Increased costs from postage, paper and other economic factors create challenges for direct mail campaigns and clients. In this 45-minute Webinar, we provide educational content on how to increase the response rate to mail while also saving on postage and other costs through improving efficiency on processing and mailing and the utilization of certain tactics and technology.
Topics include:
• How to Save on Direct Mail While Improving the Response
• USPS Postal Promotions & the New Promotions Portal
• Creating Digital Experiences from Traditional Mediums
• Savings With Processing & Mailing Efficiency Improvement
Our featured speakers are Christine Erna, VP of Professional Services with TEC Mailing Solutions; Morgan DiGiorgio, VP of Sales with DirectMail2.0; and Brad Kugler, CEO/Co-Founder of DirectMail2.0.
If you have any questions about these promotions, contact us at sales@dm20.com.
Transcript:
0:00
or now you know right well um let’s go ahead and get started
0:06
yes so anyways i’ll i’ll kick it off thank you for coming this is uh
0:13
about informed delivery i hope that you’re aware of that and and basically how you can should be using informed
0:20
delivery to improve your mail response i have to say that i was excited about this thing when i first heard about it
0:26
in 2017 and it was a product that really to my
0:32
belief brought the postal service into the 21st century i’m hoping that everybody on this call
0:38
is a user of informed delivery that’s what i wanted this poll to be i wanted to ask
0:45
um if someone is not used in form delivery themselves or is not registered i’d love you to put that in the chat or
0:51
raise your hand or or use one of the things i i feel that it’s a big big
0:59
missing out point if you’re not using this i look at it everyone in my family looks at it it’s great because if the
1:04
kids are in town and they empty the mailbox i still know what was in there if they stood over the trash can and
1:10
dumped everything so i just love this product and i’m excited
1:15
for this talk and i thank you guys for being here and uh i’m going to turn it over to christina and mo to kind of
1:22
delve a bit deeper into it but i’m sure i will interrupt and give you my two cents where i feel as needed so go ahead
1:29
uh mo why don’t you take the baton and i will be quiet sure yeah so thanks brad
1:36
we are we are going to really hone in on um the informed delivery promotion since it’s starting on august 1st but we are
1:42
going to uh give you a lot of additional valuable content with regards to how we
1:48
can lower direct mail costs while improving the response but the informed delivery promotion will be a primary
1:53
focus but we are touching on a lot of other valuable content um now just a little bit about us you know um
2:01
brad is our uh ceo here of direct mail 2.0 and co-founder
2:06
um aunt brad did you want to tell a little bit about yourself and a little bit about direct mail 2.0 actually hold
2:11
on i got a phone ringing at a certain time but uh sure i i i’ve been here about five years and uh i came before
2:19
this from the e-commerce world and i’ve always been fascinated with technology this was an interesting opportunity was
2:26
presented with me because of this when i came from e-commerce we sold a couple
2:32
products that have gone into extinction cds and dvds and i’ve been selling them before there
2:38
was an even e-commerce model to sell things online and we did really well i mean you saw them in gas stations you
2:44
saw them in department stores cds and dvds were everywhere and as that
2:50
product moved online it was a perfect product for online e-commerce sales it was if it was small it was light it
2:56
could be packaged up and mailed out relatively cheaply the us post office had a product called
3:02
media mail where you could mail cds or books or or dvds at a below standard
3:08
price well below first-class mail and it was a light parcel so it was really a
3:14
great e-commerce item and we did really well i got to meet jeff bezos a couple
3:19
times we were one of the number one sellers of cds and dvds on amazon for years and
3:25
that industry was disrupted by technology most of you probably don’t even own a cd
3:32
or dvd and the last time you bought one we were in a different decade um so that business sort of
3:39
evaporated uh i grew it from a million dollars a year to 25 million dollars we had 55 staff and uh i was the last guy
3:47
who wrote it down back to zero so when i began searching for another
3:53
business opportunity the primary thing was an industry that cannot be disrupted
3:59
something that technology will not come along and disrupt and so what what is that i’m in
4:06
marketing but what’s cool about it is we’re taking a product that is printed
4:11
marketing mail and we’re enhancing it with digital technology and you know as
4:16
a as a segway or a lead in this product of informed delivery the post office has done that with your mail and that’s i
4:23
guess one of the reasons i like it so much so i’ve been here for five years when i heard about this technology we
4:28
were one of the first to to launch it and we actually got
4:34
i think we’re well over i think we must be close to 20 000 campaigns launched with informed
4:40
delivery at this point as of the last time i checked this this was we were the most prolific user
4:47
of informed delivery in the united states so we know something about this we’ve delivered
4:53
tens of thousands of campaigns with amazing results and uh i just want to spread the word so
4:58
hopefully i didn’t go over my timeline no thanks brad um my name is morgan to
5:03
giorgio i’m the svp sales here at direct mail 2.0 i’ll just keep it real short and sweet um i’ve got about
5:09
19 years experience in different leadership roles in sales marketing i’m a co-founder of a technology-based
5:15
medical company the technology and marketing background was the perfect culmination to my start
5:21
here at direct mail 2.0 in 2018 and i would i would uh say that i am a
5:29
subject matter expert in marketing and in particular omni channel marketing and we’re going to touch on the utilization
5:35
of some of those tools today to lower the cost of direct mail and improve response as well and then i’ll just pass it over to
5:41
christine to give a quick quick intro of yourself too good afternoon and i do apologize i’m
5:46
having some video difficulties so you’re not going to be able to see my face but you got a picture that’s enough
5:53
for the moment until i get it working don’t worry no worries go good afternoon and thank
5:59
you direct mail 2.0 for having me i am the vice president of professional
6:04
services at tech mailing solutions we are a sas based software company that
6:10
supports the mailing and printing industry in cleansing your data pre-sorting your
6:15
data as well as some pretty awesome tools for
6:21
those that might be shipping parcels and meeting a lot of data quality needs i’ve
6:27
been in this industry way too long but i love what i do and
6:33
i’ve seen on both brad and morgan at the various happy to be back in trade show
6:38
world and and uh looking forward to today to talk about not only informed delivery
6:44
um but some of the changes going on in the postal service and how you can offset some of those changes
6:50
absolutely all right well let’s go ahead and kick it off let’s get into our content so um you know our primary
6:57
purpose here at direct mail 2.0 is to make direct mail the most effective
7:02
marketing channel everything that we do here is by means of integrating technology so that we can seamlessly track dark mail
7:09
or improve its response i’m a huge advocate of the direct mail marketing channel i don’t feel that um it gets as
7:16
much credit as it should um and it’s an incredible channel you know that has so
7:21
much to offer people look forward to going out to their mailbox and and seeing what’s in it they they trust the
7:28
direct mail marketing channel they they prefer brand communications this way 66
7:34
of direct mail is opened um and you know when i think about what i do in the morning when i open my email if i’m not
7:41
looking for an email i’m delete delete delete delete and i could never tell you what is in that email but when i go out
7:47
to my mailbox when i make a decision whether or not i’m going to retain a piece of mail or not i look at it first
7:52
before i discard it and i can recall that marketing message it was sent to me when i have that physical tangible mail
7:59
piece um and you know 82 percent of meal is is read for a minute or more and you know
8:05
if i do decide to retain it i’m going to stick it on my refrigerator i’m going to put it in a pile here um and it’s going
8:11
to stay in my household and last a lot longer than an email or another digital impression that’s only there for a split
8:18
second and he you know even let’s not even talk about a catalog that could sit on somebody’s coffee table for maybe a
8:24
year or more so the direct mail marketing channel is so effective um and it’s definitely a channel that should be
8:31
utilized in your marketing mix um most recent data here um from the 2022 a a
8:38
response rate report is showing that direct mail actually has the highest roi out of all these channels at 112
8:46
and i just feel that this is such interesting data because a lot of times i’ve talked to prospects
8:52
or clients about the direct mail marketing channel it’s its effectiveness and and how integral it is to really
8:58
incorporate this in your marketing mix um and sometimes they might tell me well you know we cut that out or we don’t use
9:05
it and when i ask them why one of the reasons is they say it’s expensive well
9:10
when you’re looking at a channel you need to look at the response because in most instances you would need to
9:17
utilize exponentially more of these digital channels to achieve the same response as the direct mail marketing
9:23
channel so i just think that this data is so important um you know that we’re
9:28
educating ourselves on this that we can educate our customers on this so that we know that direct mail is a contender in
9:35
the ring and we are achieving a very high roi from this channel um but
9:40
that being said we have been experiencing so many challenges um with
9:46
the direct mail marketing channel and they’re really centered around price and cost and that’s what we’re really going
9:51
to dive into today is not only how we can improve the direct mail marketing channel i mean obviously
9:57
um it’s performing so well but there’s always ways that we can improve any marketing channel um but how do we
10:04
offset some of these costs you know we we encountered um a historically high postage increase now
10:11
we just had are having another one here in july um we’re having paper supply
10:16
issues which is driving up the cost of paper if it’s even available and then of course other supply chain issues are
10:22
driving the cost of our direct mail up because our direct mail service providers unfortunately um you know we
10:29
are having to pass these price increases along to our customers so
10:34
you know how do we how do we offset some of these costs or how do we deal with some of these challenges that
10:40
are maybe making us take a second look at the direct mail channel and considering maybe putting our marketing
10:45
spend into other channels well you know i have good news because there was
10:51
actually a report that was just recently done it was the 2022 state of direct mail report um and everything is
10:59
pointing to the fact that notwithstanding all the price increases that we’re experiencing the direct mail
11:04
marketing channel is still worth the investment now this is actually very powerful there was 170 marketing execs
11:13
interviewed uh companies with a thousand plus more employees uh mailing all the way up to 100 million pieces per year or
11:19
more some of them are reporting that they’re still achieving a 200 percent roi with their direct mail marketing
11:26
channel even with the current price increases that they’re encountering um 67 percent said that direct mail is
11:34
delivering the highest roi that’s two-thirds two-thirds of them um and i
11:39
think one of the most important things to note here is that they know that omni-channel marketing is
11:45
what is really driving a response with with our marketing strategy and they know that direct mail is an integral
11:52
piece to that marketing mix so even if our customers are utilizing other channels educating them on the
11:58
utilization of mail and how they can improve their other channels by integrating mail is very important as
12:04
well so how are we going to continuously improve
12:09
the response to the direct mail marketing channel um and lower costs and and this is what christine and i are
12:15
really going to touch on today um and i can say that one of the the most
12:20
simple things that we can do to improve our response and lower cost is tracking
12:26
and it seems so simple um but really drilling down into how
12:31
we’re tracking is very important you know we’re all familiar with the utilization of you know pearls landing
12:37
pages promo codes um in our platform we have call and text tracking and uh qr codes
12:46
um we have a custom reporting dashboard that that we can really drill into the responses of things um but i want to
12:53
just touch on the fact that going further than just tracking number of responses is very important you know
12:59
really looking into who is responding and when i say who i mean the demographics of the age groups what
13:05
creatives are working for those audiences what messages are working and what don’t
13:11
and by utilizing all this data we can continuously trim all the fat off of our marketing so that we can continue to
13:17
optimize for our better direct mail costs and roi right we don’t want to just keep sending out the same message
13:23
over and over and we have access to so much technology at our fingertips whether it’s us as a direct mail service
13:30
provider or um if there’s any uh you know people that are utilizing the direct
13:36
mail marketing channel here on the webinar today you know we have access to this technology and utilizing it um to
13:42
hone into this data to cut costs is is very important right we want to create this streamlined
13:48
marketing machine where we’re continuously improving the response we’re lowering our costs and we’re
13:53
driving the highest roi we can on our direct mail marketing spend um so you know usps has several
14:02
different postal promotions uh that they’ve rolled out you know some of them have been going on for some time this
14:07
year we’re going to touch on a few of them informed delivery is one of them since it’s right around the corner uh on
14:14
august 1st but these postage promotions they are utilizing technology that is
14:22
increasing and improving the response to direct mail and then as an ancillary
14:27
benefit you get to take advantage of postage savings to help offset some of these postage increases and other cost
14:34
uh increases that we’ve been experiencing so you know the first one that i want to talk about is informed
14:40
delivery um you know this is an unsung hero in my opinion and
14:45
like brad said if if we are not offering this to our customers on their direct mail campaigns you know we are really
14:52
doing them a disservice um if you’re utilizing the direct mail marketing channel and you’re not adding this
14:58
you’re missing out on a simple technology that can not only improve your response to your meal but you can
15:03
also now starting august first take advantage of a four percent postage discount so informed delivery just in
15:10
case somebody on the webinar is not sure what it is it is an offering by the united states
15:15
postal service everyone signed up for this in the morning gets an email or a mobile notification that shows them the
15:22
mail that’s going to be in the mailbox so when a direct mail piece is opted
15:28
into informed delivery it does a couple of things to add value one it moves it to the top of the list
15:35
it’s the first thing that the prospect sees when they open their mail which is important because you only get a split
15:40
second to get someone’s attention and then there is a full color right along image that is embedded right under
15:47
the direct mail this is giving the ability to have an online response to an offline marketing channel and this is
15:54
very valuable because your opportunity to get that additional impression with your audience is huge
16:00
we get about a 65 to 68 open rate on an informed delivery email that is
16:07
astronomical okay as far as an email marketing channel goes um maybe to a
16:12
house list you’d be lucky to achieve somewhere around 18 so to get a 65 to 68 open rate you know
16:20
your likelihood of getting that additional impression and getting in front of that audience is very high
16:26
now in addition to getting that additional value on top of your direct mail campaign starting august 1st you
16:33
can take advantage of a four percent postage discount now this is double the discount from last year last year it was
16:39
two percent they’re coming out strong with a four percent discount um and you
16:45
know one thing too that i think is very valuable to note here is that non-profit marketing mail qualifies for this
16:52
so that that’s super valuable because they already have that reduced rate of postage and now they can also add that
16:59
four percent postage discount above and beyond that so if you notice this promo goes all the way through the end of the
17:06
year so this would be a great opportunity to start talking to your non-profit clients because we know
17:12
that they mail a tremendous amount of mail near the end of the year and so this is this is a way that you could
17:18
capture a new nonprofit mail business um or add additional value for your nonprofit clients
17:24
so there’s uh three four campaign elements here representative image this is required for flats it’s optional for
17:33
letters and other male pieces um you must have a ride along with a clear call
17:38
to action that is at least 20 of the image area and there must be a significant color contrast for that call
17:45
to action so you know these requirements that are in place are really geared towards utilizing best practices
17:51
to help drive that response right and then of course a url a destination url where the prospect will land when
17:58
they click on the ad and it must start with ht tps so these are some examples of acceptable
18:06
call to action um the call to action cannot have anything that is steering
18:11
anybody away from the utilization of mail so no go paperless
18:17
or sign up for electronic statements um and also it can’t be big it has to be
18:22
clear and specifically state what you want the prospect to do um any of our
18:28
partners that you know are on the webinar today uh great news direct mail 2.0 qualifies for this discount whether
18:35
it’s a full service campaign or a mail tracking job with informed delivery and of course we’re always trying to add
18:41
value and and make things simple for our partners so when you create a job in the dashboard it actually will create a
18:49
promo pdf report that you just take and you submit into the mailing promotions
18:55
portal so you don’t have to compile everything we we have a nice report that’s created for you it has all the
19:01
data that’s required um for you guys to submit that so we try to streamline that and make that simple for you
19:07
and i’ll talk a little bit about um the new mailing promotions portal here in just a few minutes also
19:14
so other uh promotion is the mobile shopping promo this is really centered
19:19
around utilities utilizing qr codes and there’s been a huge resurgence in the
19:25
utilization of qr codes people are very inclined to use them because during covid um restaurants were using them for
19:32
menus among other things technology on phones makes it very simple to just pull out
19:37
your device and scan a qr code so this is helping to improve the response to
19:43
mail since people are likely to scan a qr code um you know the other thing too is touching on the trackability so
19:50
you’re really getting uh a two for one here by improving uh your direct mail cost by tracking it effectively and also
19:58
improving the response so this mobile shopping promo is a two percent uh
20:03
discount this starts on september 1st now i did have someone asked me
20:09
yesterday about this um some of these promotions do require you to submit a hard copy sample of the meal piece to
20:17
the bmeu the inform delivery discount does not require that they removed that
20:22
requirement last year so you do not have to submit a hard copy sample to bmeu you
20:28
do have to submit a hard copy sample at the bmeu for the mobile shopping promotion um so we also do have the
20:36
ability to generate uh and utilize qr codes in our platform um but anybody
20:42
that’s utilizing these qr codes of course can take advantage of it um very important though also
20:48
it can’t just be the utilization of a qr code um it has to be uh
20:54
providing a direct link right to a website where it’s engaging in a purchase right for an advertised product
21:01
so just simply having a qr code um on the on the mail piece isn’t going to
21:07
qualify for a two percent postage discount um or even in non-profits they can even provide a link for sale
21:14
services or to make a donation okay
21:20
uh the personalized color trans promo is another one so for any direct mail
21:25
service providers or any customers on that are utilizing transactional mail
21:30
this is the promotion that you can take advantage of um very common to uh
21:36
promote or market at the bottom of transactional mail let’s say that you’re a bank and maybe uh on the bank
21:42
statement you want to mark it at the very bottom uh 200 promo to open a new
21:48
savings account or maybe you want to market the fact that you have one percent uh interest rates
21:54
on a car loan right so there’s a lot of things that you can market at the bottom of transactional statements i i know
22:00
sometimes for my electric company too they will do some uh co-marketing with like solar panel
22:08
companies and things like that um and so if you utilize color it has to be two or
22:13
more colors it could to highlight the offer it can now be black white or gray scale um you’re also
22:20
harnessing uh the technology in print a variable print here um and you can highlight whatever that whatever that
22:27
offer that promotion is and you could take advantage of a three percent postage discount again
22:33
no content that promotes going paperless not even online billing or anything
22:39
about the removal of mail and one other thing that is important to
22:44
note also if you are going to engage in repeat participation
22:51
then the messaging actually has to be personalized to that direct mail recipient
22:57
and the only exception for that would be if you’re engaging in cross-selling or upselling okay
23:03
now emerging in advanced technology promo is another one this is only going through about august 31st i’m just going
23:10
to touch on this very briefly because there is a lot to this promotion um you
23:15
can get anywhere from around two to three percent but in all reality there are so many different components of this
23:20
promo you could literally we could have a whole webinar on each of these uh different components
23:26
of the emerging advanced tech but it’s centered around the utilization of things like augmented reality or
23:33
video and print technology voice assistant and some really neat things
23:39
that you can use so usps mailing promotions portal there
23:46
is a brand new portal usps has done something very neat um they actually
23:53
created an entire portal for you to submit all of your meal pieces for approval um previously in past years
23:59
there would be an email address for each of the different mailing promotions where you would have to submit your mail piece this is super neat guys when you
24:07
submit um your your mail piece for approval you can actually track you can see all of your submissions you can see
24:14
when it’s been approved um you can ask questions through the portal um i know that the emails are still live and they
24:21
are still using them but they’re really trying to migrate away from them i don’t know that they’re
24:27
they’re manning them as aggressively as they were um so getting signed up for this mailing promotions portal if you
24:34
want to take advantage of these discounts is very important i do have an entire document on this mailing
24:40
promotions portal how to register um how to submit questions how to submit for
24:46
each of the promotions if you would like a copy of that please feel free to email me at morgandm20.com
24:55
or if you’re a partner of ours reach out to your marketing and sales consultant
25:01
so this promotions portal is really neat also usps has informed me
25:06
that they have an entire team of individuals that are manning the uh promotions approvals this year and so
25:13
they have uh said that they should be able to decrease the approval time to hopefully around one to two days they
25:20
said don’t quote them on it but it is a vast improvement from the four to five day window that we were dealing with um
25:26
last year so a few things need to take place in order for you to take advantage
25:31
of these promotions the first thing is that you need to register for them in the gateway right
25:38
then you need to register for this promotions portal and then through this promotions portal you have the ability
25:43
to register for the specific promotion okay
25:49
um so what’s another way that we can improve the response rate to a meal um
25:54
and also take advantage of of cost savings well one is creating digital experiences with
26:00
omni channel marketing okay so omni channel marketing we’re hearing about this everywhere usps is heavily
26:06
promoting omni channel um marketing uh specialists and subject matter experts
26:11
are heavily promoting omnichannel because it is what is driving the highest response with our marketing
26:17
strategy and so this is just giving you some mass about what an omni channel campaign looks like with the utilization
26:24
of mail we can see here that we have the direct mail piece we have all that messaging
26:30
and branding and imagery translating to all these other channels right whether it’s the direct mail piece the billboard
26:36
the digital ads we see the gecko the geico and the 15 minutes could save you 15 or more translated through all these
26:44
channels so just imagine that you were to receive a direct mail piece right and
26:50
now a couple days later you see this messaging on social and then you drive by billboard and it’s really helping to
26:57
trigger that familiarity that is going to drive a response
27:02
to the mail um it’s also giving people the ability to respond through the
27:07
channels that they prefer to respond through and it’s also utilizing repetition and it doesn’t matter what
27:14
channel you’re utilizing it is so integral to employ repetition because that is what drives marketing success
27:22
you can literally post your mailer digitally you can reuse that same content over multiple channels saving
27:30
you time and money you’re getting more bang for your buck you’re increasing your brand awareness
27:35
and this is really what we do here at direct mail 2.0 is we have a marketing automation platform that for a few
27:41
pennies per mail piece we actually deploy these omnichannel campaigns right
27:47
so um we’re typically seeing a very high lift in response to the direct mail
27:52
marketing channel and we’re doing so very inexpensively um the other thing that’s really
27:57
important is to stay consistent if you really want to maximize the utilization of your
28:03
marketing budget take your take your budget divide that by 12 months
28:09
and run your mailers on a monthly basis do not you know do a wasteful sporadic shot
28:16
in the dark campaign where you just burn all of your marketing budget on a one-off you know that is not effective
28:22
marketing strategy it’s not effective tactic you’re going to need to find a way to acquire a new marketing budget to
28:28
drive a response you will get a much better response from your budget if you utilize repetition
28:35
okay so why is omnichannel so effective well
28:41
because typically when people respond to marketing and they go online they leave about 96 percent of them they
28:47
leave and so it’s so integral for us to be able to re-engage these prospects we have to give them multiple opportunities
28:55
to engage in our marketing message we never know you know how many variables are in place
29:01
or when they’re going to be ready to respond and there’s so much data out there that shows that the utilization of
29:06
omnichannel is driving a very high response rate purchase frequency can be
29:12
up about 250 percent or higher um and typically what we see on our
29:18
omnichannel campaigns is about a 23 to 46 percent lift in response over just a
29:24
traditional direct mail campaign so very effective um even brand united navco research has
29:31
um reported tons of data about utilizing multiple channels and through the integration of mail to improve the
29:37
response so another strategy is growing your own
29:43
hyper targeted list there is technology where you can actually take a pixel
29:50
put it on a website and you can identify the people that are the most interested in your company your brand
29:57
your products your services you can actually identify which products and services they’re interested in um and
30:03
this is really creating a hyper-targeted list we’re not prospecting anymore you know these are people that are literally
30:10
raising their hand and saying hi i am interested in what you have to offer the problem is is that only about four
30:17
percent of people are actually reaching in putting their contact information purchasing letting you know that they’re
30:23
interested so we’re leaving so much money here on the table but through the utilization of technology
30:31
we can identify who those people are and then we can market to them and we can achieve about a nine to an i 18
30:39
response rate because we’re marketing to the right people at the right place and at the right time and this is a very
30:45
good utilization of your marketing budget um and then of course very inexpensively we can always add digital
30:52
and we can even improve your response from there um you know we do have a technology here at direct mail 2.0 that
31:00
is called lead match that does just that um and pretty much everything that we
31:05
went over today you know are things that we have access to you know by utilizing
31:11
direct mail 2.0 or direct mail campaigns we can help you take advantage of these postage discounts we can help you
31:17
improve the response through the utilization of omnichannel and have access to technology to create
31:23
hyper-targeted lists um so that’s all i’ve got uh christine’s going to drill down more into
31:30
the price changes and and some other ways that we can really cut costs on direct mail so christine
31:36
thank you morgan an excellent excellent job on the content you presented and
31:42
i mean you were so spot on with the information you shared and the data and statistics
31:49
i mentioned early when i introduced myself and i’ve been in this business a long time
31:55
and to see the change from the days where you would spray and pray
32:02
and and hopefully get a quarter of a percent of a response rate
32:08
to um the available technology now and the resources available to
32:14
you know hyper target those customers and get those responses so excellent job
32:21
thank you christine you’re welcome so you also mentioned you know the increase
32:27
in cost of doing all of this and a certain piece of the equation in
32:33
postage is changing again it actually changed on july 10th
32:39
and it will change again in january the postal service as i hope a lot of you
32:44
know have been going through some transitions
32:50
and those transitions um are going to be including
32:55
a lot more revenue generating and lowering operating costs
33:01
there was an announcement this past week that they are removing discounts to
33:07
a huge reseller network um that has been in place for close to 40
33:14
years and that’s going to have a severe impact on
33:20
um a lot of players in the market but anyway for the recent price change this
33:26
is a snapshot of some of the average increases
33:31
for the rate of postage a single piece overall stamped
33:37
went up 3.4 percent metered mail went up 5.7
33:43
um the additional one ounce rate went up to 24 that’s 24 cents that’s a huge
33:50
increase for them as well as the non-machinable surcharge
33:55
increased from 30 to 39 cents and for those of you that may not be
34:00
aware of what a non-machinable surcharge is it’s when your mail piece does not meet
34:07
the standard requirements for a letter-sized mail piece if the mail piece is too thick
34:14
if it has um an unapproved wrapping on a leather-sized mail piece um if it’s
34:21
square and it doesn’t meet the aspect ratio um anything that falls into that
34:27
category is going to be charged 939 cents per piece
34:32
the five-digit automation ladder price which i hope is where a lot of you guys
34:38
that are attending are are qualifying for your mail and there is an increase in that of 6.8
34:46
and for flats it increased at least two percentage points above the class average
34:51
and flats have always been a challenge for the postal service in their ability to
34:58
process flats efficiently and cost effectively that’s why the rates have just so drastically increased over the
35:04
years and you can move on to the next
35:10
so one of the benefits of um postal software and your ability to
35:16
present mail to the postal service and or a commingled service provider
35:22
is your ability to balance methodologies and at tech mailing we have a term of
35:28
postal optimization which allows us to sort mail at the lowest possible cost
35:36
in segregating all of your five-digit mail so that you can direct present that to the postal service
35:43
and anything that doesn’t qualify for your direct presentment would go to your co-mingle provider or
35:50
your preschool partner and that’s kind of the best of all worlds and being able to achieve the
35:55
lowest cost in postage and there are also opportunities within
36:01
manufacturing to improve costs um palletization and drop shipping
36:06
around the country that is something that’s going to be even more critical with
36:12
the rate increases is you know how much can i get the lowest price
36:18
um and then the individual piece rates um you know you want to try and reduce as
36:24
much as possible any residual male that may be going at that higher peace rate
36:32
and we can move on there so america is growing and on the move
36:39
and i’ve been using this particular content of of data
36:44
updated each year as the statistics change
36:50
but it’s important to understand that 14 to 18 of america
36:56
moves every single year and that’s 41 million americans or
37:02
families that file a change of address and that’s only the ones that actually file a
37:08
change of address many more people out there that move and don’t file that change
37:15
nineteen percent of businesses move with um 2.3 million businesses filing
37:22
change of addresses so if you’re a b2b client or mailer you want to ensure that you’re checking
37:29
your business addresses against the national change of address and the postal service is managing a
37:37
nationwide database of 158 million addresses
37:43
and there’s 1.8 million new addresses added every year
37:48
with new buildings condos apartments whatever the case may be
37:54
so it’s important that you have a good handle on the data that you’re processing
37:59
to reach your targets and your prospects through not only your direct mail
38:04
channels um and your omni channels because the data that you’re sending to
38:11
is the critical element to ensure that it’s received and that they’re able to respond to your
38:16
message on to the next one so i can see that someone’s asked a
38:23
question on how many people do not file a change of address and there’s no hard statistics on that
38:31
other than that you can find updated address information through proprietary change of address
38:37
information and there’s probably at least another 10 to 15 percent of addresses out there of
38:45
people that didn’t file that change of address and it is all about your database every
38:52
mail piece that you are you know producing spending time on
38:58
your creative morgan talked about your annual marketing budget and dividing that up to
39:05
you know 12 months a year so that you’re consistently
39:11
reaching your customers you want to be consistently cleaning your data to make sure that it’s clean you’re keeping it
39:19
clean and it’s current so correct correcting and standardizing
39:24
the addresses is done through the cash process which is the coding accuracy
39:29
support system that ensures that it’s a deliverable address
39:35
um keeping it clean is making sure that you’re doing that to those addresses on
39:40
a cadence so that you’re catching those 1.8 million new addresses
39:47
and that you’re getting updates to addresses that may have been updated by the postal service
39:54
and keeping it current maintaining that change of address information from the national change of address
40:00
if you’re taking a discount on your mailings you’re required to meet the move update
40:06
process which um processing your data through ncua is one of those methods
40:13
but it needs to be done within 95 days of your mailing
40:18
and then lastly this is important information that if you’re maintaining a database of a hundred thousand records
40:26
in three months four point five percent of those people will move and it would need to be run through
40:32
change of address two percent will likely be undeliverable as addressed due to a foreign or no
40:39
forwarding so those are the proportion that may not have filed that change of address
40:46
so out of those 100 000 addresses 6500 of them may never reach your
40:52
intended audience so that’s real important if you’re utilizing marketing mail
40:59
with no ancillary endorsements that that mail piece is not being forwarded to the recipient’s new address
41:09
okay we can move on to the next slide business issues to consider all of you
41:16
are working so hard to maintain your own client base or your clients of
41:21
your clients six to seven times more expensive to acquire a
41:28
customer than to keep a current customer and i know morgan has statistics you
41:34
know of what it does cost to acquire a new num a new customer and they can be pretty extraordinary
41:42
59 of americans would try a new brand or company for a better service experience
41:50
and 91 percent of unhappy customers will not willingly do business with you again
41:58
so when you get to undeliverable mail or undeliverable packages associated with data quality
42:06
it’s not about the return package or return mail it is what about what is your process
42:11
to maintain consistent in touch with your customer and know where they live
42:19
and we can go on to the next undeliverable mail has a financial
42:27
impact to every organization and one of the parts of our business that we’re working in
42:33
is in the parcel side of the business and i know it has nothing to do with direct to mail 2.0 platform and selling
42:40
mail but the statistics are applicable to your
42:47
first class mail that you may be sending out also whether it’s a bill
42:52
or an invoice undeliverable mail is extremely costly to every business
42:59
and these are some of the things to keep in mind when you’re having to manage undeliverable mail
43:05
and we can go on to the next one
43:13
these are high level costs um i’ve been teaching about undeliverable and returned mail for quite some time
43:20
and on average an undeliverable physical mailpiece is three dollars which costs
43:26
which is the print the postage the handling researching where a new address may be
43:32
and we certainly know that it’s inefficient there’s errors audits data issues and
43:38
certainly delays but when you get into identifying the
43:44
value of that mail piece if this is a utility company sending out
43:50
all of their monthly invoices and brad leaves town and moves
43:55
and doesn’t file a change of address and he doesn’t get his last invoice he
44:01
doesn’t pay his last invoice they’re out that amount of money
44:07
times the volume of other undeliverable returned
44:12
invoices and in the case of pharmaceuticals
44:17
um and if you are on a cadence of receiving a prescription every three months
44:22
these are pharmaceutical companies are shipping out these pharmaceuticals without checking addresses
44:30
and they are getting returns that are costing their organizations
44:36
hundreds of millions of dollars but that’s my soapbox and i’m off of it
44:41
now so we can move on
44:46
and the point of my soapbox and how it affects your direct mail pieces
44:54
if you sent out a campaign of 100 000 pieces
44:59
and 16 of those had address errors that sixteen thousand mail pieces that
45:06
may not have gotten delivered and if you had a one percent response
45:11
ratio that affects 160 potential prospects
45:19
if you had a closing ratio of 50 percent that’s lost sales of 80 pieces
45:29
let’s say you were selling a pretty big ticket item that cost fifty thousand dollars
45:36
that’s a total loss of sales of four million dollars and if you did that campaign four times
45:43
a year now we’re at 16 million dollars
45:48
and if you had a five year plan that’s 80 million dollars
45:53
these are true hard fact numbers that you can actually use this equation um
46:00
with your own numbers by virtue of you processing your data through cassidnencyoa
46:07
you know the quality of your data and one of the statistics that comes out
46:13
of there and that you should be suppressing and not mailing are vacant addresses
46:21
i don’t know if everybody on the call knew this or not that the postal service will identify
46:27
every address on your mailing list that nobody lives there and that you should not mail to
46:35
i can’t even tell you how many times people don’t know that exist don’t suppress it
46:40
and this includes those pharmacy companies shipping pharmaceuticals to a vacant
46:46
address that ultimately get returned so that is important information and we
46:53
can go on to the next one adapting to change you know we started
46:59
out this particular webinar with information on informed delivery
47:06
and ways that you can improve your campaigns save money
47:11
and get better response rates um under pricing you want to enhance
47:17
whatever work sharing you can so that you’re getting your lowest discount you’re pre-sorting your mail to the
47:23
deepest destiny deepest discount you’re entering your mail at the closest destination through drop shipping and
47:30
that you’re obviously automating where you can mail strategy optimizing your lists i
47:38
know morgan mentioned you know being able to identify your
47:43
exact customer and and the demographics of those people that are hitting your websites and responding
47:50
and you want more people like that and being able to utilize
47:55
um you know list depending to get those data elements that are going to be able
48:00
to allow you to target to those channels excuse me those customers through those omni channels
48:07
and then we talked about merging and co-mailing through those drop shipping opportunities
48:12
and mail piece design is always an opportunity to look at and i know that morgan also mentioned
48:19
you’re testing and you make sure that you’re not testing more than one element
48:25
maybe it’s the design of the mail piece versus the copy you don’t want to change up too many
48:31
elements that you can’t measure the testing against reducing the weight of the male piece or
48:38
conversely increasing the weight of the male piece if you’re doing an envelope mailing
48:44
at first class you can mail three and a half ounces for the same rate
48:50
and if you’re consistently mailing one ounce worth of material in the envelope
48:58
you’re wasting two and a half ounces of weighted material that you could be sending
49:04
dimension changes so there was um a change in postcard dimensions
49:09
a year ago last august and that increased the
49:15
maximum postcard size from four and a quarter to six by nine
49:20
so that you can mail a six by nine postcard at the postcard rate
49:25
which is a phenomenal opportunity in gained real estate
49:31
to utilize those larger cards to get your message where you’re going and i do have here postcards versus
49:38
envelopes and there are people that test both and there are statistics that do say the
49:44
number 10 envelope always wins um but it depends what you’re selling too
49:50
um but we know postcards you don’t have a choice but to look at the content because it’s not an envelope
49:58
next slide please
50:05
so adapting to change some more reducing handling binder pre-sorts we
50:11
talked about destination entry mailing strategy and this is a really
50:17
important one in timing and how you’re planning your campaigns
50:23
for when they’re going in the mail versus when they’re hitting in home
50:28
and the wonderful benefit of watching your distribution through tracking as
50:33
well as your informed delivery as we know there are some major cycles
50:38
within the calendar year around mailing you know peak fall mailing season where
50:44
every catalog in the world is is distributed you know then we have the holiday season
50:49
where it’s you know the e-commerce is time to step up and ship all their packages and
50:54
parcels maybe you don’t want to be doing a marketing campaign in in the middle of december when
51:00
everyone’s trying to get their christmas cards and packages delivered and um so you really have to think about
51:07
the timing of your campaign and then back under mailpiece design
51:12
optimize compatibility for you know whatever you can automate in the production process and avoid manual
51:19
operations yes there are fulfillment companies that will sit there and hand write envelopes
51:25
for you but there’s a machine that will do the same thing um and it’s going to pay a lot less
51:32
um and then i’m going to you know beat my drum about accurate addressing and that is just you know
51:37
my claim to fame is all about the address you can have the prettiest mail piece in the whole wide world but if you
51:42
don’t have a good address it’s not getting anywhere and then um on to the next one
51:50
and that’s all we have fantastic you’re you’re such a wealth of
51:56
information christine so i i appreciate everything that you have to share yeah
52:01
always you know throughout the years we’ve always provided so much valuable content to the
52:07
industry and how we can improve our direct mail campaigns and yeah you’re just a wealth of knowledge so i i really
52:13
appreciate you joining us today um if anybody has any more questions for uh
52:19
christine uh there’s uh contact information there um if anybody has any more questions for us
52:26
regarding the the promo or technology you can reach us there we
52:31
are running some promos through the end of july so any existing partners interested in
52:37
taking advantage of the informed delivery promo whether that’s uh lowering the cost of the informed delivery campaigns you run through the
52:43
platform acquiring the appropriate license so that you can run the mail tracking and inform delivery campaigns
52:49
or anyone uh who is not a partner on the call today or uh anyone using the direct
52:54
mail marketing channel that’s interested in this we have solutions so reach out and um we can help you with that if you
53:00
want to learn more about that um christine did you have anything else that oh yeah what’s your email address
53:07
christine see erna right yes so i it’s funny because um fiora’s
53:12
just posted it up just as i posted it up without even asking oh there it is
53:18
think alike and thank you and let me put my phone number there as well
53:24
all right um does anybody else have any questions
53:31
travis lee raised his hand
53:37
travis are you able to uh post your question in the chat
53:46
oh he it was an accident okay no worries
53:51
well thank you everyone for joining to us today we really appreciate you taking some time out of your opportunity to
53:57
spend it with us uh you included christine i hope everybody enjoys the rest of their afternoon thanks
54:03
thank you all bye now
