Direct Mail Millennials

Put this one in the dictionary next to "counter-intuitive." The Rothenberg Political Report has a great little piece up about how the Obama campaign used commercial mailing lists and direct mail as a gateway to reaching young voters in Iowa:

Despite the vast amount of attention and success in organizing connected, Web-savvy voters, new media technologies are not as good at discovering the disconnected or persuading undecided voters. Beyond the presidential level, strategists are still wrestling with how to use new media effectively for persuasion.

[...]

Younger, more connected voters are believed to be the beginning of the end for direct mail. But when the Obama campaign realized it needed to increase the overall turnout of the Iowa caucuses in order to win, the Senator’s strategists went back to direct mail. The campaign bought a commercial list of high school students (age 18 or those who would be 18 on Election Day) used by prospective colleges.

Those students were sent a full-color, direct-mail piece with an image of Obama placed on an iPhone, which also included various ways the recipient could connect with the campaign — via phone, text or Web site. The campaign used a traditional campaign tactic to discover new supporters that didn’t appear on any voter file.

It's interesting, and the piece is written to suggest that this could be a successful first-step for down-ballot candidates to approach local young voters and build a reliable voter file for the under 30 set.