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Texas-based Action Printing & Copy Center delivers high response rates to political clients
Residents in Lubbock, Texas, a town of 200,000 in the panhandle of West Texas, live in the largest contiguous cotton-growing area in the world, sometimes known as “Hub City.” Lubbock connects some of the nation’s richest oil fields to the south, Abilene to the east and Amarillo, a “no-cow Texas town” to the north, says Mike Stevens, president of Action Printing & Copy Center. Stevens has made a name for himself through his postal permit, No. 30, with a popular series of pURL postcards for local politicians. In his 15 years combining print and political consulting, he’s worked with more than three-quarters of all regional politicians.
The personalized postcards, which grab community opinion at custom websites, have attracted local television news crews to his shop. They have prompted residents to investigate postal account No. 30, and once they realize it’s Stevens, many are motivated to phone him. “Why didn’t I get that survey in the mail?” they demand. His surveys have been thrown in overnight packages and FedExed around the country, and they have commanded response rates of nearly 30 percent.
Action Printing & Copy Center offers digital and offset services, binding, copying, graphic design, pre-press and marketing, but it’s the political pURL campaigns that have made it a star, at least on the evening news. “Through our experience, we’ve become the local authority in the business,” Stevens says. He began working for a political consultant at the age of 25, and learned the ropes by digging up voter lists and doing research as well as print work. Stevens learned how to select a survey sample, how to phrase effective survey questions and how to double-check survey work. “If somebody wanted to get into the industry, it’s very doable, but also confusing. It’s a tremendous amount of hands-on work,” he says.
Recently, Action Printing & Copy Center worked on a campaign for a mayoral race in a nearby city. For the campaign, the company investigated voter records to find people who voted in the past seven elections. The list was obtained in Excel format from local elections officials and manipulated by database experts. “Most people vote for a hot-button issue or a presidential race,” Stevens says, “but this is part of selecting the good sample set.” In a mayoral race, very few people vote, so a survey targeting all residents would be inaccurate if most residents weren’t voting.
“We have a basic responsibility to the people we’re surveying. We’re more than a data company, and more than a printer.”
Mike Stevens, President
Action Printing & Copy Center
Lubbock, Texas
Of the frequent-voter group of 14,800, Stevens and the client decided on a statistical sample of 6,000, which was within budget constraints. The list was stratified by precinct, age and sex. After a survey about local issues, including taxation, quality of life and political leanings, Action Printing & Copy Center determined its client, who was kept confidential from the respondees, was behind by 23 percent.
Action followed up with an aggressive 1-to-1 marketing campaign, targeting the on-the-fence voters with specific messaging about their issues. “We were able to flip the deficit and our candidate won with 55 percent of the vote,” Stevens says. Although the company has used direct mail surveying in the past, and it might be cheaper, the pURL technology yielded day-to-day response levels and enabled data collection that fueled an effective VDP follow-up mailer. “Nothing else would have given us that kind of detailed response,” Stevens says.
As the race neared, the client contracted a telephone surveying company to pose a similar survey, double-checking Action’s work. “Honestly, they were off by two percent,” Stevens says. “We missed predicting the final count by 41 votes—tenths of a percent.”
After Action Printing & Copy Center mailed that campaign, the director of a local television program held the piece up on the news, alerting locals to watch for the survey in the mail. Residents didn’t realize that Stevens had selected for a sample size, and not everyone would be asked to respond. The phone calls began pouring in. After many realized they couldn’t voice their opinions through the survey, they demanded to know who Stevens’ client was.
“Our clients pay for anonymity,” he explained. “It wasn’t an intentionally discriminatory process. We feel very strongly about the ethics of our work.” In fact, says Stevens, clients must pass an ethics test before Action will take a job. After explaining the survey they want conducted and what they intend to do with the information, Stevens will consider taking the case. “We have a basic responsibility to the people we’re surveying. We’re more than a data company, and more than a printer.”
One potential client asked Action Printing & Copy Center to retrieve personal information from children via a pURL campaign, obtaining ages, names, pets, preferences and related data. The client was then intending to target parents with that information. “The bad news is that someone in Colorado took that job,” Stevens says, “But we feel personal information needs to remain private regardless of how much money the client has.”
The biggest response the company’s ever had on a pURL campaign came from an insurance company survey, which is a job Stevens can feel confident benefited the community. In that scenario, a local hospital purchased a small insurance company and began to refuse other coverage. Insurance giant Blue Cross/Blue Shield thought they were losing their competitive edge and pulled out from that market. Effectively, 12,000 city, county and school employees lost their health insurance coverage.
Through a survey, Action Printing & Copy Center was able to prove that locals had a negative view of the aggressive hospital’s doctors, not Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Confident that sales would increase enough to cover the initial loss, the company returned to the bargaining table with local hospitals. “We felt very good about that program because it benefited many people in health care almost immediately,” Stevens says. Coverage was restored for municipal employees.
Can the popularity of this business hold? Stevens is optimistic about the future. “We’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out what motivates end users,” he says. “We might be in the honeymoon period, where people are just darn curious about what these things are.” Then again, he says, nearly two-thirds of all those who will respond prefer to do so online. “I think it’s that people can research a product or an issue online and then tab over to respond,” Stevens concludes. “It’s a convenience factor for them, and that number is growing. Demand for those respondees will grow, too. I think there’s a lot more ahead to decide what’s ethical and moral, in addition to how it will benefit our clients and our profit potential.”
–Rebecca Trela