Mail’s Place in an Ever-Changing World

Good morning everyone. Thanks for joining us for our panel, Mail’s Place in an Everchanging World. My name is

Amanda Armendariz. I am the editor of Mailing Systems Technology Media. We are a free trade publication covering

everything related to the print and mail industry. So everything from direct mail best practices to changing uh postal

service regulations. So um I highly encourage you if you are not already a subscriber um to come see me afterwards

uh for your free subscription. So before we jump in, I would like my panelists to introduce themselves and I’ll start with

you, Herman. Um I don’t know if you guys hear me or I need Hello. can you hear me better this

way? Okay. Uh so my name is Herman Christristanis German. I’m now from

Germany, but um I’m from Spain, from Madrid, and the G in Spanish, so it’s

like clearing your throat a little bit. Uh I live in North Carolina, as you can tell by my accent. Um and what else?

I’ve been in the printing industry for about 30 something years. Uh working a

lot with print service providers and their customers, the brands and the agencies. Uh right now for the last six

years I work for Keypoint Intelligence. We do market research and consultancy

worldwide. We are a global company uh for the printing industry. So that’s me.

Thanks. I’m Paul Bobnak. I uh have been in the direct mail business for about 25

years and a little bit in the publishing business before then. I write for Printing Impressions uh the magazine as

well as the website with a uh bi-weekly blog. I am also uh the direct mail

evangelist for Who’s Mailing What, which is a direct mail 2.0 company and uh

where I host a uh podcast series called Meet the Mailers which is on our YouTube

channel uh as well as on the who’s mailing what website and I also uh write

for a variety of manufacturers, marketers, and printers.

And I’m Morgan DiGiorgio. I’m the chief revenue officer for Direct Mail 2.0. Who’s mailing what? and dm20.ai.

And our sole purpose is to make direct mail the most effective form of marketing. I’ve been in marketing for

approximately 20 years and in the print industry for a little under a decade and

uh we have a conglomerate of organizations that work together collectively to improve the direct mail

marketing channel. We work with print providers all over the United States and we provide competitive intelligence solutions for marketers or uh companies

that utilize direct mail as a marketing channel. I’m happy to be a part of this panel and thank you everybody for joining us this morning.

All right. Uh before we jump into the questions, just a show of hands. How many of you um are print service

providers? Okay, decent amount. All right. And how

many of you are here just to learn more about mail and direct mail and effective communication with your customers? Okay,

awesome. All right, so everyone who does not live under a rock knows that mail

volumes have been declining, right? That’s like the doom and gloom headlines that you always hear. Mail volumes down,

postal service losing money, etc., etc. And all that is true, but mail still remains a very effective communication

channel um that marketers absolutely need to incorporate into their mix. So, let’s start out by discussing the

factors that have influenced male decline over the years, but why male should also still be a viable strategy.

Anyone anyone can All right, I’ll take this one. So, there’s been a ton of different factors that have affected the direct mail

marketing channel. Our focus with direct mail 2.0 is we layer on digital or integrate omni channel marketing into

direct mail to make it more effective. And I can say that at one point in time there was a proverbial tugof-war between

marketers. Where should we be injecting our budget? Should that be in digital? Should be in print? And we’ve come a

long way from that. And the truth of the matter is is that if you’re only utilizing one channel or you’re using

digital without direct mail or direct mail without digital, you are missing the boat. You are not getting the

highest maximum rorowaz on your marketing investment that you possibly can. The truth of the matter is is that

they work together in tandem to drive results. Right? So I know that there’s

so many other factors that have affected the direct mail marketing channel and we really started getting hammered in this industry with COVID. Right? So costs

have been rising since COVID because of supply chain issues and non-stop postage

increases. Now we’ve got the tariffs, but guess what? The cost of digital has

been rising as well. So marketers can say that direct mail is more expensive, but so is digital. and the vying for the

eyeballs in the digital marketing space is very very challenging and there’s a

lot of open real estate right in the mailbox right so the thing is is that

there’s a lot of print providers in this room and so I would encourage you to to ask yourselves what are you doing or

what are we doing collectively as an industry to be educating marketers on the importance of direct mail and the

place and role that it has in the marketing mix and how can we from a co

consultative uh perspective be educating marketers on

how they can best position mail in their marketing mix. Yes, it’s more expensive, but if you take it out of your marketing

mix, do you think that you’re going to continue to have the same amount of leads being driven into your

organization as you did when you were utilizing mail? Absolutely not. So the key is how do we do mail more

effectively and more coste effectively and that starts with the right list, the right offer, the right call to action

and how do we strategically educate them on how they can get the best maximum

return on their direct mail. And I really think that that starts with us as print providers and marketers who should

be educating our customers. Yeah, I completely agree with everything

you said and I’ I’d add to that uh a little bit of my perspective which is talking to people again uh who know that

I’ve been in this business for uh 25 years and they ask well you know you

must have seen a lot of change over that period of time and yeah I have it used

to be that part of my previous daily job was to look at mail as it would come

into my office and be deposited across my desk in big uh FedEx and USPS boxes

and go through the mail every almost every single day and looking at uh mail

that was sent in by people around the country to uh to who’s mailing what in its original incarnation.

And we would see uh multiple copies of the same piece of mail or multiple

copies of cataloges uh going to the same person but with all kinds of variations on their name or

their address or there were a lot of tests that were being run. Uh whether it was covers or

number of inserts included in a direct mail uh acquisition package and it was

wasteful. It was frankly very wasteful of printing and postage, but printing

and postage weren’t a big concern for uh a lot of marketers at the time up until

uh really about uh 10 to 15 years ago. And that’s coincided of course with the

rise of the internet which uh really uh did a number on first class mail

especially but to an extent marketing mail as well. So, uh, I view it as kind

of like right sizing because what it did is the, uh, the increasing costs for

both postage and consumables and other materials. What it really did is it forced a lot of marketers to really take

a serious look at the efficiency of their organization or uh, who they uh,

had as a provider for their direct mail services. and to begin looking at that

and saying okay what do we need to do we need data hygiene hugely important and

so often ignored and I can say it’s still ignored by some marketers that I

see uh you you know so it’s like so it’s like a very disappointing uh thing to

still see that as a as a uh as a serious issue but also thinking about uh and

something else we can probably you know get into a little bit is talking about segmentation and really looking at what

are your most uh profitable segments that you can reach out to uh in your

mail or what are ways that you can maybe take mail out of your marketing channels

in some way and do what Morgan has been talking about which is uh subbing in

other digital channels where you know those channels are going to perform higher than a uh just like a basic

direct mail piece would have years ago. And like I said, that’s right sizing. It’s mailing less mail, but you’re

getting better impact uh from it because you’ve cut down on your cost. You really haven’t sacrificed that much in your

marketing. And in fact, you’re doing better with some of your marketing because you have all those additional impressions from all these uh additional

channels that you now have in your mix. Thank you.

Oh, yeah. And there are examples of digital

expenses increasing. Do you have examples of that? So I don’t in my brain have that

statistical data but if you do a quick search just go online and and do a

search about the rising cost of digital marketing and you will see that it’s risen exponentially. I mean I personally

we’ve experienced it internally because we provide digital services and we’ve had to increase our prices uh two three

times over the course of the last two years just because the cost of digital has risen and part of the reason why the

cost of digital has risen is because there’s so much additional competition out there. So everyone is vying for

those exact same eyeballs. So, if you’re competing with another organization to get that exact same impression in front

of that individual person, then you’re going to have to pay more and you can get into somewhat of a little bit of a

bidding war there. So, that’s why I’m saying as mail volumes have continued to decline, there’s a lot of open real

estate in the mailbox. We know how profound an impact a tangible direct mail piece works and and it and triggers

that high brand recall and and so you know to leverage that in conjunction

with this whole sea of ads. I mean people on average are seeing anywhere from 10,000 marketing messages on a daily basis. I know that’s really hard

to digest but if you think about it we’re talking about email digital logos

on t-shirt billboards. they’re inundated with with ads and the ad space all over.

And then from a digital perspective, the competition is so great and the costs have also risen as well. So just do a

quick search. I think you can get a lot of statistical data on that and that will help leverage and position to your direct mail customers that their digital

costs are rising as well and how you can make an impact with mail.

Sure. Oh, free. seem to be here

now. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So, for me, the question was why direct mail is a strong and

relevant, right? And uh forgive me for the simplicity of my answer, but when I think about direct

mail in the marketing mix, uh the mailbox is the least competitive channel

that I can think of because we only receive a couple of correspondence every day where we invaded by emails and

displays on the internet. Very annoying and that type of thing. So um the first

thing that a marketeteer will like to do the first objective and I’m not a marketeteer but I know the basics of of

of those objectives is to capture attention of the consumer of the recipient right and otherwise I cannot

sell you anything or I cannot make you do anything I want you to do. So capturing attention is the first thing

and if you don’t capture attention then you’ve got no chance. And actually the mailbox has that opportunity again

because you know less competition because we always open the mailbox and

pick up the correspondence every day normally after a long day and then we go

in in the living room or in the kitchen in the house and sometimes with a garbage between our legs like I do and

but we start touching and feeling every mail and throwing whatever is not relevant to us but we do it. Uh so for

me that’s so powerful. Um then the second marketing objectives when I

objective when I think about it after you capture the attention is elevating the perception of value of my brand. So

you trust me right? And when I think of that male you know print has so many

embellishments you know uh and you don’t send me just a you know a crappy looking

whatever. you have the chance to send me something that looks very professional, very elegant and then again it makes me

trust your brand, right? So, uh that that elevating the perception of value. You can do a special finishing, a

special substrates, a special design. So, again, it’s not I’m not here to say

direct mail is better because I like it. Uh but it’s nothing to do with being

with liking it. is a functional and it links very closely to those objectives of marketing. And then uh the other

objective in a marketing campaign after you capture attention, elevate the perception of value is to be relevant.

If it’s not relevant, I’ll throw you in the garbage like I said before, right? And and mail uh can be personalized,

right? And we are not going to get the details of that because from the idea of personalization to the actual the

relevance of that personalized mail, it goes a long way. And I I’m the first one as a consumer that receives a lot of

mail that try to be relevant to me, but they’re not. So, it’s not an easy task. And and then uh the the the last

objectives of of marketing is to make it easier for you to buy from me, right? I capture your attention. Now, you trust

me because I elevate the perception of value. I tell you something that is relevant. Now, I need to make it easier

for you to buy. And and mail is amazing. and all DC connectivity of QR codes, uh,

NFC tagging, augmented reality. I can actually send you very quickly to a

website where you can buy my products. So, I make it easier for you to buy. I can send you to a video online to learn

more about my product. So, then you buy and that type of thing. So, for me, I

mean, it just it’s just a matter of of the marketeteers to think this a little bit more

carefully because I think that they know all these things. They’re very simple. know what I’m talking about, but sometimes they forget and they rush into

a campaign, an email like like it was said before, it seems to be cheaper and

that type of thing and they choose the channel before even the strategy. So for me, those are the reasons why uh email

is a strong relevant and sustainable um and even though it’s declining uh but is

is I don’t see it uh dying anytime soon or ever. So that’s that’s my

All right. So you kind of mentioned embellishments, so we’re going to go into that since this is Printing United.

Um obviously there’s tons of options. How can these embellishments improve engagement? What should marketers take

into account when they’re, you know, working on a piece? Um I’d love your thoughts.

Well, I think that you know uh probably the first first thing to do is to uh find out which which companies are are

using what kinds of embellishments because uh if you look through your you

look through your mailbox, you’ll see that there are uh certain mailers whether they’re a uh commercial company

like a credit card provider, financial services or uh very rarely a uh a

nonprofit, you’ll see what kind of we see what kind of uh techniques are being

used, what kinds of where where they can be used in some interesting ways. And uh

it’s one of those it’s one of those things where you really have to have like a um somebody who is in marketing

really have uh kind of like inspiration where they would say, “All right, well, we know what this company’s about. We

know what can get attention. uh where do you start getting attention? You start getting attention uh on the uh front of

an envelope or the back of an envelope uh or the inside pieces. But the probably the best place would be to

start with is uh the front of the envelope is some sort of uh finish like a spot UV or uh uh metallic finishing,

something like that that just looks different and potentially feels different as well. And from there you

can get into a discussion of well uh this kind of a technique is it something

that can be enhanced with another technique that would qualify for USPS

promotional incentives uh because that is uh something that I

believe right now uh would earn about a 4% uh savings on a campaign that uses that

postage. Um but next year those are going those are going up. So uh there is

a real opportunity there to to save money with those embellishments. Sure.

Yeah. I I would have to communicate that you only get a split second to capture

somebody’s attention, right? So when you’re leveraging something like a digital embellishment, you have an

opportunity there to really speak about your organization at one point in time,

you know, with the the resurgence of the um inception of the internet, right?

There’s a lot to be said for a website being a first impression about your organization. Someone goes to your

website, they look at it, they say, “hm, you know, I can tell a lot about this company or are they putting their best

foot forward?” and I make my own indications about what I think the value of that company is based on that. And

the same thing can be said for a direct mail piece, right? So, how well is that direct mail piece communicating the

value of your organization when it shows up in the mailbox? It’s telling a story or it’s speaking some type of value

about your company, whether that’s the stock of the paper or are you utilizing some type of special foil or we’re also

engaging sensory elements, right? So, is there something that I’m feeling or

touching or experiencing that is activating something in my brain that is

causing me to want to respond to this direct mail piece, which is something that I don’t get an opportunity to

experience in the digital ad space when I’m just seeing, you know, 10,000 different marketing messages a day. And

like like Paul said, we’re having an opportunity here now to lift the response rate of mail by leveraging

these digital embellishments, but also since everyone is so sensitive to cost,

we get an opportunity to also take advantage of some postal discounts.

Um, and for me when I think about embellishments, the first thing obviously that comes to

mind is capturing attention, which is the first objective of a marketing campaign. uh to be a strategic with

embellishments. Um will you use the same embellishments to all your target audience? Do you have to profile that or

do you have a profile of that target audience for your content also that is different? And I’m not talking about

driving yourselves crazy, but is he profiling based on gender? Will you use

the same embellishments for a female than a male? Will you use the same embellishments for somebody that is

young? somebody that is older. Uh so the first thing to that I will think is is

there an opportunity uh to to do some profiling with embellishments because

you know whatever embellishment you send to my daughter probably is not going to be the same to me uh even though it has

to link to the brand so it might have to be elegant or whatever. So that’s the first thing. The second thing when I

think about embellishments is that activates the most powerful

marketing channel which is the word of mouth more than email and everything

else. The word of mouth and I think that we all have experienced this and I experienced from a consumer standpoint

which for me is the expert not the marketeteer. The consumer tells the marketeer if when they right or wrong.

And as a consumer if if I receive something that is worth sharing, I do so. And then I do it to people that I

know. So I know more than that brand about the people that I’m communicating or sharing this uh piece of uh direct

mail with. And then I make it even more relevant and personal. And this is what every marketeer does. Activate the word

of mouth is very very powerful. And I think that embeddments does that.

Yeah, one one thing that I always tell people and uh when I talk about myself, I talk about what I what I do and a lot

of people don’t understand, you know, a lot of it until you really start explaining like what direct mail is and

uh how special it is in a lot of ways and how different it is. Is I just ask them a simple question and it’s like,

well, you get a piece of you get a piece of direct mail, right? And you’re looking at it and what is it about what

is it about it that stands out? And it could be anything. It could be the paper, it could be the finish, it could

be the personalization, it could be some embellishments that that’s used. But the first thing I start off with is like how

does everything you look at that you receive to your eyes? Usually your eyes

and maybe sometimes your uh your ears as well. What does it look like to you? How

do you experience it when it’s through your phone? because that’s how what you

know like 90% of everything uh that’s digital at least is through that and

everything looks the same on you know on this um you know there’s there’s very

little that differs everything has to shrink in some way to fit on that screen

but with direct mail with a printed piece you have an amazing world of

possibilities that still in some way has to comply with USPS regulations s uh and

if you want something that’s really uh different, you will pay a little bit

more for your postage. But again, it’s an opportunity to reach people using uh as Morgan talked about

the different senses uh the texture uh sense, you know, there’s lots of

different ways you can activate a prospect or customer using them. And for

me again test it test test by you know going to a small uh part of your uh larger audience

uh look at who your and I’ve talked with u uh nonprofit organizations about doing

this about segmenting their database going to a small group of donors that they know are high value donors frequent

donors and looking at ways of activating them to a higher level of giving or

higher membership level by using a direct mail piece with uh with some

embellishments on it. Uh or something with lots of personalization, but something that that speaks to how

they’re regarded by the organization or company that mails it out.

All right, Morgan, in your first response, you kind of touch or touched on, you know, the integration of mail and digital. Um, so I’d like to expand

upon that a little bit more. you know, what are some best practices for integrating physical mail and digital?

Um, how can mail actually contribute to the uh effectiveness of a digital campaign and that sort of thing?

Yeah. Well, the first thing is that uh the

customers that are pouring more of their budget into digital, we have to think about something, right? So, we’re doing

the same thing regardless of the channel that we’re utilizing. We are driving leads into an organization and the first

place that someone goes or a prospect when they respond to a marketing message whether that’s direct mail, digital

email, whatever it might be is to a website, right? When someone goes to a website, you don’t get an initial

conversion all the time. Someone doesn’t just, you know, get that direct mail piece, see that digital ad, go to the website, and boom, they just buy and

check out or book the demo, whatever it is. It doesn’t happen that way. On average, statistically, you get about a

4% initial conversion from any type of marketing message that makes it to the website. Now, you’ve got about 96%

on average of individuals that responded to a direct mail piece or a digital ad and went to a website and they didn’t

convert. Now, what? Now what? Now, what do we do? Well, let’s say that we’re utilizing the direct mail marketing

channel. We drive someone to a website. A inexpensive way to re-engage that prospect is to leverage digital

marketing. put a cookie on the website, start showing Google ads to those individuals, pop up in their social

feeds, or since personalization is so huge in direct mail and personalization

in any type of marketing is extremely and highly effective, you can even do onetoone marketing. You can take a

mailing list, you can upload it into some of these digital platforms like a DSP and you can serve ads to the

individuals that are actually being marketed to. You can draw virtual boundaries around the addresses that you

are mailing to and serve up ads specifically to the individuals in those households. And that helps you to bypass

gatekeepers. And informed delivery is probably one of the most effective examples that I can think of of an omni

channel or uh digital being paired with direct mail. It’s one of the most incredible things that USPS ever did.

Right. So, we get an email that appears in a mailbox coming from a trusted source from the federal government. I

signed up for it. I want the email. I see this digital impression before the mail even gets into my mailbox. And

there’s a digital ad that I have an opportunity to click on and respond and go to the website. Not to mention the

fact that you get an average of around a 65% open rate on an informed delivery ad, which is absolutely astronomical as

far as an email channel is concerned where you’d be lucky to get maybe 8% on a 8 18% on a house list. So that right

there is a great pairing of digital with direct mail. But now let’s also talk a

little bit more about the individuals that are going to the website maybe from digital marketing channels. Well, when

they get to the website and they don’t convert, what a fantastic and phenomenal opportunity for us to identify who those

individuals are and then get back in front of them with a direct mail piece. So if a marketer is highly affected by

cost and they want to be marketing to the right people, there is no better person to mail to than somebody that was

on the website literally raising their hand and saying, “Hi, I am here. I’m on the website and I’m telling you that I’m

interested, but I just haven’t bought yet because you have to get in front of me a few more times.” And I know that we’ve all experienced this. And direct

mail retargeting is highly effective. So I suggest from a marketing campaign

perspective, start with mail, enhance with digital and finish it off with mail. But if a marketer wants to start

with digital, utilize technology out there to identify who the people on the website are, what are they looking at?

Now you can send them a direct mail piece that’s personalized with their name with the item that they were

actually looking at on the website and send them a little bit better of an offer than you originally uh approached

them with. And and this happens all the time. You know, I can see an ad for a pair of shoes, go to the website, put a

few in my cart, say, “Oh my god, you know, I have a thousand pairs of shoes. I don’t need another one.” I leave. But now, if I get a direct mail piece in my

mailbox 4872 hours, maybe even a week later that says, “Hey, I’m going to give you 20% off.” I say, “What the heck?” I

come back and I buy. And that can be utilized with any different type of strategy. And it’s very, very effective.

So, direct mail retargeting is is one of the best ways to be marketing to the

right people. Additionally, uh you know, customers, I I think that it’s a general

statement, but uh you know, with customers, people say, “Well, why would I want to know if my customers are

coming to my website?” Well, you might be selling product A to your customer, but you may not know that they’re on

your website and they’re interested in products B, C, D, and E. But if you were leveraging some type of technology that

was telling you who was going to your website and what their web activity looked like, now you have an opportunity to capture additional revenue streams

from your customers who you already have a working relationship with. They trust you and now you just squeeze additional

revenue streams out of them by marketing to them about ancillary products and services that you have. So direct mail

plays a very integral role in the overall marketing mix. And if we are not

utilizing it to re-engage people that are being driven to our websites from email or digital, then they’re leaving a

lot of money on the table, right? One little thing about direct mail, I

completely agree. Direct mail is like an unsung uh part of what USPS does because of how

it builds anticipation for what people see in their mailbox. I think uh you

know there’s an amazing opportunity there and a lot of companies really look at it as well um you know your piece of

mail in a campaign goes to the USPS system uh an image is taken of the front

of it and it’s just like a static uh you know black and white image and it’s just

kind of blah and for people you know who uh uh are looking you know maybe for uh

to be wowed it leaves a lot to be desired. But you don’t have to do that. You can uh use uh when you put together

a direct a uh a a campaign that uses informed delivery, you can use color

images. You can uh uh swap in a representative image that is not

mirroring what is on the envelope or the the postcard or the flat that arrives in

the mailbox, but it is a a usually like a color image that uh appears better on

digital than uh what would happen in real life. And it creates that

anticipation and it just bypasses in some cases part of the part of the idea of it is to bypass the response which is

just to wait for the piece to show up because sometimes it may not be that

day. It may be the next day when it shows up there. You could just jump right to it and immediately take

advantage of that offer or message uh as it appears. And for anybody who puts

together a campaign, it’s free. The post P postal service charges nothing for for doing that

campaign and putting it together. And when you look at the response rates you get, the response rates uh for most

campaigns are, as you said, like incredible response rates. And if

they’re not, then you can look at, well, what are we doing wrong? Maybe it’s the

uh maybe it’s the list uh that we’re working with. Maybe it’s the customers that we’re we’re sending it to. Maybe

it’s a problem of not having the right offer. In which case, you can fix that

offer and go out and reach reach out to this uh these customers that you sent this out to again with a better offer

and then they can take advantage of it and bump the response rate higher.

Yeah, for me uh all the channel, all the communication channels are here for a reason. They are all relevant and

powerful. They all have a strength and weaknesses. For every time that you tell

me where direct mail is better than email, I’ll give you another reason when direct mail was better uh email was

better than um direct mail or display or whatever. I I think that the issue here

uh is that marketeteers and this is has been my experience obviously my personal experience uh often lead with a channel

first. So the first thing that they think they pick a channel I’m going to

do a display. I’m going to do an email. I’m going to do a direct mail without

really thinking uh yet thoroughly thinking about the strategy of who am I

talking to? What am I going to say and how often do I have to say what I have to say? And I think for me that’s kind

of backwards. At least my Spanish brain doesn’t understand that. It’s almost like putting the carriage in front of

the horse. For me, first you need to thoroughly think about who do I have to

talk to again? What am I going to say and how often do I have to say that? And

then you will pick the right vehicle to do that. Uh it’s almost like renting a

car without knowing where you’re going and what type of load or content you are

going to carry. Uh and and to me that I talked to a lot of marketeteers. I did

seminars and they kind of like agree with me, but then it’s like one of those stretch balls that then when you just

let them go, they just keep going and they keep doing that what naturally doing, right? Picking up the the the

channel first. So, and I can give you examples. I mean, if you are a good customer of mine, uh I don’t have to

build any branding with you because you buy from me and you listen to myself. probably I’m going to send you an email

because it’s going to cost me less than the print and the mail and the postage and everything else. You are going to open it. You like me, you’re going to

buy from me. Now, if I need to capture your attention like we said before, then probably I’ll use the mailbox first and

I’m then I might shift into the into the mail or I might link into a display

online based on you know that area where I send my emails and then when you go online you might also see something from

me. So again, all of them are here. All of them are for a reason. And I think that the most important thing is to

think a strategy first and then identify which channels fit the best. And let me tell you something and I know I work a

lot with print service providers. They they obsess with print because of the business, right? But don’t worry, print

is so powerful that it takes care of itself. If you lead with direct mail or

with print, sometimes you will lose with direct mail or print. Just lead with a

communication in general without favoring anything. Understand your customer and what they trying to do. Who

are they trying to talk to again and what are they trying to say and then you will see the opportunity for mail and

that will be more powerful because it comes from the objective. It comes very strategic. So the new customer, the

marketeer will obviously see, yeah, it makes a lot of sense here versus trying to sell print from a a spec standpoint

or a direct mail from a a spec standpoint. Yeah, I I just I just wanted to comment

one other thing too that you know I was thinking about uh the longevity of mail also the longevity of mail in the

household and all of the scientific evidence out there that shows that high brand recall that comes with mail. When

you’re utilizing digital marketing, you get that one split second to get somebody’s attention and convert and then poof, it’s gone and it’s never

coming back. But when I get a direct mail piece and I look at it and and I I get the the long-term memory centers in

my brain activated and I have that high brand recall from my mail and it’s something that I’m interested in and I

put it on a pile on my counter or even if I throw it away. If I were to re-engage myself or a prospect with a

digital channel and I see a digital marketing message later, because of the high brand recall that I’ve experienced

from receiving that tangible direct mail piece, it is going to stick out and now you have a greater opportunity of

getting a response to your digital marketing message because you leverage direct mail to activate those long-term

memory centers in the brain and it’s sitting in my household and I can reference back to it. Let’s say, for example, it’s something like a home

remodel, and I really need to convince my husband that I want to drop 50 G’s on remodeling my kitchen. That might take

me 6 months to wear him down because maybe he wants to use the 50 grand to buy a new boat. I don’t know. But if I keep seeing that direct mail piece on my

on my counter, I can, you know, I’m going to talk to Drew about this again tonight. you know, I really I really want to get this kitchen remodel, you

know, or I’m laying in bed later and, you know, I see an ad pop up that is for

that uh kitchen renovation company or whatever it is and I can look over and have a conversation with him about it.

But if I never get that actual impression to impinge in my mind because it was out in that digital marketing

space and it was just poof gone, uh, you know, you’re again really leaving a lot

of return on the table there. So customers have a misconception that they’re getting more bang for their buck

with digital, but the truth of the matter is is they’re not because it doesn’t have as much of a lasting impression. And there’s so much

scientific evidence out there that proves that. And again, I just go back to us as being in industry and the

responsibility we have to be educating marketers on the power and efficacy of mail.

Just one one point. Uh I was talking with a couple uh weeks ago with this guy named uh Dave Baird who is uh a uh runs

a stationary company called Truly Engaging. And his company started out with doing uh printing wedding

invitations and uh collateral materials around uh weddings uh you know save the

date, that kind of thing. and his company uh changed paths slightly in the

last couple years by uh reaching out to different audiences and saying, “Well,

what kind of what kind of materials can we create for uh your membership or for

uh your customers that would be engaging for them?” And what his company has

found success with are uh materials that

are uh magnets and stickers that are

personalized for people who are uh members of college alumni associations

and uh other sort of college organizations. They create these materials going out to uh uh students

who have been accepted at a uh at a university. Again, very personalized,

but it has meaning for them. It has meaning for them because they’re they’re joining this greater world or in the

case of a uh of an alumni uh of a of a uh school or university, they’ve already

graduated, but they still have that that pride. So, it isn’t a mass market

product the way that they create these uh direct mail uh postcards with again

with the stickers or with magnets, but it is significant enough that they uh

have a goodiz business and a repeat business and one that they can expand.

Sure. All right. So, obviously everyone knows that tracking the effectiveness of a

campaign is critical, right? So what are some ways that you can track the effectiveness and prove that direct mail

is working? Okay.

Well, I I I think that one of the greatest challenges we have with the direct mailman marketing channel and why

a lot of customers pull out from the channel when the cost continues to rise is because they have no idea how to track it. I I can’t tell you how many

times I’ve been on a campaign review with one of our print provers customers or a direct customer and I asked them,

“How do you track their mail? How do you track your mail? How do you how do you track it? Not just the delivery of it, but how do you track the response of it?

Oh, well, we don’t, you know, I don’t really know. I mean, there are some very sophisticated marketers out there that

do drill down and they do have uh some very good systems and processes and procedures in place to be able to track

the response rate to direct mail marketing channel. But it’s very challenging especially when a customer is leveraging multiple channels. So, it

becomes very diluted. How do we know that the response rate or the conversion came from the direct mail or that Google

ad or that social media channel? So, there’s a lot of things that we’re well aware of that can be leveraged to track

the response to direct mail itself. One of those is a QR code. Absolutely. We can see if there’s a QR code scan. We

can utilize personalized QR codes and we can say who individually actually scanned a QR code. We can use call and

text tracking numbers. So, we have a specific call tracking number on a mailpiece. When someone actually calls

in, then we have an opportunity to say that this call actually came from the direct mail, but there’s a hole there as

well because how do people respond to mail? I go to the website. So, I get a direct mail piece. I don’t necessarily

call the number on the mail. I go to the website. If the same number there is, it’s not the same number there. Now, I’m

losing some of that attribution with my mail. Uh, but there’s a lot of ways that we can actually track a response to a

direct mail piece that you can’t track if a individual came from a digital

marketing channel. If I click on a Google ad and I go to the website, I can see the number of clicks that came from

a digital marketing campaign, but I don’t know who it is. There’s absolutely no technology out there that will tell

you who clicked on your Google ad unless you’re leveraging some type of uh website tracking software that will tell

you who an individual on the website is and how they got there. But above and beyond QR codes, call and text tracking

numbers. There is some sophisticated technology out there where you can identify anonymous website visitors and

you can then uh automatically suppress it against a mail file and see how many people went to your website from your

direct mail. And additionally, who and informed delivery also will give you a report that will show you who on the

mailing list got the informed delivery email, opened it, and clicked on the ad. And then I think it’s so important as

well that we have a very close and trusting relationship with our customers so that they’re willing to give us end

conversion data. Okay? And I’m not just talking about how many people bought from them. I want to know how many leads

did you get into your organization when I ran this direct mail campaign? How many new leads did you get into your CRM? Are you going to give me a list of

who those individuals are? And I know that all they care about is converted business, but at the end of the day, in order for me to prove the efficacy and

power of mail, I need to know that new leads were driven into your organization. So, give me the names and information of the people that actually

responded and were placed into your CRM or picked up the phone and called. Um,

and that way we can actually show how many people are responding to direct mail. So very very important. I think a

lot of it is lost or left on the table because they’re not leveraging technologies that can effectively be

utilized to track the response to mail. Yeah, I mean I I I’d agree with all

that. uh you know direct mail from its very beginning as a uh as a mass

marketing channel uh has had ways of tracking response. Uh it was always

something that was and it’s still done this way always something that was done uh simply by uh measuring the response.

you would get uh you would mail out a direct mail campaign and if you provided

a uh courtesy reply envelope or a business reply envelope uh or a business

reply card, those responses were tracked. But for small businesses, uh,

local businesses, uh, I’m thinking like of retail, they

have the same issue now as they had, uh, 20 years ago, 40 years ago, which is

figuring out where do our customers come from? What is driving them to come to

our dry cleaning shop or our pizza shop or our uh, a local uh, clothing store.

And if they don’t have any way of tracking that, whether it’s asking people when they’re checking out and

buying something, hey, how did you, you know, what what is it that drove you here? Because, uh, years ago, there were

a lot of different ways of pushing people into a retail establishment. It was, you know, um, uh, direct mail, it

was space ads, it was, uh, the yellow pages. Remember them? you know, uh there

were there were way and and so unless you asked, people are not going to be very forthcoming. Even if they were

forthcoming, there was no way uh for businesses to uh track that information

except to do it manually and then maybe put it into an Excel spreadsheet and

figure out what their next steps were from there. when you get into all these other different uh uh digital channels

like Morgan was talking about, you do complicate it a lot. And that’s where you really have to have uh other people

working for your company or uh companies that you’re partnering with who know

what all the channels are and know what they’re doing and knowing you know what what is where where they can uh

attribute the uh responses from.

Yeah, I agree with all of that. The only thing that to add I notice

uh for the ones that actually track uh performance I noticed that some

marketeteers have the perception of I track and this campaign didn’t work and I don’t get the RORI and and sometimes

you know that doesn’t work that way because one campaign might not bring the RRI because you need to give different

touches right so sometimes is the seven the fifth touch or whatever and I’ve

been in sales before this for many times and I remember the time that I was going to give up on this customer and I went

one more time and that seven time got actually the results and the sales. So it’s not just about tracking one

campaign and say I don’t get the ROI and another thing that I noticed a confusion among marketeers too that say oh email

was better than uh direct mail. Oh well because the direct mail was the one that

drove this to a website to purchase. Yeah, but did you do direct mail before the email was? Did you do direct? Oh,

yes, I did. So maybe the direct mail was also contributing to that longer

campaign. So very careful with the tracking to in that sense because there are perceptions around you know which

one is a better channel and type of things and and also the the return investment that they are not necessarily

true. Yeah. I I just want to add something too. Yeah. And I’ve had so many

experiences. Oh, you know, I I didn’t get the ROI. It didn’t work. Well, this is an opportunity here now for me to

drill into this direct mail campaign. And as print providers, uh I can just

tell you in my experience of working with hundreds of printers all over the country, I think that we can do a better

job at helping our direct mail customers put together more effective and high higher responding direct mail pieces. A

lot of times a customer might put together some DM piece or creative and send it over to them and say, “Hey, I just want you to print this.” and they

just do it because they want to take an order and they just want to get the money in the door. And that is absolutely wrong because some of the

direct mail is absolutely atrocious. And guess what happens when that goes out

into the mailream and they don’t get a response from it. Do you think that they’re going to come back and do business with you again? No. So you are

essentially causing marketers that are trying mail to never leverage a direct mail marketing channel again because

we’re not doing a little bit more to help them from a consultative perspective and say, “Hey, Mr. Customer,

like I would love the opportunity to print this direct mail piece for you, but I would really like to strategically

sit down with you and see how we can improve this direct mail piece because I care about the results and the response

and the investment and the money that you are spending in the direct mail marketing channel. and I want you to get

a better response. So, in my professional opinion, I think that we need to go out and source a good list or

you need to provide me with a customer list and we need to change this creative or add a QR code or this or that or the

third and we need to do everything in our power that we possibly can to ensure that the mail that is going out into the

mailstream is topnotch so that they get a response, they come back and we get those reorders because I can’t tell you

I mean we are who’s mailing what database. I mean, we just did a webinar like uh two months ago uh mail it or

fail it and I was pulling some of these mail pieces out of our competitive intelligence database and they were like

laughable. I mean the fact that some of these mail pieces went out in the mailstream like they should be arrested.

I mean it was terrible. I so you know we ourselves also can do a better job at

educating and ensuring that these byproducts of mail and the response rates are where they should be because

we are inputting our professional and strategic opinions.

Awesome. Well, it looks like our time is up. Um does anyone have any quick questions? Just really fast.

Is there a generic demographic profile of the typical person who signs up for

informs? So there is not a specific generic

profile, but if you go on the USPS website, they do do a customer census quarterly and you can get statistical

data about the age ranges and a lot of other census data about the individuals that do sign up for informed delivery.

Just just to add to that, they also have available uh data on the uh the business

site for informed delivery where they break down uh by zip code, the number of people who are signed up for informed

delivery within those zip codes. So you can go from zip code to regions. And it’s interesting because uh you see that

what’s considered the western states have the highest uh number of people who

are signed up for informed delivery uh by a couple percentage points over uh

the central and east and I forget what the other regions are but uh it’s it’s

very very interesting looking at your zip codes and when you know what your zip code is and the ones surrounding you

to uh to look at that. All right. Um, you in the green shirt. Did you have a question?

I think I got it. Okay. Okay. All right. Perfect. Oh,

we’re good. Okay. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you so much for attending. Um, I really appreciate you taking time out of your

morning and thank you to the panelists. Thank you.