January 1998
'Archimedes' is launched by LP
Biggest membership recruitment drive in party history starts test mailings
The Libertarian Party has launched phase one of "Project Archimedes" -- its ambitious plan to recruit enough members to become competitive with the Republicans and Democrats.
The party mailed more than 120,000 pieces of membership recruitment mail in late November, the first batch of what party leaders hope will eventually be a 24 million-piece tidal wave of direct-mail marketing.
The theory behind Project Archimedes: That millions of Americans hold Libertarian beliefs -- and the party can use high-tech demographic profiling to find them and convince them to become contributing members of the party.
"Numerous national polls indicate that there are 50 million people who already hold essentially libertarian views," said LP National Chairman Steve Dasbach. "In addition, many other polls indicate a large public demand for a new party.
"Therefore, we will concentrate our recruitment efforts on people who have both of these characteristics: They already agree with most of our positions, and they are disgusted with the Democrats and Republicans and want an alternative."
11 different groups
The first wave of test mailings went to 11 different mailing lists of people who match key Libertarian demographic profiles -- such as small-business owners, gun owners, subscribers to Wired magazine, and registered Libertarian voters.The party will monitor which lists perform best, and chart what common demographic trends emerge from those people who respond. Then, another wave of test mailings will go out based on the new knowledge.
Before doing the test mailings, the party matched its current membership list against a compiled database containing more than 70 million direct-mail-responding names, said Dasbach.
"From that, we learned the demographic and psychographic profile of our membership. This profile served as a guide for the selection of 56 direct-mail lists," he explained.
The next step will be to mail to more of those 56 lists, constantly refining the selection process -- until mailings are going only to the most-likely-to-join prospects.
Preliminary results
The party hopes to have preliminary results from the testing phase of the Archimedes Project by January, said Dasbach.The first wave of tests is being financed by $250,000 the party raised from major donors. The complete 24-million-piece roll-out could cost $2 million to $3 million, said Dasbach.
"If the testing goes well, we'll spend the first several months of 1998 raising the $2 million Capital Fund for the full-scale mailings to go out later that year," he said. "And if all goes as planned, we'll see dramatic growth for the LP by the first months of 1999."
Dasbach cautioned party members that while Project Archimedes is based on proven direct-mail and demographic technology, it is still an experiment -- and its success is by no means guaranteed.
"Are we sure this will work? Not yet," he said. "That's why we are doing extensive testing."
If the project is successful, the party could recruit as many as 200,000 contributing supporters -- which means "we'll have the grassroots and financial strength to duplicate, at the presidential campaign level, what Ross Perot did in 1992," said Dasbach.
The project is named "Archimedes" for his quote: "Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the earth."
"Why Archimedes? Because we believe that we can leverage an investment of $2 to $3 million into a Libertarian Party that's big enough to be competitive with the Democrats and Republicans. That's a pretty long lever," said Dasbach.
"Test" Subjects
The first "Project Archimedes" mailings went to:- 5,000 people similar (demographically) to current LP members
- 10,000 investors
- 10,000 computer owners who respond to direct mail
- 10,000 small-business owners
- 10,000 non-Libertarian political contributors
- 10,000 people who work at home
- 10,000 gun owners
- 10,000 National Review subscribers
- 10,000 Wired subscribers
- 10,000 subscribers to Adrian Day's investment newsletter
- 25,280 registered Libertarian voters.
