Young Voters Pay Close Attention to Direct Mail- Survey

Understanding Millennials’ attitudes and behaviour towards political mail is vital, given the US 2016 political calendar, according to a report by the United States Postal Service (USPS).

USPS recently organised focus groups, and conducted an online survey with Summit Research among US adults, with an oversample of Millennials.

The “Political Mail and Millennials” white paper from USPS, published by the International Post Corporation (IPC) dives into Millennial attitudes, preferences and behaviour towards political mail, the impact that political mail can have on Millennials and tips that a direct mail campaign can put to use in reaching the Millennial audience.

According to the white paper, Millennials rely on news aggregating sites like Google, Reddit, Huffington Post or the Drudge Report.

They like to see that their messages or quotes are well-sourced and expect to find a source or reference to explore further online as direct mail-pieces feel incomplete when they don’t include a website or social channels. Millennials view direct mail from candidates as coming directly from the source, without any news bias or filter.

They respond well to candid shots of the candidate, instead of posed or staged photos and welcome images that reflect themselves and their lives.

The majority of this demographic is accustomed to tools like Twitter with a 140-character limit and scanning short, online articles, and briefs.

They like concise and limited text with bold headlines to draw attention. Design should be simple, avoid bi-folds and tri-folds and should make use of high contrast fonts, headers and sub-headers to make the main points stand out, the survey discovered.