Voter Birthday Card List
Sending birthday cards to quality voters was long the sole purview of incumbents. Within the last three years or so, more and more campaign managers are having their candidates send birthday cards whether they are incumbents or not. Birthday cards are generally sent to only the quality voters. A candidate could, however, send birthday cards using any criteria they wish, such as age or gender. A personal connection of any type is always a good way for candidates to bond with a voter.
Our lists come in two formats: spreadsheet or Adobe Acrobat™ PDF file.
Separate File For Each Month
Birthday card lists from Campaign Data consist of as many as twelve (12) individual spreadsheet or PDF files; one for each month of the year. If you need only a few months leading up to the election date, that can be done as well.
Within each file, the voters are sorted by the day of the month on which their birthday falls, so that you are able to, say, select all voter's birthdays in a particular month that fall between the 15th and the 22nd of the month. Each of the two formats, PDF or spreadsheet, will have examples in the explanations below.
Birthday Card Labels in a Spreadsheet Format
First download the sample data set.
Download Sample Birthday List Spreadsheet (Microsoft® Excel®)
The sample data set should basically match the following illustration.
Note that a specific "day" column has been created and sorted in ascending order so that any time period can be selected for label printing. This allows you to print, for example, a week's worth of labels at one time.
Anyone with knowledge of a word processing program such as Microsoft Word™ can use mail merge and the spreadsheet data to generate mailing labels. Sorry, but we cannot provide specific directions for printing the labels. There are too many variables in the print process such as the type of labels you use, the printer manufacturer and settings, and the program used to generate the mail-merge labels.
Microsoft® Excel® data can be imported into Microsoft Word™ as a mail-merge file so that labels can be created and printed. Additional instructions regarding printing labels from Excel data can be found by querying "Help" in Excel and typing "Print Labels" under "Search For :"
Birthday Card Labels in PDF Format
Our files in PDF format will fit on Avery™ 5260 or equivalent label stock. You will be sent a separate file for each month you intend to send birthday cards.
Every brand of laser printer handles formatting differently, so you will need to make sure our PDF file works for your printer and your labels. Before ordering the data in PDF format, I would recommend that you download the sample two PDF pages and try printing them out on a sheet of paper from your printer and then holding the label stock against the printed pages to see if the PDF data fits within each label on the page.
NOTE: When you print, please make sure that File > Print > Page Scaling is marked "none."
We Can Print the Labels and Send Them to You
We can also print the labels for you and send them in twelve packets separated according to the month of the year. Although this means almost no work for you, it is a more expensive alternative to the two methods previously described.
Quantity and Mailing Costs
The question always arises, "How many should I send?" This is entirely dependent on money and manpower. I have found that a candidate or incumbent, with secretarial assistance, can usually handle, as a maximum, no more than 800 to 1000 birthdays per month. The labels are prepared and the cards are mailed once a week.
Remember, you cannot send birthday cards as bulk mail; they will require full First Class postage, so postage alone will cost $350 to $450 per month for the maximum quantities sited above. Obviously, a candidate can scale back the quantity by limiting the criteria used for voter selection.
Do not forget to also factor in the cost of printing the birthday cards.