How Digi-Mail Helped Win the East Hampshire Conservative Association Vote
Campaigning in the recent local elections, the East Hampshire Conservative Association (EHCA) had limited funds and time to ensure its message reached all voters across multiple wards to encourage them to support their local candidate and vote conservative in the polls. Citipost Mail recommended that the EHCA use Digi-Mail to maintain the impact of postal campaigns but save significantly on time and costs.
About the client
The New Forest East constituency in Hampshire serves an electorate of some 73,000. Campaigning in the recent local elections, the East Hampshire Conservative Association (EHCA) had limited funds and time to ensure its message reached all voters across multiple wards to encourage them to support their local MP and vote Conservative in the polls.
The challenge and the Citipost Mail solution
When it comes to the election campaign period, reaching homes through leafleting is a time consuming task that can result in very little personal interaction with voters. So, although more expensive, postal campaigning is a method used by the EHCA to ensure direct communications with constituent households. It may be effective, but the conventional postal campaign process can be impractical, laborious and expensive. Traditionally, the EHCA office had been using volunteers to stuff printed material into envelopes and frank them from the office for sending; a solution that was not only very costly in print and postage but also reliant on the goodwill, availability and speed of EHCA volunteers. EHCA wanted to use Digi-Mail to maintain the impact of postal campaigns but save on both time and costs as well as taking back control.
The implementation
ECHA was able to switch to Digi-Mail within 48 hours of opening a Digi-Mail account. The need to pre-purchase postage, envelopes and other stationery stopped immediately whilst also removing the cost of production from pre-printing the election material. It also allowed EHCA to control the drop date of the material as they were no longer dependent on volunteer support or speed of process. Personalised and targeted mailings for each ward in the constituency were ‘dragged and dropped’ onto the portal and letters went from the constituency office to the voters’ doormat in two to three days.
“Excellent support for our last-minute, mad panic letter shot to voters for the May local elections.” Anthony Marten, EHCA Chairman
The outcome and benefits
Prior to using Digi-Mail, the mailing process for local elections would take ten volunteer days of envelope filling, in addition to the preparation and printing time for materials. By using Digi-Mail’s on-demand service campaigns could now be released in seconds with no more than a drag and drop of the file. Digi-Mail delivers a cheaper, faster, more secure solution which has reduced the pressure on staff, volunteers and candidates whilst also delivering significant financial savings.
“Very impressed with the service given the number of mailshots our Councillors candidates asked us to do in the last few days of the campaign. We would have really struggled to stuff so many envelopes.”
Julie Butler, DCP
