Direct Mail Isn't Dead: How Agora Makes It Work In Today's World

What can a billion-dollar-per-year financial newsletter company teach us about direct mail, especially to the king of direct mail, Dan Kennedy himself, and his personal go-to project manager for direct mail campaigns, Craig Simpson? Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. We're so excited to be able to have you today. This is a very interesting podcast. We've spent a lot of time recently in the Brands of Russell Brunson, uh, going deep into Agora strategies. Specifically going into all of the details that make a campaign profitable and then how to use it and multiply your success. This episode is one to ridiculously pay attention to. In this episode, we have Dan Kennedy, Craig Simpson, and John Alexander. John Alexander works in Agora specifically on direct mail strategies. And in this episode, we get to hear Dan Kennedy and Dan Kennedy's number one project manager of direct mail campaigns, Craig Simpson, have a discussion with John Alexander about what it actually looks like to use direct mail. Now, Agora is quite honestly a very large internet business, but at what point do they flip the switch and start using direct mail? How do they know which campaigns to work? How do they know which customer they should be using? What are the metrics they are looking at? This is an episode filled with so many hidden gems that I would plead with you to put this one on repeat. Listen to this a couple of times because the strategies and ideas that you'll learn from this are going to be able to help take your marketing not to the next level, but to the moon and beyond. Let's listen in to Direct Mail Isn't Dead: How Agora Makes It Work in Today's World.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy. The legend of Dan Kennedy should be be ignored at your own peril. They're not really lessons, they're kind of laws that you live by. Dan opened my eyes to what small business marketing looks like. Dan teaches strategic direct response that is timeless.

His ripple effect touches people who don't even know his name.

The world as we know it was changed because Dan Kennedy became obsessed with marketing.

Welcome to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast with your host, Dan Kennedy.

Good afternoon, everybody. Dan Kennedy here. If you are a Diamond member, you are in the right place. Um, and we have two guests on the call today who I'll get to in just a second. Um, it is really all about a demonstration, um, that direct mail is alive and well, um, and generating revenue for businesses. As we speak, uh, today is my private phone day, so I've been talking to clients all day, and every other one is telling me their current tale of Facebook woe. Um, getting bounced off for this, that, or the other thing, fighting to get back on, getting two of 12 Facebook Lives approved and the other 10 rejected, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And at my lunch break I saw on the news there's a new criminal investigation launched into Facebook today. So its problems continue to mount. A client of mine, Dr. Burleson, I think 2 weeks ago now, a bunch of orthodontists and cosmetic dentists and so forth had their Facebook marketing all turned off because the before pictures, quote, made people feel bad about themselves. So I guess you're only supposed to show after pictures that make people feel happy. I always tell people the good news about direct mail is what you put inside that envelope and seal, pretty much nobody is scrutinizing until it reaches the recipient. And nobody is telling you the various and sundry things that you cannot do. And almost every other media, not just Facebook, they opt John, I don't know if you know this story. Craig would, maybe. Many, many moons ago, we had a— I and a guy by the name of Jeff Paul, we had a very successful ad, full-page magazine ad. We were running all sorts of places, and, um, its headline included the words, "At your kitchen table in your underwear." And, uh, we wanted to run in airline magazines, and United refused to accept it unless we took out the "in your underwear." And like morons, because we wanted to be in there so bad, we did it. 3 years in over 100 different magazines, that's the only time it didn't work. And of course you could mail it all day long and nobody bothered you. So that's one of the reasons I'm such a die-hard proponent of our topic, uh, today. Uh, with us, uh, folks, we have one person you'll probably know well, the other one you probably won't. Rick Craig Simpson, my go-to list direct mail project management guy, works with a lot of my clients, a lot of major mailers in the country, and has a vast reservoir of experience at list finding, list sourcing, list analyzing, and managing the direct mail campaigns that match the list productively. Craig is the author of the book, The Direct Mail Solution. I'll attribute it in a little bit, and if you have not read that, you should. At both my invitation and Craig really Um, uh, getting him to do it, uh, is John Alexander. John just told me he and two people with him are attending the June event, uh, Mailbox Millions 2.0. So, uh, I'll now make, uh, John's life a little worse. Not only volunteer— not only is he volunteering time to be on the call, but you can read a name badge, you may be able to find him. If you're at Juta, follow him into the men's room and ask him questions.

Thanks, Dan.

You're welcome. John comes to us from Agora, which if you do not know and you somehow live in a lead cave, is one of, if not the biggest, direct consumer publishers roaming around right now. Boardroom would be in that group. Time Life is probably in that group. And they are also probably the largest seller of newsletters, particularly in the financial investment categories. And they are doing a lot of direct mail and doing it very successfully. So, John has agreed to be with us, share some information about their models and their methods and their math. And I will tell you in advance, the fact that you're in the cookie business or the llama grooming business or whatever business you're in, you should not discount principles and strategies or the facts just because they come from me. News, all other business. So, Craig, I'm going to start with you, let you fill in whatever resume stuff you want to fill in about yourself, introduce and help John introduce himself. And for everybody's information, I'm going to let Craig lead the call and I'm going to chime in rather than the other way around for a while. Is much more on top of the specifics of what he's doing with some clients and what, uh, John's doing in the mail. And we will, in, oh, a half an hour, 35 minutes or so, we will get to a question and answer, and all three of us will be available. Uh, so Craig, John, thank you very much for your time today. And Craig, why don't you take over a little bit?

Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, and I'm so glad we're talking about, you know, having this call today and talking about direct mail. Obviously, I love it, but, you know, it's a thing where, you know, so many businesses out there are unsure of whether or not it can work for them, and, you know, is it only just for the big publishers like Agora? But really, there are so many small businesses using it and using it well, whether they're dentists or chiropractors or in the cookie business. I mean, there's— a lot of opportunities for direct mail. So I love the fact that we're talking about it today and can get the word out and really talking about campaigns that work and hopefully give those listening some ideas that they can go and test on their own. And I've got a slew of niches that I work in, but I think we should start off with John. I mean, John, you're with, you know, Agora, largest— what I, as far as I know, the largest financial publisher. Maybe you could kind of, John, give us an overview, the sense of the size of your business, your division, and then talk to us a little bit about the campaigns that are currently working for you guys with direct mail.

Sure, Craig. Absolutely. So I'll just go through some things, and cut me off wherever you want to cut me off. All right? Agora itself, as a whole, is a conglomeration of a bunch of individual publishing businesses, and primarily in the financial niche, and a little bit in the health niche. What's interesting is that in a lot of ways we have it extremely tough, and despite the fact we're a billion-and-a-half-dollar company, nobody wakes up saying, "Hey, I want to buy a financial newsletter today," right? I mean, you wake up, you look at your teeth and they're yellow and you need to get them whitened, right? But typically people might have an issue with some money or issue with this or that, but the first thing they don't think is, "Hey, I want to go buy a financial newsletter." So it makes it tough. In that aspect because we've got to interrupt them where they're at and get them to do what they're doing. Legacy Research, which is the Agora division that I work in, is about roughly about a tenth the size of the entire Agora franchise. We're third or fourth biggest depending on how you measure it. But that is primarily our company. We, again, live in the financial— ours is entirely financial newsletters. Half a dozen, a little more than a dozen, I guess, financial newsletters across all kinds of different shapes and sizes. And we literally sell newsletters to sell newsletters. We acquire clients utilizing direct mail and every other means possible. When you're acquiring clients, you've got to use everything under the sun. And we acquire a client to, we make a sale to get a client, and then we make a second sale to make money. So that's the business Agora, legacy and kind of the gist of how we do things. Is that helpful, Craig? Does that make sense?

Yeah, it's very helpful. I think it gives a great overview. So what are the top areas that you guys are currently using direct mail, the ones that are most profitable and the ones that you turn to on a regular basis?

So we use it, I use direct mail in 4 or 5 distinct ways, right? So you mentioned it earlier on the call, Craig, we use them on webinars. You can't just— yes, we do a lot via email. I mean, anybody that says email is dead is silly. We do a lot via email. Is it as effective as it was 6 months ago?

No.

Is it less effective every day? Absolutely, which is why we're in the mail. But we use it to drive people and build ginormous hot lists for webinars. I use it in a lot of different areas. I use it for acquisition, obviously. Taking full-on packages, turn them into what you think of a direct mail piece, right? A 24 to 48 page sales letter folded up in the mail with a bunch of other shoot, whoo-ha, whoo-ha things in there in the mailing piece along with it to gain attention and that. And we do that to new lists, working primarily with you, Craig, helping us identify those lists and go after it. We also do—

Good. That's what you, I, and Craig think of as a direct mail package. Um, a lot of people hear 48 pages, uh, plus enclosure, an envelope, but they throw up. Uh, or, or they think we're, we're loons. Um, um, as in nobody will read 48 pages, especially today. The cost of sending out such a package is prohibitive, etc., etc. So don't take for granted that, that people get this. They don't. And, and I'll probably come back to talk with you about it a little later, but, but I don't want to interrupt your laying out of the 5, you know, 5 models.

Yeah, well, I want to jump in that— just let me— go ahead, go ahead, Craig.

I was going to say also, when you talk about each category, you use, for example, webinars, maybe talk a little bit about what form format you use and why, so everyone kind of gets a better idea that we're not mailing a 44-page letter to promote a webinar. What size postcard, some of those things to help everyone get a better picture of how you're using each type of mail and what the format looks like.

[Speaker:ADRIAN_WILSON] Yeah, for sure. And let me just go back a little bit, because nobody really understands who I am. I'm nearly 50 years old. I've been doing direct mail since I was 16. It didn't start out with 48-page sales letters. That started out with a single-page sales letter in an envelope and figured out how to make it work, and then do the next one and the next one and the next one. So I've grown up in the mail doing this. It's my— it's the first place I turn to is how do I leverage the mail, and then how do I leverage it a second time and a third time. So for webinars, we'll do everything as small as a 4x6 postcard. With a personal note segmented off to part of the list onto a unique URL that goes to a landing page and they opt in for it, to a 4-page self-mailer folded up in the mail with a bunch more copy and a bunch more stuff. Depending on who we're attacking depends on what kind of mailing piece I use. So if it's a list that knows who one of our editors are, they communicate with them on a regular basis, a lot of times a postcard will actually work more effectively because it doesn't have to get opened. They know who the guy is, they see his face, they understand this guy has something special for them. They use the postcard, hit the URL, go to the page, opt in. And I can get opt in rates in the 40s and 50%. I can get open rates landing over to the page in the high 40s. But these are very targeted, very segmented, you know, 5,000, 6,000 name lists. When it goes to a much less targeted, much segmented list like you've helped me with, Craig, the 4-page self-mailer foldover, A lot more copy, a lot more CTAs, a lot more places for them to go to to get excited about the webinar and get themselves opted in. So that's the webinar piece.

Yeah, so I think a key point to mention here is when we're going to those who already know who the guru is or who it is you're promoting, we can tell less of a story. You're able to get there easier. But the ones that don't know them as well, you've got to work harder in the sales copy. You've got to tell a longer story to get them to convert. Does that sound right?

That's right, but it's also wrong, right? So yes, it's absolutely right, but I always want to tell as much of a story as I can. I never want to make the assumption that— I just want to use the most effective piece possible. Sometimes the postcard works. It's the most effective piece. It gets the click, right? It's the Facebook ad. It's the short point, curiosity-driven, get the click, get over to the page, and let the page sell. Other times I'll test and I'll mail a postcard and a full-on mailing piece to somebody to somebody that knows who they are already, and the mailing piece converts better. It's just one of those things that we're constantly running and testing. But for me too, I'm always just balancing it out. I'm moving eyeballs around, because I don't want to use the same thing over and over again.

Sure. Okay.

Well, let's move on to some of the other formats that you use and ways that you use direct mail.

Sure.

Two of the other ways— I'm a big proponent of postcards, because especially going offline to online. I've got a really good winning— Al Gore uses the word lift, it's an email. If I've got a really good email or space ad, image, 3 or 4 sentences, button, that works extremely well, I will take that same email that I use there, convert it over into a postcard, and drive that on to an online video to either sell, either cross-sell. So if they already have one low-dollar newsletter, I sell them another another low-dollar newsletter because I know somebody that has two of our entry-level products is four times more valuable than somebody that has one. So I, I, we know that through data, and so I use it to cross-sell. I also use it to upsell into other high-dollar backend products, being able to tell a bigger story on the, on the content that's already been created around a big long video sales letter, 60-minute video sales letter that we're using. And I also use those same postcards a lot of times to drive to upgrade, a postcard or a letter to drive to an upgrade and to try to get them to just upgrade in the product they're already in. So a longer-term subscription, think renewals, right? So we use it within that world too. And all 3 of them, all 5 of those areas have distinct mailing plans designed around them, had distinct calendars designed around them, have distinct goals and metrics that we use for each one of them as far as conversion rate, break-even, cost per acquisition, all that stuff, and we just plug it all together and track it. But we just started with one, right? So now we're to 5. Now we got a much more of a robust mailing system. But it didn't start out like that. When I got here, weren't doing much at all. And so I got with you, Craig, we started the packages. Okay, well then, how— then, then how do we add on another segment, add on something else, add on something else, to where you're starting to do millions of dollars a year as opposed to hundreds of thousands.

Sure. Sure.

So you said something interesting that I want to touch in on and talk about a little bit more. You guys had tested copy online, and you pulled it offline and tested it there as well. Do you always find that when you have copy online, does it always transfer over and work offline as well? Or are there times where it doesn't line up like that?

There's definitely times it doesn't line up. Sometimes it only worked online because it was timely and sensitive, right? Government shutdown stuff, right? That stuff, it's already in people's minds. It's already in the top of their head. They get an email that talks about the government shutdown. Once the government shutdown ended 72 hours later, anything that showed up in the mail during— like, mail's got a tail, right? Everything's dead. Nobody remembered it 72 hours later. So there are stuff that just doesn't, because of the timeliness, doesn't work as well. Um, but the stuff that— so, um, but the other side of it is that you helped us with one of these mailing packages, um, I think February of last year, Craig, on, uh, on Bitcoin, right? So, um, we did— we first started November 2017, right? So right at the height of the Bitcoin $18,000 boom, right? We got the package out in November, did really well. Remailed it in February, did really well. But Bitcoin all of a sudden is down at $4,000. We're still mailing the package and it's doing really well while it completely died online. We've been able to mail that package the entire year to segmented lists and still been effective because it lasts longer despite what's going on. So that's one of the reasons why I really love the mail. Once you get something working, nobody's knocking it off. Nobody's staring at it. Nobody's—

And look, this is an extremely important point. This is, I say that a lot of what's done online while it can be profitable, uh, is marketing as a job, and, and it changes daily and weekly. And what we can accomplish in direct mail is marketing as an asset, because once we get it to work, we can leave it alone and maybe continue to mail it to some lists or some list segments for years. Um, I, I'm sure you have them. I mean, I have client campaigns that, um, after the early testing and refinement, have mailed without changes for 8 years, 9 years, 11 years. I talked to a client this morning, we have a direct mail piece that's mailing for 22 years, and it— we haven't changed it other than dates and numbers. And you cannot achieve that, um, in, in online media. So this difference between building an asset that works for you or you doing marketing as a daily verb or a weekly verb is a really important distinction. Now most businesses need to do both, want to do both. John, you clearly do both, but you got to love the— as Ron Popeil used to say about the cooking appliances, you got to love the set it and forget it stuff.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. What do you, what do you think, Dan, about the, the concept of testing copy online and then moving it offline? How, I mean, how have you seen with your clients, does it continuously work, or do you find situations where it doesn't work at all?

So, so John's distinction is important. Um, so one of the big variables is how sensitive that pitch is to breaking news, to very current events, which of course is one of the great virtues of doing email, text message, Facebook Live, drive-to-a-video, is that you can run a war room as Carville described in politics, and you can be going out to customers and prospects with very, very timely stuff. I talked to a client this morning in the UK and suggested he get a campaign out to his own list driving to something on the web he does with "Let Brexit Make You Rich." Well, to John's point, by the time we mailed that, news events might eat our lunch. But if we do it today and we drive to a webcast 2 days from now, that's what that media really does best. When you transfer things from it to print, success in one place is always indicative but not predictive. The likelihood of it working in place B if it has already worked in place A, whatever place A is. So we could be moving online to offline or offline on— we could be taking a, uh, a speech that sells from the stage and turning that into a direct mail, uh, we could take a direct mail piece and use it as the basis to create the script for the video sales letter. The likelihood of it working is always greater than starting from zero, but it is never perfectly predictive. For the most part, I find what works online works in mail even better. And now it has to because of the fact But it works in mail even better for the simple reason that the consumer's handling of and dealing with a printed piece that arrives in the mail is different than the consumer's handling of something they are getting in their email box or they are looking at online. The printed piece that arrives in the mail tends to hold attention and interest for longer, tends to get more patient participation than does other media. So if it works online, more often than not, when you transfer it to a direct mail package, it is not only going to work, it's going to work better. The last thing I'll say is I'm all for testing stuff online. I mean, for example, why anybody now would produce a TV infomercial and air it without testing it as an online video and driving traffic to it. Is utterly beyond me. I mean, you're going to go spend $500,000 to put an infomercial in a can and test it on TV, and you could have some sense, some indicative sense of what worked and what didn't. You could rotate price tests. You could do all that for $50,000. Um, if you're really adept, you might be able to do it for $5,000. So, as a test media, I'm a big fan.

Yeah, and I am as well. I found very similar things, you know, just testing it online first, copy, headlines, things like that. It transfers over very well, and it's— you can get it tested fairly inexpensive and do it pretty quick to get some ideas and results. And in most cases, not all the time, but in most cases, it transfers over to the mail very well, and like you said, Dan, do much better. John, was there—

so I know, Craig, for just to go ahead, just to kind of stick a small business— I know, right, you're doing direct mail for like farm sheds or tractor garages or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So give me the 3-minute story on that.

Yeah, so, um, it's the store— it's actually the, the big shipping containers. I have a side business where we buy these containers and then we resell them to farmers and people who have property in rural areas and they use them as storage sheds. And it's a steel container that's massive, anywhere from 20 feet long to 40 feet long. And so when I do these mailings, it's— I use Every Door Direct Mail and I target areas where it's rural, where people have, you know, 1 acre, 2 acres, 3 acres or more. So that they have space to put one of these big containers. And it's an instant build.

You pull up with a truck, you drop it off, and it's done instantly.

They've got a storage facility. So I use direct mail for that.

Yeah, cool. And John, just a tick on your journey. So you've been doing mail since age 16. Which is about parallel to me. The winding road that got you to Agora.

Okay, yeah, it's definitely a winding road. Like, you shouldn't have seen it a long time ago. I always just— I learned about marketing reading the back of the National Enquirer, believe it or not. So, and it always amazed me that I could put ideas and words down on paper and people would send me money for it. Just blew me away, especially when I'm watching my dad work in a factory 8 hours a day building stuff and not making the same amount of money that, that ideas and paper make. And so I wandered around, I did direct mail, I did it for family-owned businesses, was in the military a bunch of years, and on the side was always working on direct mail and helping. I've got an entrepreneurial mindset. A lot of guys out of the Navy's The Navy breeds entrepreneurs by nature, just the way that military branch works. And so I'd always done direct mail, always had a business on the side. I mean, it was always the piece that I loved the most. I loved the marketing part of it more than I loved the actual business most of the time, regardless of whether it was selling real estate or IT services or whatnot. And about a dozen years or so ago, me and a buddy hooked up and helped a guy rebuild his real estate business that he'd imploded. And out of that, built this relationship with him. We've done some other stuff along the way. And then I spent the last— I've been the last 2 years here at Agora. Just prior to that, I was working with Richard James, helping him with the marketing and mailing. He works with— in the legal niche. Consulting legal niche. So Rich and I worked together for about 3 years doing a lot of direct mail in that as well and building up that. And that just kind of moved my way over here to Legacy. My title actually is Director of Monetization, which only is, you know, frankly an Agora title. My job is to monetize the list any way, shape, or form. We acquire clients and monetize them. I'm the one in charge of monetizing them. I just happen to use direct mail as part of that webinar strategy, VSL, all the rest of that. Is that helpful?

A couple things that you said that I don't want people to miss. One is you described the business model as we use mail and other media to get a client. Would take a profit on the second sale to that client. So I point that out because you have a very clear, very simple, elegantly simple business concept that governs everything, right? Uh, by the client with the first sale start the profit with the second sale. And then you have a piece of data that says, uh, if a client that subscribes to two of your publications as opposed to one is four times more valuable in total— I point that out because a lot of people don't know the what I call the benchmarks of their business, which is when we get a customer to do X, their total value multiplies. And in the dry cleaning business, it's come back third time within 90 days. For example, if they get a new customer to come back 3 times within 90 days, they have a customer for life. And the value of the customer multiplies exponentially. In our business, help get them in more walls. So we could get them into a circle, into a fast start meeting, uh, to a super conference, um, excluding what they might pay to be there. Their value multiplies. It doesn't hold over somebody who hasn't been within 4 walls. And a lot of people don't know these benchmark data points about their business and about their customers. Obviously you do, and it allows you to spend accordingly to make that, that subscribe to 2 rather than 1 happen. Could you talk just a little bit more about that? Sure.

One thing that we've done really well here, I think, Agora is just a machine. And one of the things that we've done really well is understand what the business we're really in is. And we are a marketing-driven business. Our CFO is a marketing-driven guy. In fact, he works in marketing. He's not a bean pusher. He understands that our marketing department, if you walk in, the only thing we talk about is acquisition and monetization. We can't acquire the wrong clients because if we can't monetize them, we lose money because we bought a client at a loss. And so our entire marketing department, everybody within there understands we're part of the acquisition monetization department. And each have its role, each has its place. We have to acquire them within our metrics, with our parameters, and we know without a doubt we'll monetize them. We know what our 30-day, 90-day, 180-day, 3-year lifetime value of a client is. We call it lifetime value. Typically we look at it at 6 months. But we know what the value of that client is, how much money they should spend, and which one by— we do it by campaigns because we sell ideas more so than newsletters. But if we're talking about products, we know that product. We know at 60 days how much money that client that bought that product should be worth. And if they're not worth it, what else should we do to marketing in order to make that client worth it? Is this number— Is this number 80% of what it should be? Okay, well then we need to put some more marketing in place to bump that number up because again, remember we acquired them at a loss and so we have to monetize them. No two ways in shape or form.

Yeah, and I'm going to delve into the loss for just a sec. So, uh, rate it growth limit that devils, uh, people in my industry in info marketing, but in other industries as well, is the stubborn desire to at least break even on new customer acquisition in first transaction. I have one client, I'm not going to name them because you would know them, we all know. This has been his quest for the Holy Grail for like 40 years. And he is definitely determined before he drops dead. I mean, his bucket list has one item. Uh, I'm, I'm gonna grow my business by acquiring new customers at breakeven or better. Um, and I try and teach people that all the growth they see, all the, all the companies they know that have gone from small to sizable and all the wealth from marketing they see is all rooted in being willing and able by a process like the one you described to go negative, to buy the new customer at more— spending more on getting them than they are spending on the first transaction.. And that really is the gold key to Agora's program.

And it's ingrained in us, right? So if we get, if we build an average cart, and I'm just going to use round numbers to make it simpler, but if we get an average cart of $100, I might pay, I don't know, $180 to acquire that client. I'm just making up a number because I can't give you the actual metrics, but it's a percentage, right? So I might pay $180. If my average cart all of a sudden bumps up to $120, I don't go, hey, great, I'm making more money. No, I'm paying $220 to acquire that client because I want to spend more money. I'll find other places I can spend money because I want to keep that, that breakeven percentage. That's the holy number, right? Not whether we're making money, because I don't want to make money. The more money we get average cart, the higher we get that average client value on the initial, the more money I'm going to spend because I know I can buy more clients. I've just bought speed.

That's it. See, that's a very— that's a profoundly important way of thinking about business that few people have, and it's really important. They would think the other way. The other way. Oh boy.

Well, I know, because when I was in a small business, that's how I thought. Like, because I had to, you know, that's how I thought. I get here and there's a war chest, And my thinking's different, but I wish my thinking had been different in the small business because it's not the accurate thinking. You know, it's not about making money in that first transaction. It's about acquiring that client at a price that you can afford to stay in business so that you can sell them other stuff and having a system and process for selling them other stuff so that you can really make money and then funnel it back in the front.

Right. Great. Craig, maybe one other rabbit hole here, and then we're going to go to Q&A. Okay.

You know, one thing we haven't touched on, we've talked a lot about business-to-consumer mailings. That's pretty much what Agora is all about, but I think we should also touch on the B2B mailings. And you know, Dan, back in the old magnetic marketing days, you've got tons of examples of business-to-business mailings, and I think that's something we should touch in on because there's probably a lot of business owners who only market to businesses and wondering if direct mail can work for them. And one of the things that I see working really well in the B2B space is the free information kit. You know, doing a mail campaign where you're sending out a letter and an insert and a reply form or something, and you're just getting the other business owner to request more information, free report, something that's going to— that they would want to know more about. And I think that's important because, you know, a lot of times businesses will want to go to another business and straight up ask them to buy a service. Or right away ask them to sign up for something and pay for something. But the reality is it's kind of that two-step process where you're just trying to get them in the door through free information, and from there you can then sell them into whatever product or service you're trying to market to them. But the first step is getting a hold of them, getting them to request information from you, and it works in B2B as well. It's just the direct mail is I probably spend half of my mailings on business-to-business mailings because it works so well in that niche as well, in that space. So I just want to keep that in mind, and that it's not just for business-to-consumer.

You're right. You're absolutely right. So I divide the B2B stuff into mailing to businesses with empowered gatekeepers and mailing to businesses without empowered gatekeepers. 'Cause that affects format more than anything else, right? So, you know, the CEO of the hospital has empowered gatekeepers. The dentist has less empowered gatekeepers. And the solo practitioner, one dentist, one office, he probably has no empowered gatekeepers. Keeper. And of course in many cases we can, in about 30% of the cases as you know, we can get it home and we can circumvent the gatekeeper. Not so easy with the CEOs of hospitals. So that's format. But to your point, the offer is really the same with all of them and still the number one business building offer. Is some, uh, free information— a book, a report, executive briefing, the results of an industry survey, the white paper up at the corporate level, a multimedia information kit that is free to the qualified recipient. And then it begins the process chance of making the first sale. And that is by far the most reliable structure. The companies that fail to try and drive direct-to-sale or even direct-to-a-sales-appointment are creating a lot of self-sabotage. I mean, they're leaving a lot of good prospects behind who could be nurtured otherwise. But I'll bet, I'll bet you that there's nearly as much direct mail as there is B2C. Um, we just have a—

we see more of the B2C, so we naturally think more of it, but Yeah, and the other thing I'd mention about B2B is usually the customer value is significantly higher, so we're able to spend more to acquire them. So, it's different metrics there, which helps B2B be very successful in the mail.

Well, I mean, so John was with Richard J. Applied to Buy. Did people, many people on the call know Richard? I mean, when you're selling a, software system or coaching program or package of services to lawyers and you have transaction sizes or yearly client values in the $15,000, $20,000, $30,000 range, uh, you don't really sit around to fuss about the cost of the FedEx. Um, and when we talk about direct mail, by the way, I've often really using FedEx as the delivery.

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