So I got the below postcard. I have don’t have kids and don’t intend to, but for some reason I received this. Besides the fact that the district really needs to invest in a mailing list which would save them (us) thousands in postage and printing fees (believe it or not you can purchase these lists, and they really don’t cost much) they did not even bother to target the mailer to people with kids, as you can tell from the addressing ‘resident’ and it coded as a ‘walking’ list. This means every mail carrier basically receives a stack of these cards and drops them in every mailbox on their route. Think pizza coupons.
As a former graphic designer specializing in direct mail this card is a huge fail and not just for the lack of targeting the audience;
• You should never use a typeface smaller than 10 PT, this borders on 4-6 pt.
• You should always just give the information that is important and lead them to resources, it is called the KISS theory in marketing (Keep it simple stupid).
• The entire front of the postcard was not utilized.
This was a great exercise in using taxpayer money to fill the landfill. But hey when you bilk the taxpayers for $300 million in a dubious election, what’s another couple grand?
What happen to the “Kindergarten Round-up” theme? Has rounding up children become too socialistic? And what’s this Junior Kindergarten thing? Do they have “workforce development” plans for those kids? (“Yah, my cousin is learning how to read in kindergarten, while I am learning how to use a small plumber’s wrench in junior kindergarten”… )
I rec’d this postcard and am not located in the Sioux Falls School District. Also receive similar communication on an annual basis from the Harrisburg School District. I have no problem with either, despite that our household does not have a prospctive kindergarten student.
The point of the communication is to reach ALL of the families who have children reaching kindergarten age. To send this to everyone in the school district seems in-line with that objective.
The dynamics of mobility and changes-of-address would make any targetted list obsolete anyway.
I guarantee, even with this mail piece, there are still many who show up to the school district office in late August with a prospective kindergarten student in tow with the story, “We didn’t know. Nobody told us”.
Why doesn’t the government send out notices to encourage people to register to vote? Is it because they only want a finite number voting, but they want an infinite number being subjected to their low wage workforce development realities?