sides are the same width as the paper. But it's only one sheet, and can reasonably be folded and fit inside. They're contacting true believers anyway, we'll forgive them this once.

The DNC

They started off strong, with a faux express/priority mail envelope that kind of looks like you've gotten a FedEx. You even have to look pretty closely to spot that the blue ink writing in the 'from' and 'to' boxes isn't actually hand-written, giving the first impression that listed sender Terence R. McAuliffe has sent you a very important document indeed.

This illusion was pretty much wasted on the contents.

The letter was a single page, both sides, on 8 1/2x10" paper. Which tells me that they didn't even have enough to say to fill up a normal size sheet of paper, and fell far short of the usual 2-3 page double-sided fundraising letter. Would it have been so hard to find some interesting tidbits, facts, or statistics to add to it so I feel like I've been educated a bit? When you're sending me unsolicited mail asking for money, it's the least you can do.

Then the survey, clearly intended to be the meat of the piece. It's an eight page pamphlet, about 8x5", printed on both sides. They asked me to rank major issues from a list, then asked more specific questions about Social Security, prescription coverage, education, the environment, gun control, and reproductive choice. On the last page of questions, they wanted to know who I thought would be the best choice for president, and left space for additional comments.

The back cover page contained the contribution information, but made it clear that they wanted the survey back whether I sent it with a check or not. Not bad, kind of warming up to this idea of filling this in and replying. And the survey was actually fairly well done. You could almost overlook the sparse letter, because if they aren't going to tell me anything interesting, at least they seem to want to hear from me.

But because they'd already sent me a survey earlier this year, I checked the return envelope before bothering to fill the thing in. And for the second time in months, they've sent me a survey which won't fit in the envelope provided.

Since the thing is outsized, a standard envelope wouldn't work. So they sent kind which is basically a folded sheet of paper with 1/2" wide adhesive seams, which is not in itself bad. What's bad is that it's made out of the exact same paper the survey is printed on, which means it's exactly as wide. Therefore, the inside is an inch too short for the survey, as well as being too narrow by just enough that it would still be hard to get the flap to seal if it wasn't too short.

The survey itself is too thick too fold, and the side adhesive wouldn't withstand that anyway. It's also the wrong size for me to be able to just toss it in a standard envelope of the sort I have laying around my house. I suppose I could physically alter the survey, trim it with scissors or something, but this is now an irredeemable print design fiasco.

The Odds

If any of my readers are betting people, what are the odds that I'll remember to get an outsized envelope at the store specifically so that I can return this survey to the DNC?

Will I remember it after my brain recovers from its all-out chemistry blitz shell-shock? Will I remember while I'm arranging to move house this month? And really, if a political junkie like me is feeling apathetic about the enterprise, how many of these can the DNC expect to get back? Who can save you when you don't even care enough to put your direct mail pieces through a trial assembly at the office.

If I do contribute, what assurance do I have that my money isn't going to be spent on the same kind of thing over and over? This must have cost a few times what the other mailers did, and yet it comes across as an amateur screw up. It's of a type with the early dotcom mistake of blowing so much start up money on fancy equipment and marketing that you can't make payroll.

And looking at the odds that these people can competently support my issues and candidates, I think I'll stick with supporting issues and candidates directly.

Posted by natasha at August 9, 2003 03:32 AM | TrackBack