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What determines direct mail marketing success?
Episode 52 • 12th December 2022 • Close The Loop • CallSource
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Kevin Dieny:

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.

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What I kind of think of as the offline, one of the offline

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marketing channels, one of the really interesting marketing channels

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that's been around for a long time.

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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,

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maybe he's done this for a while, someone who can really speak to the ins and outs

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and some of the ways that businesses are finding success or doing it wrong.

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Tips that can help you.

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So to help us dive into this topic of direct mail marketing,

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I've brought Travis Lee on.

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Travis Lee is the co-founder and president of 3D Mail Results.

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He started the business in 2007 as a family business, and it has helped over

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10,000 business owners increase the return on investment from their direct

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mail with proven and unique direct mail products designed to attract,

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convert, and retain the best customers.

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So when he isn't working, Travis spends his time with his family.

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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.

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But what, like what in, what is direct mail marketing?

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If you kind of just like ground us all here, just so everyone's aware.

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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.

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It's used in a lot of different strategies.

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It's not just sending out coupons . Correct.

Kevin Dieny:

Um, so, okay.

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Now for every time that I'm going into a topic, I think about, okay,

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we're gonna be talking about probably.

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You know, the pro the topic from one angle.

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So what is the opposite?

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What is the, what is everyone saying?

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What are the negative things that everyone's saying?

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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.

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Nobody is opening their mail and responding to the ads.

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Now, something.

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I think a lot of marketers wonder because every, the cool and flashy

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stuff is the digital side, but I, I don't know if I don't like, I don't

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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.

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