It’s that time of year – in an election year, at least – when campaign mailers are falling as thick as autumn leaves, and as Nov. 8 approaches, political pros say the barrage of postage-paid brochures will only grow.

Even as candidates, outside groups and issue-oriented committees pour on the voter contact with seemingly more available avenues than ever before – digital advertising alone offers numerous ways to get a message in front of voters, to say nothing of television and radio ads, phone banks and robo-calls, paid canvassers and volunteer door-knockers – there’s nothing quite like mailers to reach a targeted audience throughout a district or statewide, campaign consultants, candidates and political observers say.

“Millennials have a high degree of readership of mail, which might seem counterintuitive to folks who see them as a digital generation, who consume and get more information from digital sources,” says Andy Kabza, senior vice president of Mad Dog Mail, a Florida-based direct mail firm that works with Democrats when it does political work. “They do, absolutely. But at the same time, when it comes to delivering a credible message, there’s a lot less clutter with mail than everything you’re trying to compete with on the internet.”

Kabza, who ran the Colorado Democrats’ House Majority Project a couple of cycles ago, says the flexibility and varied focus involved with mail makes the difference.

“Digital ads pop up on the way wherever you’re going,” he says. “With mail, it’s a different interaction. Mail can communicate with people on very different levels in terms of the amount of attention they want to devote to a piece to glean information. Whether it’s gathering information from a headline or a photo, or delving more deeply into the text, there’s a lot of different ways, cognitively, that people process mail.”

A good mail piece, he adds, works on multiple levels simultaneously, talking to voters who process information differently and hitting them different ways, depending on how much time they spend with the piece.

“You have to produce eye-catching pieces to grab the attention of the person you’re mailing, and you hope they will read it – but if they don’t, hopefully they’ve at least seen your name so when they get the ballot they’re familiar with your candidate,” says Republican campaign consultant Ryan Lynch, who counts mailers as one of the most effective ways of reaching voters in the state legislative races he’s running this year.

“You open your mailbox in October and early November, only two groups are mailing you – supermarkets and politicians,” Lynch says. “Politicians are still mailing, and in fact, there’s more of it, because it’s a fairly inexpensive way to touch a voter. Some percentage of them are going to take the time to read it, while others will just glance at it, but you’re getting your candidate in front of them either way.”

He points to multiple studies that show the more “touches” a campaign does, the more likely voters are to fill in the circle, particularly when it comes to urging most voters to keep going through a lengthy ballot to reach local races and ballot questions.

“If you’re targeting the right universe, and you’re mailing with frequency, you should be able to hit them,” Lynch says, noting that most campaigns want to reach voters at least five, and preferably seven times between when they start paying attention and when they cast their ballot. “A good rule of thumb is, if you hit their door – walking precincts district-wide, you should hit all the doors you want – then you can try to get away with three or four (mail) pieces, but if you have the resources, you should hit them as much as you possibly can. Mail a fairly inexpensive way to produce a touch on a voter.”

“If all you’re getting is that there’s a name and a tag-line, good, we want to make sure everyone gets that,” says Sean Bartley, a partner and director of advertising at Denver-based Olson Strategies and Advertising, a firm that works with Republicans and corporate clients and has produced mail for Lynch’s candidates this year. “We also want to make it interesting so they can sit down and read it. We try to make sure that we’re providing for voters what they want to get out of it.

Mail allows campaigns to communicate directly with voters and provide them with increasingly dense levels of information, including links to websites with even more, Bartley says, putting to use all the voter data campaigns are presumably gathering -which voters are concerned more about the environment, which will base their vote on education policy.

“We think it makes sense to be communicating with people on issues they care about – it shows we want to be communicating with you on the things that matter to you,” he says, noting that some topics, such as job creation and public safety, are nearly universal concerns, while others, such as Second Amendment rights, might have a narrower audience.

Marketing 101

Experts say there are a few hard-and-fast rules when it comes to political mailers and Colorado mail in particular.

“What’s most important is the presort, standard postage-paid box better say ‘Colorado,'” Lynch notes. “People will notice that.” That’s an essential, he says, along with making sure a mailer doesn’t picture the wrong mountains, like the Canadian Rockies or a range in Utah instead of Colorado – it’s a mistake common enough that more than one mail pro chuckled that they have a “verify they’re Colorado mountains” checkbox.

“You’re pushing a brand, your logo needs to be on everything. Your name needs to be the most prominent thing because, if they just glance at it, they’ll at least get your name,” Lynch adds. “It’s a good idea to include your website, a creative tagline, and your images need to depict exactly what you want to convey to your target universe – it’sall Marketing 101 stuff, but it’s something you don’t want to forget.”

Still, Kabza points out, “We should be careful before living by hard and fast rules. We should be able to adapt to circumstances in order to deliver the best strategy to our clients.”

While a general rule of thumb is that campaigns spend the month or so before ballots drop on persuasion mailers and then switch to pieces designed to turn out supporters, even that can change based on circumstances and feedback from canvassing and polling. A good mail program, experts say, is nimble, and the best can turn on a dime.

“It’s a resource decision about what to do, how you divide up between persuasion and (get out the vote),” Kabza notes. “It’s a constant moving target.”

The good, the bad and the ugly

With a month to go until Election Day, the campaign managers and consultants, along with mail specialists and candidates, nominated some of the mailers they consider among the best and the worst in Colorado this cycle, although everyone admits it’s by no means an exhaustive look at the multitude of mail filling boxes across the state.

One of their universal observations, to be sure, was that the vast majority of mail pieces do the job well – there’s a level of competence in the industry unmatched in many other corners of campaign technique – so it takes something out of the ordinary to jump out, either as exceptionally good mail or mail that actually harms a campaign, rather than merely not getting across a message as well as it could.

One mailer in particular, sent by the liberal activist group ProgressNow Colorado under the hastily adopted business name Keep Colorado Great Project, stood out for its sly audacity and what could have been an outsized effect on the outcome of the GOP U.S. Senate primary. Part of a two-step campaign, the postcard landed in the mailboxes of likely Republican primary voters statewide just a week or so before ballots were due.

While the mailer appeared to be taking aim at former state Rep. Jon Keyser – for a time the frontrunner in the crowded field vying to challenge Democratic incumbent U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet – blasting the Evergreen Republican for refusing to drop out after signature forgeries came to light, it was the rest of the postcard that conveyed the subtle message, that self-funding millionaire Jack Graham was recently a Democrat and El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn was the furthest-right conservative of the five candidates. ProgressNow Colorado used the mailer to steer the most likely Republican primary voters to back Glenn, similar to a campaign Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill ran to encourage Missouri Republicans to nominate arch-conservative Todd Akin as her opponent in 2012 – assuming, correctly, that she could fend off his challenge in the Republican-leaning state.

“We saw this environment was totally open, no one’s communicating, and a little bit goes a long way,” says Ian Silverii, ProgressNow Colorado’s executive director, describing the run-up to the Senate primary. “No one was comparing these candidates. Not only were the communications sparse, but they were bad. We thought there was an opportunity to tell Republican primary voters what these people stood for and who they are.”

Silverii declined to take credit for Glenn’s win – he defeated the runner-up by nearly 2-to-1 and had benefited from plenty of outside advertising supporting his candidacy – but gloated at least a bit at the size of Glenn’s margin.

“When you present conservative voters with the truth, they’re more likely to support the one that’s more extreme, not the one’s that (are) more moderate,” he adds.

Another unprecedented mailer, sent to Democratic voters by an arm of the state party, the House Majority Project, took aim at a legislative candidate who had somehow wound up in a position to win the nomination in an Aurora-based district before anyone realized he had an extensive criminal record and had fabricated nearly everything on his resume.

“Eric Nelson is a liar,” blared one of the postcards, which arrived one after another for several days while House District 42 Democrats were returning ballots. The piece quoted from newspaper accounts – including stories from The Colorado Statesman – that told a nearly unbelievable tale of Nelson’s background.

In a series of mailers produced by Bartley for former House Minority Leader Mark Waller’s GOP primary bid for El Paso County Commissioner, favorable presentations about the Colorado Springs Republican gave way to searing attacks on his chief opponent, labeled “Taxin’ Tim Geitner” in increasingly vivid postcards.

“We knew we were succeeding when ‘Taxin’ Tim’ devoted a website to trying to debunk the moniker and he referred to it himself,” Bartley chuckles. “If people got nothing else, it was that Mark was going to be fighting for taxpayers, and Tim was willing to raise their taxes. We told other things in that story, but it was predicated on that.”

A third-party mailer attacking state Rep. Beth McCann, who emerged from a Democratic primary in a three-way race for Denver’s district attorney, might have provoked such a backlash that it propelled her from a win to a blowout. The piece, paid for by Citizens for a Strong & Fair People’s Advocate, used an unflattering picture of McCann and cited decades-old stories to argue that she hadn’t kept Denver residents safe, although it misspelled Westword as “Westworld” in a citation from the alternative newsweekly whose editor blasted the mailer in a column reminding readers that McCann had barely even been mentioned in the story. The mailer earned plenty of press coverage – including stories about the big money behind the outside group, largely funded by celebrity attorney Franklin Azar – and the “Disgrace of the Week” designation on the Colorado Inside-Out public affairs show, as well as anger from voters who knew McCann and were offended how she had been portrayed.

Another mailer from the McCann campaign presented her record alongside those of her two opponents, CU Regent Michael Carrigan and prosecutor Kenneth Boyd, giving her the advantage in every instance. McCann supporters say the distinctions helped solidify Denver voters behind the legislator, who had cast votes and sponsored legislation on topics important to Democratic voters and wasn’t merely spouting slogans.

While the volume of political mail can be crushing, experts warn against misguided attempts to use humor to cut through the clutter, pointing to two attack pieces aimed at the Democrat and Republican, respectively, running in battleground House District 3. “A dog with a suitcase!” marvels one insider, mocking a piece sent by the Common Sense Values Independent Expenditure Committee attempting to portray Republican nominee Katy Brown’s positions on several issues. It’s attention-getting but the image and metaphor bear little relation to the points, a consultant agrees, and is more baffling than illuminating. Likewise, a mailer sent by Colorado Citizens for Accountable Government features an example of bad Photoshop job, pasting Democratic nominee Jeff Bridge’s head on a graphic meant to evoke the cutthroat Netflix series “House of Cards.” The attempt undermines its own message by looking ridiculously overblown without making clear points.

But when a humorous image aligns with the message, as in another mailer sent by the Common Sense Values Independent Expenditure Committee attacking House District 28 Republican nominee Nancy Pallozzi under the headline “Meet the bridal shop owner from hell,” a mailer can indeed jump out of the mailbox, consultants say. Under the headline, “Nancy Pallozzi may be the worst candidate ever,” the flier details charges that Pallozzi, who runs a bridal shop, has faced nearly a dozen tax liens, has been sued by contractors and earned an “F” from the Better Business Bureau. It’s the first of at least three mailers hammering home the theme in increasing detail.

While negative attacks can backfire in some rare cases, consultants agree that they can be tremendously effective, which is why so much mail features them.

“Particularly in primaries, where you have a very engaged electorate, negative campaigning works,” Lynch says. “If you’re going to do it, you need to really vilify your opponent – you don’t want to raise their name ID, you want to raise their negatives.”

That’s what a round of mailers sent by an outside committee known as Colorado Right Now did in several Republican legislative primaries. While the group, spearheaded by former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez, had a mixed record in the half dozen races where it poured big bucks on mail, attacks against incumbent state Reps. Janak Joshi and Gordon Klingenshmitt helped defeat the two Colorado Springs Republicans in their bids for re-election and an open state Senate seat, respectively. In both campaigns, the races had turned into a deluge of negative attacks from both sides, and a mailer attacking Joshi exemplified that by embracing the “gutter politics” while piling mud on Joshi.

Likewise, an attack on state Rep. Tim Dore by Colorado Liberty PAC was particularly effective. Dore, who got crosswise with the Republican base in his sprawling Eastern Plains district when he sponsored late-session legislation that would have allowed unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in GOP primaries, helped matters by issuing his own mailer featuring the Republican decked out in a suit and tie, reinforcing the image cultivated by his opponents that he had thrown in with the establishment, although none of the consultants who spoke with The Statesman had saved a copy of that mailer. (“I was so angry when I saw it that I threw it out,” laughed one Republican consultant.)

But it was a lengthy mailer produced by Republican congressional candidate Casper Stockham that drew literal gasps and guffaws. Filled with dozens of bullet points, numerous acronyms and advice on everything from dressing better to talking about “Places, Things, Ideas and Concepts,” instead of people, the mailer epitomizes information-overload, one consultant says.