Direct mail basics

Did it work? Measuring campaign mail without software

You can tell whether your campaign mail moved voters with a web page, a held-back slice of your voter list and Florida's voter history file. Here is how to set it up before the first drop and how to read the result after the election.

Published Sat, Oct 17, 2026 · Updated Fri, Oct 23, 2026

• Voter lists
• Vote by mail
• EDDM
• Costs
• Budget
• Timelines
• Florida

Campaign mail is easy to measure if you decide how before the first piece prints. Afterward it is guesswork. This guide covers what to count, how to set up the count, and how to check turnout once the election is over. If you are still choosing between EDDM and a voter list, start with EDDM vs. a voter list for a city race.

What counts as a response for a campaign

A campaign mailer can ask for several things. Each one is a response you can count:

• A volunteer sign-up, for a shift, a yard sign or a day of door knocking.
• A donation.
• An RSVP to a meet-and-greet or a town hall.
• A visit to a web page or a scan of a QR code printed on the piece.
• A vote. This is the one that matters most, and Florida gives you the data to check it.

Pick the one this piece is for and put it on the front. A mailer that asks for a donation, a volunteer and a vote at the same time is hard to read and hard to measure.

Set up the count before the drop

Give each piece its own address

Print a short web address used only on this piece, such as yourcampaign.com/mail1, and point the QR code at the same page. Every visit to that page came from the mailer. The next piece gets its own address, yourcampaign.com/mail2, so you can see which one pulled.

Put a code on the donation link

If the page asks for money, add a code to the donation link for that piece, or add a "How did you hear about us?" question to the form with the mailer as a choice. A donation with that code came from that piece.

Hold back part of your voter list

This is the step that tells you whether the mail changed anything. Before the first drop, take your voter list and set aside every tenth voter. Don't mail them anything, all season. After the election, compare how often the mailed voters turned out with how often the held-back voters did. The gap between the two groups is what the mail did.

Say your list for the race has 5,500 voters. Hold back 550 and mail the other 4,950. You give up mail to one voter in ten, and in return you learn whether the other nine were worth mailing.

With EDDM there are no names, so hold back whole carrier routes instead. Mail most of the routes in your district and skip a few. After the election, compare turnout among voters whose home address is on a mailed route with turnout among voters on the skipped ones.

Check turnout with the voter history file

Florida's voter extract comes as two sets of files: one with every registered voter, and one with voting history (Florida Division of Elections file layout). Both use the same Voter ID. The history file shows, for each voter and each election, whether they voted by mail (code A), voted early (E), or voted at the polls (Y). It holds the past ten years of federal and state elections.

Counties must send the state updated history for every voter after each election (s. 98.0981, Fla. Stat.), and the layout notes say it is due no later than 10 business days after the state certifies the results. The extract itself comes out once a month (Division of Elections). So plan to check turnout several weeks after Election Day.

When the file arrives:

1. Put the Voter IDs you mailed in one column and the Voter IDs you held back in another.
2. Look up each one in the history file for the election date.
3. Count how many in each group have an A, E or Y.
4. Divide each count by the size of its group. Those are your two turnout rates.

For a city election held on its own date, the state file may not carry it, since the history covers federal and state elections. Ask your county. Miami-Dade, for example, sells a "Voters Who Voted" file for a flat fee of $20 (Miami-Dade Elections).

Watch mail ballots during the race

You don't have to wait for the history file to see mail voters. A candidate who has qualified and is opposed can get the county's vote-by-mail data, which shows when each ballot was mailed and when the supervisor received it back, updated by 8 a.m. every day from 60 days before the primary (s. 101.62(2), Fla. Stat.). Compare the return rate of your mailed voters with your held-back voters as the ballots come in. The vote-by-mail data guide shows how to get the file in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade.

What the numbers cost you

Two figures tell you whether the mail was worth it: what you paid to reach each voter, and what you paid for each response.

Cost per voter reached. Mailing 5,000 voters from a list with us is $1,650 for print, list cleanup, addressing and presort, plus $1,450 to $2,000 in postage at 29¢ to 40¢ a piece. That is $3,100 to $3,650 in all, or 62¢ to 73¢ a voter. Covering 5,000 homes with our 6.5" × 9" EDDM postcards is $1,395 plus $1,300 postage at 26¢, so $2,695, or 54¢ a mailbox. EDDM reaches every home on the route, voters or not. Our list-mail and EDDM price tables have the other quantities.

Cost per response. Divide what you spent by what came back. Suppose the 5,000-voter list mailing brings 50 volunteer sign-ups through its own page. At the low end of postage that is $62 a volunteer.

Cost per extra voter. This is the turnout gap from your held-back group turned into money. Suppose 40% of your held-back voters turned out and 43% of your mailed voters did. Three points on 5,000 mailed voters is 150 more voters, so each one cost about $21 at the low end of postage. Those percentages are made up to show the math. Your own file gives you the real ones. With a small list, a gap of a point or two can be chance, so treat a small gap as a hint and a large one as a result.

What response rate to expect

We have found no published response-rate benchmark for campaign mail. The figures people quote come from the marketing industry, and they measure any kind of response to any kind of mail. Read them as background:

• The ANA/DMA Response Rate Report for 2018 put response at 9% for house lists (people who already know the sender) and 4.9% for prospect lists (MediaPost).
• Trade press citing the 2024 ANA report gives 5% to 9% for house lists and 4% to 5% for prospect lists (Printing Impressions). The report itself is for members only.

Your supporter list is a house list. A voter list of people who have never heard of you is closer to a prospect list. For turnout, your own held-back group is the only benchmark that fits your race.

How many drops to plan

One mailer is one data point. Florida's calendar gives most races three natural drops:

1. Before mail ballots arrive. Supervisors mail ballots to voters in Florida between the 40th and 33rd days before the election. For the November 3, 2026 general election that window is September 24 to October 1 (Florida Division of Elections).
2. Before early voting. For November 3, 2026, the state's required early-voting days are October 24 to 31, and Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade start on October 19.
3. To the voters who haven't voted yet. Use the vote-by-mail file to drop anyone whose ballot is already back.

Give each drop its own web address and keep the same held-back group out of all three. Then the page visits tell you which piece pulled, and the turnout gap tells you what the whole series did. The Florida campaign mail calendar counts back from each date to the day your artwork has to be approved.

Or let us do it

You can set all of this up with a web page, a spreadsheet and the state's voter file. If you'd like help, tell us about your race and we'll plan the pieces, the list or routes, the hold-back group and the drops so the result is easy to count.

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