Mailbox Money

Hey, welcome back to the Magnetic Marketing Podcast. On today's episode, you have a chance to listen in as Dan Kennedy interviews two of his top Diamond members and deep dives into creating simple and highly profitable direct mail campaigns and how landing just one client from a single mailing of 100 letters can make you very, very happy. During this interview, there's a lot of really cool things that come up, like for example, what percentage of response from direct mail should one expect, questions about what things are working the best, and a whole bunch of other really cool things. So hopefully this will give you ideas as you are creating and crafting your direct mail campaigns. So with that said, I hope you enjoy this episode of the Magnetic Marketing Podcast.

I don't think there's anybody that has had a bigger impact in the field of direct response than Dan Kennedy.

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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. This is Dan Kennedy. I have on the phone with me from various parts, uh, asunder here, Jerry Jones and Derek Freund. And let's see, Derek has been a Gold Plus VIP member for what, Derek, 2, 3?

This is the second year now.

Second year. And a member for God knows how long. But, and Derek is a direct mail specialist working either exclusively or almost exclusively with real estate professionals, predominantly in his home state of Michigan. By the way, when, when Ohio State plays Michigan at the track this last year?

Yeah.

Somebody put up a big sign in the restroom above the urinals. It said, "Flush hard, it's a long way to Michigan." Oh no.

At least it didn't get violent. Buckeyes and Wolverines, yeah.

So anyway, Derek's a direct mail specialist working with realtors, and Jerry is a direct mail specialist working predominantly, although not exclusively, with dentists. And what both also have in common is, is that they are providing, uh, done-for-the-client services as opposed to, uh, purely instruction or coaching. And in both cases are creating copy and designs and doing postcard mailings and obtaining mailing lists and so forth. And, uh, in a second, guys, I'm going to let you do a little more detailed introductions of yourselves. The timeliness of the tape is this. I don't know if you guys read Direct or not, the trading journal Direct.

I've got it on and off, yeah.

Yeah, well, I was kind of amused. I think 2 issues ago, the publisher's article was headlined "The Next Big Thing," and upon reading it, you discover that the next big thing, the revelation and revolution to affect industry is going to be direct mail. They are—

wow, 1922.

They are discovering this as other media is being taken away from them left and right. And so apparently the next big thing in business is going to be what we all have, you know, been using as our mainstay for a long period of time. And given that there are a lot of changes affecting a lot of businesses. I just spoke this week to the International Cemetery and Funeral Association, which is a lively bunch. I was about to— that's— yeah, absolutely, a very lively bunch. The predominant color, as you might imagine, is gray, not black clothing, facial tone. I should be careful because some of them are new Gold members. Um, but, uh, but their business is one of the many severely affected by Do Not Call, and especially the pre-need portion of the business, the business where they're actually in the insurance business. And so a lot of industries are sort of running around in trauma at the moment. What does Do Not Call mean? What does the email problems mean, etc.? And we are the answer with direct mail. So I think that The discussion's going to be very, very timely and very important to a lot of people. And before we dig in, why don't you each tell a little bit about your businesses? And Jerry, why don't you go first?

Okay, sure. Thanks, Dan. I appreciate you having Derek and I on the call today. I revel in the chance to get to talk with both of you. Jerry Jones here. I'm out in Salem, Oregon. And most of us are familiar with the problems that businesses have in generating and retaining clients. I specialize in helping dental practices retain and go out and find new patients. We have a coaching program as well as a lot of full-service type programs where, you know, from newsletters to seminars, you know, that we do. So a lot of different products and services. So primarily, that's what we do is work with dental practices, as you mentioned earlier. I'm excited to be on the call.

And in many cases, Jerry, you're doing like new move-in mailings and reactivation mailings to their patients and farming mailings.

You got it. Yes, we try to work a lot if they've got an existing patient base. That's where the gold is hidden, as they say. And then simultaneously, once that's underway, we then go out and do— we do a lot of postcard mailings, saturation-type postcard mailings, farming, as you said. We do a lot of income-specific or demographic mailings. We do postcards, bi-fold mailers, I mean the gamut, you know, lumpy mail as it's called, and so quite a few different things.

Great. Okay, Derek.

Well, again, it's Derek Freund. My company's Randolph Miller, and we're based about 35 miles outside of Detroit. And our niche is, as you said, is the residential real estate agent. And Jerry and I have spoke at length in the past in the similarity of our businesses in that both our clients, his dentist and mine realtors, are both high-ticket items. I mean, every client is worth, you know, from $2,000 to maybe $10,000, $15,000 lifetime value, perhaps more. So theoretically, the clients should have the money to be able to invest in getting the new client and getting somebody on their train, their money train. It's unique. I've been studying your material, and not to I don't want to turn this into a big Dan Kennedy testimonial, but my business really turned around 5 or 6 years ago from losing money to being profitable using this principle. So I'm happy to give a chance to give back to this community. But the challenges that we both face is, you know, or what I'd like to offer is that we both sell the direct mail services, but we also utilize them. And direct mail is so important, but it's also not the only delivery mechanism. Sometimes people can, you know, drop packages off manually. I'll have 40, 50 letters at a time, UPS, UPS to a specific sales office because there's 40 or 50 agents there. Some of your clients may be able to have a skyscraper if they're selling men's clothing or financial services. So it's like you always say, Dan, you know, half of marketing is psychology, the other half is math. Yeah. Is this cost-effective and does this make sense?. And sometimes 37 cents is a bargain basement price to have a letter delivered. Other times you can do it maybe for free, and you give yourself economic advantages that you may not have otherwise.

I saw Jay Leno in Vegas this weekend, and Jay said, you know, you gotta remember that 37 cents for a postage stamp is still just the bargain of the century when you consider that one mailman picks it up, another mailman handles it, Another mailman delivers it. Combined, they carry it around for a month, 2 months, 3 months. I mean, it's less than a penny a day.

I like that one.

The storage fee is—

yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's really a bargain. All right, well, look, uh, let's start with cost because, you know, when, when you, when, when you talk to business owners about direct mail there's often the immediate resistance, the arms-folded bracing and the 'it's too expensive' reaction to doing mail. And I've certainly fought it with business owners my entire career, and I know you guys fight it. So I mean, let's talk about the economics, you know. And the question, of course, is that I know you guys get asked all the time, and that I get asked all the time, which— well, what, what percentage of response should I expect from direct mail? Yeah. And, and so what's the answer? I mean, people are sitting out there trying to decide if they're gonna— if they're gonna spend the money and if they're gonna do direct mail programs and they're gonna ask, what should I expect?

Well, Derek, I'll go first. This, it's all based on what you're spending. There's no rule for percentages. As a matter of fact, if I mailed out 100 letters and I had 1 response, I might be really depressed, I might be really excited. It depends on the size of the check that that 1 response wrote or what that value of that 1 response is. So I coach my clients not to look at how many people responded or the quantity that responded, rather the the dollars that it puts in the bank account, and is that an acceptable ratio based on how much it costs to— from, you know, what you're used to acquiring a client for, how much you spend to get a client, and how much that client will spend with you on average. So I mean, it's a mathematical formula, and in dentistry I know that formula very well. I mean, I have to. So I don't— Derek, is that kind of what, what you teach your guys?

Well, yeah, I like, I like for people to understand the numbers, and I'm sure in the dental business not everybody's getting their teeth cleaned 2 or 3 times a year, but, you know, it's 40% or it's 60%. You know, in real estate, about 6 or 7% of the homes, you know, list and sell each year. So if somebody has a neighbor— I'll use small numbers, let's say 200— that means on average there's 15 homes that sell. Well, if they send out a mailer 2 months in a row and then they check their computer and no listings came up during that month, Well, there wasn't any business for anybody to have. Now if 5 came up and they got 2 of them, well now they're doing pretty well. But they have to understand how hungry is the market, how rapid is the market, how much can you sell them. In the case of a house, there's too many other issues. You really can't sell them on, you know, here I'll give you $500 to list your house if they just don't want to move. Now with dentistry, you can probably do a better job of bribing them.

Well, I think it is interesting that really yours is about the only situation where there's an accurate measurement of the number of potential transactions to occur in a 12-month period of time, right, with the realtor within a farming base. And in fact, the ability to go back and see how many transactions in that farming base actually did occur, that's That's actually a great advantage for you and for your clients that Jerry's clients and many of mine and many other businesses wouldn't have.

That's my quick little model. Coke and Pepsi, years ago during the cola wars, Pepsi had whatever, 39%, 38% of the carbonated soft drink beverage market. Reebok has so much, Harley-Davidson motorcycle. It's go get 40% of your market share. And that's what a lot of my clients— but what's 40%? Well, go do the math, and when you've capped out on that, go get another universe.

But I think your point, Jerry, it's, you know, it's the one that I always make, is that a lot of success in business is about, you know, asking questions. But often, you know, we're asking the wrong questions. And, and the whole response percentage and how many people responded to my mailing is always the wrong question. The return on investment question is always the correct one, and it of course begs people knowing in fact what their transaction is worth, what their customer is worth, so that they can determine how much they will spend in order to penetrate a marketplace. Right. What are you guys doing that works best And what do you have the toughest time getting through the thickest skulls of the thickest scald amongst your clients about how to do this well?

Jerry, do you want to go first?

Sure, I will. I'll be happy to. Well, there's a whole— that question is, Dan, I could spend a year on, as you know. I think a lot of what we're doing right now is we are just really focusing and concentrating on the basics of direct mail. In other words, if you pick up a Dan Kennedy book that talks about the ultimate sales letter and what to do with a sales letter, those are the rules that we're playing by. Those are the rules I've played by for almost a decade now, and it's a formula that just works time and time again. Not only does it work for us to acquire clients, but it works for our clients to get their patients in the door. I'll give you an example. One of the things that's having great success right now is a very simple postcard. It's a 23-cent first-class postcard with a label on it, which I'd rather have handwriting, but it's difficult to handwrite address 4,000 postcards for 10 clients. But just a simple label, they're sent almost to a saturation situation. In other words, we'll pick the closest 1,000 people to the dental practice, to the office address, that match a $30,000 and up income. In other words, they have—

Okay, so you're doing basically geography and demographics. You got it. And pretty simple demo.

Very simple, yep. We're not merging and purging lists, you know, acquired from 10 different sources or anything like that. We're making the assumptions that, you know, if there's a body within a distance, that has a heartbeat, they're gonna need dental care at some point in time, and the idea is to be in front of them when they have that need, or if someone in the family has the need. Speaking to what I have the most difficult time conveying to clients is—

Well, let me hold you there for a second, 'cause I just wanna make sure everybody gets it. So you're taking 1,000 prospects selected by proximity to the business, and by one categorization, which is income, household income, and then you're mailing them the same postcard 4 times?

Well, if we can get that far with the client, and that leads to the next problem.

Yeah, here we go.

Now, the guys that really get this point, that actually have sat down and listened to what we're trying to teach them, are the guys that are mailing every month the same postcard, maybe varying color. And maybe occasionally varying an offer. The thing that I have the hardest time getting through is if this postcard generates a sufficient ROI— in other words, I mean, if it's, if it's going to bring $2.50 in for every dollar you spend, which we tell them to measure it in a 30-day time frame, because with the dental practice, you know, you get a phone call, you schedule the patient, you might not see the money from that for a week. Yeah, right. So you can't measure it, you know, in days. You got to measure it in terms of 30 days or so. So if in 30 days you bring in $2.50 for every dollar you spend on the postcard, I would consider that a home run. The only question I have for the doctor is, "How many patients do you want and how soon can we mail the next batch?" because you're getting a killer return on investment. Well, the doctor says, "Well, you know, I only had 3 patients from that," or I get the comment, "Oh, well, we only had 2 calls." Well, no, you had 5 calls because we were 3 of them calling you posing as a patient to make sure that you guys are recording the calls. That's a whole other problem in itself. It's the, if it works once at 2.5x ROI, let's mail it again and let's mail it again until it breaks even and then we'll retool. But that's the single hardest thing that I think, that's the hardest job I have is conveying that if it works once it's going to work again and let's just keep mailing it. Because they get distracted and, well, what's the shiny object?

Yeah, there's a lot of that, isn't there?

Oh, there's a ton of it.

I was just at, I walked the exhibit hall at Parker. In Vegas, which is the big annual chiropractic convention. And one of our members, Dr. Scott Lewis, is a chiropractor up there, and he and I went and walked the show. And I spoke at Parker several years in a row, but it's been a decade. And the exhibit hall is huge, and it is— some of it's ordinary equipment, I mean tables and, you know, that sort of thing. But the rest of it is all booths selling the next shiny object, you know, the next distraction, a different, you know, whiz-bang website, a new gadget. And, you know, like you said at the beginning of the call, it's easy to get distracted by all that stuff and not be sticking to the basics, the bread-and-butter things that day in, day out can be relied upon to bring in a certain amount of business.

Exactly.

And so getting them to commit to a continuous schedule and to accurately track and measure their results are the two biggies. Absolutely. Okay, Derek?

Well, in my business, assuming a quality person— and remember, the point of entry for a real estate agent is 40 hours of class and $100 licensing fee. So, you know, Jerry, with dentist, you know, they've got to go to school for 8 or 10 years. But assuming the person—

yeah, let's not— by the way, don't, don't— Jerry wouldn't— you should not make an assumption that just because they went for 8 years instead of 40 hours, it makes them exponentially smarter. Okay, I mean, I love my clients, but I'm just saying, it just, it just means that, you know, their families had more money or more credit, um, they could drink beer and eat pizza for 8 years. And they were willing to keep their butt in a chair for, for 7 years longer. You know, that's, you know, it's extremely instructive that the first guy to get fired by Trump at his reality show was the guy who is both an MD and an MBA.

Overeducated. He's from here in Michigan too.

He was—

he's from about 10 miles away from here. Yeah. Yeah. Anyhow, let's assume Marge or Bob is a good realtor and they provide good service and they follow up and You know, good fiduciary duty. Nothing beats the sphere of influence list. And, you know, years ago, you know, Joe Girard in his book talked about everybody knows 250 people. And now there's all sorts of other sexy programs I can have with apartment complexes and such, but if somebody has their friends and family and they just do a good job servicing them, that has the highest return on investment, much like a business having a house list of repeat clients.

So do you try and get them to build and turn over to you a warm list than—

Totally, totally.

I mean, I spent a lot of breath and I produced a lot of these tapes and CDs just to get people to do it. And you think years ago how many businesses catered to, and still to this day, college students and people selling everything from china cups to encyclopedias to vacuum cleaners. And it's like, hey, get the kid in here. He's going to sell 3 or 4 of his relatives and then we get somebody else in here. This is just a higher professionalism. Get your friends in here. And in today's market, real estate, selling a million bucks worth of real estate is now typically only maybe 4 homes, maybe 2 homes in some areas, you know, quarter million bucks apiece, half million bucks apiece for a home. And you know, you do 4 transactions, they're $30,000 underway, and you know, they do a few other things right, they're actually making a living.

By the way, as an aside, It always surprises me how many localized businesses— restaurant, dry cleaners, shoe repair shop, auto repair— these kinds of businesses, if you ask the owner if they're doing this, if they've put into their database their own warm list of family, friends, neighbors, people they do business with, you know, who do you know and who knows you, Yeah, they have— they're not mailing them either.

They don't. And Dan, I'll say this on your tape, but there's maybe something even sexually perverse about some people going out trying to market to strange people they don't know, whereas they won't market to their, you know, existing people. I don't know what this human tendency is, but, but they forget their own warm market. So what we call sphere of influence is the number one moneymaker, bar none. You give 200 or 300 people, they're well started making a good living. The second question you have, the thickest skull thing, is having people focus on the return on investment. If I sit down with a client, let's say they spend, not a big budget, we're talking $500 a month, $6,000 for the year. And at the end of the year, let's say they've made a 5-to-1 return. They've got $6,000, they've made $30,000, $32,000 back. And then they don't hire me again or they say I want to do something. It just makes me want to spit nails because I'm in this, let's say, stockbroker, you know, the old-time stockbroker 20, 30 years ago. We say, "Wait a minute, you hired me to help you make money. You made 3 to 1, you made 5 to 1, you make 10 to 1, and you don't want to keep me around?" That's not fair.

Don't you think some of that is they don't know what they made? Right. Some of it is what Jerry said, it's the next shiny object, right? Even though the $6,000 with you made $30,000, somebody got a hold of them now and has convinced them they should have a talking house machine, or they should have a new kind of laptop that does a PowerPoint presentation, and that's going to cost $6,000. Therefore, there's no money left to do again what just chugs along and works.

Yeah, no kidding. 45 minutes ago, I was scheduling an appointment with a, with a gal And she had to go to her PalmPilot, then she had to go to Outlook to schedule an appointment next Monday at 2:30.

Yeah.

I mean, she's got $500 in software and $500 in a PalmPilot to schedule an appointment that a daytimer could do for $50. So yeah, it's a real problem in, I'm sure, all professions.

Yeah, by the way, when you visit with her, feel free to quote me that there's this thing called a pencil and a calendar. And the gas station will give her the calendar for free. So you're out for about 25 cents.

As you go to a convention, when you take all the money that people spend in software and hardware and you say just spend it in paper and ink and postage, you're so much further ahead.

Can I just add one more thing to this? This is how asinine, this is how out of control it's getting in the dental industry. I just literally funded a practice here in Salem. My partner and I are starting up. We spent less than $100,000 to get this office open. I have a client in Colorado who has spent over $800,000, and I'm willing to bet my production from our office, or the production from that office that we have, will be higher than his by year's end.

Well, I'd be willing to bet on it too. Further, in the business startup category, I mean, that's the axiomatic deal of we spend all our money on the store or the office, the furniture, the computers, all of the assets that hold money captive, and we have no marketing budget left. That probably describes a third of all the startups. You know, in America.

Oh, I'm sure that's conservative.

Yeah. Um, and you know, it's a big issue. I mean, I talk with clients about it all the time. You have to be very careful of piling up too many things around you that hold money captive, because when you guys know, you know, one of the wealth principles is how many times during a calendar year can you turn the same dollar over again and again and again and again. Versus having it locked up in a cage, right? And, and, and they, they, they, they love to lock them up in pretty cages.

Well, and people like to accumulate trophies. If they can look back at their, their Lexus automobile or their Mercedes or their office or, you know, the new piece of equipment, you know, what, be it software or be it, you know, in Jerry's business with the dentist, there's— they're nice trophies to stand back. But yeah, it's hell on the return on investment because it can take years And they're not worth a hill of beans if you don't have a client to put under the equipment or a prospect to put in software.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, buy stamps first.

Yeah, yeah, buy stamps. And if you do that right, then you can buy all the trophies you want.

But, well, I gotta come first. Okay, another topic. You got outside of the warm markets now. You guys are both very, very knowledgeable about lists, and I continually harp on the fact that especially at the local merchant level. Their sort of stubborn ignorance about lists and refusal to get very sophisticated at all. I mean, we lost a handful of people a few minutes ago with geography and demographics. You know, really is a good use of lists, smart use of lists is really a very underutilized opportunity, especially for the local merchant. So if you would, kind of both of you talk a little bit about obtaining lists, list selection criteria, the most sophisticated you get, the least sophisticated you get, and so forth.

Derek, I'll let you go first.

Well, with us, we use what I would call a real street fighter basic, you know, crisscross type directory. You take a— and again with the realtors, you take a neighborhood of $250,000 homes or $400,000 homes and, you know, That's it. That's, that's all there is. We need to put the list together. They drive around, they take out maybe a competitor's name, and that's, you know, kind of the, the butt-dumb simple way to do it.

And so for them, you're doing value of home, you're not doing equity, you're doing value, right? You're doing value of home, right? And then within a, within a, within a tight geographic area, a farm.

Right. What's probably the real estate business invented and now a number of other industries— a farm, a square geographic mile, a specific Pine Creek Woods subdivision or whatever, Shenandoah West, whatever the heck it may be called. Planting the seeds in front and it would work for carpet cleaners and realtors and dentists, etc.

Do you ever get any more selective than that?

Occasionally we'll get a real sharpie, somebody who wants to get people who have lived in their homes for let's say more than 5 years.

Okay. Okay.

We'll do that on request.

Somebody will get that.

I've done tapes like this trying to encourage people to do it. Honestly, Dan, if I did it for them, there's a number of other categories. There's a specialist with elderly people, let's say empty nesters in the 55 to 60-year age plus group. That's a nice niche.

So the point is, I mean, there's a lot of things they could do. That you would recommend they do?

Oh, I got a whole— you just can't get them to do Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders, pedigree dogs, horse lovers, former police officers, former nurses. I mean, you know, pick, pick the vocation, avocation list, and let me take a realtor and put him or her on the back of a horse and say the horse lover's realtor, or a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and and we're gonna have a gangbusters program. But in 5 years, I've— you can count on one or two hands the number of times I've been able to do it.

Yeah, okay. I mean, I'd be willing to bet one hand, Derek.

Yeah, well, by the way, if you own a Harley-Davidson motorcycle or a horse, this is going to predetermine a lot of income. I mean, not— I mean, there's some poor people who may have a fancy horse, but you know, if you're right, you know, riding around on an Arabian horse, you probably have some disposable income.

Well, unless you're Wayne Newton.

[Speaker:ADRIAN WILSON] Yeah. Oh boy. I guess what we do, we do a couple of things. We do the saturation means like I talked about, and occasionally we'll throw in 2 variables, one of which is homes only versus homes and apartments. And we usually will exclude businesses, which you can do. And then we'll throw in an income criteria. For a lot of my coaching clients, what we're doing is, for instance, let's say it's a cosmetic practice and they only want to do cosmetics and blah, blah, blah. So what we'll do is we'll actually get pretty sophisticated. We'll go to InfoUSA and we'll— or we'll go to Dunhill List Company and we'll say, okay, here's what we're looking for. We're looking for a list of women between the ages of 35 and 60 with household incomes of $60,000 and up with one kid or no kids, and then maybe we will specify a car make. We will get pretty specific on what we are looking for. And then it really narrows the list down tremendously. So you might go from a universe of 4,000 women that meet that age bracket, but then when you add the filter for house, and then when you add the other filter of say 2 or more cars per household, that might drop it down a little bit more. So you're continuously narrowing the field. So when you do your direct mail piece, we address that. Okay, you know, we know you're a woman that fits in this category. We know you want to look good. You know, I mean, you just—

so you're not matching the copy to the list?

Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so we will get that sophisticated. And, and again, it comes out, you know, when we're doing stuff like that, it might come out to $2, $3 a piece. I have a doctor right now we're doing a FedEx mailing for. We have before and after pictures, and we're targeting it based on that specific of a list. I mean, we have 15 or 20 different demographic differentiators.

Jerry, are you brokering that list for your doc, or is he going out, or she going out and doing it on her own?

Oh, we just, we go and get it for them. You know, when a doctor calls up and says, you know, I want to attract cosmetic patients, the first thing I try to sell them is the FedEx package program. And this is the first doctor out of, you know, a couple hundred that's ever taken me up on it, right? Because he understands, yeah, okay, I know what's going on here.

He doesn't mind spending $2 or $2.50 for a name that's qualified.

Exactly. Okay, that, I mean, it's perfect package piece. We're mailing small numbers like 100 to 200 at a time, and his per package price is like $15. You know, he's doing cases that are $20,000 to $80,000, so he doesn't care. I mean, it's, it's all relative for him.

Well, of course it's all relative. You guys are both familiar with the trash can mailer? Oh yeah, I was just with Mitch Carson in Vegas. Well, I have a member who now has a program. Now again, he's only mailing like 20 or 30 prospects at a time. He's delivering the thing in a full-size trash can.

That's a, that's a Ron Legrand writer down there.

I mean, you know, but again, most people, you know, can't make the translation now from $15, $20, $25 cost per direct mail package against value, right? You know, it just, it just, their mind like freezes up at the cost.

They'd rather run a trade magazine public or an ad that might cost $10,000.

Yeah, because that value they don't question. Or go rent an exhibit booth and spend God knows how much money to be at a trade show, but do nothing in front or behind the show.

Well, it's tough issues because you're sometimes battling your spouse, you're battling your staff, you're battling your colleagues. Everybody's looking at you funny. If I had a nickel for every time my staff looked at me funny during the day, it's like You know, I wouldn't need the business. Yeah, because we do all these quirky things that are what get results.

I want to go back to lists for a second. Jerry hit on a couple sources. I mean, talk a little bit about the mechanics of list acquisition. Where do they go? Where do they go to get information? They just look in the Yellow Pages and call a list broker? I mean, what if somebody is going to do this on their own? What do they do about acquiring lists?

Dan, for me, that's kind of paramount to who do you use for an attorney or an accountant, because list selection makes or breaks your marketing. I mean, if you're going to a cold— if you're not going to a house list, which neither Derek or I talked about, but, you know, given the choice, you know, we'll always go to a house list first, a warm market. But, you know, going to a cold market like that, if you don't— if your list isn't prospects, qualified prospects, then your mailing, every penny you spend is wasted. In other words, if you're mailing to people, if you're an implant guy and you're doing dental implants and you're trying, you're sending a mailing list out to 20-year-olds, bad news. Or if you're a guy that does, you're a pedodontist who works on children and you're sending it out, mailing out to 50+, bad news. Right. So, um, I, I, so you have to have them, like you said, the, the basics down. And I, I would always tell people, if you're looking for a source to rent names from, get a referral from somebody who has a background and it has a long track record with the company. Um, oh, we've not, not the situation where, oh, we've used this company once and they, you know, the list was good. No, how many times have you used the company and over how many years, you know, and do you have a good solid contact there? Like Dunhill International. I've used them for going on a decade, and I know they've been around 50, 60 years, and they are— they're good, and they offer everything that InfoUSA does except for its personalized service instead of a computer. I mean, that's who we usually refer people to, or we buy them ourselves.

Good. Derek, you want in?

I really don't have that. Going to the broker market, again, we're doing it based on information we're getting from the the public resources directory or directly from the clients. So I don't have a good recommendation other than we've used InfoUSA and Melissa Data, and you know, they're as good as mediocre.

Is—

yeah, when you say public records though, so you're pulling some data yourself by going to, to what, to a crisscross directory?

Yeah, crisscross directory or a White Pages.

Got it.

It's, you know, here, give me a list of the, the 30 streets in your neighborhood. And we have a gal that, you know, within certain zip code extensions, pulls up those addresses and you have the house. As long as that matches a certain value, it's productive for our clients.

Hey Derek, can I give you a resource and a tip? Please. We use a company called— we haven't used Melissa Data, although I've thought about using them in the past, but we've used Compact Information Systems. I don't know if you're familiar with them or not. They're residentlists.com. Dan, this is an incredible tool. They have what they call a video map or a Video mapping, something like that. But essentially it pulls up a neighborhood saturation, carrier route type neighborhood maps on your computer screen. And you can pinpoint right down to the carrier routes which areas you want to hit. I mean, it's pretty—

That's ResidentList.com?

Yeah, it's pretty fantastic. And that's who we use exclusively for our saturation mailing.

That's a very good piece of information.

All online delivery within 5 minutes.

You order a list— Right, and I just want to chime in that that probably half your clients, Dan, can use these residential lists just cold as they are. I mean, there's reason to do the sophisticated stuff, but probably once it's just the neighborhood behind their restaurant or behind their dry cleaner, behind their—

oh, I agree. And in many cases, you know, businesses' transaction sizes won't support anything more sophisticated than that.

Yes.

You know, both of you do have, you know, your, your clients, the realtor and the dentist, they do have transaction sizes that will support a lot of sophistication. Like one of you mentioned, make of car that's sitting in the driveway. But of course, getting them to do it is a whole other thing. But no, a lot of businesses, they can't be spending $2 a name or $3 a name and don't need to.

Right, exactly.

If they'll just pick an appropriate farm neighborhood and mail it sequentially and consistently, they'll get a good ROI, right? You know, your point earlier, I mean, the— and I should— like, Jerry, you probably have a bunch of dentists who do new move-ins.

I mean, I tell you, it should be.

I mean, I think every, every doctor should be doing them. Yeah, maybe with the exception of, you know, 2 or 3, but yeah, we do have some that do it.

But I tell the story that this last time that I bought a new house, I mean, as you know, because lots of people mailed the new move-ins. And so, I mean, I kept it all this time and set up big tables in the basement and started a stack for each source of mail. So I got a piece of mail from Dr. Mary Smith, veterinarian. Mary gets a pile all her own. So that when I get a second piece from Mary, I can add it to her pile. And I wanted to see how many piles I could build with 2 and 3 and 4. And it's now about 2 years since I bought that house, and there were 2 and a half of those big long 6-foot tables full of individual piles. So there was a lot of first pieces of mail, a lot of mortgage companies, a lot of banks, a lot of veterinarians, a lot of dentists, a lot of chiropractors, car dealers, local restaurants. Out of all of them, I've been able to put a second piece of mail from anybody on 4 and a third piece of mail from somebody on 1, right? The rest of them sent one piece and One time and that's it.

The third, the guy that the person mailed out 3 times was probably a client of yours.

Um, not by the quality of the mail.

I hope not.

I didn't cross-reference. I didn't actually check, you know. I hope not, because what he was sending was terrible. Um, but as a matter of fact, still, um, I did do business with him.

Uh, Dan, if I can just interject, it's like you say often, and I'll mess up the quote here, but you know, in the land of the blind, the, you know, the one-eyed guy is king.

Something like that, right?

Close enough. But, you know, in this market, if somebody's looking for a veterinarian, you're not getting deluged with veterinarians. And if the person sends out a tacky little cheapy thing and you still need to have your cat neutered or spayed, you know, you'll accept that. So, you know, consistently—

well, it's a lot better than— huh? No, it's the Woody Allen line, you know, that half the success is showing up.

Yeah, or 90% of— yeah, exactly, it's just showing up. So it doesn't have to have a perfect headline or a perfect offer, it just needs to get done. And I often tell clients, a manager pulled aside who had had great results and he's saying, well, Derek, you know, we need a home folksy newsletter here and we need this and this. And I said, his name was John, I said, John, look at this like exercise. You got all these women and somebody comes in, they talk about how great Pilates is and somebody talks about how great power yoga is and somebody talks about, get your butt on the exercise equipment 3 or 4 days a week, eat a healthy diet, in a year you're going to be in great shape. You don't need the new shiny piece of thing.

No, actually, you know, 2 juice cans used as weights replace a lot of equipment.

But the thing is just doing it. I mean, you can have a $10,000 gym in your bedroom, and if you get on it once, it doesn't matter. A direct mail piece that's tacky or pink or whether you want it pink or not, just do it and somebody's going to get much better results than the perfect mailer that never gets out.

Well, I mean, quite frankly, and I, you know, don't either one of you take this wrong, and so I'm going to be very careful to clarify it, but a lot of what I see both of you putting in the mail for your clients would, by my score, maybe get a 7 on a 1 to 10, even a 6 on a 1 to 10. The copy, you know, is not spectacular, and in many cases too much space is given up to image because your clients demand that of you, right? But, but you guys are both getting good results for them with mail that we all know could be done better.

Yep. And just, Dan, you're being generous, actually. Uh, you know, that was the first thing I said at our first Gold VIP. Everybody says, Derek, what are you doing for your clients? And it's like, it's guilty of everything else. It's a pretty picture. It's ego-driven. But I'm saying, wait, wait a minute. My clients, you know, God as my witness, are having phenomenal returns because I'm doing it for them.

Yeah, because, well, because it's actually getting mailed now.

Yeah, look at what they're doing now. Look at what I'm doing, and it's copy intensive and special offers, money-back guarantee.

Yeah, by comparison.

Yeah, yeah. So what I'm selling and what I'm doing are two different things. I'd love for them to be the same thing, by the way, but I got to make a living at the same time here. Now my conscience is clean because they're making good money and everybody's happy, but that's another story.

Here's another sort of timely question. Trends. Is there anything that you see happening that is different or new or threatening or that people need to respond to, say within the past 6 months or occurring in the next 6 months as it affects mail?

[Speaker:ADRIAN_WILSON] Oh boy. Well, I'm always beating the drum of if you don't have your in-house data backed up, and for dental practices that's easy to do, but a lot of them don't do it. For me, it's just getting permission from who your patients are, who your clients are, whatever business you're in, to continue to communicate with them. And however you get that permission, get it, whatever you need to do, but make sure you've got it somewhere that says, yes, I will be happy to receive your information in the mail, whether it's on a new client form or whatever. But I think there's going to be, well, for instance, in the medical community in the last couple years, HIPAA regulations finally hit, which is the Health Insurance Portability Protection Act. So that prohibits doctors from doing a lot of things to communicate with their clients that they used to be able to do. So, you know, now they're going back to the '70s when the wall went up in front of the receptionist and there's 3 inches of glass and that kind of stuff. And so now, I mean, I'm telling my clients, you know, get all the information you can.

Yeah, and HIPAA affects chiropractors, Dennis.

Any medical.

Yeah. Yeah. Dan, in my profession, you know, the last change of probably just the last 60 or 90 days or so is the do not call list. And that had always— it was never done as much as they talked about it, but the cold calling, you know, by the way, would you like to sell your house with me, has changed my market that effectively cold calling is gone. And there's been something like 50 million households in the United States who have signed up for it. So even if the law goes away, the public has voted for what they want. So the means of communication is important. One critical thing I want to recommend to everybody is that mails is to is drop by their post office or go to US Post Office or uspo.com and get a guide to mailing for businesses and organizations. And the math part of the mailing, it's fascinating. If they look at postcards, letters, flats, parcels, exactly what you can mail and what you mail with a stamp or what you can mail standard rate or what used to be called bulk mail. It's fascinating because sometimes there's little gaps in the postal rules where you can— mail, maybe an 11x17 huge postcard, and you can still do that for less than 50 cents postage. So I think it behooves everybody to know that.

Give me the resource again.

It's called—

I've got it right here in front of me— A Guide to Mailing for Businesses and Organizations.

They have a guide to doing business with USPS with direct mail.

Yeah, but it will give you the size, the thickness, the weight. You know, if you want to do lumpy mail, if it's more than, let's say, a quarter-inch thick, it goes into another category. It may not necessarily be weight. Wait, because you can have your stuff all prepared and go to the post office and have it rejected. Yeah, well, yeah, and it pays to know. And never believe that the person— I have a real thing against government employees— that the person, the clerk, knows what they're talking about. Or he or she may accept it, but the, the person at the next post office, or the person next week, may reject it.

Bill, uh, Bill Glazer urges everybody, because the post office also puts on seminars from time to time, uh, to go— and use that, not so much the seminar content, you know, is one thing, but it's the opportunity to befriend somebody in that region at a higher level than the counter clerk.

That's a huge resource. And one of the things, when we started mailing, I was taking the mailings to the post office myself, and I'd go over there with 50 or 60 trays of mail, and I, you know, I very quickly made friends with all the clerks and the post the management there, because it's inevitable there's going to be problems even with the pros that do it every day. Buy them donuts. Yeah, exactly. Food works well. But do whatever you need to do to get to know them and develop a relationship so that when you need an exception— and by the way, if you ever have a mailing quote-unquote turned down, ask for a— these are magic words, Derek, and I'm sure you guys have used them— may we get a one-time exception for this mailing? Because they will let it go through if you've been nice and courteous and all the other things. But that could save you mountains of dough and a lot of heartache.

I one time had, no kidding, $30,000 worth of mail rejected because the card stock was 2/1000 of an inch too thin. Now when we bought it, it was right. By the time it went through the printing process, printing presses and everything, it shrunk down 2/1000 of an inch. And you know, that was a problem to deal with. It kind of ruined my day. But knowing the right people and knowing how to get through the problem, we ended up fixing it for a nominal cost.

Well, and everybody ought to get those resources that you mentioned. And as long as we're on resources, what are like your 2 or 3, don't plug mine because everybody's got mine, what are your 2 or 3 favorite or most used reference books or tools for producing direct mail?

Without a doubt. I mean, I've got a library of people. Claude Hopkins, I mean, without a doubt is right up there, and I consult his books a lot. And there's one other that's had numerous— I'm staring at it across the room here, and I can't remember the author's name, but it's had numerous revisions over the years, and it's also a resource of mine. It's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't think of it. But Clyde Bedell, there's a lot of guys, old direct mail, direct response marketing guys that have been around that are long since gone, but their work remains. But probably Hopkins is one of my favorites.

Gary? Yeah, I tell you, I've read all of those and Robert Collier's and of course Dan's material. Depending on the time of the year or the particular year, I may be hotter or colder. The two are— the one is The Million Dollar Mailers. And I don't know if Denny Hatch put that together.

Yeah, Denny Hatch. It's a very good swipe file book.

Yeah, and basically there you have his— there's another book too. There's Million Dollar Mailers and there's the second one. But they're basically historically Encyclopedia Britannica and the National Geographic and Time Magazine and the ad for the Wall Street Journal. The direct mail piece that generated a billion dollars worth of business, where you can really go in and find out what's been tested and what's worked and walk in the footsteps of the giants. Those are the biggest resources. The other thing, I maybe didn't ask this question, Dan, but even the pure sales guys, I like to take my control, and this is the way I started and I'm working out of it more now. Sold whatever, $5 or $10 million worth of my services, but just getting the control in people's hands. And if that's a stamp, that's great. If not, physically delivering it. Or I have clients using FedEx envelopes. Now they're not mailing FedEx, but they're using the FedEx envelopes or the priority envelopes that they're getting for free, and they're putting in people's mailboxes, or not their mailboxes, but their newspaper chutes, or sliding them through the door in the morning for expired listings. Or you can do this with skyscrapers. The big magic to this is most of us have been toe-to-toe salespeople in the past. If we can take our control, our offer, and let that take all the abuse for whether it's 10 cents apiece or 50 cents apiece or $5 apiece, get the paper and ink in front of people and do it massively and abundantly, just like the salesperson who would make 100 cold calls a day. We just do it, but we live a much better lifestyle.

Derek, I totally agree with you on those. Another mentor of mine was get on every single mailing list you can possibly get on, especially the big mailers that are selling a lot of direct response stuff like the newsletters. The gentleman out of Maryland there that sends a ton of newsletters.

Phillips and Agora, the two that you wrote about.

Phillips and Agora, you know, Dr. David Williams. If a person just got on Dr. David Williams' mailing list, Subscribe one time and you'll never have to subscribe again and they send you a ton of stuff. There's a lot of really time-tested, proven direct response stuff that comes out of those companies. And you can get an education just through one subscription. And if you see a piece more than once from them, if you get mailed twice within a 60-day period, you can bet that's a control that's working really well or it's one that they're testing against a control. So there's going to be a lot of stuff there that you can utilize in your own business.

Well, it's sometimes fun. It's like as a kid where there's a song and you change the words to it. You know, we all did this maybe in high school or something where we put a girl's name in that we know in the song or something. Where you take the sales letter and you just put in your pitch. I've done it with the Wall Street Journal ad as well as thousands of other people where, you know, on a clear sunny day, two realtors passed their pre-licensing test. You know, interesting, 5 years later they meet at their annual convention. Both have nice families.

Both this.

Well, one makes $1 million a year. The other one is struggling. Well, what makes the difference? Well, 5 years ago, somebody called Derek at Randolph Miller. And so you take these classics and we just adapt them for ourselves. Is that kind of obtuse taking the rock song and— Yeah, sort of.

I was about to say that neither Jerry or I were quite that pathetic in high school.

But thank you, Dad, because—

No, just so you guys know, you don't remember. We apparently had cars. See, if you have a car, then it gets easier, Derek.

Okay.

Hey, the clock has raced by. Thanks a lot. I know the two of you are busy. Appreciate the time. I'll speak at you soon.

Thank you, Dan.

Bye.

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