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What's the difference between a qualified, experienced, hard-working candidate and a lazy, grandstanding wannabe?

Too often, the answer is "not much." From the average voter's perspective, all politicians seem preening and self-promotional. People generally don't know candidates personally, making it tough to tell one political hopeful from another. Personal contact between candidates and voters has all but vanished from modern campaigns. And while the messages these candidates deliver may be com­pelling and research-driven, relying exclusively on standard self-promotional mail can simply fall flat.

Voters are disengaged, cynical and accus­tomed to the same, standard formula from campaigns year after year. They see little tangible benefit from politics, and they expect almost nothing from politicians - at least nothing good. To change their minds, we have to put the personal touch back into our campaigns. Candidates must establish personal rapport with voters, so that people can relate to the candidate as an individual interested in public service, not as a politician interested in self-promotion. Campaigns should reinforce that personal rapport with strong community-based third-party validation, to demonstrate a breadth of support for the candidate from "people just like me."

Personal and validating direct mail can do just that, helping voters relate to the candidate. The unique, micro-targeted direct mail techniques outlined here are often missing from direct mail programs because they are labor-intensive, technically complicated and decidedly "unflashy." But that is part of the magic: the "down designed" look, simulating what a campaign volunteer or neighbor would make themselves. It looks and feels personal. Its benefits are clear from tracking polls and focus groups. And most importantly, it wins elections.

There was a time when candidates spent day after day building personal rapport with voters. While out on the campaign trail in Missouri, Harry Truman would live and sleep in his car. Traveling tirelessly to each hamlet and farmstead, he met every Tom, Dick and Mary in the state. And he developed the kind of rapport with regular voters that no political attack could ever take away. His campaigns touched people, giving everyday folks the feeling they had a personal relationship with him. He harnessed that personal rapport and, confounding the political experts, won victory after unlikely victory all the way to the White House.

Truman's style of campaigning is certainly of another era. Since then, political machines have declined, volunteer bases have shrunk, and candidates have shifted their focus from personal contact to dialing for dollars. Today, voters have trouble connecting with candidates as individuals. And somewhere along the line, campaigns began to fail at the most basic task in politics making a personal, relevant connection to real people's lives.It seems so simple delivering a well tested message to targeted voters, reinforced with strong third-party validation.

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