Demystifying Direct Mail Attribution: Track & Report Results, for Real!

welcome everybody to our webinar my name is Morgan DiGiorgio I am the senior vice president sales and marketing for

Direct Mail 2.0 and whose mailing what and collectively our sole purpose is to

make Direct Mail the most effective form of marketing by integrating it with cutting edge technology to add value for

printers mailers and Direct Mail marketers now some of our Technologies are centered around tracking and attribution hence our webinar topic

today and in the current marketing environment it is more important than ever that we be able to prove and show

marketers direct mail’s driving results and give them insights into that data for so many reasons the most predominant

in my opinion is that costs continue to go up for this channel due to the postage increases and a lot of other

factors so we know meal works but we need to ensure that our clients and

marketers know it works so that they will continue to invest in the channel and be able to take advantage of the

powerful impact driven by mail right so so I’m joined today by our co-founder

and CEO Brad Kugler uh also two other panelists who I’m going to give an opportunity to introduce himself so

firstly John Miglautsch of Miglautsch Marketing, John tell us a little bit about yourself and your

organization well I got my start in direct marketing with uh with Vic hunter

in business to business in 1981 so I’ve got about 43 years or some crazy number

uh in uh in this field I’m passionate about it um I don’t think there’s any

anything else that’s as effective as male and I think most people don’t even realize the power of it even the people

who mail uh even the people who model they don’t understand the really unique

features of male and uh so that’s why you know if you if you haven’t heard of

me I have about 2,000 videos on YouTube exto in direct mail uh I’m the president

of the Wisconsin direct marketing Association and I’m so excited to talk about testing today and how that can how

that can pay off for you and your company it’s he has a ton of content out there he is an evangelist for Direct

Mail attribution and testing so if you haven’t seen his content like he said over 2000 videos a lot of really good

stuff there so John thank you very much for joining us today and I’m not affiliated with Direct Mail 2.0 any way

except that they sent me a hat and I think it’s cool and I got a mug and if they sent me we got what I put that on

my head too of course I we appreciate it we do people have said we’re good at marketing so you know

obviously we’re we’re wearing the colors here uh our other panelist today is Guy

Fashano he’s a sales manager for mailing Systems Inc guy tell us a little bit about yourself and MSI

well thank you Morin thank you Brad for the opportunity to connect here and John great to meet you I I have to say I did

watch a couple of your videos today but not all 2000 um I got some I got some work to do there um and obviously I

didn’t get the memo about the Hat I mean I got to get my hat I think I have one of those from the many conferences I’ve

been to but uh um more to come um Mele Systems Inc uh you know we’ve been

around for 30 plus years I’ve been a sales manager here for approxim imely

five years and um we are a partner of DM 2.0 um we love the product we love the

opportunity to be able to really really make mail more effective for our clients um a little bit about mailing Systems

Inc we’re part of the Delta print Group which is a group of companies um there’s

approxim I think there’s eight of us now that cover the span of all things print

and mail so we have any and everything that you can think related to printing

presses and Morgan’s been through our it’s true our our uh facilities we have

two of them they’re about 100,000 square feet each um recently we added an HP

t250 um inkjet web press which is just an amazing piece of equipment for Direct

Mail because everything you do on there is 100% digital and 100% variable so um

Morgan knows I’m passionate about you know Direct Mail attribution and I’m

always say in all my sales meeting our goal is our for our sales team is to make mail more meaningful and more

valuable get a high Roi for our clients so we can show them the best results and

I’ve been working towards that and um been doing a lot with that in in our world and I have some cool things i’

I’ve been working on and I’m in the process of uh going to be implementing here probably in the next 30 days at

looking forward to sharing a little bit more about that here yeah I mean I’m excited about that too guy has a very

high mail IQ and especially when it comes to direct mail attribution I myself personally have been very

impressed with some of the reports that you’ve put together for your clients that you’ve been so willing to share

with me lot of really great data in there it gets into all the details and he ensures that his customers know that

mail is working but more importantly what mail has done for his clients companies and what kind of Revenue that

it’s driven for them so it’s so important right if we want them to continue to invest in that channel so AB

thank you so much uh to our panelists uh I’m going to be presenting some questions to our panelists if anybody

has any questions throughout this webinar just go ahead and pop them into the chat uh if we get an opportunity

we’ll we’ll try to get to those during a webinar but if not definitely after we’ve had an opportunity to get through

these these questions so we’ve come a very long way in terms of direct mail

attribution from the spray and PR method so my first question that I’m going to

start off and pose to John is 20 years ago how did mailers marketers track or

even know if a director mail campaign was effective and do those measurements still matter today if there were any

measurements at that time well I started in the days of key

codes right and so we would put a little code on each address and that would

usually tell us which mailing list it was from and uh often times we had an

order form or some other thing that you returned in the mail to order whatever you were going to order so we could look

up the tracking code um if we forgot to put the tracking code on you know you

could take a stack of mail and you could take a really juicy magic marker and go down the side with like

purple and that would be that list and then you’d have a red marker for the next list there was a lot of ways we

used to drill press sometimes you know you get a template and you drill here for this list and here for that list and

here for that list wow there were all kinds of ways to do it if you didn’t know what you were doing or you forgot

you know you could also erase on the plate you know so you’d have numbers one to 10 and you’d go erase the nine and

then the last number would be an eight and then you’d erase the eight and you go work your way back but basically it

was tactile you know and uh I had clients that would actually change the

part numbers every mailing so they could fully attribute each item to which

mailing it was from I thought it was a little idiotic which of course let me ask told

that what that’s if you brought the coupon or the order form was returned to the source or The Advertiser what about

when it was a brick and mor or something such as that that someone didn’t bring the piece of mail in how did you track

attribut you were out of almost out of luck and mostly and Callins you know all

of a sudden then we had a big debate should we do Watts numbers which is wide area telephone service anyway uh and you

know there was big debate quill didn’t do it for years and years uh and Jack and I were became friends but um you

know you would you would say you would say okay what’s that number on the label

right uh and or it was on the part number you didn’t have to because they’d give you the part number over the phone

or mailed back in and you were good to go and but you know the problem is is

that uh you know they would we still had problems in attribution because you know

you know people got we we we advocated an integrated marketing we called it

with field sales phone in and outbound phone and uh and mail and so you know

those people with the part number I would say okay so now you mailed Acme chemical 10 times you called

on them twice with your field sales you called them 10 times on your outbound telemarketing and you got an order and

you can track it exactly to that mailing and you’re G to give

100% you’re gonna give 100% of the credit to that mailing piece I said

that’s insane you know that doesn’t even make any sense uh and so even when we

had hard numbers it isn’t quite as black and white as people wanted to make it

sound but that was the kind of thing we did be you know before the internet I suppose you’d say now almost no one you

know no one really does that anymore we all use pretty much matchback technology right no of course anything that you

want to add to that Brad uh I wasn’t doing mail back in the

80s I do remember getting order forms and filling them out as a kid and waiting for my sea monkeys to come in

the mail I mean that was a lot of fun um but I I can’t really comment other than

I don’t know how was track people would judge sales a lift in sales that’s date sort of correlated to when the mailing

went out that I remember right or hey is your phone ringing you know are you getting are you getting more phone calls

great it’s working you know there there really wasn’t a lot

above and beyond what John was talking about and honestly I mean I wasn’t even knowledgeable about any of that stuff I

mean it sounds like some real Fred Flintstone you’re younger than we are what about you any comment you know

the only thing I would say that it as far as mail and attribution has come we still do see some I would say old

tactics out there meaning you know some people are are using coupon codes you

know specific to a mailing they’re using uh specific phone numbers that are only

to that specific mailing which are you know they’re good but they’re still flaw right I mean so we still and I you know

someone said earlier you know spray and prey you know and that’s a term we still use today we we try and you know help

our customers not to do that to have some methodologies built in so they’re not in that position right yeah I mean

with a lot of track attribution we’ve come such a long way but unfortunately there are always going to be some holes

still right you use a call tracking number if the same number isn’t on the website someone goes to the website they

pick up the phone they call that number I mean there are always going to be holes but we’ve definitely come Leaps

and Bounds um in terms of tracking and showing direct Mal attribution so we’re going to talk a little bit more about

what some of those things are today uh which comes to my next question you know

and I’m just wondering I mean even though we have come Leaps and Bounds I don’t know that all marketers are

knowledgeable about these these methods or printers or male service providers or if they’re utilizing them so um I’ll

pose a second question to you Brad do you think that marketers are effectively

tracking Direct Mail attribution in today’s time and space why or why not uh some are some aren’t as as we

know that there are marketers that are much more sophisticated than others and

I think for two reasons one there’s probably not a general knowledge of the ability or methodology to accurately

track Direct Mail attribution as the primary uh the secondary is you still

got a lot of General marketers who have grown up with the pointand click

attribution models that are built into to the services out there so they they

that’s what they know people do what they know and some people are not aware of the benefits of mail such as no

privacy restriction no spamming restrictions there there’s you know yes it’s more expensive but now

you can take that attribution model that’s pretty Rock Solid from digital

world and move it over into mail with QR codes and text backs and matchback and

and and it’s really not a problem anymore right but it’s a matter of getting people to realize that this

technology exists that the cost is justifiable and again I if I’m a pizza

place and I’m selling $15 pizzas I don’t know that a direct mail campaign with all sorts of attribution is necessarily

the right return on ad spend for them it it might not be you’re going to spend a dollar dollar and a half a Target to

sell a $15 Pizza that might not be there but you know if you’re selling a a Landscaping service that’s going to cost

you $1,500 $22,000 a year or a house or a car and you’ve got a five figure Roi

justifies the spend so again you’re talking to a market segment that a is

uneducated and be unwilling and that is probably the barrier on why it hasn’t

been used more in my uneducated opinion well I think it’s a very educated opinion but you know I I like

what you were talking about a pizza place but I would always have to encourage a customer to look at the lifetime value of the direct mail

campaign because I might send out direct mail piece and I get one pizza but you know what if they order a pizza once a

week because they eat pizza every Friday and they do that for the next year now I’ve really got Roi on my direct mail

campaign I wish I could eat pizza once a week I wish I could too you know but I

can’t but but some people do it’s true if you’re in college you

might be every day yeah but they don’t need again look at a college town you walk by it it’s next to the the the uh

bar you’re going to every day do you need to send direct mail you know you can hire a college student I guess put

it under the door for a 100 bucks he’ll put 500 postcards under a door why pay the USPS there there are barriers that

need to be overcome before you even get to the attribution conversation with

mail so that that’s my point you know sure but I want them to order from Joe’s Pizza and not Domino’s you know so

that’s why I need to mail to them and Brad I think you bring up a great point and I think Morgan you

mentioned it is educating the customers right so they really really have an

understanding of what you know we’re talking about you talk about you know what’s the lifetime value of that customer a lot of lot of customers don’t

even know that they’ve never even heard that term or the term you know cost to

acquire a customer sure what would you be willing to invest to bring in a new customer and then if you know the the

cost to acquire them and the longterm value then you can really say yeah would I spend five or1 to get that client and

Brad to your point I mean you have customers I did a campaign for a um and I had to talk the guy into I happen to

know him he’s a landscape guy I said hey you should be selling some you know mailing out some postcards and then he

gave me his numbers and I matched them back and I said well what’s your average sale he goes ah we’re somewhere between

45 and $50,000 per sale I was like wow are you kidding me and I said well how

did you I said I show the numbers I said I show that you got five customers off of this he goes well three of them were

bids and we did close $95,000 off of that postcard I’m like he’s like what do

you think and I go what do I think I said keep mailing man there’s no question what you think I mean you paid

$5,000 for this mail and you sold $95,000 and I go I guarantee there’s

more and he goes why do you say that I said because it’s not 100% we’re going off of spreadsheets and guesses I mean

so but educating them and letting them know that what is your true lifetime

value your customer is that guy gonna come back maybe but what did it cost you

acquire I mean it was you know nothing to what you got in net return from that guy so I think education is where I

always start when I’m talking to someone so I can kind of get a baseline of what they understand about marketing what

they understand about direct mail and then trying to let them know you know we’re here to help them win and some of

that takes some education absolutely yeah I mean cost per lead customer

acquisition cost lifetime customer value if you’re running a business and you don’t know those metrics how do you

measure the effectiveness of marketing it’s almost impossible right it’s almost impossible so and I just wanted to make

mention um please ask questions you know I I I’ve seen uh John’s uh Consulting

invoices and I’m telling you he’s here for for the next 45 minutes ask those

questions all right oh my gosh bra um all right well

so we’ve talked about you know different ways that we can track or show Roi or

attribution for male so this of course is in your own opinion right to each of

our panelists and I’ll start with you guy what do you think is the best way to

track mail Roi or attribution uh that’s a great question and I think

there’s many people have many opinions and for us what we do is we focus on not

necessarily attribution but closed sales and we really try and get our customers to have that mindset of you know we we

don’t want to talk about how many people clicked on an ad or how many people called we want to talk about net dollars

that came into your door um so we so we get them into that and you know a lot of

times we’re talking to them and they’re talking um about digital because they feel like they really know their digital

spend and they know how much their cost per cck click is on a Google ad or LSA

ad but it’s hard for them to understand what it costs for us to drive a sale to

them and then again on the education really giving them the information and painting the picture that we know that

mail drives all those other avenues for marketing whether it be TV radio uh uh

Google web visits um Facebook you know clicks we know that mail is a part of

that and I think that’s one of the great things about the DM 2.0 tool is I can

tell them specifically the mail was dropped on this date you received an informed delivery ad and you had this

many clicks so having that tool in there to show them that but for us what we like to do is get the customers sales

data and do a true matchback report so traditionally we have a program that we

developed that we coined it’s a prism report and and we push it against there

and in in essence it’s a it’s an access database that we built had custom built

for ourselves and then we push data into that to to get matchback and show the

the results of those sales so from that we’re able to show you know Roi return on ad spend a lot of different things um

some of our customers who live in the uh what we call the Home Service space so you’re talking hbac roofers electricians

plumbers um they have two I would say two Avenues of sales one where they’re

going to go and they’ll do what we call an installation could be a big sale for a complete program or they’re going to

go do make a service call that’s you know maybe a couple hundred bucks and they’re going to try and get them to

join what they call their MVP or maintenance Club um so they can continue

to go back to them so we always try and measure and show them how many members they

received into their MVP Club because there’s a lifetime value of those because they know every year they’re

gonna come into their home and they’re going to give them a tuneup if you will or give some some type of Maintenance so

we try and show them hey yeah you did pay let’s just say $150 to get that

customer but we know the average customer spends $800 a year and then in

a 10year span they’re going to spend at least $10,000 so yeah you did get that

one-time cost to go in there but overall it’s going to be a win in the long run

we are currently working on a beta test where we’re going to be integrating with a software program the biggest one in

the uh in the Home Services Network it’s a company called service Titan where

we’re going to be integrating into their system so um every 24 hours um we’re

going to be able to see true distribution of closed sales and bids um

that have gone out that attributed to the campaign that we mailed so we’re we’re very excited about that because we

feel there’ll be a lot of um ways that we can utilize that to make mail more

meaningful doing testing um AB testing against zip codes and offers and we’ll

be able to see them in real time as opposed to when we’re doing our matchback report we’re kind of looking

in the rearview mirror a little bit right because that’s data that’s closed data that’s um taking some time for the

customer to get to us the the new program that we working for is going to be live it’s going to be every day we’re

going to be able to see that attribution so um that’s really where we’re wanting to go is to get more into that daily uh

close sale and we can show where they’re living and and what they’re getting from their mail that’s incredible I mean that

sounds absolutely incredible and um just one second John I just want to make one comment you know I think it’s so

important obviously of course as a business owner I know Brad you know uh relies very heavily on this and wants to

see the ROI right when we’re making an investment but it’s so imperative that we’re tracking both the attribution and

the ROI because you know sometimes maybe the ROI may not be there but that doesn’t mean that it was a failed

campaign right we need to see was their attribution maybe we need to nurture those prospects a little further dive

into the data a little bit more to see why we didn’t get that Roi and what we can do going forward to get there right

so I think tracking both is so important it sound sounds like you’ve really honed in on a very valuable tool that you

built internally to help do that so and one other thing and you make a great point about the attribution of a of a

sale and a lead um I think the one thing that we really we I think we believe it

as mailers but we need to prove it is a direct mail lead is of higher value than

a an internet lead and because we know we’re targeting the person that we want

to talk to the homeowner owner how much you know where they live what ZIP code they live in as opposed to a tire kicker

coming in off the internet right so we know our sales are going to close at a higher rate and they’re going to be a

higher dollar volume for that it’s we know that instinctively but we don’t NE

I don’t necessarily have the data always to prove it out and the other thing is to show them yes they did come in from a

Google click but I did put a piece of mail in their mailbox on this time being able to have that is going to be truly

valuable because we don’t disagree yeah they did come in from Google but I drove them there so having some of that

information is going to be uh truly valuable absolutely now John you wanted to add to that too well I just want to

take it up to M maybe simplify it and also take it up a little bit because

what we’re really after and I think this gets lost especially in this whole Omni Channel World what we’re really after is

what is what has the causal for to drive

customers to bring in customers that buy something what what causes it and we

we’re in this cloud of clicks and uh you

know and you can do it with mail as Brad said you can put a QR code on now we can get a click from that or you can get a

call you can track the call back to the original mailing list that she rented

with with phone numbers on it there’s a lot of things you can do to get those little activities and Direct Mail 2.0

one of the one of the reasons I I’ve wanted to work close closely with you guys is you have a lot of those tools

that can give you that that immediate feedback but that whole Endeavor you know is

partly based on this lie that says that if we get if we knew the customer was in

the marketplace you know if we knew their check engine light just went on we

could put a car ad in on their dashboard immediately and we’d get them to buy a

car from us which is insanely stupid you know I’ve always said I’d love to sit

that sounds like a good idea oh yeah it’s a great idea for service I don’t know about buying a car I gotta check

engine I’m not get rid of my car yeah well we have to in where I live the federal government makes us do it pretty

much so the but the problem is is that you know I don’t know what I’m going to

want next right and so I don’t know I didn’t know I was going to be in the market for a

car and now I am you know life is you just don’t know what’s going to happen next the fundamentals of

advertising for the last 150 years if you read uh scientific advertising with

Claude Hopkins for example it’s about getting in the customer’s head so that when the check engine light comes on you

don’t have to compete with everybody else so what fair fair what we’re

looking for is we’re looking for well what gives us that causal Force

and and and how do we get more budget for mail those two things are connected because the problem is with mail a lot

of times you know they won’t click the right QR code or they won’t do the thing the way we expect them to do and so they

go to Google and now Google gets credit because they you know they they saw the

mailing piece Boon a boon a boon and now or maybe they even went to the client’s

web site two weeks ago you know but they didn’t buy but we mailed them and then

they went oh yeah I’ve been meaning to you know get that Landscaping done uh and Y and so the the key to uncover that

causal force is to set up experimentation that’s how the scientific method works right the

scientific method work says okay well we’ve got all these causes that could be happening in the world but we’re going

to try and you know play the two teams on the same field on the same day and we

can see which one’s better right not you know hypothetically can the the 85 Bears

beat the 67 Packers you can do that kind of stuff all day long that’s kind of the

Way digital works because in digital we re we don’t really know who’s seeing our

ads or if they’re paying attention it’s like TV commercials you know you kind of

know who the demographic is but you don’t know if they got the TV on or now even with with cable you know with with

Internet TV you can kind of know but you still don’t know if I’m getting a sandwich right I’m walking

away and even if I’m sitting there you don’t know if I’m pay attention because now most of us you know I’m watching a

YouTube channel with the sound off on my TV I I he I hear that the Millennials do

that but I’ve been doing it for a long time you know I watch the Youtube and then if somebody hits a home run I turn

the sound back on so you don’t know what I’m paying attention to in in MA mass

media and in Internet media and one of the virtues of digital advertising is it

throws itself away right so you don’t know the engagement level no matter what

no matter even if you know who’s it’s in front of whereas male doesn’t throw itself away we know it got mailed we

know it got delivered we know it went to a decision maker because you know we didn’t let our kids throw the mail away

we know that there’s an interaction and a decision is forced there is a decision

there has to be a decision because you have to decide to keep it or throw it

away you have to on every piece of man right now you may make that decision

very fast but over time it’s still more engagement than you’ll get from you know

a banner ad on the side of the screen or an email where I just delete 50 at a time every day too hours I delete 50 at

a time so mail has some virtue that the others don’t have you say well yeah but

I’m committed to Google you know I’m spend I I talked to a client not too long ago or a potential client they were

spending $600,000 on Google a month and they said they didn’t have any budget

for me and I said here I’ll tell you what the most fundamental test that we

can run that doesn’t take a lot of attribution is a holdout test

right so Uber all of a sudden by accident stopped their digital advertising for a week

they didn’t mean to but they did and guess what what everything stayed the

same nothing that’s what I was nothing happened okay so if you’re in this boat

where you don’t really know how much causal force your digital has turn it

off for a week week and take that money okay $600,000 so you got $150,000 now a month to try ma right now

and here’s the key don’t mail everybody right especially start with your customers mail them because we know

who got mailed we know they have to make a decision so now what you can do is you can compare by not mailing everybody

mail 90% of them or 85 or you know or talk to a direct mail expert and they can tell you what would be sign

statistically significant but mail most but don’t mail all and then compare over

time and see what the value of the customers you mailed versus the

customers you didn’t mail is and that actually is attributable eida if you’re

a CFO if anybody’s on here who knows anything about accounting that you can get an ibaa differential because what

we’re really looking for is the causal differential between channels and we can do that with mail and once

you have that so we worked with a retailer that was a national retailer and they were doing a a little catalog

they were it was doing terrible so they hired us and then they decided they

probably should cancel it say call me up the BPA Market thing he said you know we’re thinking we don’t just want to do the catalog we don’t know if it’s it’s

valuable people don’t know our name we’d rather take our money and put it into

TV but you know I said well would you like to know if the catalog is working and he said H how could you do that and

I said oh that’s easy you know you’re mailing about 150,000 a month we’ll just

not mail some of them and then we’ll compare okay we’ll

compare what they do the next month or two and we found right off the bat

300% eida and I mean we took out the cost of overhead we took out the cost of

the mail we took out the cost of goods right so we’re down to a real profitability we had a 300% return on

investment and then when we were looking at our matchback data we we we saw that

there was a lot of next door neighbors ordering this was a furniture company so the lifetime value is tough because they

advertised this is a kind of furniture you won’t ever have to replace you know you can get new covers for it you can make it always look new so you get a

$10,000 order but then you may not get one ever but what we found was for every

one customer that was reordering we we found there were two new customers and

the ROI EA Roi for this retailer was

900% return on investment it’s incredible right now I’m just starting to work with a company that’s committed

to mail and they’re you know we can’t the tracking is just not working okay so

they asked me well can you figure out if the mail’s working well fortunately because of budget issues and other

things we mailed for about a month then we stopped for and all I did was line up the number

of inbound calls just simple stuff no no real attribution because they they

botched that all up and what we saw was the number of calls going up and then

number of calls dropping off and then we started mail it again and they went up again yep and that is the kind of causal

Force the incremental difference all the social media kept going all the websites

kept going all the public relations kept going all the field sales kept going the only thing that changed was the mail and

that gives you some real Foundation sure and then at that retailer we started

testing the offers and testing the acquisition and testing all the other stuff and all of a sudden we had all the

budget we needed we they they wanted to give us all kinds of money because they’re still mailing today because we

showed them the the incremental lift that mail

had independent of all the rest of the stuff that went on yeah it’s incredible

and you know I I like one of the points that you made um a little early on when you were starting to talk about this and

how male can play a significant role in a branding campaign because customers

currently are so costc conscious because of all the postage increases and because the channel has increased as a whole but

listen advertising as a whole has increased and we’re getting diminish it’s not just Direct Mail you know

digital marketing is going up and the responses and results that we’re getting from digital mail across the board is

lower but so the costs are going up but they’re so cost conscious and they’re looking more into these micro mailings

and these targeted mailings and and and they’re so hyperfocused on cost but there’s such a use case there for

utilizing mail for Branding purposes because it is such a powerful channel right so I I really like the point that

you made there John um and and the AB testing is is so crucial and I know that

that’s a soap box that you get on rather frequently but it is it’s so important

well if you can know something for sure then you can roll out that offer or

that pitch or that brand positioning you know all that strategic stuff falls into

place if you know something for sure and that’s mail not only gives you the

buyers but it also gives you engaged people that didn’t buy and no other

medium gives you that and that enables the modeling you know later on you’ve

got a question we have the questions here sure just like just like at the presidential debate and it gives you

both sides you you know where the F hydrant is and you know where the fire hydrant isn’t with mail with other media

you don’t know that because you don’t know who’s paying attention mail you know there was a decision yeah

absolutely and a no and that’s crucial to making AI work uh in terms of

customer segmentation now we’ve got a ton of questions in the chat here that I will

get to at the end there’s just one more question that I want to pose to our panel uh and then we’ll probably just

have some time to get into those questions here but just because it’s one of the hottest topics that everybody’s

talking about in every single possible industry um and I’ll I’ll start with you Brad but what ways do you see AI or

machine learning changing the landscape on Direct male attribution well this is kind of my my

full-time job lately um you know not to be cliche or trite and AI is changing

everything but you know what if it hasn’t yet it will I think I think and

I’ve said this before the way that the world changed in the late 1990s early

2000s I see us going through another Evolution as Bigg or bigger than that

now and we’re at the we’re we’re back to 1999 where everybody’s using the term

internet and it’s the next thing well and now they’re doing the same with AI and there’s going to be a ShakeOut and

this technology will proliferate to a degree that it will touch every aspect

of marketing the decisions that one used to have hunches about or a feeling or a

gut feeling will be relied on Big Data algorithms produce an outcome based on

past results so the amount of data out there in terms of what has been

accomplished with mailing campaigns or any type of campaign to any type of Target you’re now able to Hash that data

together and predict future results based on past results so I I’m not going

to say that it will Rel replace testing but you’ll be able to sharpen your pencil to a degree that you will get

very close to the result that you think you’re going to get based on the data that has occurred before and I think

this is going to Short Circuit or help people direct themselves to a more

focused and efficient marketing um we’re building a platform for this

we’re taking our our millions of pieces of mail campaigns including every single

piece of creative and we’re we’re tagging and annotating every single one of them and correlating them to a

results database and again uh we’re we’re in the proof of concept stage with

two different companies and I’m hoping there’s a tangible result imagine you had a piece of mail or or a piece of

creative you feed it in with your ZIP code list your your time of mailing you know the date you intend to mail and the

uh vertical you intend to mail too you know what is it is it real estate real uh automotive and it will spit back your

intended mail and it should tell you your expected result based on this past history so the data is there it’s just a

matter of building the predictive models that are accurate enough to predict

future results I mean you’ve heard stories of mathematicians say that almost any outcome can be predicted with

enough data of past results I believe that you know there’s always outliers

but if a majority can be predicted then it’s worth it now John’s laughing

laughing in agreement or if he’s laughing that I’m crazy but I know you believe it I think it’s funny I

absolutely believe it right but I’ve done thousands of models put them in the

mail so I have a little different perspective I suppose you know we started in 1995 pioneering machine

learning and beat every modeler and pretty much across the face of the world

and uh I know what machine learning will do left to its own and I know how to

beat it and you know I want to be involved

Brad somehow or other well I’m gonna have Pro of a levelheaded person here

you know I I believe and I I’ve taken you to task on some how do you

actually have a controlled group on mailing if you send the same group

people you’re right how do you know that the second result didn’t build on the first result and if you pick two

different groups of people how do you know that those two groups don’t have

Divergent ideas and would produce a similar result so I think there’s flaws with with your purity of control group

testing in mail you know except we have really B well and part of part of it is

the validation process where we compare the results that we’re getting from the

historical data all data is historical whether you so your prediction is kind of just a resorting of history but what

we do is we look at the variables and that’s why a human being is so valuable because we look at the variables and we

say does that make any sense now over time you build a library of which

variables had the most impact and that’s a really important piece but having that

human involved can sort out the nonsense because the computer won’t all the

computer will tell you is the correlation the P values and I think that you can build out technology you

can you can have judgment built in you can you can flag out liar traits that

and and either weight them less or more depending on the anything that you can

figure out you can teach a computer and it can look at the data much quicker and much more thoroughly than a human can so

all right we don’t have to have a mathematic yeah we don’t need to or or a large debate I mean listen I think both

both play an integral role in building effective maale campaigns I think that

it shouldn’t be necessarily left to you know human device or AI I think that we take advantage of Technology but it

should never be left solely up to technology without human interaction ction and without going down a rabbit

hole you know I have some of my own concerns about the artificial intelligence and things like that but um

I think that AI is going to provide a powerful impact not just in our industry

but several others but it should be utilized responsibly and I I think with

human intervention as well so um guy did you have anything to add to that no I’m

I’m good well there’s lots of questions here I wanted to to hit syand uh

question CU that’s a pretty easy one the whole back has to be random right yes

and that and it’s interesting because in that retailer example where he did the holdout test what we didn’t realize was

some of the some of the households had multiple households right so they were

snowbirds they were in you know and so we held them out in one in one place but we mailed them in another without

realizing it and that muddied up our first test and then what we did was was

identify them on customer ID not just on the physical address we

also uh instead of making it random across the board because the 8020 rule

will say that your your bad customers will be over represented so we took our segmentation and then we did an nth on

each major segment like if you think of a desile so that we randomized the good

customers into the hold out as well as the medium customers and as well as the bad customers so yes it’s not quite as

easy as I made it sound again you know like said before uh

John is always available uh as a consultant for a

fee um so there’s a couple other questions here in the chat Bill Redman was asking we see so many mailers using

letters instead of postcards is there any data on performance uh of type of direct mail

piece we prefer postcards but see men mailers using

letters so I have the same question I think that’s great I’m wondering if our models dig yeah I’m wondering if your

models we could do that so we do track letter and postcard Brad in our platform

yes we do so we have and I think it depend listen this

is this is one of those questions just in my personal opinion it depends on the vertical the industry I mean certain yes

it it just depends on on what you’re utilizing the mail for so yeah I had a client mailing into South America for

businessto business and uh they were always doing postcards because they’ done that in the United States and I

said have you ever tested an envelope and they said no and I said and this was

a really small small this my daughter was a marketing person in South America and I said you you ought to try an

envelope well they got four times the response because in South America they don’t like they you know they don’t

trust the man they don’t trust the Post person they don’t like them reading the mail as it comes to them and so they

just don’t put any important stuff in a postcard right and nobody knew that and

but now in this new project I’m working on you know we don’t have we don’t have

a lot of count we’re doing businessto business and consumer and so we’re

alternating postcard letter postcard letter kind of thing just to change up

the look y but it’s very very simple to print a few extra you know of of each

time and so the next time you Ma if you mailed a postcard now you mail a a

letter but you can mail some of those postcards against the letter format and

get a really good feel because we know who we mailed and you do the matchback like guy was talking about and like Direct Mail 2.0 gives you the tools to

do uh and you know it’s it’s a really easy way while you’re while you’re changing things up you know instead of

mailing one thing you know Vic Hunter used to say we always test something when we mail so instead of just mailing

yeah instead of just mailing one way let’s mail 10% you know it all depends on the statistical uh segment and we’re

not going to get into that yeah you know but it’s good to have enough that you get a get a good confidence interval

but that’s a great test but you should be doing it anyway sure as you’re doing it anyway you can test

it yeah and applying it within so many other en numerous factors above and beyond vertical industry like audience

you know different demographics prefer to be marketed to in certain manners and Fashions it just really depends what the

offer is what type of information on the mailer there’s so many different things that you could test yeah Barb has a good

answer and and and I agree with her yeah when there’s when there’s serious information the envelope will almost

always win 100% yeah Insurance financial industry things like that sure

absolutely right she says but use a postcard followup absolutely it’s perfect that’s really good yeah that’s

good to know so uh oh this is a good question uh carara Balor was asking can

you talk more about matchback in an omni Channel World now guy you use a lot of

direct mail 2.0 campaigns with Omni Channel and you have had matchback

reports where you’re tracking and showing attribution can you waigh in on that a little bit yeah I mean so there’s

always going to be and we’ve talked about multiple times here where people say well I’m running TV I’m running

Billboards I’m running radio I’m running um my direct mail how do I know which

one is working and everyone always says well all my mail all my marketing is working I just don’t know which one

right so when you have a true matchback we can show direct attribution

to that level of address you know so if we’re matching back to physical address and that’s typically what we’re doing

for our home service providers um is we are matching back to them so they can say okay well I saw

that person a lot of the softwares will show well they came in through Google or through Yelp or maybe they called on a

TV ad and I and I always say I’m not disputing that but I know definitively

between this date and this date I put a piece of mail into their mailbox and they became a customer during that time

I said we could go back with semantics and say which one drove that lead what I

traditionally do on my um on my reports is I’ll take the TR the full number of

attribution and I’ll knock it down 20% and I’ll say and I have a I have another

chart below there that says 100% all the way down to 50% and I’ll let the

customer decide say well you decide on what you feel your TV or your radio or

Google d drove but I’m telling you 100% of these people were mailed to within

this campaign uh timeline and they became customers I said if you want to say 25% came because your radio or your

TV that’s fine and then traditionally the numbers are still significant for direct mail so I try not to get into a a

situation where I’m arguing with my customer I’ll just say okay just have it you can have it back or give it to

whoever you want um that works for me I’m fine with that so the in that new

tool that I’m working on developing it will have that in there it’ll be built into there it’ll say these people were

mailed to and became customers during this time however they did come through another Channel maybe they came through

uh LSA ad or a Yelp or a a thumbtack or something like that for for the home

service guys so again it it’s I don’t think anyone can ever solve that specific problem because there’s

multiple channels being you know worked at the same time absolutely and then a lot of times I

like to suggest just to you know piggyback on a little bit too guy I I would never suggest to a customer that

they remove their dig digital marketing it’s it’s playing a very significant powerful role and their branding and

driving leads but when I think about Omni Channel I think about it as an enhancement to the mail campaign right I

say hey let’s take some of that digital budget and let’s attribute that to the mail and let’s help reinforce the direct mail campaign so we know that these

digital ads are here mimicking the direct mail and they’re as powerful as they are because first we got that

tangible powerful impactful impression with the high brand recall from the mail right and then we utilize that and we

repeat that messaging through digital more inexpensively and then we can say listen we want to put together an omni

Channel marketing campaign for you that is going to give you the best of both worlds you know because in today’s

current marketing ecosystem it really shouldn’t be about you know where do I put my budget Direct Mail digital like

we should be using both but in the most effective ways possible right and so we can use UTM codes and we can track and

we can show them hey we’re getting clicks to the website from these digital

uh digital marketing campaigns that we set up to reinforce the mail we can see how many hits of the site we’re getting from our Omni Channel campaigns we can

track and show attribution with our lead match pixel right if we can de anonymize a website visitor and match that back to

the mailing list we can show people from the mailing list went to the website and then we can show hits to the from the

digital but the truth of the matter is is that they’re all working together in a synergistic way to drive revenue and I

think it’s so important that we prove that Direct Mail is playing such an integral role in that space so that they

can nobody said this as a attribution method I haven’t heard it once I did

somebody said I must have I must have for sure

yeah I’m a big fan okay same I am too you all had a good question um about

spectacular formats yeah touch on that you know I noticed American Express has

the swirly like spot varnish on uh their credit card mailers for a while now and

then I noticed a couple months ago two months ago maybe they didn’t have it and basically the same mailer and it came

back again so that that question one of the ways to address it is with like a

who’s mailing what and do they go it’s not it’s not AB splits cuz you don’t

know what they test how whether they tested it well or poorly but you know I

saw that for one particular client and if you go to to Brad and say well in

this industry I’d like to see if people tend to repeat those spectacular mailers

I think that would be a great application for who’s mailing what and we do track that so the mailings that

are done and I’m sure everybody’s seen it cap Capital One credit card offers always have an interesting diecut in the

envelopes I think we’ve all gotten a dozen of them which is interesting because you get your mail and that

little die Tu sticks out in your stack of mail there you go there you go everybody never seen this before this is

from my little bank I couldn’t oh well how cool is that that was super cool I I

think Capital One started that craze a couple years ago but uh it seems to be

very prevalent I think this was awesome I was gonna where they well I mean guys I

don’t know about you but I could talk about this topic all day and go off on about a hundred different tangents which I think we went on a few today but it it

was really valuable information we’re about out of time we’re about 3 minutes to the hour guy John thank you so much

for your time today on the webinar there was a couple of questions that people just asked of the host and panelist so

we’ll send you an email we’ll get with you directly on those but thank you everybody for spending a little bit of time with us today and we hope to see

you on the next one next month have a great day and enjoy the rest of your week thanks guys appreciate all thank

you bye bye bye bye