Brad Kugler, CEO & Co-founder of DirectMail2.0, is one of the marketing automation experts in this in-depth webinar event by BRAND United called “Dynamic Direct Mail Campaigns, Innovations, Performance, Marketing Integrations, and Advocacy.” The discussion is about the power of direct mail and how it can empower a brand and drive results.
You’ll be inspired by dynamic direct mail campaigns from some of the top creative minds in the industry; learn how to effectively build a fully integrated marketing automation platform to fully maximize return on marketing investment; and learn of the powerful efforts being launched to drive advocacy for direct mail across the political spectrum.
Transcript:
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and welcome to the first brand united webinar event of 2022 dynamic direct
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mail campaigns innovations performance marketing integrations and advocacy
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i’m ashley roberts managing editor of brand united and the moderator of today’s event
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we have a robust schedule of speakers and panelists today covering a variety of topics related to direct excuse me
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related to direct mail and we’re going to jump right in with our first section of the program in just a moment
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before we get started let me take a second to point out the resources widget at the bottom of your console it looks
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like an open book if you missed the tech tips video we played leading up to the webinar you can always click this widget for more
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information on how to use your console and access other webinar resources such as today’s slides
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we will also have a q a after our formal presentations so please be sure to submit any questions you may have during
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the course of the webinar so first just a little bit about who we
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are brand united is the connector between online and offline marketing communication channels through our
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e-newsletter case studies research and educational events we provide marketing professionals with the information they
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need to maximize the impact of their campaigns and create a united brand experience
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our content equips brands agencies and designers with strategies and best practices for optimizing key
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consumer touch points our coverage of print marketing innovations package design techniques and customer
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experience trends will help you take your brand to a new level of impact
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i am also going to take a second to thank our sponsors today the center for technical communications
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bob bly canon solutions america clearview social compra media direct mail 2.0 gundersen
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direct jsmid company mohawk paper paper specs
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parsley roll and papers sql response silvamo id alliance and printing united
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alliance so without further ado i’m going to introduce our first section
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of the program over the next 30 minutes you will hear three short presentations from three of the top creative minds in
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the direct mail industry first up we have brent namath president and partner at j schmidt so brent the
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floor is all yours great thank you so much ashley uh it’s
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an honor to be with with you today a big fan of the brand united organization
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love what you guys do so it’s an honor to be here today those of you listening in today man there’s a lot of stuff
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coming your way a lot of uh sort of action-packed knowledge uh that that uh some top-tier names
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are gonna share so uh i’m gonna tee it off i’ve got about 10 minutes uh to share with you a client
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case study uh on direct mail so in 10 minutes i i’ve got probably just
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enough time to sort of dig into the weeds a little bit on on one case study uh one direct mail
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piece and share some insights on the thoughts that went into it uh how it was created
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the impact that it had and share some results on the back end
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so knowing that uh you know it’s it’s it’s hard to choose and narrow down just
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one case study that that sort of spans uh a spectrum
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of of uh topics but this one i think does and i chose it
Case Study
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specifically because it’s an unusual solution uh the direct mail piece itself is
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unusual uh and it’s an unusual product sold by an unusual company
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so the fact that all of these things are not typical that they’re unusual uh i
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think makes it interesting i i hope you think so too we call it the uncontainer
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from batesville and uh this is the box that rocked a centuries-old industry so what i’m gonna
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do guys first before i show you the actual direct mail piece i’m gonna give you a little bit of a setup here on
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uh the the problem at hand the brand first uh the challenge that we had
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facing it as as a creative agency at j schmidt and uh
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so the audience give you a peek behind the curtain there um and then the
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solution finally we’ll we’ll show you the the goods so first of all a brief explanation of of the brand and this is
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where it gets unusual the company uh was batesville casket company
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they make and sell caskets and they happen to be a leader
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in the industry so uh they’re the big guys uh they’re the 800 pound gorilla in the
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casket market uh and they’ve been around forever uh i
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i believe that uh michael jackson was buried in a batesville casket so was
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aretha franklin and if i’m not mistaken elvis presley himself
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was buried in a batesville casket so uh this is the go-to casket in case you were wondering in in the industry
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uh but they’re the recognized leader superior customer service they make a great product reliable delivery
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everything you want in a trustworthy company however along with their tradition of excellence
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and position as a premium brand came a reputation for being expensive
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their products are great but there’s a price tag that comes along with it so a lot of uh folks could not
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afford frankly a batesville casket and and by folks i mean the audience that
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we’re talking about here funeral directors these are the guys who buy the caskets uh
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so being a funeral director it’s not just a job it’s a calling
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these are unique special individuals these men and women are the scaffolding for families grieving their loved ones
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each and every day however some of them have difficult bottom lines to attend to so they’re running a
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business these funeral directors so price is important to them and the fact that believing that
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batesville doesn’t have a solution to fit their needs products that they can’t necessarily afford
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the the result of that is they don’t answer the phone when batesville reps call and that’s oftentimes how the the
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reps of batesville reach out they pick up the phone and call funeral directors across the country
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to set up an appointment or they walk in the door trying to get an appointment but they were being ignored by a lot of
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funeral directors because the assumption again was i can’t afford this stuff and
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many of the nationwide funeral directors had gone overseas to buy products much
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cheaper etc and and the result of that
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was these caskets had to be shipped from overseas mostly china
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and so they sat in these big shipping containers which caused problems like we all know
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now right fulfillment issues so here is the strategy for batesville
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after a new pricing structure they decided to lower some prices and and offer products that were more
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affordable uh they wanted to skip the hassles of of this overseas shipping these containers
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that were causing problems and the costs associated with shipping product through these containers
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so our challenge is the agency how do we get the attention of these funeral directors
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that have over the years sort of systematically ignored batesville’s sales calls they can’t the
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funeral directors can’t get in the door they can’t get them to pick up the phone so we had to cut through and make sure
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at least we were being considered so a three-dimensional mailer
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that demands attention became the solution and copy that goes right to the core of
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the business issues a copy that pulled you in that was engaging
Shipping Container
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so that shipping container became the concept for the direct mail piece we’re
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battling this uh this idea that shipping containers are
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are bad i’m struggling with them my products are sitting on a boat somewhere in these shipping containers plus it it
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jacks up the price of what i originally paid now i have to pay an additional cost to have them shipped
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so the shipping container itself became this this icon of all things bad
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and so we played off of that and made the direct mail piece uh itself
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look like a shipping container so this was about the size of a shoe box
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roughly and with the image of a shipping container sort of wrapped around it
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uh the the metal facing of it and it allowed us multiple surfaces around the box around the direct mail
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piece to carry a message to try to make sure that people open this thing up plus
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of course arriving in the mail it’s got the recipient’s name on it so it’s personalized customized for them
Un Container
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and so this this is what it looked like from from all sides uh the dimensional piece itself
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we called it the uncontainer container it’s big beautiful batesville box that looks like
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a container but delivers the uncontainer offer and the offer was and and sort of the
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message that was wrapped around it top of the line products and service at prices you would never expect from
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batesville and remember that’s the core message we we’re trying to get across we just didn’t have a chance to say it
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because people weren’t picking up the phone so this box this direct mail piece this
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dimensional thing was the shiniest thing in the mailbox that day when it arrived it’s big you
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can feel there’s something good inside it had some some noise to it as the con
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the things inside rattled around the headlines right there on the box on the outside so you can’t help
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but open it and then when you did open it here’s what’s inside the the shipping
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container box itself but then the thing rattling around inside getting folks attention was this yeti tumbler
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personalized with the batesville logo so who doesn’t want a free yeti tumbler you can never have enough of them
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so that was a bit of a gift then there was a letter a message from the ceo introducing this new pricing program hey
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batesville now has products that you can afford
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um and personalized message for the recipient with a program access code
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then there was an additional piece a brochure that was stuck in there too this colorful eye-catching
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brochure with full program pricing information everything you need to know to place
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your order so multiple pieces tucked inside this shipping container box
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and and the results were phenomenal uh you know did it work a resounding
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heck yeah it worked uh it we obtained a hundred percent
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deliverability a hundred percent how did we know that every box was delivered and
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signed for folks had to sign for it so we could track it we knew if it showed up at the door
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and we knew if they received it because they signed for it so 100 of these things were delivered and signed for and
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reached their actual destination the funeral home director that we wanted to get in front of
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it increased awareness of the price this new pricing program to 45 percent
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from zero nobody knew about it so this was an awareness effort pushed it all the way up to forty five
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percent which will be key to the long long term success of the program
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so right out of the gate uh near nearly nearly 50 awareness
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then the response rate of 20 from customers reaching out back out to
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us hey i got it a i either just want to say thank you it’s pretty cool it’s good to know that
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you guys have uh products that i can afford now or i want to learn more about it or hey
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i’d like to to place an order so response rate of 20 i’ll take that all day long every day
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and just something to note here guys this was a top of the funnel tactic designed to generate awareness we just
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wanted people to know the fact that batesville had products now that you can afford you might
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reconsider uh talking to us and hearing more about it uh and it gave leads to the sales team
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so now they can follow up so huge success i want to give credit probably to the the fact that it was dimensional
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it cut through the clutter uh emails would have got lost phone calls weren’t being taken uh just a flat uh mail piece
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maybe would have got glanced at and tossed aside you could not ignore uh this this dimensional piece so
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mission accomplished i highly recommend when you’re trying to think of ways to cut through the clutter
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a thing about direct mail but b maybe dimensional direct mail as well
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so that’s my 10-minute case study i i hope you picked up some nuggets out of it that maybe will be beneficial in the
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future it’s been fun chatting with you my time is up
Informed Delivery
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we’re going to pass it on next ashley yeah so fantastic that was such a unique
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campaign and a very interesting company so thank you so much brent and so for our second of the three
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presentations i am pleased to introduce mike gunderson president of gundersen direct so mike take it away
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thanks so much ashley uh and thank you to brandon united for inviting us to speak i always love these events and uh
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it’s really great way to get more information out about direct mail uh one thing we’re really excited about here at
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gundersen direct um is informed delivery it’s been around for a little bit but it’s really
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starting to gain traction and i think it’s really becoming a a larger tool in our
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communication toolbox for direct mail and i wanted to kind of share uh with the audience a little bit about
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informed delivery but then also provide some tactics for design and testing
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that you might want to implement on your upcoming campaign so my title a targeted digital integration
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with your direct mail and it’s free i think that’s pretty cool uh the usps has been working hard on
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this program and i think they’ve really done a great job getting it out and getting it to the prospect’s mailbox
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so if you don’t know what informed delivery is it’s a email delivered to your prospect’s inbox showing them a
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digital preview of their incoming mail just hours before it’s delivered and when you
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combine that with an interactive campaign you’re able to enhance that direct mail that comes in
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their mailbox a few key takeaways is it adds a free targeted digital touch to direct mail it
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reaches over 46 million americans every day the average open rate is 67 percent
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it adds uh when you do add an interactive campaign it actually sorts to the top of the usps
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digital digest so your mail actually shows first before all the other mail in your mailbox
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it links directly to the landing page of your campaign the usps does provide reporting so that
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you can actually do some testing around informed delivery and it increases brand and creative
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recall at the mailbox so just quickly how it works the
How it Works
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consumer signs up the mail is managed during processing if there’s an interactive campaign then
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those are identified and then it essentially will switch out the scanned image in that email digest
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a notification is emailed to the user and then the user receives their mail piece as you can see here with no
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interactive campaign it’s still fairly effective in the sense that you do get a
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scan and if you are doing promotional mailer there’s a really great way to um to broadcast that message before they
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receive it inside their mailbox but if you do have an interactive campaign applied i’m clear there’s a big
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difference here on how that’s represented to the prospect and hopefully entices them to take action
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even before uh they go out to their mailbox and receive their piece of mail so very cool
Design Elements
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so just talking a little bit about the design elements of the interactive campaign first you have the container
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this is what essentially all the pieces and assets are contained within that
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that email digest you have your representative image and
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this image can be used as the scan that the usps already does
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on your behalf but you could also replace that image with a representative image so maybe a
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clearer version of that scan so that the user or the prospect can see it better
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or it can even be replaced with an ad image so something that’s a little bit more promotional um and allows that
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prospect to take advantage of the the benefits and value and offer of that brand before that mail comes in their
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mailbox and then there’s also a ride-along image this is the bare bones this is what the
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usps requires you uh to include as part of that as part of that interactive
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campaign so you don’t need the representative image but you do need the right along
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image to be included and so you want this to be hard working you know maybe include the brand name include the offer
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definitely include the call to action um and as you see here exclusive opportunity skip the waitlist so some
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intrigue to get people to click on it and learn more about the offer and then finally there is a return
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address from the brand that is uh sending you the mail and then also some additional actions and so the learn more
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action allows you to go directly to the landing page just like the write-along image does but it also allows you to set
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a reminder so perhaps you sell this in your digest and you want a reminder to come to your email a few days later on a
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specific date maybe you’re on vacation and so you can set a reminder to actually have this uh interactive
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campaign sent directly to your inbox at a later date so there’s two uh kind of
Design Tactics
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tactics design tactics i want to share with you today one is going to be how you might use this for promotional
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uh artwork coming to your mailbox so postcards self-mailers even promotional
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envelopes and then i also want to show you what you might want to try when utilizing a
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stealth or blind envelope um at least in our business many of our clients uh have
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done a lot of testing and we have seen that blind and stealth envelopes typically will get a high response rate
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especially for financial services then a promotional envelope would in the mailbox so i want to show you how that
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might work in informed delivery so you don’t cannibalize the efforts that you’re making on that
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blind and stealth envelope so first i’ll show you the bare bone
Right Along Only
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basics here which is the right along only so that’s just this image down here in the bottom left
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and so you have the traditional scan that the usps would provide that would be in place
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right above that right along image and then the right along image itself sits in the bottom left and then that is
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clickable for um for your prospect so that’s bare bones super easy submit that
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to the to the usps submit it to your agency or submit it to your through your
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production partner and they’ll help you set this up and make sure that everything is clickable and working
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in addition you can do a ride-along plus a color clone image so essentially what you’re doing is you’re replacing that
Ride Along
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scanned image and you’re you’re adding a very nice colorful image that represents the
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mailpiece that’s coming into the mailbox this is nice because if you have a very effective
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envelope or postcard or self-mailer you can just essentially utilize that same copy and artwork to entice that prospect
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to take action today right now before they go out to their mailbox a few hours from now so this is a really nice
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complete campaign and really shows off the brand the benefits of their product and service that they’re marketing to and
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again gets the prospect excited about next steps
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i did come across a recent case study from the usps that showed they were doing some testing on doing a color
USPS Case Study
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clone image versus a black and white clone image and it was a little surprising in the sense
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that the uh the black and white clone image actually outperformed the click-through rate
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on that color image and i think it’s much like how we use maybe a stealth uh
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or blind envelope in the mailbox uh the consumer is trained perhaps to
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scan through their mail and when they see something in black and white perhaps it looks a little bit more
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official or their attention becomes uh closer on that piece of mail versus
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something that looks like an advertisement so uh it it is important to continue to test not
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only the artwork the value proposition the offers but also the way that some of these
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images are being presented in the digest in order to see if you can’t increase performance overall
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one thing that we like is actually replacing that duplicate image or representative image
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with a was it an all brand new ad image so this is something that i think can be
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useful and really uh you know making your artwork a little bit more
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hard hitting when it comes into the digest so as you can see here we’re utilizing a
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headline and a subhead we also use this really great little arrow that points down to the call to action to get that
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prospect to take action and then in addition um we add this little thumbnail image so we’re actually
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utilizing uh the image that’s coming into their mailbox so that they’re done so there is some recall on that artwork
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and uh and some and some brand recall when they go back out to their mailbox and retrieve their mail so
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hard working digital ad in addition uh to having the thumbnail
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along with it as a ride-along on the on the piece of artwork itself
Stealth Envelope
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so those are some examples of how you might utilize it with a promotional envelope or promotional postcard or
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self-mailer but what if you are trying to maybe break through the clutter by having something a little bit stealth in
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nature you know although we don’t really want um you know to be misleading uh sometimes
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as direct marketers know uh by doing a lot of testing um stealth and blind
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envelopes simply work well for certain uh cohorts and certain uh verticals uh
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in the mail so we do rely on them here at gundersen direct and so we want to make sure how can we make the informed
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delivery work just as hard on a stealth envelope as we do with a promotional envelope
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and the key to that is we don’t want to cannibalize what we’re trying to do in the mailbox so we don’t really want to
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show the image that’s going to be in their mailbox with a promotional message because then
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they’re going to know right away hey they’re just trying to give me some sales material here and i just know
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based off of that i’m not interested in this and so um so i’m going to go out and i’m going to know exactly what piece to throw out we want to still have that
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opportunity to engage with that prospect hopefully get them to commit to open up that envelope read the first or second
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you know the first headline in the first paragraph of that letter and hopefully entice them enough at that point to
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realize hey this is something i’m interested in so we don’t like this approach of actually showing the scan with a promotional image so
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in this case what we would recommend to our clients is to use the right along image along with a color ad image but
Ad Image
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make no reference to the stealth envelope inside the mailbox this allows people who are interested in promotional
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messages and again because this is targeted to the mailbox
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and targeted to that consumer there’s a very good chance that they are in the market for something that we might be
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selling them so by having an effective ad image here points down to the call to action we can
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get them one to try to uh to try to take advantage of this offer now in their digest and then we can get them
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then again out to the mailbox look through their mouth and get them have another shot at trying to get them to
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respond through the mailpiece itself so it’s a really great way to use informed delivery without cannibalizing the idea
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of that stealth or blind envelope some clients will say well look it still
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sounds a little deceiving and i don’t really want to do that with the customers that we’re trying to bring in so we think a
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nice work around is to still use that ad image but use a thumbnail image on the
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bottom right to to show them what that stealth envelope might look like but it’s a little bit
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smaller in nature and is not as eye-catching as that original scanned image so definitely something to
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consider as with all of these things we want to test test tests just like we would with
USPS
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direct mail or social surrounds or anything else you’re doing in your marketing mix i mean the usps provides a
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detailed report so you can measure and optimize your your informed delivery performance
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a few key things they allow you to see is how many emails actually did go out with your mail
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based on the subscriber base that they have then it allows you to see how many of those uh emails were open so the open
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rate and then also how many of those customers actually click through and that’s key to our testing so uh by by
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being able to access this information and allow that consumer or allow our marketers to see what’s
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working in the inbox then we’re able to uh continually test against their control packages even in
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in informed delivery allowing our customers to take advantage of both these channels in order to gain new
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customers so that’s my time today i hope i didn’t go too far over i wanted to say thank
Beat the Control
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you to everybody who joined the webinar today and as a special thank you from gundersen direct i would love for you to
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take advantage of our free book beat the control with our free book uh beat the control uh there’s hundreds of tips and
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tactics that you can use on your direct mail creative your data and your production uh that will help you drive
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more response so please take a moment pull out your phone scan this qr code and with that i’ll turn it back over to
27:39
ashley
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this is eric with sql i’ll jump in in case uh a little technical difficulties on
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ashley’s part appreciate you guys having us brand united and thanks for everyone for coming so we’re
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sql or direct response marketing agency and with my 10 minutes today i wanted to
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focus on a case study around channel launch so launching a client of ours into direct mail
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this particular client um was a credit card consolidation loan company
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and this particular campaign was a pre-screen effort meaning it was a firm offer of credit
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the targeting was coming from direct from a bureau on credit bureau pre-selects like debt amount
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um and credit score as well some other profile characteristics so
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um that’s kind of the table set of course the goal like it is for anybody looking to launch a mail campaign from
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scratch is to efficiently get to a place uh of a profitable campaign right one
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that is hopefully not just profitable but predictable and scalable
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and so that was really our mission and instead of like most case studies you
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know i’m gonna focus on uh the end result but i also want to spend a little time on on the why and
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how behind getting there and so from a methodology perspective
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um you know we want to give a little bit of a flavor of all of the things that go into getting at a champion right and
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it’s rarely just one great idea although sometimes it can be it’s
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usually the outcome of a lot of testing and research and best practices
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and i want to give a little bit of that color today with my time i don’t want to wait for the end though for you guys to
29:52
have a sense of the performance the cumulative benefit for this client
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from a sales rate perspective was a 56 percent lift
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over the industry baseline that we started with in just 12 short months time
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this client now again what they really hoped to achieve and what we hoped to achieve for them was an evergreen
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program in their case a seven figure monthly acquisition campaign
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so uh 12 months and two minutes here this is really looking at 2021
Competitive Research
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in the rear view so upper left of course a company that doesn’t have an existing program doesn’t have an existing control
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so for us a big part of what we had to start with was competitive research right one of the brand united sponsors
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comfor media is a great tool for that competitive scans another we like to canvas what
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competitors in the space are doing with their campaigns with their mail who are looking for specifically the creatives
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that are being repeated uh consistently and epic volumes we can learn a lot from that right we anticipate that there are
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smart people justifying those spends and reading those results and choosing to keep going so based on that we can build
31:03
a pseudo control as we’d call it to create our own baseline uh then
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for this particular client again a lot of companies that are launching a campaign from scratch may have a
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precursor phase like a gut check to prove viability we didn’t need that here we’ve got a lot of
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mailers in the space giving us the confidence that this was going to back out we’ve also got a perfect
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uh maybe not perfect but certainly very strong sense of what data is going to work best for this particular offer
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we’ve got limitations on incentives and offers in this space so most of this first test was really
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about wholesale creative testing um big swings we want to get a good
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uh a good round effort with three unique concepts against that pseudo control and
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we went into market and ultimately got about a 20 lift over that pseudo control right off the bat
31:54
so from there um we had a little bit of a smaller campaign incremental testing
32:00
not tracked on this roadmap to check things like official promotional
32:05
little nuanced tweaks and in parallel to that we did what we call digital pre-testing
32:12
which essentially is the ability to pre-test or test elements of a direct
32:18
mail campaign in a digital environment obviously uh it’s safer there quote-unquote um
32:23
because we have uh we can do things a lot quicker we have it’s a lot more cost effective of course
32:30
and there’s generally less risk and the intent of that digital pre-testing is not to necessarily find a
32:37
winner and just trust that that will translate into mail but rather
32:42
to trim the fat so to speak let’s winnow down how many
32:47
different things we could put in the mail 15 headlines to maybe the couple few that are deserving of a seat
32:52
actually in market in the mail campaign so between those efforts we then were able to go back into market
32:59
with another campaign with some unique creative leveraging those learnings got another 16 percent bump on top of the
33:05
19. did another round of digital pre-testing this time testing less on headlines and
33:10
positioning and more on uh unique benefits and ultimately put that back out into
33:17
mail with some additional enhancements for another eight percent lift and so
33:23
that kind of gets us to the champ which i want to spend most of our time on today but before i jump into the winning
33:29
creative and some of the justification for why we believe it performed best i want to give a quick shout out uh to the
Digital Integration
33:36
importance of digital and direct mail campaigns at least at sql um
33:42
because when we talk about sales rate and the performance of the campaign we do it uh collectively right so that includes the digital integration list
33:48
offer creative digital integration um and i mentioned digital pre-testing on
33:54
the previous roadmap i want to give us a quick second to what that means for us uh and certainly this is
34:00
only one iteration of it but ultimately what we are doing is we’re taking the
34:05
true target audience uh a file that’s been cultivated and developed offline names and addresses
34:12
and using a deterministic uh identity graph we’re able to find the identities of those individuals online
34:19
once we’ve done that we then are going to actually spend real money on in this particular case we use
34:25
native ads to test different headlines and sub headlines or benefit statements
34:32
we’re really drilling a lot of holes see where water bubbles up and we kind of get a heat map of winners and losers here with these different tests
34:39
to then know what to bring into a subsequent mail campaign so that’s something we’ve been putting
34:45
to use with good success and certainly helped this particular case study significantly
34:50
as there’s a lot of different ways you can skin copy and key points and only limited real estate to do it even in a long form
34:57
like direct mail of course informed delivery mike just gave a great overview to this
35:02
we’re big proponents of it as well um and it’s a really foundational effort to
35:08
anything we mail save as mike athlete described the true official
35:14
stealth environment and it’s a good entree into digital integration and that’s the last point i’ll make on
35:20
the importance of digital here but with the same process of taking a mail file name and address and linking
35:27
it to individual identities online we are able to around or surround the
35:35
mail we call it sql surround here anyways we surround the mail with digital touch
35:40
points and digital is an expansive term because it’s really other channels many of which are uh can be programmatically
35:47
purchased and delivered digitally uh quote unquote today that can be programmatic display web video
35:55
connected tv ott newark now is connected audio uh certainly paid social like facebook and
36:01
instagram even email the intent of all of that of course is to surround this highly
36:09
personalized and tactile high value touch of direct mail so we know we’re mailing these people we know
36:15
they’re going to deal with this mail piece informed delivery is going to tip them off it’s coming the integration
36:21
around it with digital make sure that it’s seen dealt with hopefully ultimately responded to
36:27
and act on so um that brings us to the champ so
The Champion
36:32
this is the ultimate winning creative now the initial reaction of at least a handful of people that are
36:40
tuned in today is going to be well that’s not very creative and when you compare it to
36:47
what we saw in the opening session i would agree but at sql i think just in
36:54
direct response in general um our viewpoint is the best creative is the creative that
37:00
sells right and in this particular instance client industry
37:05
this is the best performing so far is the big caveat as of course we’re already testing to try to unseat it
37:12
um and therefore it is creative from that perspective and i wanted to explain a little bit of
37:19
when we talk about direct response it’s a lot of left brain right brain and certainly the left brain um is a big part of the success here and
37:27
some of the rationale behind why this ultimately um became the champion is
37:32
what i want to spend the next few minutes on i will say too there is no acme lending uh if there is
37:39
sorry to hack me lending we we genericize this uh to protect the innocent so um obviously the first thing you notice
37:45
is the format in this particular arena number ten with uh in half by 11 and an insert is
37:53
pretty commonplace obviously with anything that’s got a letter package on it
37:58
uh that is a letter package i should say has an outer envelope and that outer envelope is our first
Outer Envelope
38:05
challenge right the first thing we need to get people passed we need to get them inside and so
38:11
that puts a lot of emphasis on the strategy for the outer envelope you can go blind and stealth and in this space it’s not totally uncommon
38:17
and certainly something that we’ve tested but if you’re going to put something on the outer envelope it better be
38:23
really intentional and strategic and for us not that this is all we tested but one of the winning benefits
38:30
and a truly a unique benefit to this brand is having a credit for on-time payments
38:37
and that was something we wanted to bring forward in the piece because it is unique to the space it is a
38:43
differentiator and that ultimately helped us
38:48
clear that first hurdle of getting them inside being that it’s a key feature and just in mail in general all of the key
38:54
things repetition is good we want to do that in a number of places you’ll notice
39:00
that with the red circles let’s get rid of that because it’s noisy so next thing now
Heatmap Research
39:06
that they’re inside the letter that’s important to remember is that heat map research shows us there’s a lot of um
39:14
v style visual info and flow that we have to track from top to right
39:21
to bottom and at the top
39:26
what i have is let me pause for a second i see one comment here saying that perhaps people
39:33
can’t see the screen
39:38
let me pause quick and see if that’s the case
39:45
okay we’re good individual situation got it okay so
39:52
again thinking about this v style flow that’s what we’ve got to do we got people with short attention spans and we’ve got
Workhorse Opening
39:59
a few seconds at a time and so we know they’re going to bounce through this created from top to right to bottom and so the first thing we focus on is the
40:05
opening and what we’ve got here is what i call a workhorse opening we’re accomplishing a lot in one sentence
40:11
we’ve got personalization with the first name you’re pre-qualified so there’s the error of exclusivity what is it personal
40:18
consolidation loan and a big number with the up to forty thousand dollars that’s a pretty key thing to have on an outer
40:24
envelope because we don’t hear it’s maybe extra important to start off with and we do in this piece
40:30
we then move to the right you see the 800 million stat eyes will move to a stat
40:37
that big stat shows that although this is the first time mailing this brand’s been around a while they’ve worked with a lot of customers size equals trust
40:44
and then we’ve got some other valuable real estate here for some key call outs and we focused on differentiators again
40:50
things that are pre-testing uncovered as differentiators the 250 credit the
40:55
ability to customize your payment plan which is relatively unheard of pause payments something that’s also very
41:00
attractive and unique um and then they bounce down to the bottom where we have uh call to actions
41:08
and of course we want to repeat those as well we want to direct individuals to directly attributable tracking
41:14
mechanisms where possible so a custom url a custom tfn qr codes which i was
41:22
pretty adamantly against just a couple short years ago now i’m a big proponent of we all as consumers have learned to
41:27
adopt those and then finally on the right hand side anyways
41:33
images this brings a warmth to pieces uh heat map research also shows that eyes go to human faces and here we’re trying to
41:40
bring um into the piece and kind of bring across some other subtle points like it’s easy
41:46
if you take care of this big life thing on your cell phone and ultimately trying to
41:53
give away or give out this key emotional benefit of relief
41:59
on the left hand side are really where most of the copy is this this is really what we call the skin zone
42:04
and so you want to be careful not to put anything that you think is a key point only in here this is a good place to
42:09
reiterate um these are really the table stakes benefits so make sense that they would be in there we want to say them i think
42:16
it’s largely assumed that these things come with products like this in this space
42:22
and so then we have as a final element here an insert uh and one one thing worth
42:28
pointing out here is we produce this typically as an eight and a half by fourteen inch letter and then you slip
42:35
and nest off this insert it gives you the ability to personalize the front side of it without really any additional
42:41
cost we did not do that in this particular creative but it also allows it to kind of fall out as a an extra
42:47
element the insert here does which gives it a little extra
42:52
pop in resonance and on this buckslip which again is very
42:58
highly valuable real estate we’ve got two things going on on one side social proof uh it’s very key in
43:03
decision making especially for a relatively unknown brand there’s that big 800 million stat again it shows that
43:09
a lot of people are signing up and maybe i should too what do they know that i don’t know or the
43:15
general uh thought that people in mass make the right decisions
43:20
uh and then we’ve got trust pilot ratings you know that’s helpful or as xenons you know when you see that kind
43:26
of you have that potential we should use it and then uh testimonial and hopefully
43:31
we’ve got a lot to choose from this particular one let us say a lot with what just one quote
43:37
simplicity uh favorable terms you can repay it early it’s okay even if you have bad credit
43:44
and they’ll help you along the way then the last element
43:50
to give a sound bite on is the back side of the insert where we’re focused on the savings so
43:55
the average person can save 9 500 that’s a big number certainly
44:01
competitive packages harp on that savings and you want to be able to spell it out and justify it
44:07
but i think the bigger thing that we gleaned from our first party research uh the digital pre-testing included
44:13
was the savings of time you know this idea of life after death to reach some level of financial freedom
44:21
and the ability to take two decades off of your payment is something that we believe to be very
44:27
strong not just on this buckslip but for this client to be continually uh promoting and harping on
44:34
so again in aggregate i’ve thrown this number out uh 56 cumulative lift uh like
Conclusion
44:40
i said it’s sometimes just a great idea um and in a lot of cases
44:46
uh it’s a lot of little things a lot of little strategic things that came from either a hypothesis
44:51
a competitive sample a pretest learning
44:56
a different client in the death care space you might learn something about it
45:01
drives a call out in a creative and so i wanted to make sure that
45:08
we focused a little bit on the science when it comes to the art and science of direct response creative
45:15
to defend all those packages that you might see that aren’t a scratch and sniff
45:20
or a highly dimensional as cool as they are especially when they work the best choice you have
45:26
and talk about a lot of the pieces you might see in your mailbox as a consumer
45:32
uh and so with that that ends my time and i’ve covered a lot and there’s a
Contact Information
45:37
number of things that i could do full sessions on uh if given the time whether it’s pre-testing or multivariate
45:44
testing or sql surround so drop me a line of interested eric k at
45:50
sql dm right there in the middle uh and then visit us at sqldm.com we got a lot of thought leadership pieces case
45:56
studies and whatnot for you guys to bounce through so
46:02
with that i’ll pass it back off to ashley yes i hope yes yes i’m back after a brief technical
46:09
difficulty on my part but thank you eric for jumping in um and i do want to say thank you to brent mike and eric for kicking off
46:16
today’s event uh for the next part of the session we’re gonna change up the format a little bit so i am pleased to
46:22
present ray van itterson manager marketing strategy at the united states postal service who will be leading a
46:29
panel type discussion with brad coogler ceo and co-founder of direct mail 2.0
46:34
and dennis kelly ceo of postalytics so floor’s all yours ray
46:39
thanks very much ashley um and what i want to do is i want to build off something that eric said eric was talking about you know the role of
46:46
digital and direct mail and i think it’s important to recognize that there’s actually two different aspects where
46:52
digital and direct mail interact the first of which is digital channels where
46:57
you can have multi-channel campaigns with direct mail and digital and the second of which is digital technology
47:03
because the power behind a lot of the digital cam channels is digital technology and these
47:09
gentlemen brad and dennis are bro two of the people leading bringing digital technology to really power direct mail
47:16
so without further ado let’s introduce brad and dennis brad can you tell us
47:22
something a little bit about direct mail 2.0 absolutely i’m happy to be here and
47:27
thank you for that um direct mail 2.0 has been around for about five years and what we do is we are an add-on product
47:34
that lifts the response rate for direct mail typically by about 23 to 46
47:40
and we do that using about 11 different digital technologies that we layer on top of the mail to access that lift and
47:48
you know we can go into those different things that we band together but it’s out of experience and testing we feel we
47:54
found the sweet spot on how to lift response rate upon direct mail by adding these
48:00
technologies dennis
Dennis Kelly CEO Postalytics
48:05
great thank you everybody for uh joining us today uh as ray said i’m dennis kelly
48:11
ceo of postalytics uh we’re a fast-growing direct mail automation software company
48:17
and we help marketers agencies and non-profits solve three big problems
48:23
with traditional direct mail first is speed uh using our software
48:29
you’re able to cut the average time it takes to get a campaign out from four to six weeks down to
48:36
two to three hours second is integration we make direct mail
48:41
a part of the marketing tech stack so everybody deploying crm and marquee
48:47
automation and customer data portals are able to use direct mail in conjunction with all their other channels
48:53
and then finally we help direct we help marketers track what has happened after you send
48:59
by tracking both delivery and response via some proprietary software we’ve created
49:07
great and so before we dive into a lot of that stuff in greater detail i just want to
49:13
do a little bit to set the context of what’s going on with direct mail and especially with the advent of digital um
49:21
so if we look at you know direct mail in the last couple of years it’s got you know three times the press that it had
Response Rates
49:27
in the you know a couple of years before that and you know people are asking you know why is all of a sudden direct mail
49:33
cool again and you know i think that there’s really two different aspects that driving it
49:38
the first of which is response rates the um association of national advertisers did a survey a couple years
49:45
ago and identified the direct mail response rates are higher than all of the digital response rates put together
49:52
so that’s you know always been you know a great thing that does get people interested and then people say but okay
49:58
that’s good but direct mail actually costs a little bit more per impression than some of the digital channels do and
50:03
so in this year’s association of national advertisers um report what they did is they looked at average roi um and
50:10
if you look at on the leftmost column direct mail is again better than everybody else so the part of the reason
50:16
why um everybody’s interested in direct mail is because it works um
50:22
second thing that people are interested in it’s about you know we’ve talked about this this digital side you know and if you look at overall forecasts you
Digital vs Traditional
50:30
know people are saying you know if you look at traditional you look at um digital where is the growth going to be if you look at this left most column
50:37
here overall digital is expected to grow where some of the traditional channels are not expected to grow quite as much
50:44
what’s interesting however is if you look at traditional channels you look at out of home you look at audio you look
50:51
at tv in each of these areas um traditional aspect within a traditional
50:57
channel is looking to shrink and the digital aspect within a traditional channel is looking to grow so out of
51:04
home that means that digital display back up boards are growing whereas um
51:10
paper on billboards at the side of the highway is not growing as fast you look at audio podcasts are growing but you
51:17
know terrestrial radio not growing as quickly and tv same thing over the top and um connected tv growing rapidly
51:24
linear tv not growing as much similarly in the direct mail space um
51:30
matter kind and magna did a study and they found that advanced addressable direct mail and we’ll talk about more
51:36
what that means in a minute this grew 50 last year and it’s going to grow 30 this
51:41
year so really you can supercharge your direct mail by adding in digital
51:47
technology like what some of our um colleagues have been talking about so far
51:52
so let’s now bring back the experts and let’s talk about you know what does it mean to have digitally powered direct
Audience Targeting
51:58
mail and we think that you digital can power direct mail an audience creative octa-channel and measurement let’s start
52:06
on the audience side dennis can you tell us about how digitally is powering audience on targeting for you and your
52:13
clients yeah sure uh definitely so you know ray and an
52:20
audience uh we’ve seen a tremendous growth in what we call trigger drip direct mail
52:27
campaigns and so these are campaigns that are integrated with a third-party software
52:34
tool like a crm or a marketing automation tool and when a certain behavior happens
52:40
uh whether it’s you know somebody’s visit a website or fill out a form or
52:46
who has maybe stopped responding to email a marketing automation workflow kicks in
52:54
and says hey let’s send this person a piece of high impact direct mail and
53:00
and so it’s very different than sort of the traditional list based kind of batch
53:06
process that direct mail often uh incorporates and and so
53:11
you know marketers are starting to learn about how effective this can be and in fact
53:17
in the growth of uh of this type of marketing uh between
53:23
2020 and 2021 at least in the postolytics customer base
53:28
we’ve seen 226 percent more triggered direct mail campaigns than the
53:35
year before triggering 290 percent more mailers
53:42
and so you can see that as marketers are incorporating direct mail into their
53:49
marketing tech stack they’re looking for easy wins low hanging fruit to be able to trigger
53:55
these male pieces to go out and so i know continue please
54:02
i was just going to say uh there’s a few key reasons why uh number one trigger direct mail has a
54:08
much higher response rate right because this is very highly personalized
54:13
something has happened uh either that an action i’ve taken or an action that i haven’t taken
54:20
and a piece of mail gets triggered out to address a specific issue for
54:27
that particular person and so that’s a big driver of this the
54:32
second big driver is what’s going on with first party data versus third party
54:38
data and so you know as cookies are going away
54:43
as email tracking is becoming a more more difficult proposition
54:50
marketers are looking to leverage their infrastructure they’ve created to trigger
54:55
high impact direct mail to deliver their message
55:01
cool and i know one of the areas that you don’t cover yourself is lookalike models which everybody’s gotten really
lookalike models
55:07
um familiar with on the digital side um and that’s really come over to um direct
55:13
mail as well with people being able to upload lists of their customers and their who’ve really been successful and
55:20
finding um similar lists um just is you know snapping fingers just easy as is on
55:25
the digital now i want to move over to to brad on the creative side because brad’s doing some really groundbreaking
55:32
work looking at predictive analytics for direct mail and if there’s anything else to add on the audience side please jump
55:37
in there too as well please brad yeah thank you i would like to add something on the audience side one of the points that you have on your list
retargeted direct mail
55:44
the bullet points is retargeted direct mail and we’re finding a groundswell of interest in that so
55:50
going back to the previous pre-internet days of direct mail it was sort of a spray and pray methodology you know you
55:57
maybe got a demographics list and you blanketed an area but now with new technology
56:04
and it’s one of the primary products that we offer is that you can get a residential address from the anonymous
56:11
visitors to your website and what you’re doing now is you’re building a mailing list with the behavior of the actions
56:18
they took while they were on your site so give an example if somebody has a shoe site and one of the visitors spent
56:25
a lot of time on a pair of boots well that residential address or that household that the person
56:32
made the inquiries from can now be targeted with a very relevant piece of direct mail
56:39
again we don’t know the person name who actually was on the site but you’ve got the household just just as
56:46
important so again in that audience that retargeted direct mail is a vital piece
56:52
of direct mail going forward because it it almost sidesteps a lot of the privacy issues you’re just sending an offer
56:59
that’s very relevant to someone in that household that visited that website so so i wanted to kind of put a point on
57:06
that that people are not doing that with most business being online or even services you can you can use that to
57:13
create a direct mail mailing list very very cheaply um on the creative side you had
57:20
mentioned the predictive analytics for direct mail one of the things that we’re working on
57:25
that we’re just starting to test now is after five years and almost 40 000
57:30
direct mail campaigns or pretty close to half a billion pieces of mail we started
57:36
putting these mailers into buckets buckets by vertical whether it’s non-profit financial resid uh real
57:43
estate etc and we’re now able to cross-reference or correlate the response rates the
57:51
engagement rates online with the pieces that were set so we’re also developing a
57:57
database of the creative of these pieces to correlate with certain demographics in certain verticals again without
58:04
disclosing any privacy the idea here is that we can tell someone who’s doing a
58:10
non-profit campaign in the northeast this is the engagement rate you should expect and these are the size of the
58:17
headlines these are the calls to action that have been most successful and we can establish a benchmark for a certain
58:23
vertical campaign for a certain industry or certain demographic in a certain area
58:29
so we’re getting to the point where direct mail can almost have that
58:34
scientific response rate targeting that lifts it incrementally just like digital
58:40
targeting and digital response tracking can do so that’s something that’s very close to becoming a reality in the
58:46
direct mail space cool and dennis i know you guys have been groundbreaking in some of the the
QR codes
58:53
response rate mechanisms in creative and personalization yes uh ray that’s right we’ve um
59:02
seen a huge increase especially in the use of qr codes i think both
59:09
uh eric and mike showed examples earlier of creative with
59:14
qr codes incorporated them and and over the last two years we’ve seen subsequent 50 plus percent
59:22
increases in the usage of qr codes in the campaigns run using postolytics
59:28
uh you know it used to be that uh qr codes were
59:33
you know sort of this oddball thing that were not very prevalent in north america
59:39
but really since the pandemic we’ve seen a huge spike in the use of those qr codes
59:45
and from a direct mail perspective it used to be that you had to go buy some specialized software and you know
59:52
learn some new landing page tool in order to incorporate these response tracking mechanisms
59:59
but but now you know with most direct mail automation software it’s just bundled and free and a part of the
1:00:05
software solution and can you talk a little bit about personalized urls too please
1:00:12
yes so so personalized urls and qr codes really sort of fit together uh and and
1:00:18
so um you know within postal linux and you know some other marketing uh direct
1:00:24
mail automation tools you’ve got the ability to generate a unique uh personalized url for each recipient
1:00:32
so that when somebody responds to that url you can track the
1:00:37
specific person who is responding and then you can even track what pages they’ve gone to
1:00:43
whether they’ve hit a conversion goal or not and so those personalized urls and qr codes
1:00:50
work together to provide an easy on-ramp from
1:00:55
a direct mail physical experience into the digital realm where you’re then collecting data and and you’re driving a
1:01:02
very low cost response tool yeah it’s been truly impressive in the
1:01:07
last year when you know you used to have static qr codes that were just pointing for one campaign and now you can get a
1:01:13
personalized qr code that’s just tied to me and so when i scan it you know the marketer on the other end knows exactly
1:01:20
who it was which is is a great shift um and another big shift that we’ve seen in the last number of years is
1:01:25
personalization you know it used to be you know dear first name but now we’re seeing increasingly you know
1:01:32
imagery which is changing um with the person there was one survey um that was
1:01:38
done a few months ago that found that about 45 percent of marketers who were doing direct mail with personalization
1:01:43
were changing images as well so it’s great to see you know again what digital printing technology is enabling um
1:01:51
changes within the direct mail space um now i want to talk a little bit more about optic channel because you know
1:01:58
there was a survey that said that really only about 1 in 20 people are doing direct mail just by themselves we heard
1:02:04
eric talk a little bit about what they’re doing at sql um brad can you tell us a little bit more about what
1:02:09
your clients are able to do in adding in additional channels absolutely so we can add up it to 11
1:02:17
digital features to a direct mail campaign um and and i i don’t want to take the
1:02:22
entire rest of the time to go over all of them but mail tracking call and text tracking so obviously when there’s a a
1:02:29
phone number on a piece of mail we have it so it’s set up someone someone can respond via text or they can call via
1:02:36
voice and it’s smart technology that will optimally route whether whatever response it is
1:02:43
we actually record all of those responses whether it’s a voice call or a text response we can send back a coupon
1:02:49
code any of this can be set up literally in seconds for any mailing
1:02:55
and it’s a great tool to recover lost engagements if somebody calls or
1:03:00
somebody texts and then you sort of lose that connection or it drops off you can now recover that contact and and restart
1:03:07
the conversation and hopefully repair failed clothes additionally informed delivery uh we have been doing
1:03:14
this pretty much since the beginning i think we’ve surpassed 20 000 informed delivery campaigns it is
1:03:21
and i’ve always thought it’s the best thing the post office has done since the pony express i really believe this
1:03:27
product if you’re not using it you have to be using it the the conversion rates
1:03:33
and the response rates are out the roof over any other type of uh digital campaign to be honest
1:03:39
we also do retargeting the first thing someone usually does is they go to a website well if they go to the website we now
1:03:46
then retarget them digitally for 30 days whether they went to a social media site or they went to a typical website we are
1:03:53
showing that ad and hopefully that same call to action to those same people for 30 days and we know that that will raise
1:04:00
the likelihood of engagement the more they see that offer or the more they see that brand or that name
1:04:07
additionally as i told you we have the direct mail retargeting option but it can be used in a completely different
1:04:13
way we can actually show attribution so as i told you we can return a
1:04:18
residential or business address from a website visit we could now match that residential address or business address
1:04:25
back to the mailing list to prove attribution and allow the advertiser to
1:04:30
really drill down into those that have already visited the website or called in
1:04:36
as your warmest or hottest prospect so a lot can be done custom audiences we take
1:04:41
the mailing list and we actually create a custom audience on social media so that we again are hitting that same list
1:04:48
of recipients multiple times raising that engagement score or likelihood of
1:04:54
that recipient and it it’s it’s about the number of times over so for pennies on a on the
1:05:02
dollar we can kind of mimic what the largest brands do in
1:05:07
multiple impressions per male recipient on multiple channels within a concentrated period of time so that’s
1:05:15
really what the goal is with our product we’re constantly adding new technology and new features to improve the number
1:05:21
of touch points with the intended recipient we plan to add ctb and over the top device connectivity
1:05:29
too so the i guess you could say the options are limitless in targeting those direct mail
1:05:35
recipients and improving the likelihood of conversion yeah so so as you can hear you know
1:05:42
today if you’re wanting to send your direct mail and you want to do a multi-channel campaign increasingly the
1:05:47
tools exist so that with one place you can do one-stop shopping to be meeting
1:05:53
all of your needs you know dennis you’ve you guys have done a great job of integrating into existing tools of crm
1:06:00
and marketing automation platforms can you talk a little bit more about how some of that data um gets fed back into
1:06:06
those platforms and what that means in terms of the number of dashboards that um marketers need to deal with
1:06:14
sure yeah no i think it’s it’s an increasing priority on the part of
1:06:20
marketers to have marketing channels
1:06:25
that easily plug into the infrastructure that they’re creating for the vast majority
1:06:31
of their marketing and so uh it’s important that direct mail uh isn’t this
1:06:39
sort of standalone channel without any kind of easy access
1:06:45
to those core marketing tech stack tools like crm and marketing automation
1:06:51
uh and and so uh you know what what we’ve done is to create integrations
1:06:58
native integrations with a lot of the big crm and marketing automation players uh open apis and in easy ways for
1:07:07
things that are happening inside of your crm to trigger
1:07:12
a piece of mail to go out or to create a segment or an audience and pull that in very very quickly and easily to send out
1:07:19
a more traditional batch based campaign additionally we’ve incorporated tracking
1:07:26
right so that as a piece of mail is being processed an intelligent mail barcode from the
1:07:33
usps is generated and then attached to the specific
1:07:38
contact so that as a piece of mail is being processed through the print production
1:07:45
cycle through the delivery cycle events are being generated and then
1:07:51
captured in a dashboard either directly in postlytics or more
1:07:56
importantly synced back into your crm and marketing automation tools so that
1:08:01
that those that data about where the mail is in the production or delivery process
1:08:07
is being consumed and used to inform other channels
1:08:12
so you know going back to uh what brad was talking about in the other panelists earlier about informed delivery you know
1:08:19
it’s it’s a great example of a multi-channel campaign where email and direct mail are working together right
1:08:25
to drive higher response and so when you’ve got this ability to trigger an email
1:08:33
when a piece of direct mail is being delivered then
1:08:38
you’ve got an easy way to incorporate multiple channels multiple touch points
1:08:44
and so that that ability to capture that delivery moment from the usps sync it
1:08:50
back into the marketing automation tool to trigger that email or to trigger a call from a rep
1:08:56
is a super important part of that whole process we also talked about the the ability to
1:09:02
add personalized qr codes personalized urls to the creative
1:09:07
well all that also comes back and so by capturing those scans
1:09:13
and those browser events right when somebody responds to a piece of mail
1:09:19
that data is also synced back right so that your crm and marketing automation tools
1:09:25
are consuming direct mail information about the campaign and then using it to drive
1:09:32
those other channels that can boost response very easily cool and so i think it’s just incredible
1:09:38
you know being able to leverage all the different channels and then have all that data come back into your system as
1:09:45
well as what brad was talking a little bit ago about you know what i call matchbacks you know the greatest thing
1:09:51
about direct mail is that we know what physical address it’s being sent to so if you’re if you have a retail and
1:09:57
retail establishments you’re mailing you know a physical product to somebody’s
1:10:02
house it’s pretty straightforward to say i mailed to these 10 000 addresses
1:10:08
these a thousand addresses purchased in the month afterwards i can look and i can see how many of those people who
1:10:13
bought in the month afterwards you know were on my mailing list and how many weren’t and it’s insane how much
1:10:20
much more of a lift you have in terms of the people who you mail to versus the people that you don’t you know and
1:10:25
that’s why we’re seeing the response rates and that’s why we’re seeing you know the growth that um we are now i
1:10:31
need to allow us to move on the um next part of the panel but i apologize to um
1:10:37
to dennis and brad i didn’t get your email addresses on here so can you just
1:10:43
briefly tell your email addresses so in case any of the q a that they want to follow up with you directly and then
1:10:48
there’s more q a we’ll hit it at the end of the session sure thank you uh mine’s pretty simple
1:10:54
brad brad at dm20.com or you can just go to dm20.com and you
1:11:01
can find us pretty easily again brad dm20.com
1:11:07
same thing here super easy dennis d-e-n-n-i-s at postolytics.com you can
1:11:13
also hit us up at postlytics.com the website social channels etc
1:11:18
and how do you spell postal linux dennis uh postal p-o-s-t-a-l-y-t-i
1:11:27
great thanks very much both of you really appreciate the conversation back to you ashley
1:11:33
great thank you so much that was a fascinating and informative discussion so thank you to ray brad and dennis
1:11:39
so our final portion of the event today will be with former congressman kevin yoder partner of consulting firm hobart
1:11:46
holloway and quail ventures and campaign spokesperson for keep us posted who will be joined by a special call-in guest
1:11:53
aaron brower senior director government affairs for hallmark cards so take it away kevin
1:11:59
all right well thank you ashley appreciate the opportunity to be on with all of you and all this talk about
1:12:05
sending direct mail brings us to the mail service itself and how we
1:12:11
make sure the postal service remains strong remains well funded keeps its rates down and delivers on
1:12:16
time i along with aaron brower and a number of other folks started an organization
1:12:23
last summer uh called keep us posted and our goal is to
1:12:28
ensure that the voices of the american people uh industry
1:12:33
um interested groups are able to have their voices heard in the halls of congress when it comes to postal policy
1:12:40
i served in congress for uh close to a decade from the state of kansas the suburbs in kansas city
1:12:47
and during that time worked on a number of different postal issues but i’ll have to be honest for
1:12:52
many of my colleagues uh and for much of congress it just wasn’t a top issue that
1:12:57
they dealt with from day to day even though it’s in the constitution congress is required to establish and
1:13:02
maintain the postal service it’s just not the type of issue that gets the headlines it’s not something
1:13:08
that um you see in campaign ads and frankly members of congress don’t hear a lot about it from their
1:13:13
constituents unless they are a company like maybe some of the folks on here or someone who works for the postal service
1:13:20
um yet it’s a pretty critical service postal service delivers to 161 million locations daily no matter how remote no
1:13:26
matter how rural and it’s a critical service to a lot of americans delivering
1:13:32
medicine and packages and of course all this direct mail and greeting cards and financial documents and even during
1:13:38
coven to ring covet tests so we know we need a uh a successful postal service uh
1:13:44
to deliver for the american people so we’ve started this organization it’s a campaign to uh make sure that the halls of
1:13:51
congress and the policy makers and the postal service uh know what the american people think and what they want from
1:13:56
their postal service so as we said it’s community of uh individuals americans and allied
1:14:03
organizations united in the belief that a reliable affordable us postal service is essential to our way of life
1:14:10
uh we have developed a number of different tactics and ways to communicate with the american people we’ve got a campaign website we have
1:14:16
social media content uh i’ve been going on programs different shows
1:14:22
and um giving input to members of congress as a public spokesperson now you all may
1:14:28
recall that in the last few weeks for the first time in 16 years congress passed postal reform and this
1:14:34
legislation made significant changes to how the postal service uh financial uh
1:14:41
is where financials are on how its benefits are coordinated and it saved the postal service tens of billions of
1:14:47
dollars this is something that took a long time to get in place it’s something that the postmaster general supported
1:14:52
the board of governors as well as republicans and democrats in congress that actually kind of brought everybody together
1:14:58
on a policy which is pretty hard to do in congress these days i’m sure you know pretty divided uh we want to make sure
1:15:04
is that we continue to ensure that the postal service with these savings
1:15:10
um does the right things to help the american people some things that we’re concerned about
1:15:16
like the cost of delivering mail with all this direct mail we’re talking about sending on this webinar we want to make
1:15:24
sure those prices stay affordable and the postal service is looking at record historic increases so we want to
1:15:30
make sure they take into account uh the voices of those who are sending these this mail to make sure that these rates
1:15:37
stay affordable and we want to make sure that the delivery times are
1:15:42
quick and get to people uh um on time and so for a long time
1:15:48
first piece of first class mail was considered on time if it was delivered in one to three days now that’s five days and so
1:15:55
we have concerns as we raise prices and we reduce services that that’s going to
1:16:02
decrease demand and interest in the postal service which in itself is going to continue to cause the postal service
1:16:08
to have budgetary problems and lose customers in fact over the next 10 years the postal service estimates that they
1:16:14
will that that male volume will go down 42 percent and we
1:16:19
just don’t think that’s acceptable we want to help the postal service bring more customers back in
1:16:25
and hear those voices uh next we’re going to go to a quick
1:16:31
video
1:16:37
1:17:35
also say i have a grandmother who turns 103 on saturday and i want to make sure she gets the birthday card
1:17:42
come on hey that doesn’t pull your heart string and i will tell you the best part of her
1:17:48
day is when she gets her mail that’s right so come on people kevin yoder is a
1:17:53
former gop congressman who leads a new group keep us posted comprised of male
1:17:59
users including greeting card companies like hallmark and small newspapers he
1:18:04
says it’s a key moment for the postal service it’s one of america’s most trusted institutions
1:18:10
that americans rely on every single day in this country and this is an essential service that we think many of us have
1:18:16
taken for granted i think some of the challenges the postal service faces though really is just in the delays in
1:18:22
service and some of this uh by the way is intentional uh on october 1st the postal service announced that they were
1:18:28
intentionally slowing down the mail that a normal piece of mail first class
1:18:33
is supposed to be delivered within one to three days that can now be delivered up to five
1:18:38
days and still be considered on time he wanted to keep delivering for americans and this bill that passed the house last
1:18:45
week is sort of the the first leg in that stool want to get this done and then we want to continue to work to make
1:18:51
sure that the postal service is here for a long time to stay and that it keeps its rates affordable and it delivers on time for
1:18:58
the american people
1:19:43
uh so you can see in the video there some of the work we’ve been doing in terms of advocacy we had 17 650 emails to
1:19:51
congress just last month which is a massive number um 20 almost 2500 tweets
1:19:56
to congress about the postal service reform act that uh is awaiting the president’s signature
1:20:02
um now we want to continue to work on keeping rates down and improving service keeping the postal service strong
1:20:08
uh because of uh the rate increase structure that’s in place over the next 10 years
1:20:14
there could be historic significant rate increases it could continue on twice a year pushing
1:20:21
the cost to even mail a single letter or a greeting card to over a dollar a piece
1:20:26
and i think these these rate increases could really have a harm to
1:20:32
the folks on this call the business is trying to use direct mail and um you know puts postal service at risk
1:20:39
so we’re going to continue this work uh we’ve got supporting partners we’re branding um
1:20:44
our our product here to be able to reach more and more members of congress so that they keep this in front of them and
1:20:50
that they don’t forget that the the public cares about these issues and we continue to engage consumers
1:20:55
with them we’ve got uh as you can see here twitter and um facebook
1:21:01
uh 181 000 unique impressions overall with all these different items
1:21:06
we’re looking at cable tv print ads
1:21:12
different newspaper ads to really engage with members of congress um and then looking at creative ways so
1:21:18
all this is about trying to punch through as we talked about on direct mail we’re trying to make sure that our
1:21:24
voices are heard in the halls of congress with all the other issues that are out there so we’re looking at um
1:21:30
getting direct mail sent to members of congress using the digital
1:21:35
connection to all of our new followers to make sure that members of congress are getting postcards and other mailing pieces which
1:21:42
is on brand for us and then we’re also really working on um a uh additional
1:21:47
digital campaign and i’ll just show you some of the ads that we’re working on to try to sort of capture the hearts and
1:21:52
minds of policymakers and the postal service
1:22:00
1:22:11
um
1:22:50
i think we’re
1:22:56
if you guys can see the slides there or not um our sort of final work is to try to have
1:23:01
creative efforts on capitol hill through capitol hill events press and district local recognition
1:23:08
uh connecting industry and consumer and constituents with the members of congress as well as unique thing unique
1:23:14
things like the school a school pen pal program a signature stamp and unique mailboxes for notes to congress
1:23:21
all of this is to keep these issues on the front burner
1:23:28
partner with the postal service to ensure that it has the attention it needs from congress make sure the postal service is hearing from us
1:23:35
uh the american people and that we make decisions that will keep it the postal service strong
1:23:40
well-funded and um ensure that it has the uh the support it
1:23:48
needs for the american people and then it’s doing the things it needs to keep its rates down and deliver delivery times up so
1:23:54
appreciate the opportunity to share these ideas and issues with you and the work that we’re doing uh we’d love to
1:23:59
build partnerships with you we have as you saw we had a number of members that are involved in our organization we’d love to get your businesses your
1:24:05
organizations involved um because it takes an organized effort to ensure that
1:24:10
uh our voices are heard in the halls of congress so thanks so much and we’ll kick it back
1:24:15
kevin this is aaron brower real quick with hallmark i just wanted to add
1:24:21
kevin’s really done an amazing job humanizing this very complicated and wonky issue and after 15 years of
1:24:28
working really hard with a bunch of uh fantastic partners we finally did get this major post build reform bill across
1:24:35
the finish line but there’s so much more work to be done and we knew we needed fresh tactics and fresh voices
1:24:42
again humanizing the effort through a pr campaign and reminding people about the value of mail
1:24:48
and um you know our work has just started and i think as you saw from the social media impressions we’ve already
1:24:54
had a huge impact with with very few resources so i think really in order to
1:24:59
gain us uh the end of industry respect we we deserve and a seat at the table so we can have
1:25:06
input in future policy decisions um and really hopefully halt
1:25:11
a self-fulfilling prophecy of a 42 mail decline we need to band together and and
1:25:17
we really encourage your groups to get involved with the campaign um we have a fantastic spokesperson i just i do i
1:25:24
thank kevin so much for working so hard and and like we’re we’re excited we’re excited for for what’s to come and again
1:25:32
really just please please get involved we need your support and uh thank you
1:25:37
again for this opportunity to present today
1:25:44
great thank you so much thank you to both kevin and aaron and telling us about keep us posted
1:25:50
um so it looks like we do have a few minutes um we have a lot of um
1:25:57
questions that have come in and we’re not gonna be able to get through all of them but i can say that we will
1:26:03
share the questions with the speakers after this event so they can reach out to you with more information some of them were
1:26:10
directed specifically to some of the presenters so i think what we’ll do is we’re going to take one of the questions
1:26:16
um which is kind of general and i’m going to ask each of you in turn to kind of give your um perspective
1:26:23
so a question came in that was what do you see as the biggest shifts in direct
1:26:29
mail strategy during the past two years so we’re gonna start with brent
1:26:34
um let’s see what your perspective is on this question
1:26:40
uh great question the the biggest shift in in direct mail strategy
1:26:45
um i the first thing that comes to mind is is
1:26:50
a tactic that we use with a lot of our clients who historically
1:26:56
uh many of which have used direct mail so it’s not new to them
1:27:02
maybe heavy catalogers for instance but they used it in a different way a very
1:27:07
transactional way where direct mail was treated almost as a as
1:27:12
this standalone thing off to the side separate from all digital efforts and all the other efforts that they were
1:27:20
using for marketing purposes and i think just recently
1:27:25
maybe the last five years three years two years for sure um
1:27:33
folks are using it as as a sort of a tap on the shoulder and then a driver uh direct mail
1:27:40
has become a driver to go do something else it’s connected to other digital efforts
1:27:46
we use it as drivers all the time to push people either online to find more information
1:27:53
to go watch a video to hopefully make a purchase
1:27:59
maybe go to social channels to engage in in a broader conversation but
1:28:04
there is no better thing out there other than direct mail to drive people to go take that next
1:28:11
step so to me the biggest difference is people don’t expect direct mail to
1:28:16
to necessarily do all the heavy lifting anymore um to to start the conversation
1:28:22
and end it without going somewhere else too so the shift from just just it standing by
1:28:29
itself to now becoming a mix a part of the overall mix is the biggest difference
1:28:36
great very well said mike what’s been the uh the biggest shift in direct mail strategy over the
1:28:42
past two years for you well i i just think it’s it’s so interesting how um people who are really
1:28:48
utilizing direct mail to drive new leads it’s working really well for them so i think the first thing is just i think
1:28:54
people feeling more confident to get back in the mail which is really exciting i think utilizing tools like postalytics and direct mail 2.0 are
1:29:01
awesome especially for customer transactional emails and excuse me direct mail and getting them excited and
1:29:07
re-engaged about visiting a website and i think things like the what the usps is doing with informed delivery uh
1:29:15
we had mentioned a few things about qr codes it’s not the sexiest thing in the world but they are definitely working better these days uh given you know the
1:29:23
pandemic and i think that um that qr code lends itself to 100 attribution back to that direct mail piece so um
1:29:30
really great things are coming out i think more and more things are coming uh to the innovation of direct mail and i’m
1:29:36
super excited to be helping our clients out with that kind of stuff great
1:29:41
eric yeah thanks uh these guys are touching
1:29:47
on certainly some of the big ones um again i touched on uh digital integration i think we’ve
1:29:54
seen that uh take shape in a number of ways technology is making it more uh realistic um match rates becoming a
1:30:02
little more tolerable and things like that but certainly enable it but i think the other big
1:30:07
shift that we’ve seen a lot in the last few years have been a lot of the new brands coming into mail
1:30:13
uh digitally native brands that have uh hit some ceiling of growth or anticipate one coming or have been
1:30:20
pushed to our shores from privacy changes and a shifting landscape
1:30:25
from a digital perspective that are starting to look for other ways of growth and you know in mail they find something
1:30:32
that’s familiar uh to what they’re maybe lacking in a digital context today from a targeting
1:30:38
perspective and tracking perspective so i think for us it’s been fun to see kind of an onslaught of
1:30:45
new prospects uh new mailers that are seeing the value of this channel that we’ve believed in for so
1:30:51
long perfect perfect so moving to the the um
1:30:57
kind of the tech perspective um our panelists so um dennis and brad what are
1:31:04
some of the biggest shifts that you’ve seen in direct mail over the past two years
1:31:09
i i mean i think it’s it’s a ever-changing area but i i like the fact that you can now
1:31:17
track people that have gone to a website provide an address and then follow them up via mail retargeting i think that
1:31:24
that’s a very effective way to non-creepily or without going into privacy concerns
1:31:32
mail an offer that’s relevant um that’s going to get seen i mean people have been doing that with email
1:31:38
and and retargeting for years but this is something tactical in your mailbox this is something really new that’s
1:31:44
really gaining traction and to me that’s really the future not the future but it’s it’s definitely
1:31:50
something that is new and is working we’ve seen we’ve seen actual response rates as high as 16 percent on direct
1:31:58
mail retargeting efforts which is phenomenal and justifies the investment too
1:32:07
yeah and just to back up some of the earlier comments uh you know clearly
1:32:13
uh what what we’ve seen with the tremendous growth of triggered direct mail
1:32:18
is that uh as brent said you know direct mail is is now a touch point
1:32:25
that is a critical part of multi-channel campaigns
1:32:31
and and so you know this idea that direct mail can look and act and feel
1:32:37
just like all the digital channels just like email is something that i think is really
1:32:42
starting to uh come into the consciousness of of of marketers and nonprofit marketers and
1:32:48
agencies uh and and you know they’re hitting uh as uh mike said or as eric said
1:32:55
they’re hitting some uh the digitally native brands are hitting response
1:33:01
uh plateaus and and it’s getting harder and harder for them to move the needle with just digital
1:33:07
channels and so this ability to plug direct mail into those efforts is clearly a huge trend uh and it’s why
1:33:16
you know two-thirds of post-lytics customers were not sending direct mail before they use
1:33:22
post-lytics because these brands are adding direct mail to complement the work that they’re already
1:33:28
doing great great and last but not least um
1:33:33
kevin and erin so you know over the past two years some we’ve just heard some some shifts in direct mail so how does
1:33:40
that play into keep us posted um and and that role kevin do you want to
1:33:46
take that well i just think uh with the rate increases that the postal service is planning and the reductions in
1:33:53
delivery times i think that cuts against uh the efforts to
1:33:58
make this direct mail so successful and it’s clearly effective and it clearly is
1:34:05
very useful to um you know a lot of companies on this call and we can see how you connect with a
1:34:11
lot of um a lot of your customers but there’s constantly efforts within congress to
1:34:17
look at trying to go to five days of delivery instead of six you know if you reduce the days that you deliver if you
1:34:23
reduce the um the amount of people that you’re reaching
1:34:29
and the times and frequencies that you’re reaching them and you raise the rates to a price that makes it like the
1:34:35
roi uh less effective then there are challenges and it’s going to make it difficult so i think this is
1:34:43
really demonstrates how important mail service is you know there’s a number of people when
1:34:48
we have these conversations in the halls of congress that say why do we even have a postal service anymore just let fedex
1:34:54
or ups you know deliver that stuff we don’t need mail i don’t even check it every other day right and they they
1:34:59
don’t realize that for a lot of americans it’s a lifeline and it’s being taken for granted and so
1:35:05
our job is really to you know be working every day in the background reminding members of congress how
1:35:11
important it is to many of the companies on this very call and so i think there’s a real tie in there with what you are
1:35:17
trying to do great and aaron anything else you’d like to add
1:35:22
oh i would just add yeah it’s not just all about race and how it affects our bottom line as businesses in uh in this
1:35:29
industry but it’s just the customer service piece and when you don’t have quality service and reliability and
1:35:35
delivery times i mean it it it’s a scary place to be so i think that’s why it is so important
1:35:42
that the mailing industry uh has a seat at the table and we can help direct these policies
1:35:47
and you know put our foot down what it needs to be because if you just have continuing declining service
1:35:53
it’s you’re gonna lose customers and then your rates are going to increase and they’re going to lose customers so we have to
1:35:59
you know really join together and be a stronger more powerful voice um otherwise it’s really going to be
1:36:06
damaging towards towards all of our businesses so that’s that’s why we’re really invested in this effort and uh
1:36:13
um we just we know the importance of it and we know the folks on this call know the importance of it so
1:36:18
we’re doing our best but we need your help great thank you so much
1:36:24
and to everyone um as i mentioned before we got we have dozens of questions that have come in so
1:36:30
we will be sharing those questions with speakers um but it looks we are out of time so i want to thank all of our
1:36:36
sponsors and especially our speakers and our panelists today for offering up their
1:36:43
their expertise and their time to help us offer you this educational event so on behalf of brand united and our
1:36:49
generous and supportive sponsors i want to thank you for attending today’s event um if you would just take a minute to
1:36:55
fill out the brief feedback survey that will appear on your next screen we would be grateful your feedback will influence
1:37:00
the webinars and events we bring to in the future and i hope to see you at the next brand united webinar
1:37:08
thank you
1:37:48
you
