Waltham Times survey on postcard delivery

Earlier this month The Waltham Times mailed promotional postcards to every residential and business address in Waltham.

Having learned that some residents had not received a postcard following our first mass mailing last spring, we decided to poll our subscribers to find out how many people received a postcard from our November mailing. More than 30% of the 498 people who responded to the survey said they had not received the card.

There are problems with our method of data collection. Some people may have tossed out the postcard with their junk mail without realizing they had received it. We think that it is likely that 30% is an inflated figure. 

We also mapped the addresses of the people who responded to the survey. Here is that map, with addresses that received the postcard indicated by blue pins and those that did not indicated by red pins.

The areas of the addressees that received the card seem to overlap geographically with those that did not, suggesting that it might be somewhat random whether the postcard was delivered to any one address. But a closer look finds some “hot spots” of nondelivery, as shown in the map below of South Side neighborhoods which shows that a significant portion of Ward 8–2 postcards were not received. 

We will be digging deeper into the data to determine whether any trends we observe here are linked to underlying causes or systemic issues.