A Real Vote-Winner

Written by Sam Upton

Find out why direct mail has more influence on voters than any other political medium

The year 2024 was undoubtedly the year of elections. Across the 12 months, a record-breaking number of voters headed to the polls in at least 64 countries, representing a combined population of around 49% of the world’s population. While the UK and US elections dominated the headlines, Austria, Finland, Belgium, Czechia, Croatia, Iceland, India, South Africa and many more all had national elections.

While the policies, slogans and priorities may be different in each country, what all these elections have in common is a need for politicians to communicate with the electorate, a way to effectively engage with the people to get their messages across. And while many people predicted 2024 to be the year of the digital election, with political hopefuls expanding their communications to feature social media content, in the UK, there was a clear winner in the most influential media stakes: print .

The Eyes Have It

A new report by Marketreach has found that mail is more likely to have had an influence on voting intention than any other marketing channel. The research agency surveyed a total of 3,920 adults across all ages from across the UK in three ‘swing seat’ constituencies during and after the UK election campaign.

The research found that 27% of people said that mail was the ‘most influential’ on making decisions compared with 24% saying TV and 18% who chose social media. Mail was also voted as having the highest level of engagement at 70% and was regarded as twice as trustworthy as the other channels. Mail is also much less associated with misleading or inaccurate information (20%) compared with social media (34%).

Echoing other reports that demonstrate young people’s preference for print media, the youngest age groups demonstrated the highest levels of engagement with mail. Among 18-24-year-olds, 81% said they had engaged with mail during the run-up to the election. This figure is higher than that for social media (72%), posters (67%), online advertising (64%) and party political broadcasts on TV (51%).

Trust Counts

The Marketreach report goes on to list the various reasons mail was the dominant medium in the 2024 election. Those reasons include the fact that mail is the only medium that reaches all voters, is held onto more than any other medium, and is more trusted than other election media.

“This is extremely important at a time of great concern about ‘fake news’ and AI involvement in election communications, along with a rise in communications designed to discredit other political parties,” the report stated.

Other reasons for mail’s election success include the fact that it makes people think, which helps them make up their mind come polling day. It also has a physical presence in voters’ homes and can be targeted down to constituency level. In addition, mail is a very personal medium – direct mail and door drops enter the home and can connect with people about the issues that matter to them, giving political parties complete control over their messaging.

“I think my feelings toward receiving information on the election by post has changed,” said one voter in Crewe. “I used to think it was annoying but now consider it to be enlightening and informative.”

A Local Issue

One person that is a fan of print communications at election time is Andrew Marr, who provided the foreword for the report. “Elections are national, sometimes even global, events,” the journalist and broadcaster writes. “But in our Parliamentary system, they are first of all local ones. We want a direct, emotional connection between ourselves, the candidates and ultimately the MP. It’s about intimate space – an actual address not an IP address; a physical postcode, not a digital identifier; something I can hold in my hand, not something only held, briefly, in the mind’s eye. And something that I can trust.”

To download the Marketreach report, go to marketreach.co.uk/resources/landslide