What Is the Total Cost of Political Mailer

August 30, 2020 8:32 PM

I am interested in learning the total cost of a political mailer. For example, if I were to receive an envelope from the RNC or 45 asking for financial support, what is the total cost of envelope, paper, printing, postage, etc
posted by goalyeehah to Society & Culture (7 answers total)

That's a little hard to answer, for a few reasons.

One reason is that the per-unit cost decreases with volume. The more mailers that are sent, the less each one costs. And more colors increase the cost.

Also, are you including costs such as design, messaging and photos?

There are two many variables for a definitive answer. A low but reasonable price is 50 cents each. But they could cost much more.

(Source: I ran for City Council last year.)
posted by NotLost at 8:49 PM on August 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

Size is another variable that you need to account for.
posted by NotLost at 8:51 PM on August 30, 2020

I will admit I'm not an expert, but there are so many variables in your question that it feels like it will be hard to answer with any specificity. For instance:

- what kind of paper (plain office paper, good quality paper, glossy, etc)? How many sheets per mailing? Will there be inserts other than the actual mailer?
- How involved is the printing of the mailer - is it just text, or does it also have graphics, and if so, are those graphics simple line drawings or actual images? Any complexity here raises the cost of printing.
- Same question with the envelope. Will it have graphics, or will it just be a plain envelope?
- Postage varies depending on how many pieces are being sent - the more you send, the less each piece costs to send.

Even assuming that the RNC controls its own mailing list, if the mailing comes from a PAC and not directly from the RNC, there may also be acquisition costs for the mailing list.

So unless you have a specific mailing in mind, any estimate given would be pure guesswork.
posted by pdb at 8:52 PM on August 30, 2020

"How involved is the printing of the mailer - is it just text, or does it also have graphics, and if so, are those graphics simple line drawings or actual images? Any complexity here raises the cost of printing."

Graphic designer here who has done lots of mailers/mailings (although not as much lately as in the past). This statement is totally not true. Black and white vs. color will affect cost. But the complexity of the image has no bearing on the cost of printing. If you're paying for an illustration, a more detailed one will most likely cost more than something simple, but the printer will not charge differently.

As stated, quantity is the key factor in figuring out the cost per piece, but to give you a ballpark figure, most of what I have done are 6" x 10" piece printed four color (i.e. full color) on one side and just black and white on the other, printed on a fairly heavy paper; and when I do something in the range of 3000-5000, between printing, mailing services (which is the printed running the mailing list through postal software, inkjetting the names and addresses, sorting everything and taking it to the post office), and postage, it ends up being roughly 50 cents per piece. The mailing services have always been a fixed cost regardless of the size of the list. Printing has a setup cost, so the price per piece drops quickly in the first few thousand, but levels off after that.
posted by jonathanhughes at 9:14 PM on August 30, 2020 [2 favorites]

I spent $2800 to send about 5000 full-color mailers (both sides), using a union printer, in Peoria, Illinois. Larger runs cost less per piece. The cost-per-piece was consistent regardless of what I sent them; I had my own photos and did my own design and sent it to them as a PDF. You could hire them to do the design for $X, but I didn't really consider that. The union printers were slightly more expensive than the non-union printers, but it was ABSOLUTELY worth having the union bug on your flier if you were a Democrat. (Everyone in the local Dem party knew if you skipped out on using a union printer. Also they split their printing between Lebanese and non-Lebanese printers, but that was a very local concern.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:38 PM on August 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

I ran for a low level public office and like EM, sent out mailers to approximately 5,000 households. Total cost, it was one stop meaning I hired a firm that printed, got the mailing list from the USPS and sent them, was $0.42 each. $2100 bucks. I did not check nor consider if the printers were union or not. The small marketing firm I hired, did the printing and the mailing. I did the design. It was pretty much postcard size and one sided for graphics.

"Go for West young man..." with a bunch of stars on the address side and pictures and verbiage on the other side.
posted by AugustWest at 10:02 PM on August 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I work in fundraising (not political fundraising). jonathanhughes is correct, quantity matters more than any other factor. Surprisingly, black & white vs. colour doesn’t make a huge difference when printing at high volume, but depending on the campaign, it can play with people’s perceptions. For example, colour printing can be seen as “wasteful” even if it adds less than one cent to the price of a mailer. 50c to $1 is a good ballpark.

One additional factor: the cost of actually putting together the material. Was it done by staff? By an external agency? How many rounds of edits / how many hundreds of staff-hours went into it?

The ROI on this kind of thing is obsessed over in charities, and I would assume the same for political campaigns. So whatever the cost of an individual piece of fundraising collateral, the campaign is very, very unlikely to have a negative financial return and not be “worth” it.
posted by third word on a random page at 10:07 PM on August 30, 2020 [4 favorites]