March 1998
First Project Archimedes tests: Good, but...
First wave of tests exceeds expectations, but more research is needed, says Willis
The first wave of Project Archimedes test mailings performed "better than expected" -- but more testing is needed before any conclusive results can be guaranteed, said Perry Willis, the past LP National Director who is working with the party on the membership recruitment effort.The first batch of 120,000 pieces of direct mail generated a .58% overall response rate -- more than twice the quarter-percent return Willis said he was expecting. That translates into almost 700 new LP members.
"The test went better than I expected," he said. "I think things are looking good."
The party sent out the first wave of membership recruitment mail for Project Archimedes -- named after Archimedes' famous quote, "Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the earth" -- in late November 1997. It was the first batch of what party leaders hope will eventually be a massive 24 million-piece blitz of direct-mail marketing.
200,000 Libertarians
The goal of the project is to recruit up to 200,000 Libertarian Party members from the 50 million people who already hold essentially libertarian views.The first mailing went to 11 different mailing lists of people who match key Libertarian demographic profiles.
The five top-performing lists, said Willis, were:
- High-propensity California registered Libertarian voters: 1.74% response.
- National Review magazine subscribers: 1.31% response.
- Adrian Day investment newsletter subscribers: .74% response.
- Massachusetts registered Libertarians: .81% response.
- Wired subscribers: .38% response.
At the bottom of the performance chart were "compiled" lists of home business owners (.07%); business owners (.06%); and gun owners (.01%).
The party is now in the process of analyzing which common demographic trends emerge from those people who responded. Then, another wave of more selective test mailings will go out, based on the new knowledge, said Willis.
"This [first] test has already allowed us to boost the universe of names that we can mail to at our target response rate from about 70,000 to nearly a quarter of a million," he said.
However, Willis cautioned, it's still too early to draw any final conclusions from this first test.
"As promising as the first returns are, there still are uncertainties ahead before we can be sure how successful the overall program will be," he said.
Based on the results of the first test, Willis said the party will roll out another 250,000 pieces of direct mail in late February, with results expected by April.
