Direct mail

The Direct Mail page is one searchable list with two kinds of rows. Culper print jobs are pieces you submitted for fulfillment; each shows the template, the format, the list and recipient count, its status, the quote or final cost, the mail date, and the vendor. Uploaded artwork rows are mailings you produced with your own printer; each shows the list and count, dimensions and paper weight, the printer, the cost, and the mail date. Both kinds open into an edit screen.

A third entry point sits on the Email page: Log external mail, a short form for recording a drop a consultant or vendor did for you when all you have is the list and the date. It never sends anything; it marks every on-roll voter on that list as mailed on that date, so the piece counts in contact history and on the contact heatmap without a design or an artwork file.

Print templates are built in the print studio under Outreach → Templates, which opens with a format picker. Six formats are available, each with its own dimensions and print rules: a 4×6 postcard (standard USPS rate, design on the front, address and a short message on the back), a 3.5×5 push card (a door-to-door handout, bulk-printed and not mailed), an 8.5×11 letter (folded into a #10 envelope for donor or persuasion mail), a 24×18 yard sign, and 4×4-foot and 4×8-foot signs for intersections and fences.

The studio is a front-and-back canvas measured in inches. You place text, rectangles, circles, lines, stars, and images from your uploads, and an address block that merges the recipient’s name and address at print time. Text can carry merge fields for first name, last name, full name, campaign name, candidate name, and the address parts. Every template is validated strictly before it is rendered, including a rule that images may only load from Culper’s own storage, so a template cannot be used to reach anything it should not.

When you order, the design is rendered to a PDF by a headless browser: one copy of the piece, front and back for two-sided formats, with the address block left for the print shop’s variable-data merge. Rendering every recipient into one giant file is deliberately not done; the vendor’s merge software does that from the recipient CSV Culper generates.

Add New → Design with Culper is a three-step wizard. Choose a template (or jump to the studio to make one). Choose the list; Culper generates a recipient CSV of every voter on it who is on the current county roll and has a complete street address, city, state, and ZIP, sorted by ZIP for the mail house. Review, add notes for the fulfillment team (a deadline, a target cost per piece, a rush request), and Submit print request. The PDF renders, the job moves to Awaiting quote, and Culper’s fulfillment team is emailed with the design, the count, and your notes.

The wizard promises a quote within one business day. When it arrives, you get an email and the job shows Quote ready with the amount and the vendor. Approve & Print moves it to In production; Decline ends it; Cancel is available any time before approval. When the vendor mails it, the job becomes Mailed with the final cost, the mail date, and a tracking number, and you get a second email. Notes stay editable throughout, and once a job is in production you can also record the tracking number, mail date, and actual cost yourself.

• Statuses, in order: awaiting quote, quote ready, in production, mailed. Declined, cancelled, and failed are terminal and read-only.
• The recipient CSV holds first name, last name, full name, street, city, state, and ZIP, in the shape a print or mail house expects.
• The rendered PDF and the recipient CSV are stored in a private bucket, not on a public URL.

Add New → Upload Artwork is for a mailing your own printer handled. Pick the list that was mailed, give the mailing a name, optionally upload a preview of the artwork (PNG, JPG, or WebP), and enter the piece size in inches and the paper weight from a chip list (60-pound text through 16-point card stock). The last step records the printer’s name and contact, the total cost, the mail date, and notes; every field there is optional. The record can be edited later or archived.

Log external mail, on the Email page, is the lighter version: the list, the piece type (postcard, push card, letter, yard sign, or door hanger), the drop date, and the vendor. It writes one mailed record per on-roll voter on the list, dated to the drop, and is kept separate from the campaign’s own send metrics so it never inflates them.

City council, one postcard. You save a list of 4,000 households of likely voters, design a 4×6 postcard in the studio with the candidate photo on the front and a three-line message plus the address block on the back, and submit it with a note asking for delivery before early voting starts. The quote comes back the next morning; you approve it from your phone. When it drops, the 4,000 voters show the mailing in their contact history, and walkers who knock those doors the following week see it on the household.

School board, a letter to the most reliable voters. A 1,200-person list of voters with three of the last four elections gets an 8.5×11 letter about the bond. The letter is written in the studio with the first-name field, and the recipient CSV is exactly the 1,200 people with a complete address, so the count on the quote matches the count you meant.

County party, consultant-run mail. A consultant drops 25,000 pieces for the slate. Nobody designs anything in Culper; a manager logs the external drop against the list on the Email page, and every candidate’s walk and text lists now show which households already got mail.

Mail is the one channel a local campaign almost always buys and almost never tracks. Recording it per voter is what lets the next contact build on it: the walker who knows the household got the postcard, the text that references the letter, the list that excludes people already mailed twice. How many contacts a win number takes, and why mail alone rarely gets there, is in How many votes does it take to win a local election.

Timing matters more in vote-by-mail states, where a piece that lands after the ballot drop is wasted on everyone who already returned it. Ballot chase in vote-by-mail states covers the calendar; the recipient CSV is generated at submission, so build the list as late as the vendor allows. The door program that mail is usually paired with is in the door-knocking guide.

Fulfillment is quote-based and human on Culper’s side, and the studio is a design tool rather than a mail house. The boundaries below follow from that.

• No price list or instant checkout. Every job is quoted individually after you submit, and prices depend on the vendor, the format, and the count.
• No in-app postage payment. You approve a quote; billing is arranged with the fulfillment team.
• The variable-data merge is done by the print shop from the CSV; Culper renders one copy of the design.
• No address verification or move-update processing. The CSV carries the address on the voter record.
• The Send to mailer shortcut on a list’s action menu is marked coming soon; start from Direct Mail instead.
• Push cards and signs are print products, not mailings; the studio designs them, but they are not sent to a list.
• One tracking number per job. There is no per-piece delivery tracking.
• Only the candidate and campaign managers can open Direct Mail or act on a job; staff and volunteers do not see it.

Mail starts from a saved list and ends as a contact on the voter record, which is what ties it to the rest of the campaign.

• Search, lists, and tags to build the list you mail and to exclude households already mailed.
• Yard signs and field assets, which use the studio’s sign formats.
• Block walking, where push cards are handed out and where mailed households show up on the walk.
• Email outreach, whose templates share the same Templates page.
• Dashboard and reporting for where mailed contacts appear in the contact heatmap.