How to reach your whole precinct for <$200, mail a letter!

[mexicanpizza]

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Detailed walk-through for excel newbies in post #72, here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?p=1117819#post1117819
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Hey there....thought I would document what my wife and I decided to do in our precinct. We are both shy and very busy so canvassing has been hard to get time/nerve (but we're still going to try! ;) )

We decided to send out a personal letter to every Republican in our precinct. It's fairly simple to move the precinct addresses into a useful, automatable format...in my case I imported everything into Excel and filtered for Republicans and duplicates in the same household with the same last name. This amounted to ~450 voters in ~348 households.

Then we wrote and printed our personal letter, and put a candidate comparison and some RP quotes on the back. We addressed all of them using Word and a mail merge using Excel as the data source. Printing 350 double sided letters took less than an hour using our $99 laser printer.

Here is our precinct mapped using http://batchgeocode.com (AWESOME site for mapping addresses en masse):

http://scaryknife.com/images/ronpaul/precinctmap.jpg

Stack of letters...you can get an idea of the candidate comparison:
http://scaryknife.com/images/ronpaul/rp%20%281%29.JPG

Stick in a slim jim:
http://scaryknife.com/images/ronpaul/rp%20%282%29.JPG

Sit and fold/stuff for ~2 hours:
http://scaryknife.com/images/ronpaul/rp%20%283%29.JPG

The finished product:
http://scaryknife.com/images/ronpaul/rp%20%286%29.JPG


Total breakdown:



Joining voters.ronpaul2008.com $0
Download precinct voter info $0
Reformat in excel, filter Republicans $0
Map people @ batchgeocode.com $0
Ream of 24# bright white laser paper $7.99
Box of 500 windowed envelopes $18.99
Print 350 double sided b&w flyers $ ?? (cheap on home laser)
350 Slim Jims free from meetup
2 hours folding/stuffing with wife $0
Postage (350*0.41) $143
Total cost $170

Homes/voters reached: 350 / ~440


Our letter is hosted here (WORD DOC (http://scaryknife.com/images/ronpaul/RP-Mailing.doc)), and (PDF (http://scaryknife.com/images/ronpaul/RP-Mailing.pdf))

Get out there people. After I send these, I'm calling as many as I can this weekend.

If anyone needs help with list formatting/filtering, let me know!



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Detailed walk-through for excel newbies in post #72, here: http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?p=1117819#post1117819
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[tonyr1988]

Props on your hard work and good organization. I'll be doing something similar on Wednesday, except I'm going to drop them at people's houses instead of mailing them (I'm a poor college kid...cheaper to walk than mail. :D). It's nice to have some extra information to add to my handouts.

[tcindie]

Nicely done. :)

I just got home from a late night lit bomb...

I had ordered 1000 of these (http://www.theadvocates.org/discover-liberty-low-res.pdf), and printed off about 700 of the Common Sense (http://www.manofcommonsense.com/?page=Home) flyer. I inserted the printed flyer, and a precinct specific slim jim (including info about time/date/location of our caucus location) into each paper, stuffed them into plastic newspaper bags, and drove around for about 2 hours to do a 600 house "lit bomb".

Previous to this I had hit about 300 other houses with slim jims over the past couple weeks. So after tonight I've canvased half of my precinct. From here out I'll have to rely on making phone calls, since the temp is dropping to about 20 below starting tomorrow.

Total cost was about $160 or so, most of which was the slim jims, as I had them printed on card stock at a print shop, and cut to size for me. That was something like $80 and I ended up with about 3 times as many as I really needed... I think the girl gave me quite a few extra sheets for no charge. The flyer I printed on a neon blue paper with a regular black laser printer -- paper cost about $20, and the newspapers are $30 for 1000. Oh, and the newspaper bags I found at a local distributor for about $20 or $30 for a pack of 2000.

After tonights lit bomb, I've got about 1400 newspaper bags, and 400 newspapers left. But since I'm tossing around the idea of running for congress, I figure I could do a similar lit drop with info about me should I choose to run. Or, I'll just gradually hand them around to educate people about liberty and libertarianism I guess.

At any rate, I'm excited to see what kind of response my work generates. Congrats on your mailing.. keep up the good work! :)

[Nic4Truth]

I want to do a mass mailing tomorrow. What is the quickest way to get these slim jims? I have a laser printer, so worse case I will just print letters and info.

Thx!

[tcindie]

I want to do a mass mailing tomorrow. What is the quickest way to get these slim jims? I have a laser printer, so worse case I will just print letters and info.

Thx!

If you don't have a local HQ to pick them up from, you might be best off just printing some out.. Most of them are on the campaign website as pdfs. Click Here (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/get-involved/downloads/)

Without access to slim jims, you might be best off using the "Issues Flyer (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/files/Flyer-Issues.pdf)" along with a personalized letter.

[mexicanpizza]

If you don't have a local HQ to pick them up from, you might be best off just printing some out..

Yah, I find that a high speed industrial color laser copier works great for making 500 in about 10 minutes...

or something...

....not at my work...late at night...

;) :D

[Devil_rules_in_extremes]

Awesome stuff. My wife and I are planning our own Direct mail campaign to Republican voters in our precinct also. This gives me some ideas. Thanks, and good work! Freedom lovers all over the United States thank you.