The Endorsement Mailer

My mailers are usually 11 inches by 6, the largest you can send at the letter postage rate. This one was a folded 11 x 12, and it said that you can vote for Aimee because everyone else is.

We mailed one version of this as the ballot chaser, then a revised and updated version to the poll voters a few weeks later.

We planned this image of the crowd standing behind Aimee, and hired my friend Arthur to shoot the photo. The people were attending an SEIU union meeting, after they had endorsed Aimee. I masked out the background in Photoshop to make it nice and clean.

Discount postage is surprisingly complicated, and you have to figure it out before printing. The indicia has to be right, and the space for the address must accomodate a very large barcode. I have the software and equipment to do large mailings myself, but in the final weeks of a heated campaign, a professional mailhouse saves time.

The inside of the folded piece lists elected officials and voters who have given permission to use their name. The remit envelope has a check box for this, and the web site has a form.

By sending the mailer with "Carrier Route Sorting", it does not need to be tabbed. Those are the little round stickers sealing a folded mail piece closed, and they prevent many voters from looking at the inside. Carrier route sorting means that we give them to the post office in the exact order that the letter carrier walks.

The first time I had this printed, the company sent me the image at right depicting the plate used on the press. Our particular shop uses a 19x25 inch press, which wastes quite a bit of paper printing only 11x12. The next time we printed, we put another print job on the same plate. This is called a gang run. After you learn the details of doing it, you can save a lot of money on campaign printing costs.