Hello, and welcome to the Close the Loop podcast.
Kevin Dieny:I'm your host, Kevin Dieny, and today we're gonna be talking about what
Kevin Dieny:determines direct mail marketing success.
Kevin Dieny:We're gonna really get into the world of direct mail.
Kevin Dieny:What I kind of think of as the offline, one of the offline
Kevin Dieny:marketing channels, one of the really interesting marketing channels
Kevin Dieny:that's been around for a long time.
Kevin Dieny:And so to help us dive into this topic, I, I'm not an expert in this, and I
Kevin Dieny:thought, man, I gotta find someone who really knows what they're doing, knows,
Kevin Dieny:maybe he's done this for a while, someone who can really speak to the ins and outs
Kevin Dieny:and some of the ways that businesses are finding success or doing it wrong.
Kevin Dieny:Tips that can help you.
Kevin Dieny:So to help us dive into this topic of direct mail marketing,
Kevin Dieny:I've brought Travis Lee on.
Kevin Dieny:Travis Lee is the co-founder and president of 3D Mail Results.
Kevin Dieny:He started the business in 2007 as a family business, and it has helped over
Kevin Dieny:10,000 business owners increase the return on investment from their direct
Kevin Dieny:mail with proven and unique direct mail products designed to attract,
Kevin Dieny:convert, and retain the best customers.
Kevin Dieny:So when he isn't working, Travis spends his time with his family.
Kevin Dieny:He loves traveling, snow skiing, camping, and boat around in the Pacific Northwest.
Kevin Dieny:So welcome Travis, thanks for coming on.
Travis Lee:Hey Kevin.
Travis Lee:Thanks for having me.
Travis Lee:Glad to be on with you and your guests and talking a little old school
Travis Lee:marketing, you know, paper and ink and sending stuff through the mail...
Travis Lee:hah hah.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, now it obviously, in my head I'm thinking like,
Kevin Dieny:okay, direct mail marketing, the coupons, the ads I get in the mail.
Kevin Dieny:But what, like what in, what is direct mail marketing?
Kevin Dieny:If you kind of just like ground us all here, just so everyone's aware.
Kevin Dieny:What are we talking, what are we thinking about when we're talking,
Kevin Dieny:when we talking about on this podcast, what is direct mail marketing?
Travis Lee:So obviously in its core we're sending it through the post office, right?
Travis Lee:So this isn't digital, this isn't email, but the, the thing that
Travis Lee:direct mail does is that it is very, fluid in what it can accomplish.
Travis Lee:So it can be what we call top of the funnel marketing.
Travis Lee:It can be ways to get your name out there, ways to get new leads.
Travis Lee:Ways to get new customers, right.
Travis Lee:And that's what most people think of when they think of
Travis Lee:any kind of marketing, right?
Travis Lee:It's, I need new customers and I needed them yesterday.
Travis Lee:Right?
Travis Lee:And so it has the ability to do that, but it also has the ability.
Travis Lee:To increase profits, increase sales throughout that customer life cycle.
Travis Lee:Uh, so now let's.
Travis Lee:You've got a shoebox.
Travis Lee:If you're old school, you got a shoebox full of business cards of
Travis Lee:people you've met over the years and you want to convert 'em to a customer.
Travis Lee:Or if you're a little bit more, um, advanced and you've got a crm, a customer
Travis Lee:relations management system, and you've got all these leads in in it, and.
Travis Lee:Maybe some of them have bought little things.
Travis Lee:Maybe some of 'em have bought nothing, but they're kind of your suspects.
Travis Lee:They know about you, but they haven't really given you much of anything.
Travis Lee:And so it can help in that portion, we call that conversion.
Travis Lee:So we talked about top of funnel, getting customers,
Travis Lee:getting leads, getting awareness.
Travis Lee:Then you get that and now you've tried, now you need to convert
Travis Lee:them from a suspect to a customer or a prospect to a customer.
Travis Lee:I like suspect.
Travis Lee:Right?
Travis Lee:Cause they're just kind of hanging out there on your, on your.
Travis Lee:and it can also help now with conversion and longevity to other
Travis Lee:products, other services for referrals, um, for upsells, for down sales.
Travis Lee:Uh, let's say you give sales presentations.
Travis Lee:They don't buy X at the presentation, but now you've got alternate offer y that
Travis Lee:could be sent out through direct mail.
Travis Lee:So it really is a, a chameleon in that it can really.
Travis Lee:Anywhere in that customer life cycle, depending on where it
Travis Lee:is that you need the most.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, wow, that's really cool.
Kevin Dieny:Uh, the, and it, so it's hitting a lot of different places.
Kevin Dieny:It's used in a lot of different strategies.
Kevin Dieny:It's not just sending out coupons . Correct.
Kevin Dieny:Um, so, okay.
Kevin Dieny:Now for every time that I'm going into a topic, I think about, okay,
Kevin Dieny:we're gonna be talking about probably.
Kevin Dieny:You know, the pro the topic from one angle.
Kevin Dieny:So what is the opposite?
Kevin Dieny:What is the, what is everyone saying?
Kevin Dieny:What are the negative things that everyone's saying?
Kevin Dieny:So one of those things that I've, that I've found that seem to be one
Kevin Dieny:of the most prevalent, let's say anti direct mail opinions out there was
Kevin Dieny:direct mail marketing is dead, or it's dying because nobody is responding.
Kevin Dieny:Nobody is opening their mail and responding to the ads.
Kevin Dieny:Now, something.
Kevin Dieny:I think a lot of marketers wonder because every, the cool and flashy
Kevin Dieny:stuff is the digital side, but I, I don't know if I don't like, I don't
Kevin Dieny:have my thumb on the statistics.
Kevin Dieny:You have a better understanding of it.
Kevin Dieny:What would you say to the idea that direct mail marketing is dead?
Travis Lee:So a couple of different things.
Travis Lee:First off, is the volume of direct mail being sent down?
Travis Lee:Absolutely it is.
Travis Lee:There's no question about that.
Travis Lee:However, it is not on the marketing side of the business.
Travis Lee:So think about this.
Travis Lee:Think about 30 years ago how you paid every single.
Travis Lee:You got the bill in the mail, you then wrote 'em a check.
Travis Lee:You stuffed it inside the return envelope, you put a stamp on it and you sent it out.
Travis Lee:That's how everybody paid every single bill they had.
Travis Lee:Um, some people still do it that way.
Travis Lee:Uh, think about all the birthday invitations maybe you used to send
Travis Lee:out, or, uh, Halloween cards to your nieces and nephew and grandkids or
Travis Lee:any kind of personal male, right?
Travis Lee:I mean, My grandparents have passed, but they would literally sign, they would
Travis Lee:write letters to me when I was a kid.
Travis Lee:Uh, it's your birthday and I remember when you were born.
Travis Lee:Right?
Travis Lee:And they would send, and they'd, they'd always have this beautiful
Travis Lee:script handwriting and they'd have this stamp up there and like,
Travis Lee:they sent mail to communicate.
Travis Lee:They sent mail to pay bills, they set mail.
Travis Lee:And all of this is going in and out, right?
Travis Lee:Well, now look at what we've done when it comes to the digital side of.
Travis Lee:Most people don't get statements in the mail anymore, right?
Travis Lee:They get it via direct, they get it via their email.
Travis Lee:They then log into their bank, or they log into the vendor and they pay their
Travis Lee:bill with a credit card or with a, with a direct deposit or, but no one's signing
Travis Lee:checks and putting them in the mail.
Travis Lee:Uh, no one's sending out birthday invitations anymore.
Travis Lee:We go to Facebook, we create a group and we have a birthday party.
Travis Lee:And as a little side note, the one industry that it seems to
Travis Lee:have continued the, the continued the mail is the wedding industry.
Travis Lee:So you still get to save the date and you still get the wedding invite and the card.
Travis Lee:But somehow with birthdays and anniversaries and everything else,
Travis Lee:we've gone away from all that.
Travis Lee:But I digress on that a little bit.
Travis Lee:But that's, that's the kind of male that we're no longer sending.
Travis Lee:So, and that brings down a huge volume.
Travis Lee:However, when it comes to marketing mail, there is still more marketing mail
Travis Lee:sent today than there was last year.
Travis Lee:Than there was the year before.
Travis Lee:Than there was the year before.
Travis Lee:Than there, right?
Travis Lee:So the media itself as a marketing medium is still alive and well.
Travis Lee:And if you were to look at some of the largest direct mail companies,
Travis Lee:not the largest direct mail companies, the largest senders of direct.
Travis Lee:They're things like Google AdWords.
Travis Lee:Uh, they're places like Amazon.
Travis Lee:I'm guessing.
Travis Lee:Every single person on this call who is an Amazon Prime member, has
Travis Lee:a catalog mailed to them in the last, I'd say two to three weeks.
Travis Lee:Um, they've got umpteen hundred million members.
Travis Lee:They're all getting a, a catalog.
Travis Lee:I now why would they send a catalog?
Travis Lee:If you sent a catalog this thick, you still couldn't get one 100th
Travis Lee:of what Amazon sends in it.
Travis Lee:Yeah, but they still send a catalog.
Travis Lee:Well, why do they do that?
Travis Lee:Because they know it drives sales back to the website.
Travis Lee:Uh, it gives people something to thumb through, something to look at.
Travis Lee:Um, And so that's the kind of direct mail that's still being used a lot.
Travis Lee:Now, in some industries, it, it has dried up a lot.
Travis Lee:Um, you know, think about realtors.
Travis Lee:How many just, just, uh, just listed, just sold letters and postcards
Travis Lee:you used to get in the mail.
Travis Lee:Now you hardly see that ever.
Travis Lee:So in some industries, this is actually a good thing, the dry.
Travis Lee:Means that there's less competitors.
Travis Lee:And so while you may have gone to Google display ads or social media or TikTok,
Travis Lee:and this is not to bash online, we use online marketing, we use websites.
Travis Lee:We use email.
Travis Lee:I'm on a podcast right now into the, into the cloud universe.
Travis Lee:Right?
Travis Lee:So I mean, I get it, but it's something.
Travis Lee:As people go away from, there's obvious opportunities for people
Travis Lee:who can use it and use it, right?
Travis Lee:Cuz of the lack of the, you know, the lack, the lack of competition.
Travis Lee:There's simply less mail there from you, your competitors, and everybody else.
Travis Lee:Cuz the one thing we're all competing with is time and attention.
Travis Lee:So if there's less people there we have more time, we have more attention.
Kevin Dieny:That leads really well into the next sort of prevalent
Kevin Dieny:question that's going on, right?
Kevin Dieny:When they understand, okay, well there is direct mail going on, but, I think
Kevin Dieny:the reason that this is asked is that it seems like something that was done in the
Kevin Dieny:past as sort of like a, an afterthought or wasn't put, like wasn't, a lot of
Kevin Dieny:strategy wasn't put into it cuz that's like, I don't know, maybe that's the
Kevin Dieny:feeling or sentiment that's out there.
Kevin Dieny:But this one was direct mail marketing, the performance of it
Kevin Dieny:isn't something you can measure.
Kevin Dieny:So that's what, that's...
Kevin Dieny:That's something I was wondering what your thoughts are on that cuz
Kevin Dieny:it's not, I wouldn't, in marketing, I wouldn't wanna do something I can't
Kevin Dieny:be like, yes, we spent this much and this is how much we got for it.
Kevin Dieny:But there is the idea that, you know, sometimes marketing you, you
Kevin Dieny:do stuff and you can't measure it.
Kevin Dieny:So where does this, where does direct mail marketing fit in?
Travis Lee:Yeah, so with most direct mail and with most small businesses,
Travis Lee:it can be tracked well enough to know if it's successful or not.
Travis Lee:Are you going to get every penny that falls through the
Travis Lee:cracks and be able to track it?
Travis Lee:No, you're not.
Travis Lee:Um, you know, with all marketing, we try to track as much of
Travis Lee:our marketing as we can.
Travis Lee:I'm a direct response marketing guy.
Travis Lee:I, I grew up listening to all the great direct response guys, Dan
Travis Lee:Kennedy, Gary Halbert, all those guys.
Travis Lee:Yes, we wanna be able to track every single penny.
Travis Lee:For the most part.
Travis Lee:That's really hard to do.
Travis Lee:But for most small businesses, for mo, you know, most of the people that are probably
Travis Lee:listening to this podcast, simply having a different phone number for them to call
Travis Lee:into and be able to track calling volume.
Travis Lee:Um, to your point, having coupons and things like that, that can be
Travis Lee:tracked, you know, so let's say we're a sporting good store and we're going.
Travis Lee:They can redeem online or in store.
Travis Lee:And now we can scan that or we can enter that.
Travis Lee:Uh, you know, same thing with maybe a an H V A C company.
Travis Lee:Uh, we put a unique tracking phone number in there that we know only
Travis Lee:rings from the direct mail piece.
Travis Lee:Maybe we create a, a separate landing page.
Travis Lee:So let's say we're seattle hvac.com, maybe we create, um, happy seattle hvac.com
Travis Lee:and now that's only in the places.
Travis Lee:That's only put in a direct mail where we can actually target.
Travis Lee:That's what most businesses can do, and for most people, that's going to
Travis Lee:be good enough to know, all right, we're getting volume of calls.
Travis Lee:We're getting volume of sales.
Travis Lee:I know that that's now my baseline, right?
Travis Lee:So maybe they found us, they Googled their name, went to the regular website,
Travis Lee:called the regular phone number, right?
Travis Lee:But that gives me the baseline and you just need to know that anything above
Travis Lee:that, you are very likely getting more than that cuz that's your baseline.
Travis Lee:So I have a client, uh, perfect example of.
Travis Lee:We have a, a, a numerous clients that are attorneys and
Travis Lee:they're bankruptcy attorneys.
Travis Lee:And so what we're able to do is when you haven't paid your credit card bill and
Travis Lee:you get sued by your credit card company, that's now a public facing action.
Travis Lee:So we know that Kevin in Topeka, Kansas is being sued by Discover credit card because
Travis Lee:they didn't pay their credit card bill.
Travis Lee:Well, now that's a perfect prospect for a bankruptcy attorney right
Travis Lee:now if your next door neighbor.
Travis Lee:Maybe just fine and we could send as many direct mail pieces as
Travis Lee:possible, but he's got an 800 credit score and doesn't have any debt.
Travis Lee:We can't convert that guy, but if we know they have a problem and we're able
Travis Lee:to mail them, so now we're starting with a good list and now I tell them.
Travis Lee:So put tracking phone numbers in there and put a website in there that you
Travis Lee:know are only coming from your direct response efforts and direct mail efforts.
Travis Lee:Well now that's your baseline because, and like in our previous
Travis Lee:example, they look up you.
Travis Lee:Kevin Dean, attorney at law well, and now they've Googled me
Travis Lee:and now they've come in there.
Travis Lee:So as, as long as we can track to get that baseline, we know that that
Travis Lee:is the minimal we're going to get.
Travis Lee:Now, the slightly longer answer is there are technologies now that
Travis Lee:we can use with Google, uh, Google Pixels, Google Tag Managers, where we
Travis Lee:can actually take your mailed list.
Travis Lee:Upload it to a server, put that tracking phone number in there, and then when
Travis Lee:they go to visit your website, we know exactly when and where they came from.
Travis Lee:So Kevin's on the mailing list, Kevin got it.
Travis Lee:He went to abc website.com and we know that he hit it.
Travis Lee:And that's kind of the next level now is this, you know, bringing in
Travis Lee:the online and the offline world and making them work together.
Kevin Dieny:Wow, that's really cool.
Kevin Dieny:And I, and that's such a great example of a way to be smart about
Kevin Dieny:your list or they're smart about who you're sending the mail to.
Kevin Dieny:So the very last, uh, , negative sentimental thing about direct mail I
Kevin Dieny:have, this is the very last one of that, is that it's too much work to get right.
Kevin Dieny:So you've talked about, okay, yeah.
Kevin Dieny:Direct mail isn't dead.
Kevin Dieny:Direct mail is trackable.
Kevin Dieny:Direct mail has value.
Kevin Dieny:But for those who are saying it's too much work hah hah...
Kevin Dieny:Um, so how much work is direct mail to get right?
Travis Lee:You know, I'd be lying to you if I said it was not work.
Travis Lee:Um, however, I don't know of anything in business that gets results
Travis Lee:that isn't work at some point.
Travis Lee:Uh, I, I, you know, and we get that question all the time.
Travis Lee:It's the magic bullet question.
Travis Lee:What's the one magic bullet that I can do today to get sales tomorrow?
Travis Lee:And, and the simple answer is, well, there's not one.
Travis Lee:My dad has this great quote who I started this business with.
Travis Lee:He said, I don't know one way to get a hundred different customers.
Travis Lee:I know a hundred different ways to get one customer.
Travis Lee:And it's when I use all hundred is when I have success.
Travis Lee:So it's certainly harder than email.
Travis Lee:It's not as, you know, so email, I can, I could have an email
Travis Lee:sent out to my list of customer.
Travis Lee:Five minutes, Hey, we're having a sale.
Travis Lee:Go here, click send.
Travis Lee:And all umpteen thousand of them get a direct, get an email message.
Travis Lee:Um, so it's certainly harder than that.
Travis Lee:But when you look at the other media available to you, um, I mean, let's
Travis Lee:just look at Google Paper, click.
Travis Lee:I think everyone has an idea of how Google play per click works.
Travis Lee:You bid on keywords.
Travis Lee:You either, if you bid high enough or get a high enough click through
Travis Lee:rate, you, you start higher up on the.
Travis Lee:There's work involved in that.
Travis Lee:You've gotta test it, you gotta measure it.
Travis Lee:You gotta split test your ads, you've gotta set your budget.
Travis Lee:Direct mail is no different.
Travis Lee:And just like those things, a lot of the setup is in the beginning
Travis Lee:and then there's a lot of tweaking.
Travis Lee:As you go along.
Travis Lee:So yeah, you've gotta have a creative piece.
Travis Lee:Yes, you need a mailing list.
Travis Lee:Yes, you need a conversion.
Travis Lee:What is the, we want the action for them to take whatever that is, request free
Travis Lee:information, come in for a seminar, uh, go to, go to the, go to our retail store
Travis Lee:and buy, doesn't matter what it is.
Travis Lee:And so in real, in reality, it is no.
Travis Lee:Then all the other media have available to you.
Travis Lee:I mean, if we've got TV advertisers, you've gotta write a script and
Travis Lee:then you gotta get a director.
Travis Lee:Then you gotta get actors.
Travis Lee:Then you gotta buy airtime that is all before you ever see any return, right?
Travis Lee:Direct mail is similar.
Travis Lee:You've gotta have a creative piece.
Travis Lee:You gotta have a mailing list.
Travis Lee:You gotta have.
Travis Lee:Money for postage, which is your airtime for, for broadcast stuff.
Travis Lee:So is it difficult?
Travis Lee:Yes.
Travis Lee:Is it any more difficult than most other media that pull their weight?
Travis Lee:Absolutely not.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, so I mean, of those things that I said of that
Kevin Dieny:I found or were people were maybe thinking direct mail's, not for me.
Kevin Dieny:Was there anything else that you, that you've run into where people
Kevin Dieny:are like, Now this is the reason why direct mail's not for me.
Kevin Dieny:And you're like, that blows my mind.
Kevin Dieny:. Was there anything else or cuz those are the three big things that I could find.
Travis Lee:Yeah, um, all my people are too young.
Travis Lee:They're all, they're all Gen Zers and now they're all on their
Travis Lee:phone and they're all on this.
Travis Lee:So that's one I hear.
Travis Lee:Um, you know, there are some places where it makes it tough.
Travis Lee:Um, you know, if, if, if you've got a low transaction size and
Travis Lee:not a lot of volume behind it, so there's no repeat orders, there's.
Travis Lee:Upsell to the product, you know, product a plus plus plus, it can make it tough.
Travis Lee:There are some things where, you know, a spray and pray shotgun approach
Travis Lee:is probably better than, than a, um, than a very targeted approach.
Travis Lee:Um, you know, so there's a Mexican restaurant down the street from my office
Travis Lee:here we go to a couple times a month.
Travis Lee:Them, they probably need to use an inexpensive postcard or use some kind of.
Travis Lee:Uh, mailer, like a penny saver or something like that, because they're
Travis Lee:just playing a pure numbers game, right?
Travis Lee:So there's things, there's some nuanced things like that.
Travis Lee:Uh, the one I hear now is young people don't look at their mail, um,
Travis Lee:to which I say, well, when was the last time they got a piece of mail?
Travis Lee:Wouldn't you like to be like the first one?
Travis Lee:Wouldn't that be novel ? And now they're like, what is this thing?
Travis Lee:Right?
Travis Lee:So it goes back to the whole idea of if everyone is over here doing this,
Travis Lee:There has to be some validity for being over here and doing the other thing.
Travis Lee:Um, Yeah, based on pricing, based on competition, based on all of that.
Travis Lee:Um, but that's probably the big one I hear right now is, oh my, all
Travis Lee:my audience is too young and they don't even know what direct mail is.
Travis Lee:They wouldn't even know where to go check the mail.
Travis Lee:Well, I've got a 13 year old at home and he sure likes he, he just got his
Travis Lee:Halloween and Thanksgiving cards from his grandma's just a couple weeks
Travis Lee:ago, over the last couple weeks.
Travis Lee:And he loved it.
Travis Lee:He put 'em up in his room and they were.
Travis Lee:Sat there for a whole month.
Travis Lee:How many e imagine if grandma sent an email or a text.
Travis Lee:How long would it, would it sit on?
Travis Lee:Would he print it out and put it on his desk for a month?
Travis Lee:Of course not, right.
Travis Lee:So a silly example, but an example nonetheless, that I don't care your
Travis Lee:age, it's gonna stick around if it's the right message to the right person.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, now, I also want to add to that because there's two
Kevin Dieny:things that I've run into where direct mail has had tremendous value.
Kevin Dieny:The first one is, even though.
Kevin Dieny:At least, you know, the way I've thought of it too is, Okay, this ad wasn't
Kevin Dieny:very effective cause I looked at it for two seconds and threw it in the trash,
Kevin Dieny:but at the same time, , I looked at it for two seconds before I did, cuz I
Kevin Dieny:don't wanna discard things in the mail.
Kevin Dieny:That could be very important.
Kevin Dieny:Like there's still some feeling, at least for me, that stuff in the
Kevin Dieny:mail could have great importance because it's sent in the mail.
Kevin Dieny:So I'm not just taking it out of the mailbox and putting it directly in
Kevin Dieny:like a shredder, . It doesn't just flow that way, , um, to point out a meme.
Kevin Dieny:But basically, It does go through sort of like a, a brief screening process.
Kevin Dieny:So yeah, I, those two, three seconds that I looked at it are, Are not of
Kevin Dieny:no consequence, there is value there.
Kevin Dieny:And the second thing is we run into a lot, and I don't know if other businesses
Kevin Dieny:have this issue where finding your target ideal audience is hard online.
Kevin Dieny:It's hard.
Kevin Dieny:The targeting of tools available online are still not great enough to
Kevin Dieny:be like, Pick these five or six out of like a neighborhood or pick these
Kevin Dieny:that have this specific problem.
Kevin Dieny:They don't really have that.
Kevin Dieny:They just say, oh, you want someone who likes football, or, oh, you
Kevin Dieny:want someone who is of this age?
Kevin Dieny:Well, what if I want more specific targeting and I can't get that
Kevin Dieny:in the targeting platforms that are available online.
Kevin Dieny:I need are there, you know, maybe offline tools that have that target and I found
Kevin Dieny:that to be, to exist in direct mail marketing or if they're in my crm, like
Kevin Dieny:you said, what platform knows who's bought from me and when and what the
Kevin Dieny:only, you know, I have that list and I can upload that list for targeting.
Kevin Dieny:But if it's not super big, right?
Kevin Dieny:A lot of online is like you need at least a couple, you
Kevin Dieny:need at least 500 or a thousand.
Kevin Dieny:Whereas direct mail you could send five.
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:So there is sort of like a.
Kevin Dieny:Medium present in direct mail that's not in anything else.
Kevin Dieny:And while I think that it may have, may suffer, you know, a great amount
Kevin Dieny:of time of having a high impression, but low duration of two second, you
Kevin Dieny:know, it, it's just, it has that, that isn't, um, something that
Kevin Dieny:I would say you can just ignore.
Kevin Dieny:I think there's value in those things that I have found value
Kevin Dieny:in, in being able to reach an audience I couldn't anywhere else.
Kevin Dieny:And that even though it's sent out, then we followed up with a call and
Kevin Dieny:they say, oh, I tossed it in the trash, but I remember you hah hah.
Travis Lee:So yeah, that, no, that's totally true.
Travis Lee:That's totally true.
Travis Lee:The, um, you are correct in that direct mail gives you the ability.
Travis Lee:To not just target, but micro target, micro target mic.
Travis Lee:I mean, you can, you can get down to the sixth or seventh or eighth degree of a
Travis Lee:person that it's harder to do online.
Travis Lee:I'll give you an example.
Travis Lee:I, I think you said before the call that you have a lot of, uh,
Travis Lee:home services type companies, H V A C, plumbing, things like that.
Travis Lee:Well, let's say I'm an HVAC company and I, and I.
Travis Lee:You know, service, air conditioning units and I replace and repair 'em
Travis Lee:and all that kind of stuff, right?
Travis Lee:Well, I might know certain things about an individual online that I can
Travis Lee:serve them as, but so like in that example, we can target the person,
Travis Lee:but it's really the house plus the person that we want to target.
Travis Lee:So my armchair quarterbacking tells me, all right, my, my HVAC unit.
Travis Lee:Now I live in the northwest where we just don't run our
Travis Lee:hvac, our aacs all that often.
Travis Lee:But let's say, let's say the shelf life of a HVAC unit is, is 10 years
Travis Lee:just to pick a number outta the air.
Travis Lee:I have no idea if that's any close at all or not.
Travis Lee:But let's say it's 10 years.
Travis Lee:Well, we can get homes that were built 10 to 12 years ago, right?
Travis Lee:So they're probably gonna need maintenance.
Travis Lee:They're probably coming along where they're going to need to be replaced.
Travis Lee:And then we can add the, the, the consumer element on top of it.
Travis Lee:So they, I want a ho house that's 10 to 12 years old and I want the occupant
Travis Lee:to be married, have kids, and make over a hundred thousand dollars a year.
Travis Lee:I just picked that outta the air.
Travis Lee:That probably seems like a pretty good target if I'm gonna be
Travis Lee:selling, uh, HVAC unit to somebody.
Travis Lee:So you can add those different layers to it so that you can now, and
Travis Lee:that's just one example, but now you.
Travis Lee:Take the characteristics of the person plus the characteristics
Travis Lee:of, in this case, the home.
Travis Lee:We can do the same thing with cars.
Travis Lee:I wanna know if they bought a new car five years ago.
Travis Lee:Average person buys a new car every five to seven years.
Travis Lee:Now I can start mailing to that person who has a new car from five years ago.
Travis Lee:And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Travis Lee:Uh, we can get people that have bought fitness do das, right?
Travis Lee:So they've got, they've got six different aros underneath their, underneath
Travis Lee:their, uh, underneath their bed.
Travis Lee:All right?
Travis Lee:Well, the, the seventh one is the one that they're finally
Travis Lee:gonna get out and use, right?
Travis Lee:So let's get a u let's get people who have bought fitness do das.
Travis Lee:And so it really does give you the ability to mic to, to target.
Travis Lee:To the nth degree, to your point where it wouldn't be efficient,
Travis Lee:but you could get a list of five people, uh, and, and not efficient,
Travis Lee:but could very well be effective.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, when we're talking about the effectiveness, the success,
Kevin Dieny:the things that businesses have found that have worked now, and,
Kevin Dieny:and from your experience, right.
Kevin Dieny:And this is like the crux of the main, the whole episode is mm-hmm.
Kevin Dieny:. What does determine, or what helps, a business achieve like a greater likelihood
Kevin Dieny:of success with direct mail marketing?
Travis Lee:So the very, there's really only three things you can mess with
Travis Lee:when it comes to direct mail, the first foremost, and the one that will
Travis Lee:dictate success more than any of the other two, and we'll get to the other
Travis Lee:two in a second, is that mailing list.
Travis Lee:So, to your point, if you've got a, if you've got an 800
Travis Lee:credit score, you have no debt.
Travis Lee:And I'm sending you direct mail as a bankruptcy attorney, it does not matter.
Travis Lee:I could have William Shakespeare of copywriting today write the greatest
Travis Lee:short story ever and mail it to you.
Travis Lee:I could have it delivered by the governor and knocking on your door and nothing
Travis Lee:is going to change because you have absolutely no need for that service.
Travis Lee:Now you take that away and we pinpoint like we discussed.
Travis Lee:Now you don't need William Shakespeare and you don't need it to be hand delivered
Travis Lee:by the most popular person in town.
Travis Lee:It can go by a stamp.
Travis Lee:It can go via a direct mail piece.
Travis Lee:So the number one determinant of success in any direct mail piece
Travis Lee:and really any media, right?
Travis Lee:So this could be online, offline, tv, radio, whatever it is,
Travis Lee:bill Billboards, I don't care.
Travis Lee:What it is, is finding the right audience that is.
Travis Lee:At least 50% of the battle is finding that right audience.
Travis Lee:So again, with our attorneys to go find the people that have been sued, find the
Travis Lee:people who are in a foreclosure, um, for our H V A C guys or something like that.
Travis Lee:It's, it's finding the home that fits the criteria of a good potential client.
Travis Lee:It's combined.
Travis Lee:The homeowner, the themselves.
Travis Lee:Um, so at least 50% of the battle is that mailing list.
Travis Lee:Then the other two, we won't spend nearly as much time on, but
Travis Lee:the other two now is the offer.
Travis Lee:So what is it that we want them?
Travis Lee:To do, um, if you have a more complicated sale and a longer
Travis Lee:sales cycle to go directly to a, Hey Kevin, here I am by my stuff.
Travis Lee:Doesn't make a lot of sense.
Travis Lee:So if I'm selling a, if I'm now flipping it and I'm doing B2B and I'm selling a
Travis Lee:$50,000 a year SAS subscription software as a service for whatever it is that I do.
Travis Lee:Well, almost no direct mail piece alone is gonna get that person to
Travis Lee:call up and say, Hey, here's $50,000.
Travis Lee:Let's get started.
Travis Lee:So you need to think about the offer.
Travis Lee:Is it an exploratory call?
Travis Lee:Do we offer free information, come to a free webinar, get my free book, um, things
Travis Lee:like that to our restaurant example.
Travis Lee:Perhaps we just get a list of everyone who has a December
Travis Lee:birthday and we send the, the, the birthday boy or girl, a free entre.
Travis Lee:Perfect.
Travis Lee:That offer works just fine.
Travis Lee:Cuz if I decide that we're gonna go to the Mexican place, I'm gonna get
Travis Lee:my free $20 entree, then I'm gonna bring the wife and both kids and
Travis Lee:there's gonna be some margaritas and it's gonna pay for itself, right?
Travis Lee:But that's the offer you've gotta think about and it's all dictated
Travis Lee:by who it is that you're going after times what it is that you sell.
Travis Lee:So again, if I'm a dentist and I want to get new movers, Sending
Travis Lee:out a a, a freer low cost.
Travis Lee:Welcome to the neighborhood.
Travis Lee:Examination probably works just fine and not probably, it does work just fine.
Travis Lee:You don't need to say, get my free book on how to brush your teeth better
Travis Lee:No, just come into the office and we'll get your teeth looking better.
Travis Lee:Um, so we've got list and then we've got offer.
Travis Lee:Then the third one is the media, the thing that we send.
Travis Lee:So, again, to, to kind of close this loop, if I'm sending out a postcard for that
Travis Lee:Mexican restaurant, postcard works just.
Travis Lee:And then when I talk about media, it's the thing you actually said, well,
Travis Lee:is that postcard gonna work for that $50,000 software going to the chief
Travis Lee:marketing officer or the chief technology officer, or a, or a, um, director
Travis Lee:of marketing or something like that.
Travis Lee:That little postcard probably isn't gonna pull the weight that I need it to.
Travis Lee:So I need to send something with a little more oomph to it.
Travis Lee:Um, I've got some fun things here just to give you an idea of how
Travis Lee:outside the box we think sometimes.
Travis Lee:We have these little feet, so I want to get my foot in the door, . So now
Travis Lee:you're selling a $50,000 software going to the VP of marketing that says, Hey,
Travis Lee:I want to get my foot in the door.
Travis Lee:Is now a time to talk about abc X, Y, Z?
Travis Lee:That's appropriate for the task, would be simply overkill for the restaurant.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, now I've explored this a little bit.
Kevin Dieny:Um, I had another guest on, his name was Stu Henick and he, he would send
Kevin Dieny:out cartoons, uh, comics and stuff.
Kevin Dieny:He'd draw them, he'd draw his target into the thing and send it and, and
Kevin Dieny:they would catch their attention cuz they're like, that's me.
Kevin Dieny:He's talking about me there.
Kevin Dieny:And he spent time to make one, you know, per person, that's like very high quality.
Kevin Dieny:Very, he, you know, low volume, he'd said one of those per person, right?
Kevin Dieny:Cause like, he's not, he's not saying they're drawing the cartoon for a
Kevin Dieny:thousand people per se, for each send.
Kevin Dieny:So like understanding, I guess the, you know, you have your list,
Kevin Dieny:so which is who you're after.
Kevin Dieny:There's then your offer and your, your media.
Kevin Dieny:So if a business is like, okay, I'm interested in doing a
Kevin Dieny:direct mail marketing campaign.
Kevin Dieny:What does the first, let's say, couple steps look like?
Kevin Dieny:Where they, what are the big things they should be thinking about in the
Kevin Dieny:beginning for getting started on this?
Kevin Dieny:Cause I, cause what you mentioned is you got.
Kevin Dieny:I'd say half of this is importance is on this list.
Kevin Dieny:And then once we've got our list and we're pretty confident this is yeah, who
Kevin Dieny:we want, we then we figure out our offer, okay, this is what we want from 'em.
Kevin Dieny:And those two kind of go together.
Kevin Dieny:But then the last part is like, oh crud, what do I say?
Kevin Dieny:How do I position this?
Kevin Dieny:Right?
Kevin Dieny:But so from the business, what are like the first few steps to
Kevin Dieny:even get started in this process?
Travis Lee:So the first thing I, when I'm consulting with a client is
Travis Lee:I want to look for the largest, the lowest hanging fruit opportunity.
Travis Lee:And to be honest, for a lot of businesses it is not that top of funnel stuff
Travis Lee:going out and getting customers.
Travis Lee:It is usually.
Travis Lee:Getting your customers to buy more, converting your suspects into customers.
Travis Lee:So we talked about that.
Travis Lee:You know, we've been talking about up here, but maybe there's a, a logger head
Travis Lee:in here and you've got, you know, you went out and did a whole bunch of inspections
Travis Lee:for H V A C units, HVAC units, and now you've got a list of all these folks.
Travis Lee:Well, Now it's time for them to buy the new unit.
Travis Lee:So let's give them a new unit offer.
Travis Lee:Uh, so it really is for me, we try to find where the lowest hanging fruit is.
Travis Lee:And for not all of them, maybe not even most of them, but for
Travis Lee:many of them, it's already in that list that a customer already has.
Travis Lee:It's the prospects, the suspects, the people who bought peanut butter
Travis Lee:but didn't buy jelly and vice versa.
Travis Lee:I.
Travis Lee:Overly simplified, but there are so many businesses that so worry about
Travis Lee:filling the top of that funnel that they don't worry, they completely
Travis Lee:disregard that lower portion of it.
Travis Lee:So the first thing you've gotta do is say, where is my biggest opportunity lie?
Travis Lee:Do I have a lot of suspects?
Travis Lee:Do I have a lot of customers?
Travis Lee:Um, one of the things that we do internally often is we take a segment
Travis Lee:of our in-house customer list, whether they've bought something, whether they're
Travis Lee:just a lead and they're in our CRM system and they haven't bought anything,
Travis Lee:and we will test offers into them.
Travis Lee:Sometimes we'll even start with just email.
Travis Lee:Hey, here's an email about Product A.
Travis Lee:All right, that did well, that resonated.
Travis Lee:Let's create a piece for product A in a direct mail piece.
Travis Lee:And so we're, and so by the time that we've done this, two or three or four
Travis Lee:times, okay, now maybe it's time to bring this offer to the unwashed masses
Travis Lee:for that top of funnel filling up of.
Travis Lee:So that's what, that's probably the biggest thing is where now, now if
Travis Lee:you're a startup, if you're just getting started, you don't have that opportunity.
Travis Lee:You, you just don't, I mean, you've got your, you've got your
Travis Lee:three uncles and your two cousins that you sold something to.
Travis Lee:All right, well, so now you do have to go to that top of funnel stuff.
Travis Lee:Um, And to be honest, in some places, you know, if you're just getting started with,
Travis Lee:with the money layout that is needed for direct mail, you might be better off doing
Travis Lee:networking stuff, going out and doing, you know what I call elbow grease work, right?
Travis Lee:I've got more time than money, so let's go do that.
Travis Lee:But when I do have the money and can multiply myself, Right.
Travis Lee:Cause that's really what direct mail is, is it is multiplying you, it's
Travis Lee:multiplying your sales team to get them to raise their hand and say, Hey,
Travis Lee:I'm interested to get them to buy, you know, for most of us, that lower ticket
Travis Lee:thing to then put 'em into this, into the other stuff that we could sell 'em.
Travis Lee:But you've really got, where's that opportunity?
Travis Lee:And for so many of them, it's literally right under their feet and they
Travis Lee:just, they just don't look there.
Kevin Dieny:That, that whole, that all like really lays
Kevin Dieny:it out really well for me.
Kevin Dieny:Cuz.
Kevin Dieny:And online and I don't know, like I like if this is even
Kevin Dieny:like that solid, but it is.
Kevin Dieny:It is something that exists in online channels.
Kevin Dieny:You often have to get a minimum.
Kevin Dieny:Goal accomplished to lock in like a, an effective, like for the
Kevin Dieny:campaign to be guaranteed to be more successful or be very effective.
Kevin Dieny:And the reason is, is that the online platforms use a lot of machine learning.
Kevin Dieny:They use a lot of Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:Algorithms to continue.
Kevin Dieny:Like they don't want you to just be successful in month one.
Kevin Dieny:And then, All your customers are gone.
Kevin Dieny:They want you to be able to leave your campaign on as long as possible
Kevin Dieny:and to, to do that, they try to find people who are just appearing or who
Kevin Dieny:are, you know, expand the market a bit.
Kevin Dieny:They try to expand your reach a bit.
Kevin Dieny:Mm-hmm.
Kevin Dieny:to get more in there.
Kevin Dieny:And they can only do that effectively if you're accomplishing whatever
Kevin Dieny:goal you've set out to do.
Kevin Dieny:And generally what I'm used to hearing is, you know, 20 to 30 a week, maybe
Kevin Dieny:even 50 a week of whatever goal you have.
Kevin Dieny:Now that can be expensive, right?
Kevin Dieny:If you're like, Every lead's about, let's say every lead's 10 bucks and I need to
Kevin Dieny:get 50 a week, that means I'm spending, you know, $500 a week and then in a
Kevin Dieny:month that's, you know, pretty expensive.
Kevin Dieny:So, If you're thinking, okay, if I, let's say you have a marketing
Kevin Dieny:tool belt and you're like, okay, if I do this advertising, it's at
Kevin Dieny:least two grand a month, right?
Kevin Dieny:If I do this, it's about a thousand a month.
Kevin Dieny:And this is just not even, this is not even including like graphic design
Kevin Dieny:putting together like the media.
Kevin Dieny:This is just what it costs to run the thing, right?
Kevin Dieny:Just ad spend.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:So.
Kevin Dieny:in terms of the, the general basics, because cost per
Kevin Dieny:lead is all over the place.
Kevin Dieny:There's some businesses, there's, you mentioned attorneys, I know
Kevin Dieny:they're in the hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars a lead.
Kevin Dieny:Now.
Kevin Dieny:There's others where it's like, okay, under a dollar leads are, you know, good.
Kevin Dieny:It's a giant range, but in terms of direct mail, What kind of minimums or what
Kevin Dieny:kind of requirements, what is the cost?
Kevin Dieny:I mean, I know this is very, I keep it very general, but
Kevin Dieny:like generally speaking mm-hmm.
Kevin Dieny:, what kind of cost would businesses be looking at to, to run direct
Kevin Dieny:mail marketing in sort of like, let's say in a month?
Travis Lee:Yeah, so it, a lot of it's gonna depend upon a lot of
Travis Lee:the things that you spoke about.
Travis Lee:What's the value of a customer?
Travis Lee:What is the, um, what's the lifetime value?
Travis Lee:What's the immediate value?
Travis Lee:Um, what's the lead worth, what's closed business worth?
Travis Lee:Um, and we work with so many different customer bases.
Travis Lee:I mean, so every, every example I've given you, we work with
Travis Lee:right from the mom-and-pop shop who's making 50 bucks per transac.
Travis Lee:To software companies that are, you know, 50, 60, a hundred thousand, potentially
Travis Lee:millions of dollars over the life.
Travis Lee:And it comes down to the appropriateness of the thing.
Travis Lee:I'll give you another example.
Travis Lee:We're working with a client right now.
Travis Lee:Uh, we're doing what we call a Dream 100 Campaign forum.
Travis Lee:Uh, so in a nutshell, dream 100 is you go and find a hundred of
Travis Lee:your most perfect ideal prospects.
Travis Lee:There don't, maybe they know you, maybe they don't.
Travis Lee:It'd just be happenstance if they did.
Travis Lee:But they need, you wanna, if you were to get one of those, It would change the
Travis Lee:trajectory of your business potentially.
Travis Lee:Right.
Travis Lee:So these are your Dream 100.
Travis Lee:So probably not gonna work for the restaurant, probably isn't gonna work
Travis Lee:for the dentist, but stay with me here as we talk through the example.
Travis Lee:Well, he sells a verification software, so.
Travis Lee:I think Uber is one of his clients.
Travis Lee:I don't think I'm speaking out of turn.
Travis Lee:And so you wanna be an Uber driver and they take a picture of your face, you
Travis Lee:enter the social security number and they scan your, and they verify all that.
Travis Lee:So it's a verification system.
Travis Lee:Their low end customers are worth a hundred thousand dollars.
Travis Lee:Their high end customers are worth millions of dollars.
Travis Lee:Well, How much of that million dollar potential are we going willing
Travis Lee:to spend to get a new customer?
Travis Lee:Well, so now that opens up the door to a lot of different things.
Travis Lee:So we've sent things just in the last month out of this office we've sent.
Travis Lee:Real magnifying glasses.
Travis Lee:Like, you know, the big ones you use is back in biology,
Travis Lee:back in middle school, right?
Travis Lee:So are you really looking hard at the, at your, and I
Travis Lee:forget the exact shtick, right?
Travis Lee:But are you really taking a good look at X, Y, Z?
Travis Lee:Uh, we sent them little stopwatches, um, with 30 minutes of time.
Travis Lee:I can tell you if we're the best match.
Travis Lee:So all these things are costing, boy, honestly, 10 to $20 to send out the door.
Travis Lee:But if he just gets one of those customers over the course of a whole
Travis Lee:year, He's going to make up for it.
Travis Lee:Now they're also doing some phone reach out where they can,
Travis Lee:they're also doing LinkedIn.
Travis Lee:Reach out where they can, they're doing, they are, you know, the
Travis Lee:list of a hundred they picked from were their ideal customers.
Travis Lee:Hopefully there are other things going on that are.
Travis Lee:You know, they're sponsoring this event and, okay, so this is the guy that sent me
Travis Lee:this and now he's sponsoring this event.
Travis Lee:So you've got this buildup of everything.
Travis Lee:And I know that was kind of a long winded way of answering your question, but it
Travis Lee:really comes down, it's just math and it's the math that we learned in algebra.
Travis Lee:What is a customer worth?
Travis Lee:What number of that am I willing to spend to get the customer?
Travis Lee:And then just a little bit of, okay, let's say I can, let's put some numbers to it.
Travis Lee:Let's say the client is worth $10,000 and I'm gonna get a 1% response rate.
Travis Lee:And so now we just start doing the math.
Travis Lee:Client is worth $10,000.
Travis Lee:I expect about a 1% response rate.
Travis Lee:For most people's, pretty low.
Travis Lee:On average it's pretty high.
Travis Lee:Uh, but you're gotta take into account, that's American Express
Travis Lee:mailing, 500,000 pieces a month, right?
Travis Lee:So their response rate at 0.01% is just fine for them.
Travis Lee:Client's worth $10,000.
Travis Lee:I have a 1% response rate.
Travis Lee:If I mail 10,000 pieces at a dollar each, that means I.
Travis Lee:Whether that be a hundred responses.
Travis Lee:Mm-hmm.
Travis Lee:of those a hundred responses, I close 10 of them at a 10% close rate.
Travis Lee:I've made a hundred thousand dollars.
Travis Lee:If each one's worth $10,000, that $10,000 was spent.
Travis Lee:Smart and spent in a way that makes sense.
Travis Lee:So you've gotta kinda work backwards with, you know, an average customer
Travis Lee:value and then figure it out from there.
Travis Lee:So as we were talking with that client, with the, with the software,
Travis Lee:um, you know, he was thinking maybe spending three or four bucks a piece.
Travis Lee:By the time we were done, it was.
Travis Lee:Geez, I can be spending 10 or 12 or 30 bucks a piece and still be way ahead
Travis Lee:of the game if any of these guys poke their head up and say I'm interested.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:That's really cool.
Kevin Dieny:I love thinking.
Kevin Dieny:I love going back.
Kevin Dieny:I use the members the same way.
Kevin Dieny:I start with like the end mind and go backwards.
Kevin Dieny:Okay.
Kevin Dieny:Then that sets me up to understand like how much my budget needs to be,
Kevin Dieny:or my testing budget needs to be too, because I always like to say, I like to
Kevin Dieny:try to do a test of anything that's of importance, which means, okay, if I'm
Kevin Dieny:gonna send out a direct mail piece, is there room to test something on this?
Kevin Dieny:Is there room to, to do even just one test?
Kevin Dieny:And I'd separate it and then I could see, okay, if I, I have enough people,
Kevin Dieny:then I could test if this, if it's like, okay, I'm sending three pieces.
Kevin Dieny:I'm not testing really, because yeah, yeah.
Kevin Dieny:What am I gonna do?
Kevin Dieny:Like one in three respond, I'm gonna be thinking that that's the best result.
Kevin Dieny:So, It makes sense, like to start with the, the number and work backwards.
Kevin Dieny:So the, one of the last things I was curious about here is, um, and,
Kevin Dieny:and we've covered quite a lot of the things that I, I had questions about
Kevin Dieny:in just answering one of the questions.
Kevin Dieny:But one of the things I think is still maybe lingering for me is do
Kevin Dieny:you have any learnings you could pass on of what people shouldn't do,
Kevin Dieny:should not do indirect mail marketing?
Travis Lee:That's a good question.
Travis Lee:Um, One of the things that I often see, and it's not like a tactical
Travis Lee:thing, it's more of a in your head thing, and that is they expect to hit
Travis Lee:a home run the first time they send direct mail, so they say, I did this.
Travis Lee:It gardened X.
Travis Lee:I was expecting x plus plus, plus, plus plus, and it didn't happen.
Travis Lee:Well, For some reason we don't think about that.
Travis Lee:Well, let's use online.
Travis Lee:I think most of us know if we're gonna hire an agency to do some online
Travis Lee:stuff for us, that we need to be able, you know, the first ad that we send
Travis Lee:out will not be as good as the ad.
Travis Lee:The second one, it won't be as good as the third one, which won't
Travis Lee:be as good as the fourth one.
Travis Lee:But for some reason in direct mail, a lot of people end up saying, I did it.
Travis Lee:I didn't hit a grand slam.
Travis Lee:It didn't make me a million dollars.
Travis Lee:Oh, well I shouldn't be doing it anymore.
Travis Lee:Well, I mean that's like telling your two year.
Travis Lee:Hey, you know, you're just kind of babbling.
Travis Lee:Maybe you're not gonna really be a talker, so maybe you should just
Travis Lee:like, you know, not talk, right.
Travis Lee:And we'll just, we'll just use a se, we'll use a series of hands signals and
Travis Lee:we'll be good for the next hundred years.
Travis Lee:Right?
Travis Lee:Well, I mean, you would never do that.
Travis Lee:I mean, and, and for some reason I think it's to our very first point
Travis Lee:that people have gotten away from it that they forgot about it and now
Travis Lee:they're coming back and it's kind of that magic bullet thing again.
Travis Lee:And it really does.
Travis Lee:To test and measure stuff, right?
Travis Lee:Just like you would do it.
Travis Lee:Okay, let's run AD A and let's run ad B and let's run it to the same
Travis Lee:audience, and who clicks on it most and who has the most conversions.
Travis Lee:You've gotta look at it in the same way all the, all the social media platforms
Travis Lee:have pretty much done is steal direct mail principles and put it online.
Travis Lee:I, I mean, when it comes to custom audiences and cost per acquisition
Travis Lee:and cost per click, that was.
Travis Lee:1920s, 1930s stuff when we, all we had was the direct mail.
Travis Lee:There was no online.
Travis Lee:Um, so just wrapping your head around that, I'm not gonna be as successful
Travis Lee:now as I am gonna be in a month, and I'm certainly not gonna be as
Travis Lee:successful in a month as I am in a year.
Travis Lee:Um, the other thing is don't feel like, so I'm gonna contradict
Travis Lee:myself a little bit in.
Travis Lee:Don't feel like, so I've got a list of 5,000 people I've
Travis Lee:gotta mail out all 5,000.
Travis Lee:Nah, there's no need to do that.
Travis Lee:Mail out 10 batches of 500 mail out, five batches of a thousand.
Travis Lee:There's, there's no need to have all your layout out there at once.
Travis Lee:All your money layout at once to spend on a direct mail piece.
Travis Lee:Um, As much as that, I'd much rather sell you $5,000 or 5,000 things than a thousand
Travis Lee:things, but that's not good for you.
Travis Lee:And ultimately it's not good for me.
Travis Lee:So if you do have a larger universe, if you do have a list that is
Travis Lee:larger, test and tweak different things, try different stuff.
Travis Lee:Um, no rule that says you have to ma just because we have a list of 5,000
Travis Lee:that says we have to mail all 5,000, just cause we have a list of a hundred
Travis Lee:doesn't mean we have to mail all hundred.
Travis Lee:I don't care what the number is.
Kevin Dieny:Right, right.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:That, that's really, that is such good advice because, Um, scoping your campaign
Kevin Dieny:to what works for you, your business, and right now, what number you may need to be
Kevin Dieny:able to say, yes, this test even worked.
Kevin Dieny:Like, if I'm gonna send three and then decide whether direct
Kevin Dieny:mail marketing is for me or not, may not be significant enough.
Kevin Dieny:Um, also, you know, there's.
Kevin Dieny:The price of sending a postcard versus sending like, uh, there's
Kevin Dieny:another story of like someone sending, you know, like a helmet.
Kevin Dieny:One of our coworkers here a long time ago, something like a really
Kevin Dieny:expensive helmet, like that's a very expensive single piece of mail.
Kevin Dieny:Um, but it was very targeted, very specific.
Kevin Dieny:So like these things, Like when you figure out your list, your offer and
Kevin Dieny:your, uh, media, like you may have a pretty good idea of like, okay, well this
Kevin Dieny:is, you know, what I can get away with.
Kevin Dieny:I think that's all really fascinating.
Kevin Dieny:Um, so thank you for all that.
Kevin Dieny:Now, Travis, if there's, um, anything else that has been mentioned, uh, go ahead.
Kevin Dieny:But also like how could people find you?
Kevin Dieny:How could people connect with you, get to know more about you?
Kevin Dieny:Uh, if they have questions, how can they find you to connect with you?
Travis Lee:Yeah, the best place to start is to just get my free book.
Travis Lee:I've got, you know, so I practice what I preach.
Travis Lee:We do lead generation marketing.
Travis Lee:It's called How to Explode Your Advertising Results and Skyrocket
Travis Lee:Your Mail, uh, excuse me, How to Explode Your Advertising Results and
Travis Lee:Skyrocket Your Profit Using 3D Mail.
Travis Lee:Um, So if you go to 3dmailresults.com/book, so
Travis Lee:that's the number three, the letter d, mail results.com/book.
Travis Lee:You can get a free copy.
Travis Lee:It's completely free.
Travis Lee:It's not like free, and then $5 for the shipping, none of that.
Travis Lee:Give me your name and mailing address.
Travis Lee:I'm gonna actually physically send it to you in the mail.
Travis Lee:And then what you'll.
Travis Lee:Behind that is our marketing funnel on converting you.
Travis Lee:So all the things we talked about top of funnel conversion, you'll see
Travis Lee:it and we're actually gonna send you some of our direct mail in the mail so
Travis Lee:you can actually see how it arrives.
Travis Lee:And oh, hopefully you'll say, oh wow, that's really cool.
Travis Lee:I gotta get in trust to Travis with this team.
Travis Lee:So 3dmailresults.com/book.
Travis Lee:Uh, and if you just wanna look at our website, 3dmailresults.com
Travis Lee:will get you there as well.
Travis Lee:And, Like I said, we practice what we preach.
Travis Lee:So if you wanna see direct mail in action, if you wanna see a follow up sequence
Travis Lee:in action, if you wanna see, um, how we convert people, cuz we talked about
Travis Lee:that whole journey, you're gonna see direct mail across that whole journey.
Travis Lee:But you're also gonna see email.
Travis Lee:You're also gonna get phone calls if you give us a phone
Travis Lee:number from our sales team.
Travis Lee:So we, I think we do a pretty darn good job.
Travis Lee:Using all the media available to us.
Travis Lee:Um, you know, direct mail isn't the toolbox.
Travis Lee:It is a tool in the toolbox, just like anything else.
Travis Lee:So you gotta use all the tools and, uh, when a hammer's appropriate,
Travis Lee:a hammer works great, but when you need a screwdriver, that hammer
Travis Lee:ain't gonna help you at all, so....
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, wow, thank you so much, Travis.
Kevin Dieny:I've also got Travis's book.
Kevin Dieny:Uh, you sent me one here.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, I've got that.
Kevin Dieny:Oh, perfect.
Kevin Dieny:Great.
Kevin Dieny:And I was checking it out and I had a lot of, you know, stuff that
Kevin Dieny:I was wondering about came from, for this podcast, came from that.
Kevin Dieny:Um, perfect.
Kevin Dieny:Thank you so much, Travis, for coming on and lightning and
Kevin Dieny:helping us understand better.
Kevin Dieny:I, I'm, I'm much more excited about direct mail and so thank you for coming
Kevin Dieny:on and telling us, helping us, giving us ideas, helping our audience, I think,
Kevin Dieny:get a little more confident in if they were gonna approach direct mail, how they
Kevin Dieny:could set it up for success, so thank you.
Travis Lee:Thank you, Kevin.
Travis Lee:Thanks for having me.
Travis Lee:It was a great conversation.
Kevin Dieny:All right, everybody.
Kevin Dieny:Thanks for listening to The Close Loop Podcast and catch us again next time.