Beyond the Envelope: Tech-Driven Direct Mail Success

every other month panels um the goal here is to educate and stay on The

Cutting Edge of what is new and different in marketing in its relation to direct mail so as we have done before

we’ve assembled a panel here of some very knowledgeable people in very different aspects of the direct mail

marketing world and the first thing I’m going to do is I’ll introduce myself and then I’ll introduce these guys and then

we’ll get right into the meat of it and hopefully you get some takeaways of what else you can be doing with direct mail

to increase your Revenue to increase your engagement to increase your conversions whatever it is that you’re going for so I am Brad Kugler I am the

co-founder and CEO of direct mail 2.0 and who’s mailing what um you guys

probably have heard that we acquired that company last spring and uh I’ve been doing this now for seven years and

before I came here I was in business with my little bro there with the similar last name and we sold DVDs and

CDs together until we couldn’t sell them anymore so then we had to each go off on our own and figure out how to pay for

our lives but anyways uh I’ve invited my little brother here uh because he does

something very unique in the direct mail marketing world so I will let him

introduce himself next but yes we are related and I am his Elder by what five

seven seven years that’s right good all right ryry tell us what you do okay hello everyone thank you for having me

Direct Mail 2.0 you guys rock yes my brother and I used to be in business we had some great times some fun times

mediocre times uh we we do do business currently sometimes I use his services

and vice versa uh I’m with a company called ideal content I’m based out of Los Angeles right now uh and basically I

own a company that makes high-end marketing material for companies that are looking to send something out via

mail or a handout or a convention but basically we make brochures okay that when you open them

they start to play a video so this is something that’s a little different in the world is it playing yes basically if

someone’s looking for something a little different that grabs attention that’s what we do postcards are great but if you want something that grabs attention

and we have some good case studies how you know people hold on to it for six months it stays on their desk and then

yes they can be put in mailers speaking of mail where it comes out and can be mailed out to someone as a return

address and everything so that is what we do and uh there you go I’ll let we’ll go on the next one thank you Ryan so

everybody’s contact information will be shared at the end with a QR code and uh we will take questions assuming we get

through the initial panel questions quick enough but uh let’s move on to Chris Chris tell us what you do sure

thanks Brad uh so I’m Chris Matthews I’m an account manager at cesere and uh cere

is a set marketing agency so we help our clients uh in in many many different

verticals connect with consumers um and for brands that have a fragrance um like

many of the cpg brands that we started with we help them um you know share those fragrances with consumers and it’s

in order for them to make buying decisions but about five years ago we entered the direct mail Market working

with uh non-fragrant Brands who have no tie to scent at all and using scent as a as a powerful upgrade to mail and uh

we’ve had of success in the space for the last five years so um you know excited to be here uh great group U to

to be here with so looking forward to everybody’s questions and and information thank you very much Chris

all right Mike you’re next tell us hi Mike Gunderson I just wanted to tell Chris we we worked with them on kind of

trying to develop some concepts for a client and they were just awesome to work with sent us a bunch of samples uh

highly recommend those guys um so we have two different uh companies we have Gund which is a direct mail marketing

agency it’s a full service marketing agency and we work with large Brands and startups um to basically bring direct

mail to market for them uh and try to utilize Direct Mail as being a main marketing channel for their companies

and then we also have post reminder which is a enhanced QR code technology that allows you to set a reminder for a

direct mail uh event offer um and be able to essentially get a alert right to

your mobile phone to remind those consumers who take advantage of that direct mail piece so super excited to be

here and uh hopefully we’ll be able to lend some value to the audience awesome Mike and I we’ve worked with all these

guys before and they’re all standup guys they wouldn’t have been invited here if we couldn’t vouch for them but uh Morgan

since I didn’t get into the meat and potatoes what do we do here yeah I’m Morgan de Georgio and I’m the senior

vice president sales and marketing for Direct Mail 2.0 and who’s mailing what and our sole purpose is to make Direct

Mail the most effective form of marketing by integrating it with Cutting Edge technology so we have a 15

technology Omni Channel marketing platform with a real-time reporting dashboard that integrates into dark mail campaigns and that typically achieves

about a 23 to 46% lift in response on mail we provide a lot of tracking and attribution data and we work with

printers and mailers they buy a license to White Label and reseller or Tech stack to their direct mail clients as a

value added service so they can get positive outcomes for them and their clients and as Brad alluded to now as a

May of last year we acquired who’s mailing what so that we can now up the Annie and assist printers mailers and

Brands take mail to the next level with competitive intelligence insights and lead generation opportunities so they

can seek and acquire new Direct Mail customers and we’ve got a lot in the works Brad’s like a mad scientist back

there and we’re constantly evolving and building new features and Technologies and this year we will be revealing some

of those like dm2 doai and more and I’m personally excited about this webinar

because it is an educational platform for what we do specifically why we do

what we do and how the print industry can benefit from it so excited for it

all right awesome Mo great description I mean I think part of the thing that

everybody that does any print marketing has to realize is evolve or die okay you

can’t just print a piece of paper with ink and send it out and hope that it’s

going to Roi for you without doing additional things okay so whether it’s a

post reminder or a scentisphere or something tactile or or a video embedded into a piece of mail or the Omni Channel

marketing that we attach and mik attaches to a campaign these things are

it’s like it’s not like a nice to do anymore it’s like if you are not doing it you will be deleted okay maybe not

tomorrow maybe not next year but your market share will shrink and I’m not just saying this because I’m trying to

sell my product or Mike’s trying to sell it it’s true all right so if you haven’t been convinced of that yet then maybe at

the end of this webinar you will give you the the tools and the contexts you need to get ahead in this industry so at

this point what I’m going to do is I I’ve got a quick question we’re going to kind of run through each of them that

will kind of give other viewpoints and and to really learn something sometimes it’s helpful to have the the opinion of

more than one person we all view this industry a little bit different from a slightly different tangent so this I

feel is helpful and again uh there’s already been some questions please feel

free to put your questions in the um Q&A you can put them in the chat but with a

lot of people chatting you know we got I mean we had over 400 people registered

for this and there’s 260 of Us online so that chat could go like this and I won’t be able to respond to you so please use

the the the uh Q&A but the first question here and I think I’ll start off

with baby brother here if he doesn’t mind or he’s going to send me a nasty email later what is the most valuable

reason in your opinion a mail provider should offer value ads for mail or use

technology when you send out something in print why bother why not just send it out the way it is I mean are you

referring to like a postcard versus what I have exactly or what Mike has or what

what Chris has or what we have why not just save the money and do it the oldfashioned way well first of all I

think each one of us I think this is a great Roundup you have here between Chris and Mike we all offer different

products and services and I think it just works for whomever uh with what I send out which is you know people hire

us to make these brochures that play a video or a little flip card or something like that it’s got to it’s got to be

relevant to what the person wants to see and can see now when we send out something are we do charge a little bit

more money our products a little higher because we’re sending out a screen an LCD screen with a battery and a little memory chip and all that I don’t think I

just want to say I hope nobody thinks that that’s like a dollar each or even five or even $10 each okay so this is

definitely at the upper end of the price the pricing range for something involving Direct Mail yes so we so right

now we’re working actually we work with lawyers who work with other people they’re trying to get to the customer and get the customer to open up and not

just like you said delete it Brad where they just say up I’m done basically when someone opens up our product and they

see the brochure that we made for XYZ Customer because it’s all custom made they go wow what is this there’s a video

playing and then they’re like how is this working how is a video playing in a piece of mail that I just got and there’s no wires and how where’s the

Wi-Fi is it an iPad so it’s relevant so it it makes them go wow and then they show three other people because they’re

like oh you got to see this so now three other people see my product or should I say your product whoever the customer is

and basically then go wow that’s cool and then their logo their services their products resonates with them and then

also they keep the product if anyone’s watching they keep the brochure on their desk for up to six months two case

studies three other people see it when it gets mailed to them or handed to them and they hold on to for six months

because it’s like it’s an electronic device and they don’t want to throw it away they don’t know where to throw it away so anyway uh so it has to you live

in California do they not know where to throw it away yeah well you go to Best Buys that’s what we tell people anyway

um but basically so it has to do with relevance it has to do with you know but it also has to do with does it resonate

is it something new and different everyone like you said before you can send someone an email you can send them a postcard you can send them this and

they might just go yep been there done that because we all get mail this is something where they go oh this is neat

I’m not going to throw this away for a little bit and it also your message is also communicated in the 30 seconds

while they’re trying to figure out what this item is so whatever video is playing is like it’s implanting in their

brain and their ears saying this is what our product and service is so that’s the Plus thank you very much Ryan Chris tell

me what you feel is the most valuable reason that people should add things Beyond just the incon paper

sure so so I I actually I’m really glad that you asked me this going right after Ryan because if you look at what we do

and our scent marketing Technologies they might at scale cost half a penny

while Ryan’s product cost you know I I’ll make up a number 20 $40 right in the it doesn’t matter what the unit is

it’s it’s Roi right if if our clients are spending a half a penny upgrade but they’re returning three cents um and you

know whereas Ryan’s clients are spending $30 to return 90 you know that’s what this is all about so getting that

engagement from male recipients no matter what the initial investment is is what we’re all trying to um you know

tell our clients that we can help them do so you know um you know I I was in uh

direct mail with with uh the world’s largest printer for uh 23 years before I got to sentosphere so I’m not just a you

know a scent expert I’m a I’m a printing and Direct Mail guy and so you know we talk a lot with our clients about

combining um scent with other embellishments and kind of really you know creating a Powerhouse uh Direct

Mail campaign so that it gets opened you get your message across and hopefully um

you know you’re you’re grabbing that Roi um with with two sides first uh an

increased response rate and second if our clients are all using the USPS promotion smartly we should be able to

save them save them some money on that side as well so that’s really the you know the Holy Grail is saving postage

dollars and increasing uh the response is where we where we all win very good

good Chris and and Mike to you yeah I mean for us I mean

look there’s there’s going to be anywhere between five and 15 pieces of mail in your mailbox and how do you stand out and even if you do stand out

how do you get them to interact with your direct mail piece and QR codes are great as you guys know at Direct Mail

2.0 I mean it’s it’s instant um real time attribution back to the clients um

it’s more convenient for the consumer to be able to scan that and get to a mobile experience where they can start to transact I think that’s awesome but what

can we do to actually enhance that how can we make it more how can we have more

engagement on that QR code uh in general how do we make that uh the user

experience better for consumers and allow them to do kind of have multiple tracks on that QR code and be able to

track all those interactions you know things like hey this is a great offer you know my wife my daughter my

girlfriend would really love uh to learn more about this offer and the ability to share in real time um the ability to tap

the call or the ability to set a reminder you know hey I’m busy I’m about to go pick up the kids I don’t have time

right now to interact with this deal but i’ love to be able to get back to it

later and so the the act of setting a reminder getting that right to a mobile phone is pretty pretty awesome um and so

all this technology the scent the video by the way love the video we have a high net worth realtor here in the Bay Area

that sends out video mailers entire tours uh of these homes and he gets huge

conversions out of it huge conversions now it’s only going to a couple you know maybe 20 people 40 people 200 people but

it’s going to the right people with the right message as you me mentioned Ryan and it’s super effective so utilizing

all those senses in the mail which you just can’t do on a mobile phone is uh is a pretty cool benefit to our medium so

yeah that’s the reason why you should be leveraging technology in MA excellent okay Mo take it away this is your this

is what you say all day uh well in my opinion it’s not only a necessity for

the sustain stainability and growth of their business but for the print industry in general I mean I agree with

you Brad the only thing constant is change okay markets products services are constantly growing Contracting

evolving there’s always change and unfortunately the print industry is one that I have observed that seems to have

one of the most challenging times accepting that or adapting to change which is so unfortunate because the

success of the industry as a whole and each individual print owner’s business in general depends on the utilization of

value ads to ensure growth or to even remain a contender in the ring like when digital marketing emerged in the 90s

things really started to change in the print industry and it’s evolved from having a need to provide print products

and services to having a necessity of providing Marketing Solutions right

because print and direct mail is just the vehicle for desired outcome and what the customer cares about is the outcomes

and in all reality you’re not selling print or ink on paper you’re selling

your customer lead and the more efficiently and effectively you can do that the better your chances

at improving the overall Outlook not just on print the results the the success of the campaigns and ultimately

your customer satisfaction now listen if you think about any successful

entrepreneur and what they do it’s simple they take something that’s

successful and then they tweak it or they manipulate it and they find a way to do it better and that is what the

integration of technology and print and value added Services is doing for mail providers it’s going to lend to the

acquisition of an attractive feature that will help print providers acquire new mail business uh retain existing

clients get reorders and not just accomplish the sustainability of their organization but accomplish their

customers goals perfect perfectly said I wanted to make one point and and this is

this is another sort of high level like why you got to do this Studies have shown that every person in this country

receives 10,000 marketing messages a day all right it’s a constant stream of noise whether it’s emails Billboards TV

commercials banner ads 10,000 messages a day you must you must do something

whether it’s repetitive or something that stands out to get those eyeballs and maintain that attention or make an

impression in their mind and this is where this is why we’re here this is what we this is what we’re trying to do

so whether it’s sense or it’s post reminders or its videos or it’s Omni Channel and a million other things this

is kind of why we’re here and I’m I’m going to give a shout out to a to a gentleman who was going to be on this

and I’m going to do a little showand tell and I’ll give you an example this is a giant postcard okay and a

corrugated box it’s a Mr Stu heiki I hope I didn’t butcher his name but

inside this corrugated box is like an old New Yorker cartoon all right

and it it can actually be a poster you know you can put this on your wall it’s foam core it’s plastic on the back is

the message it’s a giant postcard you get something like this in the mail out

you’re you’re not throwing it away you’re going to probably if you like this cartoon or whatever it is you put

on here you’re going to put it on the wall you’re going to keep it in your office you’re going to put it s but I’ll tell you when I got this from stew it

didn’t go in the garbage like a thousand other pieces it stayed here and I’m showing you what one must do to stand

out in marketing now unfortunately did you buy something from him no no I didn’t he he just prospected me it was

fantastic okay it was fantastic and it was I mean this was about as expensive

as your video brochure once you put the die cutting and the printing and the corrugated and all that together it’s

not either but again doesn’t get thrown away so got your attention how can

you package absolutely convert so as we

move into the next question which deals with a really nasty word called Roi it’s it’s a very hard swallow for

people to get their wits around something that’s $340 per Target it’s it’s a like Oh My

God moment all right now now those things what Ryan does and and what Stu does those are are very specialized

highly targeted Focus pieces you know but you know what what Mike and and

Chris and and we do you we’re not talking double digits we’re talking pennies per piece okay and to the point

being is the ROI can be different if yours pennies per piece where just $30 a piece it’s a different world they better

be selling houses or cars or jewelry to justify that $40 okay so it has to be

commensurate of what’s happening so let me let me get to the next question here how do you explain the value or Roi of

adding your primary service and it’s the same question for each of you uh to direct mail and can you give an actual

example of someone who has Roi and about how many times it was all

right uh let’s start with Mike since he’s chomping at the bit there yeah well you know know just going

on to post reminder so one of our first clients for post reminder was uh the Gap

they have amazing um you know amazing Direct Mail program over there um and they do a lot of friends and family

Black Friday type of sales so these sales start on a on the beginning of of of a day and then usually span three or

four maybe even up to a week uh an entire week of um of promotion and so uh

what’s really cool about it is they send out a postcard to that uh to that customer base basically saying hey take

advantage of this 25% uh Banana Republic sale and um and come bring the postcard

and get your discount or hold on to the postcard and and and transact when the sale starts well the issue with that is

is that they’re receiving that postcard maybe two days four days maybe up to a week before that promotion even starts

so it’s really great for awareness but it actually has uh like like no engagement right except for stuff it in

my purse put put it on my bulletin board put it in my pile of mail only to be forgotten later so uh what was really

neat about this is is that we didn’t have to make any changes to the control postcard all we did was add a QR code

with a small call to action it says scan the QR code and we’ll remind you when the sale starts that’s it they scan the

QR code forget about it couple days goes by and one day before the sale they get

a an alert right to their mobile phone says Hey tomorrow’s a sale you know come out and see us uh you know shop online

then the day of the sale they get an alert hey today’s a sale take advantage of this they get a text message uh

hyperlink go ahead and go in and and transact and then all the way through that three or four or five days they get

one more reminder one day before the sale ends hey tomorrow is the last day for the sale make sure you take

advantage of it this is huge for them not only did we engage them when they got that postcard we actually added life

to that postcard throughout the entire process of the sale right which is fantastic and what we found is because

of our our links and our text messages are trackable we found over 60% of those folks ended up clicking on the uh the

text message uh URL to transact so I mean it proves in the pudding here I

mean what we’ve done is and it’s never been done before is added a reminder to direct direct mail that took us offline

print to online mobile and were able to get these customers to transact in real time at their convenience

when it mattered to them um and so that’s just a really great case study

for our product and the same as for tripa we’ve had similar numbers with those guys utilizing the product and

sharing the product that’s one thing I wanted to mention even with um with the with the Gap is their share rates are

you know two three four 5% so that one piece of direct metal is now getting shared with other folks uh to take

advantage of the cell so again enhancing that QR code code uh technology getting

all the benefits of tracking but then and and transacting but also getting additional benefits to do more with that

QR code yeah I I think I think it’s great you know and I Ryan should put that on his brochure offerings and sell

it as an upcharge to his clients you know I think it’s a natural no-brainer you know unless you want to go and build

or a QR code technology processing application yourself which you probably

don’t it’s easier to use someone else’s you know um each one of our clients

designs the brochure themselves so it’s their choice to use mics we don’t well

we just print what we’re given right so all we want to do is bring that product or service to that consumer on their

time when it’s most convenient for them and things like a real estate agent right I may not be in the market right

now to sell my home but I sure did like what you offered and I might be in the market in three or four months 6 months

um to then trans act with you and so that’s where this technology is so exciting for Direct Mail is cuz we just

get to expand the life and the engagement of that direct mail over time it’s great all right Chris tell us about

Roi with sense well let me make Chris you have a message in the Q&A chat for

you that you should answer me Chris oh Chris well there’s the the Q&A is

filling up uh the chat has hundreds of messages already please put your question in the Q&A section we will have

time at the end I hope and we will go through these questions live so do not Fray You are not being ignored um but

Chris go ahead Roi yeah absolutely so um cenosphere in our mail business I I like

to categorize in two different buckets right for since 2002 the Inception of

our company we have helped brands with fragrances use our Technologies in

direct mail and in every channel fsis in store to be honest with you that’s the easy part of what we do right um you

know if you’ve gotten cataloges from any of the major candle companies um or you know coupons from any of the cpgs that’s

obvious that we would be connected to those companies what is not so obvious is the work with that we do with Brands

who have no link to fragrance who are using um rcent Technologies as upgrades

to mail embellishments right and um so you know we’ve had lots of success over

the last 5 years uh to the point where this year we’ll have over 1.2 billion pieces of scented mail enter the mail

stream this year the USPS promotions have been a major impetus uh for that

growth um you know like I mentioned before clients are are using our products to number one increase response

rates but number two find a way to um you know shave some some pennies off of

those postage amounts so the combination of of those two is really powerful uh we

we’ve had some good success in the credit card Market um where one of our early um campaigns our our client um

experienced a more than a 50% lift over their control when adding in um

fragrance they did lots of testing on various fragrances in various locations

of this direct mail piece and they finally got to a sweet spot where this scent in this location within this piece

is is really delivering so that that continues uh to this day a couple years later we’ve got a more recent one in the

nonprofit space uh where we’ve got a client who has a more than 20% um lift

and response rate and um a decrease in the uh cost to raise a dollar so you

know we’re expanding more and more into different markets we think nonprofit is actually going to be a big market for us coming soon so you know as as tough as

it is for us to um you know just like all of us to gather that hard data because it’s not often shared with us um

you know just like all of us we we feel great every time we continue to um you know do those monthly mailings because

we know they’re working we gather the information how and when we can um but you know it continues to grow great

great yeah I understand you’re not dealing directly with the client in some cases you’re supplying the printers so

yes I should I should say that in many cases we are talking to the brand in many cases we’re talking to the agency

in some cases the printer brings us in so we kind of attack it from all different levels um and and so you know

every interaction is different um in in in some cases we get to see the artwork early on and some cases we don’t and I

would tell you that the earlier on that we get to see the artwork and provide some uh information on how that call to

action is written the the better the success of the campaign good good thank you for that uh and Chris I we got a lot

of questions for you you’re a popular guy here but I I’ll I’ll hold them till the end um Ryan you got any Roi stories

so Roi stories with the video brochures so not only we do brochures we actually do these little blocks too which are a

little cheaper than brochures um and we can do custom Rubik’s Cubes which Brad you know about that and also some flip

carts get one right here there you go gonna show so really if if someone’s looking

for a little bit more than a postcard and higher dollar amount is is Chris and Mike said then yes that’s where we jump

in and help and the return the ROI on that is two good stories is we did um

some brochures for a local hospital here in La actually I think it’s National now Providence and they sent out some uh

brochures to their for their Capital campaign to raise money for their nonprofit and they said they sent one

brochure to one person and they wrote a check for $50,000 so yes a $40 brochure netted them $50,000 which is great

another agency so you know Chris got into that yes probably about 60% of our customers are agencies uh the other 40%

are direct L with the brands the companies themselves we don’t really work with printers uh maybe one or two

in my life but we love printers so thank you uh but we had one agency I’m sorry

one brand uh come to us and they sent out one brochure that got them a $1 million account so again and that

brochure was a little cheaper because I think they bought thousands so you know it’s it’s a good return and just like

Mike said in the Bay Area we do deal with Realtors you know soues and Remax and these guys buy brochures from us too

and you’re right they go sell a house and make 2 million not bad for sending out a brochure so just depends on your

customer you’re mailing and we do suggest people that do this as much as we want your big orders you really want

to isolate it to your top customers and give it to them as opposed to just handing it out like pens gotta save

money I mean you got to spend money to make money all right Morgan we anybody ever made any money using our product

absolutely I mean I have two different perspectives right so one is going to be from the print provider perspective and

for as low as 349 bucks a month you get to leverage years and years of

development millions of dollars that we’ve poured into this organization to build this 15 technology Omni Channel

marketing product and you get to harness that white label it and make it your own and look like a superstar in front of

these Direct Mail clients and as far as uh you know an Roi perspective I we have

tons of testimonials on our website and I know firsthand because I talk to our our resellers all the time I mean

several of them have acquired multi-million doll Direct Mail campaigns

just from leveraging our product and when they go out and they sell it they sell it for a few pennies per piece and that’s not a cost coming out of your

pocket because you mark it up 100 to 250% so your client’s paying for it

you’re getting 100% profit margin or more in that product which there’s not a lot of of products out there with those

kind of profit margins and you know for this minimal in investment now you’ve got a multi-million dollar deal just

because you were willing to go out and have a conversation with somebody that uses direct mail for marketing purposes

about doing something different or how you’re going to make their direct mail better and you get that conversation and

you get your foot in the door and now you’ve got millions of dollars in print business and you know I’ll share the

flip side of this too is I see this all the time I see all our resellers bidding

you know for the the same rfps I see some of our resellers some people that don’t lose use our product and they lose

rfps because they don’t add a value added service on it or worse off you

know I I have conversations with printers and mailers that lose some of their largest clients by not embracing

value added services and and it’s painful for them recently somebody that I was speaking with had to lay off a ton

of Staff because they lost one of their largest clients because they shopped them and went to somebody that had value

added services so you know those are the kind of things that happen if you’re not adapting and leveraging the types of

things that are out there positioning you as as being more valuable than your competitors now from a marketer’s

perspective right so let’s think about it all right I want you to add Direct Mail 2.0 on I don’t know let’s just say

I want you to add an additional $5,000 to the campaign we’re going to get you a 23 to 46% lift maybe we get you you know

10 new clients the value of one client to you is 10 grand um and so you just

made $95,000 for your $5,000 investment like it’s a no-brainer right and and

just think about it conceptionally what do you think is going to work better right do you think that just sending out

one direct mail piece is is going to do it you just hit them one time one mailer boom you’re going to get massive Roi I

mean you’ll get Roi but you’re just scratching the surface of the kind of results you can get when you can immerse

your prospect in a in a full Omni Channel experience and hit them in the mailbox and hit them through digital

channels and through the channels they prefer to be uh you know nurtured through and and you’re just getting so

much more value because we know that what works in marketing is repetition right and that’s what you’re delivering

for a very inexpensive uh you know offering and we’ve got tons of white papers and and

case studies and all that stuff on our website so you know if you want to take a look at that it’s all up there and you

can or shoot me an email and I’ll share some some data with you thank you Mo you know I just had a I just made a great

quote you guys are going to put it on your wall marketing is the magical merger of creativity and repetition you

like that I like it awesome bro I liked it better let’s put it on a a big postcard and mail it and send it out

that guy now you know Ju Just again as as a thing you know for your printers and agencies out there all of us Chris

Mike Ryan and us we are more than happy to partner with you and bundle and offer

these Services through you okay uh if you’re not offering these things you

should be doesn’t mean you got to sell it every day as your primary thing when you wake up in the morning but if you

have it in your waistband or you have it in Your Arsenal and somebody’s wants

something hey we can do that we can do that what are you supposed to do as a sales guy we can do that yes we can do

that anyways just wanted to make that comment before we move on so we got a little over 20 minutes left I want to

move through the next question here uh again we can ask each of you and I’m even open this up to the audience all

right the question is what other products have you seen that complement and impr improve Direct Mail Roi so I’ll

let our our our panelists answer that but I’ll be looking in the chat for anything that sparks my interest I

already saw one that mentioned Ott CTV which is something we’re working on but

what else have people found successful Ryan has something so gift boxes oh get

right good yes that’s a big thing when someone comes up with a new product this was for oh so you got a video on top of

the gift box yes and then they put a product in there I don’t think it has it but I think they oh they put Beats headphones or something we’ve had people

put uh tumblers and pens uh actually Florida Publix did it and gave out some

pens so people are sending out gift boxes now to present their new product or give them a gift of a Tumblr or right

now working on a bid for some wine so that’s what we found perfect good good

Chris what what have you seen again it doesn’t have to be related to what you’re doing what’s caught your eye in the last 6 months 12 months that you saw

being in this industry sure I’ll tell you two things the first is related to to what we do and it’s a combination

that Mike and I should talk about uh offline later but we we have a a new

offering that we’re putting out there called uh scratch Sniff and scan so it’s a combination of code SC with rubb and

smell or scraps and sff same thing uh conceptually on top of it so you’re really drawing the eye and the nose to

that part of a mailer um you know you’re you’re getting that engagement and then you’ve got that that mobile part that

kicks in um with with post reminder or you know lots of the other QR code um options out there so so we love that as

an offering that uh we’re getting some good traction on um you know the the other thing I would say is I know in my

mailbox the the hyper personalization is just massive right now um you know there

I see a a shift to um lots of data heavy postcards but then I see other brands

who are combating that who are sending you more complicated featur Rich mailing

so it’s it’s really kind of two um you know two two things happening at the same time and and I’m not sure who wins

um in that battle but it’s it’s interesting that the you know what we’re seeing in the mailbox is is continuing

to evolve good that’s very good m yeah well um really just post reminder

no um so I’m G I’m gonna give the USPS a little love here um I’m you know I’m

loving informed delivery I mean it could be that I’m biased and I’m a mailer and so I look at my informed delivery every

day but their addition um of being able to set a reminder is pretty cool uh they

also have the ability to now have much more accurate uh package data on that uh

on that digest so that gets more people to look at the digest which is good for the marketers because that means more

people are looking at the marketing so they’ve they’ve been able to leverage their technology to add enhancements to

the digest and then that means more eyeballs on for for people that are doing Direct Mail because now they’re

going to see what’s sorted at the top which is mar uh marketing mail who have

done the promotion the the informed delivery promotion sort to the top so by

adding these enhancements are get more eyeballs on the stuff that we care about which is getting our clients more leads

um and so I think that that one enhancement as they continue to iterate on it and and improve it it’s it’s going

to continue to be a driving force again just so the audience knows pretty much a free marketing touch targeted marketing

touch uh to your direct mail uh digital marketing touch to your direct mail which is pretty cool and then the other

thing I’ll just mention is kind of along the lines of cenosphere is like uh texture indirect mail I think makes a

big a big deal I think going back to the incentives with the USPS you know them allowing promotions around these kinds

of of techniques on the direct mail allows us to have more interesting stuff in the mail uh that allows people to get

more excited about it and then um and then I it’s coming uh I I recently just

got something with some augmented reality that didn’t uh make me go download an app it was actually an in

browser uh experience and um and I see that I’m still trying to figure out exactly what the right approach is for

that but I think for um retail where you can maybe maybe your your CB4 your CB2

or you’re you’re you know buying furniture where you can maybe place that in a living room really quickly as an as

a as a way to interact with that direct mail I think there’s some uh technology

gains there um that will be useful uh to really enhance some of that mail coming

in our mailbox excellent excellent I’m going to just step in with one that’s a very simple one that there’s been case

studies uh written up about you’ve all seen it um I think Capital One or or um

one of the credit card companies made the die cut with the envelope with the that had the little bump out on the top and bottom we’ve all gotten dozens of

them but apparently for for the amount that it costs on the envelope yeah that has been

like one of the biggest cheapest rois of anything because it then exceeded the

standard size mail somebody had a stack of mail it always stuck out with a little message and and that’s that’s how

simple it can be and now that everybody’s doing it I don’t know that it’s as cool or as effective as it was

two three years ago when the first one showed up but uh this is where being the first uh can help you leap ahead so but

Mo you’ve seen anything out there that caught your eye well I mean I I’ve seen

some pretty neat things being done with print management software there’s been a lot of upgrades to to product like that

where they can integrate with CRM systems and analytics platforms now which you know since the cost of mail

keeps going up marketers are so sensitive to that and they are really focused on tracking campaign performance

and it’s giving them access to a lot of data that they can use in their ongoing campaigns to tweak and and make changes

to improve their Roi but you know the other thing too I just have to put a plug in here you know since we acquired

who’s mailing what last may you know I’ve just been ever more uh focused on the importance of gaining insight into

that competitive intelligence right because every marketing campaign you run is a test right and it costs a lot of

money in testing when we’re running these marketing campaigns so getting the ability to really leverage and access

data of what are competitors are doing what’s working well what isn’t like I

don’t want to be sending out an offer for an $89 tuneup if I’m an HVAC if my competitor sending one out for 49 bucks

right and so this can help me improve the ROI bu on my direct mail marketing investment and give me access to

creative uh intelligence ideas and and and what’s working and utilize that data

for rfps so I can win more direct mail bids so competitive intelligence is is

really important and um you know I’m I’m interested to see how we grow that out too knowledge is power absolutely and

you know well done for putting in a Shameless plug for who’s mailing what there’ll be more of that I did it

so did it so we could do it you know Ryan did it too with his his gift box

you know so uh listen we have about 16 17 minutes left I have 17 questions from

the let’s get into let’s get let go quicker gonna start with the first one and this is to Chris what is the most

popular scent used by Brands not selling fragrances sure so

um the easiest way for a brand that is not involved in the fragrance world is

to jump in and um go seasonal right holiday themed fragrances tend to be the

easiest for marketing people to say yes we can bolt on to that campaign we can

find a scent that is relevant to the imagery that we were planning on using and our consumers um will see this as um

you know an emotional connection right that’s a lot of what we talk to our clients about is how do you build that

emotional bridge between the male recipient and your brand and holiday tends to be um a great way to do that

now the good news is we’ve got Seasons um you know we we’re just coming up on

uh Valentine’s Day which I should set myself a reminder for um we’ve got we’ve got Mother’s Day coming up we’ve got

Father’s Day so we we talk to our clients a lot about using the seasons um

because it that that’s an easier way to dive in so can I make a comment on that Chris

just real quick so we did a mailer for triaa I don’t know it might have been about six or seven years ago and it was

um it was a really cool mailer that had like a pop out car that you would kind of build the car uh and we use a scented

uh leather smell to the I was goingon to say you should have used gas or burnt rubber but it was really cool because it

does it doesn’t necess need to be you know even seasonal but just related to the product in some way so we talked

about I is a trigger mailing like hey you have a new car um you know check

check out our you know our rates but it it touched all the senses including building this little tiny car uh and it

was just a really to me just a really cool use case of using scented mail and direct mail to really again again

engagement is key to engage that audience and get them excited about what they were looking at sure and in that

case Auto leather was like a natural pairing there with some Brands it’s not

so natural right and so that’s where we tend to to have them lean on the seasons

um just for their initial testing that’s awesome good excellent excellent response uh the next one I think would

probably directed mostly to Ryan um do you think these expensive

embellishments I.E video can hurt responses for nonprofits is it possible

that the donors perceiving it a waste of donor dollars to send out these expensive

mailings yes and I’ve heard that comment many times not only from nonprofits but

from other companies too sometimes people that are selling bck pens will not use us because if they’re only going

to sell a package of 12 for $1.99 it’s not worth spending 20 $30 on a brochure

uh but I did give up that example of Roi of the Hospital Providence which is very well known here on the West Coast um

using the brochure and getting a big donation so it also depends if the video

they’re putting in is captivating and it’s it draws them in and if the speaker or whatever the video is which

then comes to a whole another world of marketing of people making videos these days uh really does the job but my quick

answer is yes okay good so well and I think you can head that off with messaging sometimes you know you can be

very upfront about it like hey this might feel like we’re putting our dollars in the wrong place but we really need to get your attention in order to

get your appeal right and so um I I think that that’s because that’s been asked in our

like by our clients a lot too like is it too expensive does it look like we’re spending too much money we did a lot of stuff for the boys and girls club um but

we needed to raise like I don’t know $4 million to build a new club uh and we did like a booklet but but it was so

well done and telling the story that that perception isn’t important anymore

it’s really about like what do we what do we doing and how did this get their attention to allow them to read this and

hopefully donate money and it did we raised an enormous amount of money by really telling the story and that was

just unfortunately packaged in a more expensive package in order to get their attention cool all right this one’s for

Mike uh is it possible to do a one-off program this is Don Morrison is asking

like a white label for a client and add a QR code to their postcard like an upcharge like what Brad is talking about

you know I guess I I don’t know for sure but I I think he’s talking about a oneoff it’s not like they want to sign

along term contract and running for years you do that we yeah so right now

we we do have a $499 um uh a month fee um but we work

with a lot of companies that do want to do the one-off events right because again if you’re doing an invitation if

you’re doing um some drtv uh we work right now with NCM doing pre-roll ads

before the movies um and so we’re we’re working with these companies with um kind of a an allart solution uh in order

to fit their their budgets right so if you have something that’s interesting even if it’s small hit me up after this

I’ll get you an account I show you how it works and my goal is this isn’t really a money I mean look down the line

if this could be something really great that would be wonderful what this is is an enhancement to direct mail and really

an enhancement to a lot of different marketing email uh out of home drtv you

know where we can use QR codes really do more for customers and and really put the power in their hands to come back to

you as a customer I think it’s a really cool thing and it’s only going to enhance uh our efforts by allowing

customers to have more options so uh yeah uh we are offering you know kind of a free trial so anybody’s interested

we’ll do your first campaign for free if it’s something that looks like it worked for you then we’d love to have you as a long-term customer yeah okay good um

maybe someone can answer this I’m not sure I’m gonna ask Ry had asked Ray Ortiz do you use in-market data for

these campaigns again this was a 20 minutes ago I’m not sure what he’s referring to but if he can clarify his

question we’d be happy to answer it unless someone has an idea what he’s asking I mean I think he’s just asking about the audience elction right and so

that’s just going to vary and depend upon what type of a campaign you’re running and what their overall go goals

are right so I mean that just depends yeah but yeah absolutely I think any of

us can do that good all right here’s a here’s a planted shill question from someone that works for Mike here it says

is there a plan for dm2 to license post reminder Tech and offered to its Partners I do not know that person I

promise we’ve talked about it we we have and you know it really comes down

to it’s same Roi thing for us you know can I make money on it Mark it up and

are there enough people that want it for us to spend the resources and programming time to build it so more on

that later but keep ask interested stay tuned yeah this is a great question that I

know that most people have hi I get push back from leadership on Direct Mail lead

well okay lead time they want to use a 30-day window however we prefer to use a 90-day window as we see this channel has

a longer lead time any industry best practices you could share uh I I’ll let

Morgan or or Mike Mike wants to say this one yeah I can tell Mike’s got something yeah that’s we’re up against

that a lot with digital marketing and and I you know I think like things like

QR codes and things like this allow us to have more real-time attribution so we don’t have to rely on a matchback on a

30 45 or 60 day um you know matchback but um it’s it is kind of hard um to get

especially folks new to direct mail to get that instant satisfaction um but what we find is um if we can do the

third we do multiples so we’ll do like a 30-day and then we’ll do a 45 day we’ll do a 60-day we’ll even go beyond that

especially for like B2B sometimes it it can go a lot you know kind of much further and one of the reasons we came

up PO post reminder is like how do we cut down that response curve how do we get people to react Faster by putting

this uh response mechanism in their hands at a at a later time um but I

think it’s just important that you tell them that there’s a couple of different case studies you can pick there’s uh lots of resources like on our website

that kind of talk through you know ways to to um set expectations um but but uh

you know Direct Mail is kind of a long a Long play uh one thing I like to always try to get folks if they’re really

serious about testing a direct mail is to really think about Gathering um you know address data at the at the intake U

you know on their web forms or or what have you um using pearls uh personal QR

codes or using personalized um offer codes will help at least get us back to

that actual record on the on the database so that we can at least say hey these guys actually responded from the

direct mail uh piece um and then the other thing is is down funnel just making sure that you’re taking that

Direct Mail audience that responded all the way through to qualified lead all the way through to conversion because

what we find with a lot of our customers is yes we get good response rates but what we find over the course of digital

is that we’re actually driving a higher valuable High a higher valued customer at the end of the day right we’re

actually driving either uh larger LTV uh you know longer term customers or

customers that actually buy more because they have more intent when they receive that direct mail piece not only did that

have more intent but they were pre-qualified right we we we targeted them they didn’t Target us and so uh

really looking all the way through the different um pieces of that response funnel and conversion funnel and then

utilizing those metrics to prove Direct Mail unfortunately at that 45 day or 60-day

yeah yeah I agree 30 days is just too short a window like Direct Mail is a long game it’s a marathon you know it’s

not a Sprint and we’ve talked a lot about repetition here right and so I mean you’ll definitely get get some

response rate data back in that first 30 days but I always try to recommend a 90-day campaign with a series of three

drops right and and when you’re layering on that digital on top of it you’re definitely going to help boost that

response rate to mail but a 30-day window is really tough to gauge the effecacy of a direct mail campaign and

and I just think it’s so integral that we’re educating our customers on what

Direct Mail is and how it works and you know when they don’t want to use that channel in the way that it’s intended to

be used with the power of repetition I’m like well you’re not putting a billboard up and taking it down in one day and you’re not just sending one email and

you’re not just sending one digital ad so like why are we just sending out one direct mail campaign and gauging the

effecacy of it after 30 days you know it just doesn’t make sense so all right

guys I’m gonna interrupt because we’ve got still 11 questions ago and we got about rapid fire let’s go all right

that’s a good sign man there’s a lot of Engagement here uh Chris you got a question here what what was the scent

that credit card companies and nonprofits found most successful

so um that kind of goes back to my to my previous answer credit card has a couple

of the credit cards that we have um done this for have been travel related so

they have been um fresh clean air and there were some cool hiking imagery there was some really good beach imagery

and a and a really luxurious um you know uh Beach Hotel so

kind of tying into what the the point of the cart is um what’s funny is and I’ll head this off because I will probably

get this question from somebody today who reaches out to me the smell of money is the number one question that we get

how do we find it and unfortunately we have not found it you know I talk with lots of folks in credit card and finance

and there is just not a good fragrance oil out there that that replicates the smell of money but that’s the number one

thing we get requested to find there are a couple out there that say they do it’s

just um nobody has has uh replicated that smell of that filthy paper yet and I’m sure that the US Mint would not like

anyone to either that’s true that’s true yeah just print your mail on a dollar bill what’s going on come

on all right let me let me keep going this one’s this one’s for uh Mike here

post reminder are the QR codes tagged with the mailer recipients identification so we can identify the

records in the database that the mailer received it and used their code we know who used it or made the offer or

purchase now I don’t know about that part but what we can track through purchase but

uh we can do Pearl uh or personalized QR codes that’s no problem and then we also

most of for as a best practice most of our clients will do a separate QR code for each

uh uh Direct Mail creative cell so if they have a postcard over here and a self mailer here and a letter package

over here they’ll have a separate QR code for each one of those or if they’re doing all three postcards but doing two

different you know offers have a separate that way they can actually see the effectiveness of each postcard

individually um and then obviously on the response path uh making sure that you’re collecting either an offer code

or making sure you’re collecting a personalized offer code so you can track back to that individual uh that that

resp oned excellent all right we have a member of an industry analyst here and a

writer for wtt and MST which I don’t know what those are but uh whatever it

says what are we missing when we write about the impact of direct mail I’m going to let Morgan roll with this one

what was the question it says as an industry analyst and writer for wtt and

MST what are we missing when we write about the impact of direct mail well I

think that we’re just talking about mail as being ink on paper and we’ve all been talking about it today and I we were

also talking about it a little bit before the call right so Direct Mail is just the vehicle and it’s just a feature

but we need to be talking about the benefit of direct mail and what it does

for the marketer and how they can truly leverage that to get what they’re looking for and that’s leads you know

marketers are looking for leads you’re not selling them in on paper or direct mail you’re selling them leads and so we

need to effectively educate marketers on how effective Direct Mail is and what it can actually do for them and how that

can help them to grow their business excellent I want to just pipe in on that so there’s a lot of studies

whether it’s from USPS or what have you that Direct Mail is probably one of the

most effective rois out there obviously you can get some wild rois on email

because email is almost free but in terms of I mean if you really want studies on

the effectiveness of direct mail as a marketing category we got them we got them and I don’t want to bore everyone

with that we go over them all the time all right so uh someone mentioned here

that Trish widowski webinar on 220 Direct Mail formats that work I’m giving

a shout out for that thank you Anonymous attendee I just want to say one thing about about direct mail that that may

not be missing right now but as AI continues to infiltrate everything we do

it’s only going to get better at um at sorting your email and telling you

what’s important versus what’s not important and the direct mail Channel still continues to be one of the most

trusted channels uh in the United States both by the people who are delivering it and by the by by the actual quality of

the message so for me I think Direct Mail is going to continue to be strong when it comes to just being very honest

with that customer and delivering something you know very relevant to them versus everything that’s going to be

sorted in your inbox probably within the next you know 12 to 24 months thank you

that’s a that’s a great point that um you know look I’m not smart enough to understand what’s coming with AI and how

they’re going to trick us but it the the the realness and physical nature of direct mail is is there’s safety in that

for sure I agree I agree I’m gonna I’m going to close this by taking the last question

myself uh we regularly use DM 2.0 thank you Ben Roco What new technologies on

the horizon ah so this is you know I may be the CEO here but probably my favorite

job is the CPO Chief product officer we’ve got uh a lot of machine learning

quote unquote buzzword AI stuff coming out with who’s mailing what and dm2 AI

we’re doing a Enterprise mail tracking we’re integrating with zapier and the crms to get your leads directly in it by

a OneTouch I mean we we release at least half a dozen upgrades a year and at

least two or three major new featur so we will continue to do that and I I could talk about it all day but I want

to keep everybody on time I want to thank each of you for spending the hour with us I this is probably one of the

most interactive uh in terms of volume of questions from the audience I’ve ever had there’s still seven or eight

questions we didn’t even get to but guys thank you very much let’s just could you

throw up that slide with the oh yeah gez man and then and then also anybody on the on the audience who wants a 2025

lookbook just go to our website gund.com book and uh we’ll get you we’ll get you

a physical book sent right out to you and I promise you that there will be a lot of great ideas in there yeah guys

anybody who’s left on here and it’ll be the video this is the contact information for each of the participants

today um please get that as a screenshot or or scanned into your phone but I

think it’s been very very uh educational and we will have another uh webinar next

month Morgan did we decide what it is or we still hashing it out well we’re working on it but whatever it’s one of

the two ideas we talked about earlier so but I don’t want to give away the Thunder yet all right all right just

just watch our our posts and emails we will have another amazing webinar next month that uh again will not be a onour

commercial but it will be produce to help you all right thank you very much guys ending now take

care day and uh we’ll do it again bye bye thank you thanks everybody