Brad Kugler on Glovisor Podcast

Everyone talks about digital marketing,

but the real wins comes from people who

know how to supercharge direct mail with

data and technology.

Welcome to the Global Podcast, where we

explore business growth, communication,

and personal development through real

conversations with people that make an

impact. Our guest is a CEO of Direct

Mail 2.0, Who’s Mailing What, and

DM20.ai, AI, three platforms dedicated

to helping marketers and commercial

printers achieve better results from

direct mail. A lifelong entrepreneur and

innovator, he combines data, technology,

and market intelligence to help

businesses make smarter marketing

decisions, improve campaign performance,

and uncover new growth opportunities in

increasingly competitive marketplace.

Gloviser welcomes Brad Cougler. Joe,

thank you so much. It’s uh I’m happy to

be here and I couldn’t have done a

better introduction myself. That pretty

much explains it perfectly.

So, what would you like to know? Where

would you like to start? The first

question we have for you is Brad, what

do you do? Great question. So, I want to

be a disruptor for a technology or or a

marketing angle that’s been around for

decades. It’s direct mail. Part of that

comes from my story, but basically what

we do is we take direct mail and we make

it better. Now to be more succinct, we

don’t print or mail anything. We take

direct mail campaigns and we add 15

different technologies on it to improve

the lift to report real time on its

performance and as well as provide

modeling and competitive intelligence on

your campaign to help you improve it

from the get-go. We have three different

platforms that do that and we’ve been in

business since 2017

and we have improved the response rate

on over 2 billion pieces of mail and

over 80,000 different campaigns

and that’s for about 8,000 clients at

this point. What’s the difference

between the three platforms? Our

original platform is is called Direct

Mail 2.0 I know. And what that did, and

the easiest way to explain it, Joe, is

you’ve probably gotten advertising mail

that has a barcode on it or a text back

number and you’ve been able to scan that

that QR code or you text back a certain

number and then it engages with you with

a form or it it somehow continues that

engagement. We are the people behind

those type of technologies, but that’s

not where it ends. That’s where it

begins. We will track the mail just like

packages are tracked. I you you can

track an individual piece of mail when

it lands at a person’s house. And people

will say, “Well, what’s what’s the

benefit of that?” Well, if you’re a

marketer, you want to know when that

mail is arriving. You want to have your

sales team ready. You want to have your

store or your brickandmortar ready to

receive those people. You want to

anticipate that delivery so that you can

deliver to that demand. The other things

we do is most people may not have heard

of this informed delivery through the

post office where you get an email of

everything that’s going to be in your

mailbox that day. Wonderful piece of

technology that has click-through rates

of 30 or 40%. So if you’re doing direct

mail and you’re not doing this, you’re

missing out on half of the engagement.

Of course, on top of that, we are

digitally targeting the recipients of

the mail. When I say digitally

targeting, we’re delivering ads to the

devices and the household of the people

receiving the mail. So, not only are you

getting that one impression in your

mailbox, but we try to get every single

mail recipient 8 to 12 additional

impressions. And and you know what’s

what’s step one in marketing? It’s

repetition of message. So, if you’re

going to spend good money getting that

piece of mail into someone’s hands, now

we’re going to get you for a few pennies

more, 8 to 12 additional impressions.

They can be on your television through

uh cable TV advertising. They could be

on retargeting. They can be on social

media, you name it. We are going to get

that same message delivered to that

household to their devices to reinforce

the piece of mail that was invested on

heavily to get into their mailbox. We do

other things like deanonymize uh website

traffic. So if somebody goes to your

website as a result of the mail, we will

know it. We will get an address that

will resolve. We will match it back to

the mailing list so we can prove true

attribution to that mail piece. So in

essence, what we’re doing is we’re

taking the old school direct mail and by

adding 15 different technologies, we are

boosting the engagement rate of that

piece of mail by up to 50% for maybe a

10 to 15% increase in cost. So the value

prop is real simple. You’re going to

spend thousands of dollars on a direct

mail campaign. for a few hundred dollars

more. Are you willing to risk not

lifting that engagement rate or can you

spend a few extra pennies per piece and

get a 50% increase in engagement on the

mail piece? That is what we do. We show

all the results real time. We track the

leads that went to the website, people

that called, people that responded to

emails, people that sent texts. It’s all

on one dashboard for the marketer to see

how effective that campaign is in real

time. Well, before you move on, u

someone had mentioned this to me in

passing and said, “If you’re planning on

doing a onetime mailer, don’t bother

because it’s just not worth it.” What

from your perspective, what what do you

say about that? 100% true. And and and

it’s one of the hardest objections to

overcome when trying to convince someone

to do direct mail because they hear,

“Oh, I can send, you know, 100,000

emails for a couple hundred bucks or I

can do a digital campaign and target

30,000 people for, you know, $25 a day.”

But then when they hear to get 5,000

pieces of mail into someone’s mailbox,

and you know what, you need to do it

three times at the very minimum. That’s

15,000 pieces of mail. that price could

be $10,000. They almost fall out of

their chair. Okay. So, so there is a

price shock. But the way to dismantle

that objection, having been in this

industry for almost a decade, is the

engagement rate of a physical piece of

communication goes so much further than

an email that most people will never see

or delete or some banner ads or social

media ads. I mean, everybody’s scrolled

their Instagram or their Facebook or Tik

Tok in the last couple of years. Every

other

thing in your feed is an ad. It’s

becoming a a level of noise that’s hard

to get through. So, so the real proof in

the pudding is to do them in conjunction

with each other. The same message

through multiple channels will get the

lift in engagement. And yes, one time is

not enough. It it is a commitment that

has to be repeated. But you you can

almost go to any marketer and they will

agree that probably one of the most

successful things is direct mail. It’s

convincing people to spend the money.

Sure. All right. I’m dying to hear about

the other two platforms.

So the other two platforms are very

interesting. So the this was an

execution of a direct mail campaign. The

other two are in preparation for that

execution. The first one is called who’s

mailing what. That question says what it

is. If you’re going to direct mail, do

you want to know what your competitors

are mailing to the same people? I would.

What is their offer this week? What are

they offering the last few months? What

does their piece look like? We have a

database that’s been around for 40

years. I acquired this company about two

years ago. And I acquired it because I’m

trying to build the most comprehensive

database on Earth for direct mail, which

I have, and I’ll I’ll get to that in a

minute. But it’s a piece of competitive

intelligence. You can see trends by

industries. You can see when people are

mailing or not mailing for a particular

region or a particular vertical. And

this information is immediately

actionable because you’ve got Fortune

500, Fortune 100 brands in their big

banks. If it’s a financial offer or a

mortgage offer, these guys know what

they’re doing. So, if you can follow

their patterns and follow their targets

and see what they’re mailing, you can

improve your offer, you know who to

target, you know who they’re going

after, and I guarantee you if you’re a

smaller company, leverage what they’re

doing to what you’re doing, and you

should get an increase in success. So,

it’s a subscription-based

access to a database that has a we call

it who’s mailing what chat built in just

like chat GPT. And you say, uh, tell me

all the financial offers in the

Northeast for credit cards in the last

60 days. It will show you all those

offers and all the companies offering

them and how many times they’ve offered

it. You know, whatever your industry is,

whatever your target is, you just ask it

in plain language. We we retoled that

database to be as easy to use as a chat

GPT. Just ask it what you want to know.

It’s a great catalog if you want to know

what people are doing. That’s the second

one. The most recent one is I took all

of the data from the two other

platforms, all of the campaigns that

we’ve run, all the databases, and I

said, “Let’s build a modeling AI

engine.” Uh, and and I I’ll give you the

backbones of how this was done. It it

it’s people say it’s very complicated,

which it’s not easy. It’s it’s hard to

get AI right. I’m sure everybody’s

experienced AI hallucination and

responses, but we took all the campaigns

and all the data. We dumped them into

buckets by vertical, nonprofit,

financial, real estate, automotive, you

know, whatever, home services, and we’ve

taken the creative and we’ve broken down

them digitally. We digitize them. the

headline, the call to action, the logo

size, what are the images, uh how much

text to image ratio, you know, all these

things. We’ve digitized this and we’ve

put it into buckets by vertical. Okay?

As well as by the size of a mailing. And

why is that key? You know, a guy who’s

mailing a 100,000 or a million pieces

versus a guy who’s mailing 5,000 to a

small region, they don’t come into the

same buckets. you know, those are

definitely different size campaigns. So,

we’ve broken these things down into

dozens of little buckets. So, how does

this help a guy? Let’s say I’m a a

landscaper and I’m getting ready to do

my, you know, spring cleanup mailing.

Well, they upload the piece that they

want to send. They upload their

targeting, you know, the zip codes

they’re targeting, when they’re mailing,

how many they’re mailing, are they

targeting consumers or businesses, you

know, because that makes a difference.

and a few more uh kind of targeting

questions. So they upload all this, it

goes and churns against the database.

So for that vertical, for that time of

year, for that size of mailing, for that

geoloccation, we’ve created benchmarks

for all these verticals and it’s plotted

based on the creative and the targeting

and it has a benchmark that averages

them all. The guy uploads his own. It

says, “Oh, based on past history, this

is where we predict your campaign will

will register.” And we do it with

engagement rate. We can’t do ROI because

a guy selling $100,000 vehicles or $25

pizzas. How do you combine those ROIs?

You can’t really. So, we combine it in

the rate of engagement. How many people

went to the website? How many people

called the number? How many people

scanned a QR code? How many people

clicked on an email? and we rate that

engagement rate and what we expect his

will do with what he’s submitted. And

then we provide a three AI model uh

recommendation. We go out to chat GPT to

Gemini and Claude and we feed all this

data back to them and then we say how

can we do better based on all this data

and it gives him recommendations and how

he’ll do and when he should mail and

when he shouldn’t and things and that’s

what it does and we charge anywhere from

$12

to $99 for that test depending on the

subscription or no subscription. Uh

everybody gets a free trial. come in and

try it out for free and see if you like

the results. We’ve had a lot of good,

honest feedback. We update the models

every 40 days with new campaign data and

it’s it’s really a piece of Frontier

technology. Nobody has done this with

direct mail campaigns. We are the first

and we have the biggest database that

we’re running these models against. So,

I’m super excited about this technology.

It’s kind of cool to be the first guy

there and sort of figure it out. And you

know when you’re the first guy there,

you’re also figuring out the market too,

right? So you mentioned local

landscapers and then you also mentioned

national banks.

Yes.

Who is your ideal client?

Our ideal client is anybody that uses

direct mail to advertising. We have

tools to improve it. We’ve branded

oursel the performance stack for direct

mail advertising. That is our branding.

That is what we’re promoting. So, if you

do direct mail, it behooves you to at

least look at our technology stack and

see if it can improve your campaign. I

know it can, but we’ve got to prove it

first. I think when you acquire the

company, there might have been some

people who said, “Rat is crazy. He’s

going into a a prehistoric business and

he’s getting into it, not thinking of

all the visions and all the things that

you’ve layered since that takes that to

the next level.

So, how how did you deal with that? How

did you have that vision initially when

you acquired the company or is this

something that just built as you went

along?

No, no, no. I I it was well known in

advance. And if I may digress to my sort

of origin story, okay, I was in the

business of selling DVDs and CDs. I

mean, there may be some younger guys

that are like, “What are those?” You

know, I was in VHS before that. We had a

wholesale distribution company that sold

telemarketing over the phone to

Blockbuster franchises in the late 80s,

early 90s. I came right out of college

and I this is what I was doing. Family

business went really well for 10 years.

Great business. Built it to 25 million.

We had 50 60 employees. We had 100,000

square feet under roof and a warehouse.

But we knew even even in the late 90s

that technology was coming that was

going to disrupt this, mainly the

internet. So, we went heavy into

e-commerce. Business continued to to go

up for years.

Probably around 2010, 2012, the writing

was on the wall. Netflix, Apple,

Amazon were all beginning to sell

subscriptions of package media. They

were competing with me. The the digital

streaming was beginning to get tested in

certain markets. I was like, “Uh-oh,

this is for real now. I’m gonna get

disrupted out of this this universe. And

I’ll be honest with you, I I dropped out

of college. I never finished my degree.

And here I am coming up on 50 years old.

I got two kids in college. And I’m like,

I I’m going to be out of job. This is

this is happening. You know, I we were

losing revenue at 30% a year. Margins

were shrinking by 30% a year. I went

from 25 million back to 3 million in

three years.

lay layoffs of 10 or 12 at a time every

quarter. It was painful. Real estate

that we owned to house all of this

inventory that was evaporating into its

value. Margin calls by banks. It was it

was it was the most stressful time of my

life and

it was coming fast. And the light at the

end of the tunnel was no light at the

end. It was the oncoming train. I was

able to to maneuver through that complex

minefield.

Um, you know, we had a $3 million line

of credit with with Meil Lynch to fund

inventory and they they called it with

at 60 days notice. We need this paid

off. I I can I can tell you I I aged and

didn’t sleep well for many months during

that time. I was able to secure another

SBA loan to sort of take that out, but

we were any penny of profit was going to

pay down the line. And I said, I I need

to figure out what’s next. No college

education. I started I I I went

literally I went online and I started

reading all the MBA books that they were

reading in in business administration

post-graduate classes. I joined every

tech group and I said, “Here’s what I

know. Whatever I do next, it’s not going

to be dis heading for disruption. I am

going to be the disruptor. Okay. So, my

mindset changed and I learned a lot. I

learned a lot more on the way down than

I did on the way up. I had a product

everybody wanted in the 90s and early

2000s. And by the 2010s, I had a product

nobody wanted. Okay? We tried to get

into streaming. We almost had a deal

with Hulu to resell streaming uh content

to the education market.

It died in the lawyers offices to

everything. The the rights the legal

problem was millions of dollars and and

the money wouldn’t outweigh it, you

know, so the market was too small.

Anyways, this opportunity presented

itself. Hey, we have this technology to

keep direct mail alive, you know, and

we’re doing all these things and and I

immediately started turnurning, you

know, we’ve got all these technologies

we can add to it. So every every quarter

we’d add a new technology. There were

three when I started. I spun this

business off of another business. I was

recruited to do this by a a long-term

friend of mine.

Joy Jandooa, who runs Postcard Mania,

was a print marketing company, and she

said, “Let’s spin this technology off

into its own business. I said, I like

this.” changed the model to recurring

revenue model and a subscription model

and started adding different

technologies and went from two or three

technologies to 15. And then I started

looking at the data we’re acquiring and

I’m like there’s value here and then the

AI revolution hit and I said ah let me

acquire the biggest database of direct

mail that I can because others didn’t

see the value I did. And so I’ve been

kind of on this strategy now for two

years and it’s getting some traction.

Direct mail is a difficult market, but I

believe I am the only guy positioned to

make a play at this with these platforms

I have. So that’s the story. I am a

disruptor rather than a disrupt. I’m

ahead of the market curve. I am building

everything in AI based products and I’m

monetizing the data we’ve gathered over

years that is I mean down to the

household level I know what people are

buying and they’re reacting to. This is

a valuable database. So that’s that’s my

story and uh gets me excited to talk

about it. Keeps me coming to the office

every day. Love it. Uh well, correct me

if I’m wrong, but I’m starting to see a

shift again towards direct mail because

most businesses are realizing that their

emails are not getting open. No one’s

reading them and direct mail might be

the the future, which used to be the

past. So, I think that even though

someone would have thought that you were

going to a prehistorical business, here

you are going into the future. Am I

right? I believe so. I mean there is

there is quantitative data that direct

mail is increasing but it’s single

digits increasing. So you’re still

losing some but the but the the

millennials and Gen Z

are getting a bit of digital fatigue

that is known. So putting something

tactile into their hands and especially

if you’re combining it with the digital

that they’re familiar with,

I believe that there’s a future. And now

you add AI into a component that will

help them better target and create

better creative that converts. Now

you’re really talking about a value

system when you’re combining an old

school technology with new technology.

And and and that’s what I’m staying on

the cutting edge for. I’ve taken seven,

eight years to really immerse myself in

this business. I’ve always been a

technofile and I love learning new

technology and will continue to do as

long as I can. I’m coming up on 60 years

old. I’ll be honest and uh most of the

people believe that this techno stuff,

this technology is for the younger

people and and I’m determined to prove

them wrong.

I’m with you on that one.

Uh would you be able to share with us a

client success story?

Yeah, you know, we we’ve done so many

campaigns.

We’re seeing lifts where people were

doing the direct mail campaign. They

tried it once or twice and they’ve added

on our product and they’ve and I’m

talking for them. I think there was a it

was an educational and I don’t remember

the name of the college but there you

know colleges make their money on on

recruiting new students and it’s it’s

the case studies are on our website

dm2o.com

and there’s dozens of them but this is a

college that added our product and is

still with us today and they use it

every every summer season or fall or

whenever they attract their their new

applicants but they doubled their

admissions uh or not their admissions

but their um application

from this, you know, and they get 50 $75

an application. So, if you went from 2

or 3,000 to four or 5,000,

that’s a that’s a huge revenue jump, you

know, and uh so there there’s there’s so

many of those. I would I for specifics,

I’d have to direct you to to the

website. There’s case studies and

testimonials. And basically what we’ve

done also is is a lot of the

brick-and-mortar printers, and these I

can tell you another one specifically,

they were a very small mom and pop

letter shop doing about $2 million.

They licensed our platform for resale.

This is this is a white labelled

product. So it’s not always sold under

our moniker.

And over two years, they increased their

revenue from $2 million to $5 million.

Now, I’m not going to say it’s all this

product, but this was an add-on. So,

they were selling their their ink on

paper and their their logistics. Now,

they’re adding a marketing action to it,

too. So, we we basically sell this at a

wholesale cost and they market up to

their customers. Um, some of the

customers do it as a differentiator and

they pass it on for free. Some of them

it’s a it’s a big profit center for

them, you know. Um, so there’s dozens of

stories of printers who have sort of

revitalized their direct mail business

by reselling this platform, which is,

you know, out of the box, ready to roll.

Thank you for explaining the pricing

process. Well, can you get us on the

same page? How does the white labeling

model work?

Absolutely. So, let’s say you’ve got a

printing company in St. Louis. They do

direct mail for clients. They maybe

brought this client through an marketing

agency or they may have them directly.

So they will license our platform.

It integrates with their print

management system where they can enter

the information in the dashboard. So

they pay us a licensing fee or a right

to come to the party. They get the D,

they get the entire platform. They then

resell it. So, example, if we sell it

for

$2,500 a year for the license, and then

maybe we sell it for six or seven or

eight cents per mail piece. Okay? So,

they pay their $2,500 license fee and

they’re doing a mailing for someone for

5,000 pieces. We charge them $450.

Usually, they’ll mark it up double, $8,

$900.

So now if that person’s mailing every

week or every month, it’s a recurring

revenue stream for them. So they’re

getting $1,000 per client with a $500 a

month markup for 10 clients. The money

adds up pretty quick. It allows that

printer to compete with a digital agency

because we’ll deliver the digital

products, the tracking products, the

monitoring products, and they retain a

customer and not lose that revenue to an

agency because it allows these

businesses to grow into another market

and as you said to preserve that

relationship with the client and without

having to hire more people, go through

the whole learning process and in

essence send everything to you

and one better because you know part of

that licensing fee what that does is it

buys you

we’re not essentially on your staff as a

full-time salesperson but if they have

somebody interested

one of our marketing and sales

consultants will pitch that product as

if they are their sales engineer. So

they get the person on a webinar, our

our expert sales team who can do this

the digit speak as you may say and

explain the platform and the benefits.

Whereas remember these guys are legacy

guys. They’re selling ink on paper.

Being able to sell a 15 feature digital

campaign that may be a learning curve

for them. We will pitch it for them. So

they get them on the phone. one of my

team members will pitch it with complete

confidence and certainty so they’re not

fumbling around with it and that’s done

as part of the licensing. If listeners

remember only one thing from today’s

conversation, what do you hope that

message is?

Well, I I’m going to speak personally

rather than try to plug my business.

Everyone goes through ups and downs in

their entrepreneurial career. Everyone

faces barriers and really when you’re

faced with a barrier, you want to keep

thinking. You know, very often when

things look bleak, you tend to run away

or or pull back. And I was faced with

that moment. I could have been like

everybody else that was in the DVD

industry and now they’re they’re either

working at a Starbucks or they’re

working somewhere else. I wanted to stay

on entrepreneur. I took what I learned

from that business and applied it to

things to do in my next entrepreneurial

iteration.

And it’s really about persistence, okay?

And driving that ball forward, even if

it’s only one inch a day. Move that ball

down the field towards that goal post.

You don’t have to hit a home run or to

run for a touchdown every time you touch

the ball. Just keep moving that ball

down the field. small increments at a

time equal big changes over a longer

period of time. And that’s kind of what

I’ve learned for that and and I I like

to share that story and hopefully

inspire others when things are tough.

Very inspirational. Uh Brad, where can

our audience connect with you, learn

more about your work, and continue this

conversation?

I think the easiest place is just go to

dm20.com.

All right. You can you can Google my

name. uh find me on LinkedIn.

Above all, I I think a person is only as

valuable as he can help others. You

know, it’s great that I’ve had some

entrepreneurial success and I’ve had

some trials and tribulations, but in my

heart, helping other entrepreneurs or or

or talking tech speak and helping give

them ideas and motivation at this point

in my career, that’s more my passion.

And trust me, I I am not one who has

made a bundle of money where I can just

sit home. I still have to go to work

every day and pay my mortgage like

everybody else, but I’ve evolved to a

point where I like to share what I’ve

learned.

Thank you so much for joining us today

and and sharing your insights and your

personal story. It’s so inspirational.

Thank you, Joe, for having me and happy

to come back and share more, answer any

questions, anybody in the audience.

Thank you. Thanks everyone for

listening. If this episode inspired you,

share it with someone who needs it. And

don’t forget to follow the Globeizer

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conversations to make an impact. Till

the next time.