Direct Mail...The Untapped Marketing Secret | Maxximillian Seijo | MMP #031

Intro there's a lot of people in in design who want to design really seamless aesthetically uniform branding right this is this makes sense for websites this makes sense for for marketing across the board but with postcards often you have that Split Second where you're going to capture someone's eyes you want to actually direct them in the right way and so you want your call to action to be non-matching your watch marketing Misfits with Norm Ferrar and Kevin K so Norm you were just telling me that you're having hot flashes no I was asking you actually you're saying that you're checking here on my screen and there's some it was it was like flashing a little bit and you but but that's not what you said you said you're having hot flashes I was like Norm I thought you already passed this I thought you're old enough guy you're uh um of that age where you're already pass the hot flashes no Kev I was warning you about menopause that's what I was asking you if you had hot flashes oh I misunderstood you I misunderstood oh uh no I haven't I haven't had that happen yet thank God I hear it's not pleasant I really couldn't tell you but uh it it's only unpleasant if you start to see my screen start to blow up in the background with these hot flash I thought you might just be having hot flashes because you know I'm down here in Texas where it's 82° right now and you're up there in the great white North where what's the temperature outside uh outside there in north of Toronto yeah it's probably uh it's below zero anyway below zero celsus I'll put it that way we've got snow we had freezing rain yesterday beautiful conditions we don't have that here in Austin you know when it snows in Austin it's a big deal I mean we had a bad storm about three years ago that put everybody out for about four days that's rare I've been in Austin 30 something years I think I've seen snow three times and I remember one year it was like all in the news they're like it's going to um snow is coming it's going to about 2:26 in the morning and we're going to have some flurries people are setting their alarms to wake up at 2:26 in the morning to go out they had never seen snow before to go out on their balconies or to go on their porch or in their yard and see snow because by morning when the sun comes up it's going to be gone uh that that's that's the extent of snow here and if if we get snow once every five years in Austin uh that's that's a pretty rare occurrence now Dallas three hours north of us they get a little bit more but we do get ice we get the black ice yeah so we'll get where it'll rain and it'll freeze and on the black they call it black ice because the road's black and you can't really tell that it's icy and then your your car is slipping and sliding when I was that's what we had yesterday when I was a teenager we had that in Dallas where I grew up and I was delivering pizzas for a place called uh uh what was it place called Jimmy John's I was one of the ones that went in on an ice day because everybody's like stuck at home and I I'll never forget I got the biggest tip of my life I got a $200 tip for delivering some pizzas to a hotel um because I uh they weren't they were stuck they were stranded out by DFW Airport uh and I was like the only stupid guy like slipp and sliding down the road delivering pizza so I can make a make some money but I made I made like six 700 bucks that day uh you know for 18 19 year old that's that's back in the 80s uh that's serious cash uh it was uh my dad when I came home he's like where were you uh I was like I was working he's like give me your car keys you know you're not supposed to be driving on this stuff but but those were the days and you know speaking of the days back Kevin’s Marketing Journey then I got my a lot of people don't may not know this about me but I got my I cut my teeth in direct marketing and actually doing physical male so my my background is back in the 1980s early 80s uh before I was even when I was in high school I was doing mail order I was doing putting ads in the back of stamp magazines and coin collector magazines and baseball card magazines and then that evolved into uh I remember around 198 86 887 I heard about this thing called direct mail and Target marketing magazine and couple other uh things like that and I was like what is this direct mail this is there was no internet back then I like oh wow I can sell something to anyone anywhere in the in the United States if I send them something in the mail and like this is pretty cool I don't have to run an ad a classified ad in the back of a newspaper or a magazine I can just get list and you can buy list and you can actually send stuff to them in the mail so I started an entire business business of actually I started a mail order catalog where we send out like The Sharper Image it was for college kids and then I was doing postcard marketing where I would send out postcards to actually people to buy stuff and that continued and it continues to this day and and to this day everybody's always all the Young Generation all the young marketers are all talking about social media and Facebook and advertising and ugc and all this and they're like nobody pays attention to the mail um and that that's so like old school that's what the old people do there nobody and they there could be nothing further than the truth direct marketing right now is the golden opportunity I believe that nobody is paying attention to except the smart people and that's who we have a guest on today who's his companies that's what he does that's what they do is they help people when it comes to direct marketing and direct mail and I think we're going to this is going to be an eye-opening discussion for a lot of people on some of what you can do and the power of using physical mail um I I know Canada Post is on strike at the time of this recording so you know you're not probably getting any mail right now uh Norm um but but I but mail is a powerful thing so I'm excited to have our guest on today because we're going to geek out on some really cool stuff I think that's going to open some eyes for all you Misfits out there on ways that you can Market totally differently all right well why don't you introduce Our Guest yeah so uh he's from PCM postcard marketing they got a whole Meet Maximilian Seijo bunch of different companies he'll tell you all about but if you will please welcome uh Max ailan seos I think it is uh all right let's bring him on bring him on Norm Max hey guys how you doing good good to be here I said say hos it's SE ho sorry about say ho yeah you almost got it I almost got it I gotta put an S on the end of it uh I'm so excited so before before we get started why don't you tell us a little bit uh about yourself and and what you do yeah absolutely so um I work for Direct Mail Strategies postcard Mania as Kevin mentioned um I work specifically as a product owner for our Integrations division so postcard Mania has been around for 25 years in the direct mail space and um you know we we have a lot of different divisions that focus on different things and in Integrations we focus mostly on integrating the possibility the capacity to uh use Direct mail into different pieces of Technology like crms or other kind of platform-based uh Direct Mail triggered kind of applications so is this is this any kind of printed Direct Mail is this brochures or is it postcards or is it cataloges or is it what what kind of what is Encompass what is direct mail so we cut our teeth on postcards for sure it's in the name right postcard Mania but um absolutely we send pretty much anything you can think of right if it can be printed we've got the machine we do it all inhouse in clear waterer Florida um so anything from brochures to letters to all different types of sizes of postcards to you know we could we could nerd out on different types of envelopes and things if you're interested but you know if you can think of it we can do it can you do all the rub off stuff too where like you got to scratch a coin or take the do the sticker where you gotta you know in the old days to get engagement uh now engagement is post a like or post a comment but in the old days on on drink marketing engagement was like uh subscribe to my magazine take the sticker that says yes peel it off and put it over here in this little circle uh you know to get the engagement and then send an in do can you do that kind of stuff as well so we have some snap AP Parts but I think nowadays it's mostly QR code based that's true that's that's true so Norm have you done any kind of direct marketing or I used to back yeah back in the day back in the 80s and 90s we did a lot of direct marketing but nowadays you know what's funny uh Kevin you're the one that kind of turned me on to this but I really thought that it was dead and then you kind of showed me the ropes and uh it's not dead I it just might smell funny to a lot of people and you're right it is a very very good way of marketing right now that other people aren't doing so why not take advantage of it and that's why I'm really excited to get into this um but yeah thanks for you know getting me back on track with this because I don't know where we're going to go ourselves like you and me with our new business but uh it seems why not take advantage of something that nobody else is doing and now a word from one of our sponsors one of Norman I's favorite tools stack influence are you looking to quickly boost new Amazon product launches or scale up existing listings to reach first page positioning the influencer platform stack influence can help stack influence pushes high volume external traffic sales to Amazon listings using micro influencers and guess what you only have to pay with your products they've helped upand cominging Brands like magic spoon compete with Cheerios for top category positioning while also helping Fortune 500 Brands like unil lever launch their new products right now is the best time to get started with stack influence to crush it during this holiday season that's right dorm sign up today at stack influence.com or click the link in the video below and mention Misfits that's right Misfits m s fit TS to get 10% off your first campaign head over to stack influence.com right now see the way I got normed to actually pay attention is uh one time we were on a zoom call and I was like or actually I just come back from a trip uh that Norman and I were in uh I think we're in Montreal brainstorming on one business I came back and got on a call and I was like Norm's like uh Kevin have you done this these things that we talked about I said no man I've been busy he's like what have you been doing so man I went to the post office box and I put the key in and opened it up and was falling out all over the floor like all these envelopes like were falling out all over the floor and I was like hold on a second nor hold on let me go grab it I'll show you this I go back to my other office I'm in my studio right now I bring back a stack of envelopes you can't if you're listening to this you can't see it but imagine like 2 feet tall if you're holding a stack of envelopes two feet tall like Norm every one of these envelopes look they're handwritten and inside each one of them is an order form that someone took some Scissors because I put a little dotted line with a pair of scissors emoji and said cut this and there's a check or money order or a credit card number on every one in every one of these envelopes and he's like get the hell out of here no way who does that I'm like no and I ended up opening those envelopes and um you know a couple days later because I had to catch up on everything there's $199,000 in that stack of envelopes that I showed you literally $199,000 $3,800 of credit cards that people wrote their credit card number and had me I had to manually charge them uh and the rest were checks and money orders uh and a few people actually sent $10 bills and stuff in there too so this is not Deb uh and you know my that's for my a business I have that's my calendar business and so we also have um we do you can go to the website so when I send something out direct mail it actually has a URL on there a QR code and you can actually go to the website as well and and when you when you go to the website um people order now the sales on that same time frame this is like a week time frame was about 70 or $80,000 on the website so from that direct mail piece that I send in the mail and I sent one email to my list but to that direct mail email uh piece I did $100,000 in a week about 70% 7 7 75% of it was online the rest was through Direct Mail Direct Mail is still powerful not only for people to actually pay you but also to actually Market to people and they see it and here's here's the thing that I always tell people when it comes to directag marketing is that when you send out an email the email lasts a Split Second maybe you read it and then you you put it into your to-do list or it SS in your inbox and you might get back to it if you don't take action on it right right away if you if you download a PDF or something or download a coupon code it sits on your computer gets lost if you send something in the mail especially if it's a coupon 20% off your next order you know from uh Frontgate or something like that one of these big catalog companies what do you do with that you don't like you might throw it in the desk drawer most people take it it sits on their desk with their bill stack or it goes up on a magnet on the refrigerator or or you can get creative by putting a calendar on there it's you know Christmas calendar Advent calendar it has a coupon the site it's a constant billboard in somebody's house and people now because direct marketing used to be such a big deal and they called it junk mail and you would get so much stuff well that's cut down because of people like you Norm who thought it was dead yeah and so now when you get your mail there's not nearly as much stuff if you do it right with a right message in the right graphics and the right offer it can crush and it can be way way cheaper than doing Facebook advertising I mean so that's what I I I want to know about um max right now with his strategies is it any different than what it was before or are you doing something new yeah so I kind of want to pick up a little bit where Kevin left off there right describing this kind of deliverability Crisis um in digital advertising um that we see particularly with email in some ways and how it's kind of reversed over the years right where it we used to think of junk mail but now junk mail when you say that that that's spam right that's how that's your inbox being filled up with all these emails that you you can't parse through sometimes people just mass delete them um I think we're all kind of aware of what that that experience is just constantly being kind of bered with all these emails that are important right like you know digital advertising is is an important tool right but it's but also you're leaving a lot on the table if you're just relying on that form of a touch Point uh to reach your potential customers so it's precisely in that kind of deliverability Crisis that Direct Mail really cuts through um all that noise and can really offer the the tangible right everything in our life it it feels abstract it's there's you know new technologies all the time there's something to be said for something tangible in your hand that you can hold that you can feel um that you can relate to in a way that um will will have lasting staying pow Power whether it's on for brands or um particularly in other ways for for local businesses to to to reach into their communities literally with something tangible um and so and with that said right that kind of General framework for thinking about Direct Mail the technology has also come to the space as well and there's a lot of uh automation personal ation I mentioned QR codes that could take you to personalized landing pages right that bring the information on who the particular recipient was who uh scanned that QR code to your front doorstep as a business that you can then capitalize on that lead um everything from that to to variable imagery on the postcards um and letters so we see that a lot with people in real estate who are wanting to buy you know whether they're investors or their real estate agents they want to buy particular homes literally putting images of you know from Google Maps or from somewhere of particular things that's targeted to the recipient um of that piece of direct mail with very custom a kind of custom strategic sense of marketing what would you say to someone though it's like well yeah that's great you can do all this customiz but I can do that on email too I can have someone click a link and they can go to a web page and I got the same data and I can change the pictures and I can change custom it to them why is Direct Mail more powerful combination or maybe even more powerful than singing an email with the same same data and the same customization ability what we'll say is always you should be doing both right you don't leave any any channel untouched um and so but the reason why we then will emphasize Direct Mail is because if you think about it right sometimes people don't open emails right they don't click on the link they don't even see it they don't see your marketing they don't see your brand it just goes either straight into junk or they delete it um but with piece of direct mail at at Baseline your customer has to look at it right when you're going through your mail you look at it sorting over the trash everyone's done it right you're looking at it at it second at least with it you put you put your your eyes on it it says you know for me it'll say you know dear maximilan and then I'll go okay well I don't need this but interesting throw it away right let's say I do that though okay I do that once one of the things that we emphasize is repeated touch right not giving up on a list not giving up on leads um and okay I get another postcard oh now I know them right okay again maybe it changes up there's a different image this time dear Max milon you know what I've actually done this as a consumer not even before I was in the direct mail space where on the third fourth time I get the postcard that's when I put it on the fridge right it it kind of breaks through at that point and there this repeated touch both visually right and in your hand where this is this product this brand is becoming real to you over time as you as you handle the the the piece of marketing in your hand and even if you throw it away or put it on the fridge um and then another aspect of that too that I think I'll say is there are particular design practices that we emphasize um at Postcard Mania that make the can make the marketing more effective and there's some things that are really counterintuitive and one that I really like is you know there's a lot of people in in design who want to design really seamless aesthetically uniform branding right this is this makes sense for websites this makes sense for for marketing across the board but with postcards often you have that Split Second where you're G to capture someone's eyes you want to actually direct them in the right way and so you want your call to action to be non-matching um to the rest of the postcard so that it actually jumps out right they see it almost as like an outpoint on the postcard that then it directs their eyes to it and then right they're they're calling the number they're looking at that particular part of the postcard so that these are just some little things that being you know in the industry that you learn over you know decades you were talking about uh receiving these postcards multiple times I'm wondering if is this similar to social media do you try to come up with different messages different sizes different just a whole different look so it's not just a 6x4 postcard it might be something else that's completely different so that person gets that touch point it is a a really separate touch point that they're looking at and it's almost like split testing the message yeah that it's a great it's a great way of putting it and it actually kind of brings me to one of the things that the Integrations team I think we we offer that that really does the best for people is you can set out a strategy for managing and following up with leads ahead of time right you automate that strategy whether it's in your CRM uh in our platform however you want to connect up to um these direct mail services and then you you kind of you you let it run as a strategy right as you would a kind of email or a social media uh strategy where you're targeting particular demographics you're targeting particular leads in different ways whether they're warm cold or hot leads you kind of set it to send a postcard and then you delay for let's say seven days 14 days maybe even a month and if this lead reaches in or changes status in in kind of your lead management um stages you alter the postcard slightly right it you you alter the offer you can tailor it maybe it's a bigger postcard to make more of a splash right instead of the 4 and a qu by six uh it's a 6 by 8 and a half or the jumbo the 6X 11 you come up with a cohesive strategy that covers every aspect of your sales process right and your your lead management process um that then can run in an automated way integrated with the rest of your customer relationship management that then can you can kind of almost like her these leads in particular ways with particular particular touch points um so that's something that really bringing a kind of strategic uh perspective to direct mail marketing as you would social media marketing where you're trying to kind of touch them at multiple points in in a lead's life cycle can really uh generate generate the goods what's it cost I mean uh for like a six four and a quarter by six which is a smaller size postcard what are we looking at on an actual cost I know with a bulk mail you have to send 200 pieces at a time but because of your relationships and your systems you're able to co-mingle so I can send one-offs basically and get a discounted rates under your system so I don't have to do all these big Mass mailings so I can do them daily or as people coming or as a CRM says what am I looking at to send like a single four and a quar by six postcard that's fourcc color printed on both sides yeah so it's a great question absolutely um so with higher volume as you said in bulk like you know our our pricing does vary according to volume if you're going to come spend you know send 10,000 postcards we'll give you a slightly better rate on the per piece um but with our integration team as you said we have the technology and and the printing infrastructure to commingle different um different sends and you're going to be able to send a oneoff postcard completely personalized for for under a dollar um with no monthly fees no startup fees no nothing um and and so what what that can do is really allow how you you know let's say you're a small business or you're even a a one oneperson shop trying to kind of market and start up and Dabble in in direct mail to see how you want to scale it um you can set up your integration and go and send two pieces three pieces five pieces right and you know spend less than $10 and and see how that kind of personalized touch affects some of the process of managing and trying to convert these leads and and also generate new ones right if you want to buy a list and Target a particular area right some people want to Target the the closest 50 homes to a job they did for example right and and you wouldn't necessarily have the intelligence at your disposal that like a big Corporation would have um kind of traditionally to Target specific customers right you don't if you don't have their information they didn't fill out a form if you're a small business but with our technology you can you know spend something dollars and Target you know you do a job you're like I want to get I want to get access to this neighborhood and just and just do it right and know you know you can know that those leads are going to be um they're going to be hot because they're right in the demographic that you're already servicing so I can I can do stuff like if I'm opening a new gym I can Target I mean I you can do some of this on Facebook but you're at the whim of Facebook's algorithm and I always say that uh you know email a cold email gets a 10 to 30% open rate postcards get a 99% open rate um so if you which which one do you want yeah you're paying that dollar or a little bit less than a dollar and you can get that down to 50 60 cents or even you know in bulk um but you're paying that but you're getting these much higher open rates and much like you said earlier people even if they skim it over the trash they at least have a split second with it you do your job so I can actually get lists of people that are surrounding three miles around my gym and that and I can overlay that to people that I know also are in the fitness and I can send them a postcard that says hey new gym opening um you know come in for a free uh yoga class or whatever it may be and I know that that's going to actually reach those people and if those people moved a lot of people don't realize this in the US you can get 48 uh months of NCA National change of address information so for 48 months you can follow people where they go and you can also do it for Canada as well I think it's 24 months for Canada um so you you keep you keep up to date and you keep current with everything so that's that's some of the power here that you can do can you do that on digital marketing too yes you can do targeting like that but you don't control it with mail I know that if I mail this to them the post office is going to deliver it to that house um it's gonna it's going to get there but I don't know if I have a list of a a thousand potential exercise people around my gym I run a Facebook ad Facebook's going to show that to 20 or 30 of them see what the engagement is see what the reach is if they if they're just not paying much attention or it happens to be at the wrong time of day nobody the rest of them aren't going to see it but if I send a thousand postcards I know that 99% of those people at some point during the week when they check their mail they're GNA see it that's that's the beauty of it okay this is a question about engagement is there an IND industry standard on how many people will click through scan the QR code I mean you get uh a 99% deliverability but how many people take action yeah so um I guess what I would say is there there isn't an industry standard it actually depends on the industry um that you are marketing from often and some you know there are some particular industries that are you're always going to kind of guarantee a a a boatload of Engagement um particularly like some of the local based postcard sending right that that really works because you know that who you're sending to is already interested by nature of where they live in what you're trying to sell or or what you're trying to to provide as a service so it really depends on how personalized you're getting what what you're trying to sell and what your strategy is right if you're trying to build a brand right with bulk with bulk sending you're going to get less of a clickthrough but you'll maybe get like over time more more of a critical mass of Engagement um by by doing it that way um and then there's some for some types of Industries like for example I mentioned real estate investment that's a great example where all they need is one person right they send thousands and thousands and thousands all they need is one person to make it worth it because their margins are so high um so it really depends in what what we emphasize is making sure that the design practices meet suit the industry that you are you are in and we have uh consultants and coordinators who will really walk you through any step of the process if you're interested in in getting involved in this I me we we kind of know what we're doing and we have different levels of Hands-On versus hands-off approaches to facilitating um facilitating your direct mail campaign needs and we also have a number if you're interested in checking particular Industries a number of case studies on our website uh postcardmania.com where you can just actually click through and see um you know what what's your industry what are some examples of some engagement rates um in the past all right I know I know that postcard that the response rates typically I I don't have the status I wish I had this um I did in a presentation a while back when I did a presentation on postcards uh and and it was like 15 to one over direct uh the uh the the engagement so it depends like he said on industry but it's like a 15 to1 ratio 15% 15 times higher uh ratio uh so if you got a 1% response on on a email you should get about a 15% Mail vs. Email Marketing response on a direct M marketing piece or if something like that um certainly to that number but it's a much much higher engagement thing certainly when compared to to digital absolutely I mean that that's that's been con consistent for years but see people would say how do you cter the people say well this is all great Max Million but I can I can send 100 emails for less than I can send one postcard um and if it's a if it's just a numbers game like you said for this real estate person I I just have to hope they open one of those 100 emails and respond versus sending them a 100 postcards how how do you respond to someone like that I'm not going to mess with this this is so old school well I mean I think the great thing is about being in direct mail marketing is I don't have to say that uh emails don't work right um all I'll say is is if you want to make sure you're leveraging all of your marketing you know possibility right and trying to maximize what you can what you can bring to the table to your customers you're going to want to touch touch you know touch their life in every single way that you can and direct mail is a way that is proven so you know you're relying on the infrastructure of the post office which is proven and almost guarantees uh deliverability and you're not that that is a subsidized form of deliverable infrastructure that um you know you're taking advantage of as as a as a business that you know for with email you of course of course will have success if you play the volume game but um you direct mail has been around for years for a reason right and it never went away right I think there's people think that oh that's old school there was a point in time where um where it stopped working and it and it never it it just that's just not true it never went away right um it's just that our we're we're confronted by the the kind of flashiness of digital advertising um everywhere we look and in ways that are kind of I would say working less on on net by you know every single by volume um that we see this like Resurgence of in the effectiveness that was already always there in direct mail advertising now a quick word from our sponsor lavant Hey Kevin tell us a little bit about it that's right Amazon sellers do you want to Skyrocket your sales and boost your organic rankings meet Levant Norman secret weapon for driving highquality external traffic straight to our Amazon storefronts using affiliate marketing that's right it's achieved through direct Partnerships with leading media Outlets like CNN wire cutter and BuzzFeed just to name a few as well as top Affiliates influencers bloggers and media buyers all in levant's 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L.I Misfits do you see a difference in when you're doing there's a lot of little hacks and tricks when it comes to doing Engagement Tips & Tricks stuff by mail like handwritten making it look like the address is handwritten or the the postcards handwritten or it looks like he just sent it from a vacation in uh the Bahama or something or putting a a real stamp uh you know having a a real glued or stick on stamp on the outside instead of an indicia that says you permit number whatever and all these little little little minute things like we talked about earlier the sticker peel off the yes and stick it over here and mail the postcard back what are you seeing some what are some of the cool engagement or little tricks that you're seeing that you guys can can do that are helping with with response rates or engagement so you mentioned a few of them I mean the Liv stamp is is great it's a it's a really a powerful means of of you know particularly with letters of of upping the open rates of those um letters in an envelope so something in an envelope correct yeah particularly envelopes right because with postcards you have the benefit that the images are already there right but with letters you know you you want you want to get people to to open the envelopes and things like handwritten fonts changing the color of the fonts on the outside of the letter um the live stamp is great and then playing around with different Windows right so whether it's double windows full windows or or regular envelopes like it would be you know if I sat down with the with the letter and wrote it out um and then actually you know wrote the address on the outside handwritten and applied the stamp right we can we can facilitate making bulk mailing look exactly like it would look if I just sat down and wrote it out um and and from as you mentioned you know handwritten fonts yellow paper right the the whole thing that that everything that you can kind of think of for for these little uh yellow paper was always one that was a trick that those those stand out in the mailbox yellow I I remember that what about I mean in when you talking about letters I mean the same you have the same thing applies in direct marketing and online when subject lines I mean you have open hooks so if you're doing a doing an envelope or even a postcard you want to have open H uh creative hooks or Loops that draw people in so a lot of the marketing principles and the psychology are very similar right yes absolutely and I'd recommend for anyone interested postcard Mania has 12 elements of successful postcard design that talk through um the particulars from the clear headline relevant images color um there's even a you know components of like eye tril of particular images right so where where the actors and the images are looking right um there's those little tricks that can marginally increase uh the engagement rate what about the size what do you see the difference in size makes I mean first of a four and a quarter by six to a a 5 by8 to a 6x1 um what do you see each one of those increases the printing cost increases the deliverability cost and um what do you see the engagement differences or the response differences it it how do you decide which one of those do I go with do I stand out so they just can't miss it with a six 6 by 11 or do I go with a small size just and be efficient or do you com combine those you kind of want to balance you know questions of cost for you know obviously the the larger jumbo size is going to reach more people right it's going to be bigger it's going to stand out when it's on the fridge more people are going to see it but sometimes the 4 and a quart by six and you can afford to send to a few thousand more um will just work better because you'll reach more people so it really you want to make sure you're thinking with both of those sides of the coin and trying to balance your strategy right coming up with a cohesive strategy that then you can Implement and maybe you send the jumbo to hot leads and to cold leads you send the the four and a quar by six you know the one that always gets me and I know it's coming like I'll take a look at the envelopes that come in and those kind of just get tossed I don't even give it a second look if they have a window there I know it's kind of the old junk mail so I toss it but if it comes in a regular envelope like you guys were just talking about with that Bloody stamp and it looks like I and I know that oh this is just another marketing campaign but it intrigues me enough that I'm gonna open it up and go okay yeah another marketing campaign but but it's it's very interesting about just by putting that Bloody stamp on or making it look like a human wrote it you know H had had written it uh just that engagement so again going back to that split testing but the other thing I I I just want to bring out here is that when I went through school the the touch points for me and I think it was a standard for many years after I graduated was seveno touch and then we've learned nowadays that's no longer that seven-point touch it's much much higher and 20 yeah yeah okay so Kevin says 20 so it has to be right I was going to say 21 but but it might be 21 it's it's around it's around that yeah but it's much higher right yeah yeah and this is just that element and if you're blasting out multiple campaigns different sizes different shapes split testing I mean that's just like we were talking about uh doing some uh digital marketing like I'm talking about on a truck you know there's all these new ways of doing it yet you can't forget about the old school ways and those seven touch points they don't work anymore you have to get way past that double triple that and uh this is just one element to it so I I really like that can we talk about some of the best practices that are happening right now yeah absolutely so Direct Mail Best Practices um I'd say one of the things with regards to best practices is the way I think of it is I kind of break down this question of automation versus a kind of discretionary sense of marketing right so discretionary meaning like okay I'm a marketer and I have the discretion to buy a billboard or um okay we're gonna we're making the choice to Target this group with social media advertising right and here's we want to Target x y and z um versus an automated approach that says okay we want to build a kind of cohesive strategy for our marketing that will run on its own and you can kind of architect it let it run optimize it and then just kind of split test and tweak it and one of the things that we see really works in particularly then the direct mail side of that um is having QR codes on your mailers right because what that does is it allows you to capture right the lead coming back in as as a hot lead that was maybe a cold lead that you sent to on the way out so there's this full full circle um kind of structure and system for managing the benefits and and the engagement on the direct mail side that then you know maybe we when they scan that it comes back in and then you send an email or a text message right so there's this this full structure of of kind of encircling these leads until you can kind of you know convert them after getting those multiple you know maybe those 20 touches or however however you know you wanna you 21 touches yeah there you go um so I mentioned personalization a lot um right design practices which I also talked about um and and I think with with all of those things kind of if you if you're accounting for all of those things you can start to maybe see what it would look like for a like the life cycle of your leads depending on you know how hot or warm they are when they're being hit from multiple angles um and having that that you know that direct mail piece be a kind of anchor for um kind of going and getting them in the real world and bringing them to your your digital presence um it really it really does work and it it it can be a kind of missing link for a lot of people in um in their marketing and so that that's that's what I would say yeah how do you do attribution I mean if so if I'm doing a multi multi approach I'm doing email I'm doing Facebook ads I'm doing uh advertisings in a magazine I'm doing postcards how do I do the attribution uh to know is my postcard marketing working because maybe they end up making this they end up making the buy off the fourth email that I got them but the postcard the second postcard I sent them kind of pushed them over the edge but not quite but that follow-up email that fourth email is what they actually clicked to actually buy so I'm giving all the attribution to that so how do how do you do attribution and decide like oh well we should just cut out the postcard Market because nobody's scan the QR code and buying they're all buying off the fourth email um how do how do you account for that kind of stuff this is a great way I think of of uh it's a great question because what it captures is the the kind of limits of of the the onetoone attribution in in all of our marketing right because we can't can't we can't always know what what was the the the touch that that put them over the edge right we can't always know okay was it actually the email that they clicked on or has has our brand been turning in their head for for months right because of uh you know a video ad or or a postcard that we sent so it's one of those things that obviously we have to balance marketing budgets and costs and and there's all sorts of decisions to be made on a from a business sense but in in our eyes you really have to think of think of marketing in a holistic way right not not try to cut Corners not try to shave off small percentages here and there because you don't actually know if that's going to cost you money in the long run um unless you do some pretty complex reporting on on you know touch points and and and some do some quantitative analysis that can at least give you a a window into you know maybe how many touches a lead uh received before it converted into certain things like that what combinations of touches um so that that's kind of where I would go with that he talk a little bit about list a lot of people don't understand or Using Lists & Data realize the how many lists are out there that you can rent uh and that you can get access to of whether that's people who have bought from a catalog or subscribers to I me I used to make tens of thousands of dollars per month renting my list of catalog buyers so I had people that bought Collectibles from me and I turn around and I had an agency that would represent me and you know the you'll like this one Norm uh one of the cigar uh collector catalog cigar catalogs uh would actually rent my list they' come to me and they do a test they say we want 5,000 uh names I would send them 5,000 names um and I would seed that there's there's mailboxes places that will seed that with like fake names uh or or their seed name so that I know that if they're misusing this because they have the right to use it one time to send out to all 5,000 people one time and then I get the I get samples of what they mail so if they're not if they're not mailing what they told me they're going to do if they're misusing the list or sending to it multiple times I know but there's so many lists that you can get out there and people don't understand uh where you know they're like I don't have a list I don't have an email list or people just aren't signing up on my website so can you talk about Mex million a little bit about what you guys can do to help people actually find these leads and find this stuff yeah absolutely so we have a a full list team uh that you know basically any need you can think of and probably ones you can't even think of we can help facilitate there's a bunch of different types of lists that you can purchase from you know radius lists around zip codes carrier root lists um you could look at consumers resident occupants business types of lists um for those who are kind of In The Weeds about this stuff there's there's even more you can kind of uh you can kind of dive into but but the key is is you can do what you used to be able to do on Facebook you can still do direct mail but Facebook used to be able to do you could do all these overlays where you could say I want someone that's bought from Amazon they also own a dog and they also drive a Cadillac uh and Facebook took a lot of that away because the C Cambridge analytics and all this privacy happened you can still do all this stuff in direct mail and there's Big Data out there that will do all these overlays and all this kind of stuff right absolutely yeah yeah I mean you could do income you could do uh typ you know multif family versus single family H Home Apartments you could Target I mean it's the the amount of demographics you have uh at your disposable at your disposal it's it's pretty much anything you can think of targeting there's a way to do it um and and one thing that I'll say too is with our lists you're you're uh you're purchasing those records so you can reuse them after the fact so um that's that's a nice plus that that we offer as well uh with regards to the lists and um and then on the on the technology side for the Integrations team we have uh the ability where you can actually um integrate list purchasing in your platform um so let's say you run a CRM for X Y or z uh if you wanted to allow your customers to purchase lists through you that's technologically possible by using our integration so like with go high level or something you could set up a deal where people can okay can can white label all of our Direct Mail servic directly into their platform in different crms not just high level though that's one of the big ones we're focusing on at the moment so a lot of the times when uh we're talking about e-commerce sellers they're using uh post-p purchase campaigns through email they can add up the average is around 40% additional Revenue by doing a direct mail campaign postp purchase uh same amount roughly or uh what does that do to affect the revenue that you can uh additionally bring yeah so can you say the numbers on that again sorry yeah there's 40% roughly 40% based on the information that I have that a an Amazon Seller if they do a post purch or an Ecom seller does a postp purchase email campaign continually that they can add um roughly around 40 44% additional Revenue I was wondering if you could do that with mail yeah I mean I certainly one of one of a a key use case that we service is that post-purchase um that post-p purchase out Outreach with with direct mail and you know what what's great about that too is you with the variable data option you could actually send uh send images of the products that the person bought specifically um to you know whether it's on the postcard or you know or even send an accessory uh to that product by targeting their particular order in that direct mail so it can even it can go up you can send them a custom you're saying your service can send a custom postcard or letter or whatever uh where it's like we know they've bought these four dog products from us and they're missing this fifth one we can actually show them here's the four you're missing the missing the missing link is this one here's how it fits together you can customize it to that level uh so that they feel like they're missing something yeah I mean it would require a little bit of strategic thinking on the on behalf of the e-commerce uh seller but absolutely yeah technologically that that's something we can facilitate and we have uh clients who do that all the time um and that really can because you're bringing the personalization to the real world that really as a as a consumer it feels targeted in a way that like it's wow this is about me right they're paying attention to me and what I'm buying and what I potentially need um from them and and we find that that really gets a lot of Engagement um when you can kind of personalize it in that way uh and then it's like you know scan a QR code to add it to your cart and because there logged in it's already done well I think that was a five cigar uh nugget there if we were going to rate that I didn't know you could do that you know you could do that no really yeah no yeah you can do all kinds of uh cool stuff you can get very personalized with uh with everything on on postcards Dr it does have to be postcards it can be any kind of letter direct mail it's basically same as mail merge um but yeah you can you can even do can you guys do sampling as well like if I've got dog treats can you do like I want to send a sample pack out or you just doing physical Printed Products or can you actually send uh or like in the old days uh Norm was talking about that engagement where the pin companies you know that the promotional companies they'll stick a pen in the envelope so when you get the envelope in the mail there's a bulge in there or they put a penny in there or put a dollar in there or something um you know to get engagements can you do any of that kind of stuff as well or just we we stick to printed only there's some accessories like you're describing that we do but uh we don't we don't do samples because we don't house uh our clients products um but but I wanted to mention another particular e-commerce use case that's really powerful which is in the similar vein which is um abandoned carts so let's say I'm on Shopify right I have a Shopify U e-commerce site and and a customer of mine put some things in the cart and then abandoned that cart you can have that trigger a postcard with the images of the products uh in the cart that were uh abandoned and send that directly to that customer um which you know you do that without them having logged in too so if they have not gone ahead and filled out their billing address and their shipping address They just added it to the cart and actually never they went to the sign in page and says sign up or log in they I screw it and they went away you can actually with uh science you can actually pick up 50 science yeah 50 to 70% of those people's real address and then three days later they get something in the physical mail you could do this by email too but the email addresses the disadvantage is the email address might not be as targeted as the direct mail piece because the email address might be their Yahoo I mean like Norm I've got a he sends me something to a Yahoo account say I check that once a year that might be the email address that gets picked up but my address is my address and I'm going to check my check my mail so your response rates and your your conversion should in theory be dramatically Higher by triggering a postcard and this can be Automatic by your system into your CRM and it just sends it out and three days later like oh by the way you left blah blah blah it's called direct mail retargeting and so yeah that's something that we we see a lot of uptick in from and this is kind of an example of one of the things that like you know the olden days of Direct Mail Right things have changed right we've broughten technology into the direct mail space as well so it's not just that Direct Mail cuts through Tech you know technology or digital marketing but it also integrates it we've integrated it into uh Direct Mail Marketing in ways that we couldn't have dreamed of you know 15 20 years ago Hey Kevin King and Norm ferar here if you've been enjoying this episode of marketing Misfits thanks for listening Final Thoughts & Wrap-Up this far continue listening we got some more valuable stuff coming up be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify make sure you subscribe to our Channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of the marketing Misfits have you subscribed yet Norm well this is an old guy alert should I subscribe to my own podcast yeah but what if you forget to show up one time it's just me on here you're not going to know what I say I'll I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too we'll just you can go back and forth with one another [Music] yikes but that being said don't forget to subscribe share it oh and if you really like this content somewhere up there there's a banner click on it and you'll go to another episode of the marketing Misfits make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like [Music] Norm all right we are coming up to the top of the hour Mr King do you have any other questions that you'd like to ask maxilon no I could geek out on this for a long time but I just want to emphasize the the importance that I mean I'm mean I'm my background is in direct marketing I still do it to this day and I get poo pooed all the time people are just like yeah whatever it doesn't work it I'm like no it absolutely works if you do it right it's a very powerful thing and with Dragonfish uh that Norman and I are doing uh we're going to be doing this for a lot of our clients so if if this is something you're like yeah that sounds cool but I don't want to mess with that I don't want to learn uh Dragonfish will be able to help you uh do a lot of this kind of stuff uh right Norm that's correct and you can reach dragon fish [Laughter] at um but no maxilon is there something that uh what do you think is the the biggest hurdle that you have to overcome when you're talking to a new potential direct marketing client and they're just like ah I just don't know what is that that one thing that that that's always the barrier that you have to break down so you know funny enough I think what people expect from uh direct mail services and things like that is you know everyone's like oh but I have to send 20,000 I have to send 50,000 to make it worth it for starters right but really that that no minimums um feature and and and use case that we offer is really something that that just allowing people to try it right because it's a new it's a new Avenue for marketing and sometimes you have to learn there's a lot to learn and you don't want to like dive into the deep end but sometimes you know it just takes okay I'll just do 10 100 before you know it you're buying 5,000 recipient lists twice a month and you know and and really investing a lot in this marketing channel so um that's what I would say is the first thing and then also you know there's that that response that you get that you're describing which like oh Direct maale like snail mail um like like real mail and and you go yeah no this is this is both the past and it's the future and uh you know you gotta you got to get on board with it because it's something that funny enough like everyone in Tech um I'm in California right now everyone in Tech is always looking for the new great thing to make marketing better to make it more intelligent right to do X Y or Z that we've lost sight that the most like counterintuitive and sometimes the most interesting things um are actually things that have worked for a long time right um so that that's what I would say it's both that mental block and then the the learning block of wanting to try it uh but not wanting to you know start with tens of thousands of ss and and what people would perceive as you know kind of spend money on a Prayer um and really just kind of start small and build up to something that can be cohesive sustainable and really generate engagement for the long term for your business all right how do people find out about uh is it postcard mania.com or where do they go if they want to learn more about this so yeah two great places would be postcardmania.com and then uh PCM Integrations docomo of postcard Mania the Integrations team that I work for um and that that's where I'd start and uh you know reach out to us we have a robust team that uh will kind of help you get started okay now there is one last question question so we always ask at the end of every podcast if our Misfit knows a misfit so um I'm Gonna Keep It Direct Mail themed because I know at least Kevin uh that that you know gets him talking um so missfit I'm gonna nominate is uh Brad cougler who is the CEO of uh the company Direct Mail 2.0 um and I think you could continue this conversation and also maybe move into some other directions with him and he would fit right in with you guys all right fantastic well we'll reach out uh for Brad's info but uh Maximillion thank you so much for being a misfit and thanks a lot for being on the podcast today thanks Norm thanks Kevin it's pleasure all right appreciate it man hang hang on we'll we'll be back with you in just a second all right Mr King uh that's good I I love geeking out on this cuz it's it's it's my it's my it's in my blood you know it's it's where I I cut my teeth and were in this whole direct marketing thing and he said it there at the end Max Millian said you know everybody's always looking for the next great thing what's the next hot thing and what's old is new uh and and psychology doesn't change the way people behave doesn't change the technology changes and when you overlay current Technologies like we just talked about and some of the things that you can do and Implement that with old school stuff that still works and is highly effective the the possibilities are endless uh I mean my mind is spinning right now with just a hundred different ideas we can do for dragon fish and some some of our clients at dragon fish around this and but the the trick is just going to be convincing them like they see their eyes roll and we say yeah we're going to add a direct marketing snail mail to to to the campaign they're N I don't know I just want to do Facebook ads right that that's the problem and and the beauty of something like postcard Mania is you look okay you don't got to go spend 20 grand let's just try it with 100 200 500 uh you know there's no setup cost we can get into it for 500 bucks what's 500 bucks to do a test uh and and then prove it to them that this this works perfect I know I'm like you probably worse because uh I'm just getting back into the cycle of this I I have left direct mail behind for many many years uh and now just hearing all these ideas and you know what's old is new again so it's fantastic I'm looking forward to it it's going to be good and So speaking of what's old and what's new again we'll be back again next week with another episode uh of the marketing Misfits and what was that website uh it's marketing Misfits do it's it's co it's co and by the way uh Dragonfish by the way is dfci doco that's right dfci doco get that in there that's right uh well Norm I guess I I'll be talking to you again next week right we we have another awesome awesome guest on I'm looking forward to it all right Kev we'll see you later see you everybody [Music]