Can Direct Mail + Inbound Play Nicely Together? [HubHeroes, Video EP69]

That's right, Max. I finally fixed it. It's the right intro to the podcast. We're winning.

We're winning. Of course, the first week you get it right is he's not here.

I started crying.

So, HubSpot. HubSpot is in no way responsible for all of the silence from Devin. They disavow any connection to the silence that Devin will be bringing to today.

And I kid you not. I kid you not. I got the audio into my Rodecaster 2 and Slack went. And then it was him saying he wouldn't be here.

And I was like, I bet it was personal.

I bet it's like he knew or something.

I know. Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another epic episode of the Hub Heroes podcast. I am your host, Liz Morehead, as well as our resident content strategist. I'm joined, as always, by the one and only George B. Thomas and Maximilian Cohen of Closed One City. And happily, guys, I'm hyped for today's episode because we have a special guest. And don't worry, I'm about to introduce you, buddy. But we have somehow managed to set up an entirely unplanned, organic series around topics that bridge offline and online or seemingly disparate and, quote, unquote, outdated outbound tactics. With Inbound, we did that with abm, we did that with SMS texting in our last episode. And this week, we are joined by the one and only Dennis Kelly of postalytics, because we're diving headfirst into the. Into the. I had. I don't have a metaphor here. We're talking about direct mail today, folks. We are talking about direct mail. So, Dennis, thank you so much for joining us. Tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah. So, as you mentioned, I'm CEO of postalytics. We are a direct mail automation software platform. And, you know, believe it or not, those things seem oxymoronic, right? You know, direct mail and automation and software, like, how do those things fit? And that's kind of the point, right? Like, direct mail has been this thing. It's been hanging out there for a long time, chugging away, doing what it does. And. And what we're doing is we're saying, hey, let's bring this into the 21st century, surround it with software, integrate it with HubSpot, and make it a part of the modern marketing stack.

I love that so much. I love that so much. And, Liz, we might be trying to subtly tell the listeners and viewers something. I mean, don't get me going next Week might be billboards. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Maybe I don't know.

How can pet rocks fit into your attract, engage and delight strategy in 2024? Find out next week.

Well, that's 2025. Pet Rocks is 2025.

Just not. We're not there yet. We're not there yet from a. From a technology perspective. But okay. So I actually want to start today's conversation by speaking explicitly to you, George and Max. I'd love for you to share with Dennis what your initial feelings and reactions are. When I say the term direct mail, what immediately comes to mind. Max, I see you.

He's having a moment.

You are emoting, sir. Bring those feelings out. Share them with us.

Well, you got to put me on the spot like this with my first.

Interaction with Dennis because you're wearing yellow.

Sign, you're wearing yellow sunglasses, and you look like you're about to pull me over for a speeding ticket.

So, like glasses. All right, so we don't fry my brain looking at the computer.

Too late.

First thing that comes to my mind when I hear direct mail. Dennis, don't take any of this personally. Recycling. That's the first thing comes in my head because when I get direct mail, I put it in the recycling and it's just because. And here, let me, let me be totally. I am, I am, I am coming to this conversation willing to have my mind changed because, listen, I feel the same way about crappy email marketing, right? That also goes right in the garbage, right when I get it. Same thing goes with bad mail that I get to at my house, right? However, I have more of a gut reaction to saying, oh, does this not look like a postcard from a friend or family member? Or is this not a bill?

Trash.

And like, I don't even open it.

Right?

But I know I'm. I know that that is just me. And I didn't grow up with mail being like a huge part of my, you know, day to day way I communicated with people. So I have a very, you know, jaded disposition when it comes to marketing via the mail.

Right.

But I know that that hasn't always been the case. And I'm sure there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. I feel like I interact with the wrongs ways of doing it a whole bunch of Right. So despite George and Liz, what you think I'm. I am, I am. I'm totally willing to have my. My mind changed.

Oh, yeah.

Be enlightened on the good Ways.

Right.

And also, I have a feeling that HubSpot added that postal mail activity for a reason.

Just maybe for a reason.

Right.

So I am. I am. I am open minded. I'm willing to have my mind changed on direct mail. And Dennis, thank you for being here, man. It's great to meet you.

Yes. Let me start with that, Dennis. I. Yeah, Dennis, I'm glad you're here for the conversation. I mean, I. I saw something a while ago online and was like, we need to have this conversation. Let's get you on the show. What's funny, Max, is I too, am a big person of like, if it's crap, throw it away across the board. If it's a crap ad, if it's a crap email, if it's crap inbound, if it's crap, just more crap, crap, crap, crap, crap, throw it away. However, on the flip side, I have probably spent the most money that I will ever spend and will continue to spend because of direct mail. And, and let me explain this. What I mean by that is, if I get a crappy postcard from the local insect company, Trash. But as soon as Carnival or Royal Caribbean send a direct mail pamphlet that my wife and Daugh can flip through and book another cruise to go on vacation, I know that direct mail works because I'm gonna end up spending money. We're gonna end up on a beach, we're gonna be drinking cocktails. And it's not because we just woke up one day and said, let me go to carnival.com. let me go to Royal Caribbean. By the way, they're not sponsoring this podcast, but Carnival, if you're listening, at Royal Caribbean, we can talk. But. But I know that as soon as that pamphlet makes it into my real world mailbox, I'm in trouble.

George, I have a question for you. How many. How many timeshare presentations have you sat through?

I have never sat through a timeshare. No, actually, maybe twice in my life.

Sold your stuff off of the direct mail. There is no chance in hell you have not sat through at least 14 timeshare presentations.

Maybe two. Maybe two.

So, yeah, I'm just gonna throw that out there. I'm gonna echo what George said. Royal Caribbean, if you are listening, I'm all, We could talk. Hub heroes at sea. Let's make it happen. But what's funny is I find myself in between both you, George, and Max. Max, on the one hand, I am definitely with you.

Well.

Not all of us can be you. Do you have your steering wheel today, bud?

I'll Grab it. I'll grab it.

Go grab it. But I find myself a little bit in the camp of, of Max, because it reminds me of this comedian who was really popular in the early 2000s, named Mitch Hedberg. And he would talk about. People would hand him like, brochures on the street. And his joke was, it's as if you're saying, here, throw this away for me. So there's that. On the other hand, I have been a marketer who has developed direct mail campaigns that have worked exceptionally well.

And I know, George, you and I have some examples that we want to dig the fun direct mail packages because we have. I've put together some really cool ones where I'm like, I'm so glad I'm sending this to someone else and not me.

And it makes me really bummed out.

So, Dennis, I want to turn to you here. What do you see as the disconnect, or opportunity, rather, between what many inbound practitioners think direct mail is and what it can be in the context of inbound?

Sure. Well, you know, I think there are a lot of folks that have negative perceptions of direct mail from the old days of junk mail. And, you know, the volume of junk in Your mailbox in 2007, 2008, was the peak of mail volume, and it's been on a decline.

Right.

Ever since. But, you know, at that point in those years, moving up to that point, your physical mailbox looked a lot like your email inbox today. It was filled with repetitive, with the same, like two current resident type of, you know, spray and pray. You know, it's just an impression. We're spending money. Get it out there.

Right.

And that's what, that's what became of the channel in the late 90s, early 2000s.

Right.

But what's been happening now with the advent of marketing automation and then the advent of tools like postalytics that plug into marketing automation is that you can use direct mail to target people who don't look at anything else. And so all of a sudden, the 70% of your audience who's not opening your email can get something in their hands that they have to at least look at for a moment before deciding what to do with it. And so you can use workflows inside of marketing automation tools like HubSpot to precisely target individual people with a single piece of highly personalized mail. And you don't have to worry about the economics of print that are driving typically people to do huge batch and blast types of campaigns where you need to send 100,000 pieces out in order to save a few pennies per piece. You know, all that's been kind of removed by technology, all those issues. So now it's much more of like a surgical strike. It can be that surgical strike that is a part of a bigger campaign.

I love that. Go ahead, Banks.

I asked us a question about just, like, the economies of scale, all that kind of stuff. So, like, something that I've done recently, I started. I started a hat company, and I sell these, like, hats online and stuff, but I don't have, like, a warehouse. I'm not gonna mention what it is. I don't have a warehouse.

Big hat.

I use a print on demand. I use a print on demand service that doesn't require minimums.

Right.

So has there been, like, I'd imagine, like, back in the day, I think you were, like, kind of alluding to it a little bit. When you wanted to do these, you know, big, giant mail sends, there was probably, like, minimums, and you had to get, like, a certain amount and you ordered them in bulk and, like, you then you kind of sent them out, blasted them out that way, and then maybe ended up with, like, a ton of waste and stuff. But I'd imagine the logistics of that don't really work within the context of a marketing automation platform because it's like, you know, the idea is that, hey, if I want to target a list of like, 384 people, I just want to send 304, you know, pieces of 384 pieces of mail.

Right.

Not like, say, oh, I'm going to go, you know, order a bunch, they're going to arrive at the office, we're going to package them up, and we're going to send them out. Like, that's not how it works. Has there been, like, what. What has kind of changed in the, you know, the. The industry of like, you know, being able to go from a place where you had to get this stuff in bulk to being able to do it, like, literally on demand now. Because I'm assuming that's what your platform does, right? Like, I can go make a thing. I want to send, choose the envelope. Right. You know, figure out what's on it, maybe do some personalization tokens and stuff like that. And, like, you might just be sending out one piece of mail.

Right, Exactly.

What's changed in, like, the technology behind the scenes that, like, allows you guys to do that and still be, like, profitable when, like, sending, you know, maybe only a few pieces of mail that are highly specialized?

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there have been several changes. But, you know, the big thing is this. In order to. For a printer to execute on, on a print job, you have to have an operator. Operator has to work with a piece of equipment. They have to load paper up into it, they have to load data up into it, they have to load creative up into it. They have to do this sort of mapping between the, the spreadsheet file and then the Adobe file and make sure the personalization is, is matching up. Like, there's all these steps that have traditionally been required in order to process a run. And so there's a fixed cost. You know, there's. There's some press operator who's getting paid, you know, 120 grand, and, you know, they're spending an hour, you know, start to finish on this run, overseeing this piece of very expensive, sophisticated equipment. And so there's all this cost, kind of fixed cost into that process. So, you know, if you think about that, well, if I take that total lump cost, I divide it by one piece. That's a pretty expensive piece. If I divide it by 100,000 pieces, well, you know, you know, some economics are happening, but what's happened since then is companies like us have come along and said, hey, you know what, we're going to standardize direct mail around some really popular formats, and we're gonna get a whole lot of companies, the scale of SaaS to contribute and process mail all day long by firing data out of HubSpot and into these templates that can be then pushed out to print partners in aggregate with, you know, hundreds of other companies every day. So you could send one piece of mail, you could send 10,000 pieces of mail, you can send 100,000 pieces of mail. They all get treated exactly the same way. They're all priced very competitively, and they take advantage of the scale that we bring to the equation that we bring to our print partners, but allow marketers to not have to worry. You have to worry about print economics. You have to worry about postage. I like to tell people that are, you know, email oriented. I say, what, you know, when, when you send an email campaign, are you worrying about lining up a email server and go and build a contract with an email server and, you know, cut a deal around this campaign with an email server in order to distribute your emails? No, of course not. Are you worrying about the Internet protocols that determine, you know, how that mail, how that email is being distributed across the world wide Web? Of course not. Well, and that's kind of what we're doing for physical Mail, we're saying you don't need to go find a printer. You need to worry about postage and all these requirements. USPS to get everything exactly the way it has to be. We deal with all that stuff. You market, be a marketer. We want you to focus on the message, the call to action, the integration with the landing page, the integration with HubSpot, like, that's where you need to spend your time.

So there's a couple things I want to unpack from there. One, you're making it easy. Two, you're letting me do what I actually like to do anyway versus the other crap that I'd rather stay away from. But I definitely love this idea of the power of community or the power of scale of multiple people using like type items that get then into the process. But the thing that you said that before, Liz, I hand it back over to you and we keep chugging along, that I want the listeners to pay attention to, is that you started to use the term like surgical. Right. Per. And, And I always have this thing where I tell people, listen, listen, this is more of a scalpel, less of a sledgehammer around some other things that we talk about with marketing. And I want you to realize when we're talking about direct mail, we are talking more scalpel use, less sledgehammer use. And so think about where that fits in with inbound and HubSpot. Liz, let's keep chugging along.

Yeah. Because here's what I want to dig into here because you, you made the point, Dennis, there, of allowing marketers to do what they are supposed to be doing. Now, George, you and I have had a couple of interesting conversations over the past few weeks where in clients that you and I both work with with the case for direct mail is actually very obvious. So could you speak to some of those examples?

Yeah, so the one I'm going to bring up. Well, and. And I think it's the most memorable because A, I was young in my career when this happened. This example that I'm going to bring up. Two, it was one of those moments where I knew everything. Let me show you. This is the inbound way. And then all of a sudden this happened. And then it's something that I've just carried with me because I'm like, oh, shoot, there's. We should always probably check this thing. And so, Liz, the example that I'm going to use here where I feel like if I would have known about postalytics and this whole idea back then, I would have been like, and here's where we're going with it because we could have tied it to the CRM, we could have measured results versus what ended up happening is this person probably went and did it the old school way and there was no connection to analytics or understanding. And so we were kind of in the same boat. Anyway, here's the example. I was training an H Vac company on HubSpot and how to use HubSpot and how to do inbound marketing. And we got to the conversation of data hygiene or database cleanliness. And we ran the usual list that we run to show that people are just not real active or probably not a good fit. And I, I got to my usual spiel where I said, so let's go ahead and delete those humans. Oh wait, let's delete those humans. There we go. From the database, right? And to which the owner said, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. I don't know if we're ready to delete those yet. And I said, well, why not? They haven't visited the website. There's no sales activity. Like, they're, they're not, they're not, they're not, they're just not. And he goes, listen, one thing that you have to understand, and by the way, I feel more in tune with this now that I'm 52 versus it being about eight years ago. He said, one thing you have to understand is most of my business is 55 or older. I'm lucky if they even get on the Internet, let alone come visit my website. And so what I'd like to do before we delete these contacts, I want to send them a letter or send them a postcard or see if I can get them to call in, right? And so now all. So think about that even, right? We talked about SMS last week. Text in, call in, make sure you're using a HubSpot phone number. When they call in, you can track that. Now we're talking about using postalytics because that could be the send and then the phone call. So now the, the, the, the mail is tracked, the call is tracked. Like, it's all like, you see how it's like creating this like, ecosystem, even what was historically outbound. So for me, I'm sitting there as a young marketer going, this guy just took me to school because there is an audience that isn't going to do what we think they should do and we should have a way to serve them. And by the way, Dennis, this is why when I saw the LinkedIn post, I was Immediately, like, we need to bring this to the masses.

Love it.

Oh, Max, what do you got Having.

Okay, I think I'm having a little bit of a. Coming around on all of this.

You having a breakthrough? Are we having a breakthrough?

I'm eating. I'm. I'm. I'm drinking some of my own medicine here. You know how I always say, you know how there's that line that I use all the time when I talk about people's reluctance to, like, do, like, social media and stuff like that is like, I'll say the. Your. Your future buyers are growing up on TikTok and Twitch. Not. Not Google and.

Yeah.

Anymore.

Yeah, I know where you're going.

I think I probably also need to maybe realize that the way that people like to communicate can also be. I mean. I mean, there. I'm basically saying, people.

He's having such a hard time just saying he was right.

It's like watching a pony. It's like watching a pony learn to walk. This is great. Keep going, bud.

What I'm saying, I need to apply that same logic that people like to communicate in the way they grew up communicating. And I need to remember that if your audience grew up communicating more with mail, they're probably more likely to engage with that medium than something else.

Be careful about us being a little bit, bit too ages there, though, and here's why. Now, let me finish. Let me finish. Because the. The example that came to me, the example that immediately came to mind for me is a client that George and I work on together. And it reminded me of something similar I saw when I used to do ABM work at my old agency, which is when you're dealing in certain industries where the deal sizes are exceptionally large, or in the case of the client that George and I work with, they are dealing with endowments that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And so they are going around to specific institutions where you could give them the digital versions of all of the collateral that you're going to give them. But there is. There is something more institutional and established about creating those pieces as tactile, physical collateral pieces that can be tailored to the institution that you're trying to reach, that can be sent to very specific people. You can send. You can send different types of messages in different types of ways in the three dimension. There are certain things that I think can get lost when you have it purely in a digital space. Like think about for some folks. Like, there are some people who are purists and will never read a book on A Kindle. It will never happen because they lose something from the digital tactile experience. And there are some people who are totally fine with it, but I completely agree with you, Max. I wasn't trying to pee in your fun cereal. I'm so glad you have learned how. You're a pony who's learned to walk. Everything's fine. We're growing. We're having breakthroughs. That's amazing. I think two things are true. You need to be hyper aware of who your audience is, where they are, and what their preferences are for consuming information. And then you also have to meet them where they are in terms of what is the scale of what you're trying to achieve. What is the. What are the things that you need to communicate from an established nature? What are the things that. That can only be communicated in a physical format? So it's both. It's both. And.

And, you know, often in. In those, what we'd call highly considered purchases, big ticket items, they're often not decided by a single person.

Right.

So think about college recruitment. We have a lot of, you know, higher ed institutions that are driving out, you know, highly, highly personalized letters and packages to a student, but also mom and dad.

Right.

And. Or whoever's in the family, because these are shared experiences. When. When you're buying a car, when you're buying, you know, a really expensive thing you're buying insurance policy. You know, these are things that have to be kind of handed back and forth and talked about over the dinner table or over the, at the kitchen counter.

Right.

And. And that physical thing is lingering. It's not something that is in and out instantly. It hangs around. So when something comes in the mail that is perceived to be potentially of some value, there's a long tail of consumption of that.

Oh, yeah.

Content.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a long tail on those carnival brochures, bro. I'm telling you, those suckers lay on my kitchen table for the longest of times. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I love, Dennis, what you're saying here, because the way my brain works, by the way, and I'm looking at the chat pane for a second, then Dennis, I'll hand it back over you so you can finish your thought. But I'm looking at the chat pane and Chad is in here going. The roofing industry direct mail is huge. It's like a top of mind, always type scenario when you do one person's roof, sending mail, right. The neighbors. Dennis, what you were talking about, I started to get this like when there's a group or community decision. So now we've already talked about if it's demographically needed direct mail, if it's financial basis of we're talking about hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. And you need a tactile, different, real world feel. Maybe direct mail, if it's a community or group, like my wife and daughters decision making process, maybe you need something that can be passed back and forth direct mail. So it's super interesting how we're almost building in real time a matrix of opportunities that business should be thinking about when to tag that scalpel version of marketing and sales into the mix. Dennis, go ahead and continue on.

Well, you know, I'll just sort of wrap this with some really interesting brain research that was done up in Canada. So neurologists were studying the impact of marketing. Messages that are consumed by something that is held in your hand. Could be mail, could be something else. Right? But, but there's some sort of package, some sort of thing that you're holding and you're reading versus looking at an ad on a screen. And the brand recall was 70% higher on the thing that you hold in your hand. You're, you're using more than one sense, right? You're using multiple sensory things in your body to deal with this message. And so, so there's, there's science that also says, hey, you know, you can get somebody to slow down for a sec and stop and look at something. And even if it's going to the recycler, right, you have to look at it because it may be something you need. So you have to make that decision. And it's, you put it aside, you throw it away. You keep the couple things that are of value that you want to dig into further. You come back to them. What do you go, when you do get something of value, where do you go? You go on the website, you go to the website of the company that is hitting you up. And that is why, to complete the circle. This is an inbound marketing tactic because today direct mail is about getting people to go to that site, go to a landing page and begin the inbound experience. Or, or in a scenario where direct mail could never be used in the past, low funnel, mid funnel, post sale, all these types of things that, that inbound does so well.

Right, right, all of that.

Now this is, this can be a part of those stories.

Okay? So I have to, I. Oh my gosh. So there was so much good right there, by the way, like rewind and re listen to that segment right there. Because a couple things that are just going through my brain right now. One, everybody is living at freaking warp speed. And so the fact that, Dennis, you said getting people to slow down, like, if you can get them to slow down, I would say that is a super powerful moment that you're having with them, because it's more time, even though it might be, like, less time in general, but more time than they're giving the average thing that they're seeing in this warp speed digital world. But then you triggered in my brain something that I haven't thought about for probably about 14, no, maybe 16 years. And when I started out, I. I started out as a designer, and I had a creative director that was teaching me different things. And I'll never forget this conversation we had about the. Because we're ordering this project for a company, and he. And he had to go down to the actual paper place because he wanted to know how the paper felt. He wanted to know how the paper smelled and like it. And for him, it was this very, you know, sensory touch feel when I'm looking at it, like, what. What is the entire experience gonna be? And I had. I had forgot about that. I had lost that until you started to mention that. And so. So this idea of a tactile sensory slowdown moment, what I hope people hear when they listen to this, is how important the copy and the graphics that you're putting on that moment to go with what we're talking about is. So it's not like a historical let's turn it out and hope for the best. It's a. Let's. Let's use this to make a. Yes, I said turn it out, Max. Let's make it. Let's make it. I mean, I could have used a different word, but, you know, but let's make it a special. Yeah, let's make it.

We're doing great, guys.

We're doing great.

We're doing good. Let's make it a special moment. Like, let's make it an experience in that moment.

Speak. Speaking of experiences and Dennis, I've been looking at the. You know, whenever I look at integrations, I always like to go into the HubSpot app marketplace and try to make sense of it. I'm seeing this thing in here that you guys can do these free personalized, like, URLs and these QR codes. And the next thing I see is that you're doing personalized landing pages. Are you guys, like, packaging up cookie information into a URL and then turning that into a QR code. So.

Dang, you just got nerdy, bro.

I mean, if someone hits the website, it's doing like smart content and like personalization tokens.

Yeah, that's crazy. We're able to generate the data that is driving the personalization of the mail piece. We're able to repurpose and sprinkle tokens into the HTML your landing page. So we have customers that are sending out direct mail that is completely data driven and personalized based on a wide variety of factors. So different images, different content blocks.

Right.

All this type of thing is zeroing in a piece of mail that is designed specifically for you. And then where a lot of the time, people marketers have gotten this wrong is the transition from one medium to the next. If it is jarring, if it is not familiar, if it is not consistent, you're going to lose people. So this is about conversion rate optimization as well.

Right.

This is about taking the data points that you pull together in your direct mail piece and making sure that I'm seeing something that has message match when I go to the next step of the process, when I go online to deal with this. And so having that continuity will raise your response rates significantly. And so, yeah, so the mail is a part of a digital experience. It happens to be physical.

Right.

But. But it's a, it's a part of a much bigger, you know, digital experience that, you know, is. Is. Is driving you to a particular call to action.

Mm.

Okay, so I want to pivot the conversation here because we've been talking a lot about some of the best practices, some of the things that we see work, while the importance of understanding what makes this tactile physical experience so powerful. But I'd love to hear from you all and, and in particular you, Dennis, as well, what are some of the pitfalls or mistakes we've either experienced or seen from brands that should be avoided with direct mail? I'll go first. You know, George, you mentioned earlier, you know, not skimping on the copy, not skimping on the design. I've actually seen the inverse where the copy and the design are spot on and the, and the materials are just garbage. Like they, they go as cheap as possible in terms of what it is that they are actually delivering to you, whether that's going through a service where there isn't a lot of QA so things are off centered, or, or the. You're trying to convey something that's supposed to be of high quality, big deal sizes, you know, high investment opportunities. But the Paper itself is very low quality itself, things like that. That's just something that always irks me. But I know you guys probably have some more strategic answers to that in terms of the no no's, the don'ts, the bads.

Yeah, Dennis?

Yeah. I say the number one thing that we see are people who say, hey, you know, my email marketing is on kind of a long term decline in effectiveness. You know, I'm running out of other channels. I want to try direct mail, so I'm going to send a campaign and if it works, we'll keep doing it. And I say, okay, well, how do you define a campaign? Well, we're going to send one postcard out to a thousand people one time and if we hear back, if we have some response, great, we'll keep going. And my response is, okay, well, is this a cold solicitation? Are these people who know you? And the answer is often, no, these are not people who know me. This is a cold solicitation. I said, all right, well if you had a sales rep who made 100 phone calls and left 100 voicemails and never did another thing, what would you think of that? Sales rep? And inevitably they say that rep is fired, he's out. And I said, well, that's good. What's going to happen to your direct mail? Because you have very little chance of success if you think that you can do like a one off little, you know, one time campaign and expect to have really any influence on any audience. And so it's just bad marketing. And so it's marketing 101 applied to a different medium. And that's really a big emphasis of where we're trying to lead the market. We've just put together what we call postalytics Academy. And I'm super excited about it. And it's designed, it's a free set of online courses. I don't know where I would have got that idea, but free set of online courses where folks are able to learn the fundamentals of direct marketing, of direct mail, of how technology is starting to change direct mail. And then of course you can learn how to use postalytics and apply all that.

Right.

So it's a huge thing for us is to kind of teach the fundamentals of direct mail marketing to the world.

So Liz, one, let's make sure we get a link to that academy and put it in the show notes so people can get to that. I'm trying to figure out how I can manufacture some more time in my day because I'm like, oh, an academy. Let me go see what I can learn there. Because I. I think this is really important. And it's funny because, Dennis, when I was listening to you, like, things in my brain of like, oh, 17 touches and top of mind and, like, brand awareness and, like, I see it online and I see it in my mailbox and I see it here and I see it on the billboard, and. And all of it interacts to be the one. You know, one thing that all of a sudden they get this great idea. Let me just reach out to that company. And they don't even really remember why it is that they're going to reach out to that company. But it's the 17 things. And so this idea of one off and. And that's what you're going to do. No, first of all, it doesn't even have to always be cold. It might be lukewarm. And then you're doing it. So there's just some good stuff there. I'll tell you the thing that cracks me up, Liz. I agree with you. Crappy paper, glossy orange on blue, black, black on purple. Like, now the. How do you think I'm gonna read this? Like, can you. Can you check out some design principles, best practices before you buy your postcards or whatever it is? But here's the one that always kills me is I'll. Before I throw it away, I'll actually give it a minute and I'll look at it. Just because I'm a nerdy marketer and also a nerdy designer and I want to just see what's going on. I can't tell you the amount of direct pieces of mail that I get. And I'm like, where am I supposed to go? What, What, What. What am I supposed to.

This reminds me.

This reminds me of our calls to action episode where it's like, are you giving a person a clear next step? If you don't give them a. They're gone.

Yeah. I'm like, I don't. Feels great, actually. Doesn't look terrible. Have no clue what the flip it is you want me to do. Cylindrical file. So, like, you like the. Again, we're creating a little bit of a matrix of things to think about when you're going to create that piece of, like, oh, yeah, I need. It needs to feel good, smell good, look good, and tell people what the heck I want them to do in a way that they don't get lost along the way. Like, it can't be. You know, you've all seen that PowerPoint that has, like, half a book on it and everybody's like, I don't even know where to look. So anyway, that's, that's my thing. Make sure you have a call to action on these bad boys.

Maxi, what about you? What are your. What are your don'ts? Your no no's.

He's already signing up to do a postalytics run for his happily or our hat tip, as Chad put it.

You know, shilling for big hat.

I do have some, I do have some mailing addresses, I guess. So I could probably move some cross sales up.

Sales, baby.

I think the big thing like I'm trying to figure out because again, I'm here to learn. I don't know if I necessarily have like a bunch of like, don'ts other than like, you know, I think I, I think honestly a lot of the same things that I say about email marketing would apply the same to, you know, direct mail marketing. It's like buying lists and blasting stuff out, like, probably isn't going to be that good. If anything, it might be more detrimental because it's like, oh, you're giving me a physical task to throw something away that I didn't want. I wasn't expecting to hear.

Right?

So I'd say like, you know, take, take. I think take everything you know about email marketing. Maybe. Again, I don't know if this is an educated take, but try to apply that also, right? Because you're, you're doing the same thing. Like you're sending the mail. It's just in their, their mailbox, not their inbox. Right. So I'd say try to apply like a lot of those same best practices. But like, what I'm trying to figure out, the big thing I'm like trying to wrap my head around is like, where does direct mail sort of like fit into like a typical inbound strategy? And like, does it all the time or is it. Is this something that really is only going to work when you have an audience that likes to have, likes to be communicated with that way, Liz. Or is it. Does it depend on what you're selling or.

Honestly, that was our next question.

So, Max, you're doing my work for us.

Yeah. Let's hit it. Liz, do you have a question for that? Maybe that's what I'm.

Let's figure out.

Let's slap on that thumb around it.

Like, like, where am I gonna go tell like the all inbound marketer, like, you should. This is where you, how you should fold in direct mail, right?

Like a cheese. Folding the cheese schitt's Creek. No, just me. Okay.

All right.

Yeah, I'm alone.

So, you know, I think your analogy between direct mail and email is spot on. And in fact, that's often how I try to explain postalytics to people. I say it's kind of like email, except it happens to print and mail.

Right.

So our software kind of works like email. It looks and acts and feels like email when you're setting up campaigns. So the principles are the same. Right. You have a target, you have a person with some data associated with them. You've got some creative, you merge them together, you send them out, and then you monitor whether or not they respond. And so the most natural, lowest hanging fruit for inbound marketers is to try direct mail with the audience that is not responding to your email.

Interesting.

That is absolutely the low hanging fruit.

Yeah. So probably a big indicator. If they're not using email, they're probably using some kind of mail.

Right.

And there really is the only one option besides I guess, carrier pigeon, which would be physical mail, even the same.

So yeah, the drones are coming, but we're not there yet.

Yeah.

So smoke signals. Falcons with little caps on their heads. Where are we at with those?

Yeah. Oh, I like falcons with caps.

That's telepathy.

Big fan.

Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. So like trying like, you know, I mean, and that's something that's like easily actionable.

Right.

Like go, go take a look at your gray mail list. Or like, you know, build the list of people whose unopened emails, like hit a certain amount.

Right.

Like, you know, HubSpot's already.

Build a workflow in HubSpot to comb through your last five emails. And when you find somebody that hasn't opened an email in, in five or six touches, drop them into a three or four touch direct mail sequence.

Yeah.

And trigger some different mail pieces out with some different offers over a period of a couple of months and see what happens. If you get some engagement, bring them back in. So what we advise folks to do is use direct mail to try to bring them back, get them re engaged, and then try to get them back on email because email costs less. So if you can use email, do it, but if it's not working, don't just keep pounding it.

Right.

The definition of insanity. We all know what that is. So you've got to use other tactics. And that's where we try to plug in and make that a seamless process to use some different direct mail techniques to get that audience engaged again.

I think I I want to poke a little more, but you have a question?

Yeah, well, no, not a question. You poke here in a minute. I think I have a new talk track, to be honest with you, because there's a list for that already, the unengaged email list. 11 unopened emails. And what's happening now is most people are getting in that list and then people are just like, delete them, forget about them, whatever. But it's real interesting to me to think about a narrative where it's. If they reach the unengaged list, then there's something that fires them into a 90 day direct mail campaign. Make sure I go over to my settings and have resubscribe flipped on for my forms when I do get them back to the website and they can resubscribe or whatever they have to do for the email. If they've unsubscribed, which by the way might be another one. If they unsubscribe, wait 60 days and send them direct mail. If in unengaged, you know, email list, then set up the like. So there's literally two ways right there that you can start to think about this folding into. See what I did there, Liz? Folding into your. And not even without even watching the show. Fold them into your inbound strategies just in those two ways. Right. Right now.

All right, I have two questions, two separate ones. So is, do you see that, like, is postal mail better for landing, like initial business or is it more effective for like repeat business? Or is there even like a conversation to be had there.

From a response rate perspective?

Like, like, where do you find it more, where do you find it more effective? Right? Because like, I could make the argument of like, I've never heard of this company before. I'm not going to open up this, they sent me versus oh, I had a great experience with these people. I'll open this envelope. I'll take a minute to see what's going on.

Right.

Like, is there, is there anything you see in terms of like the successfulness of, you know, direct mail in those two different, like, scenarios?

Yeah, so, so response rates are double when you are sending direct mail to a warm audience. Exactly, exactly. So, so, you know, we see 8, 9, 10% response rates when you're sending to a warm audience. When you're sending to a cold audience, it's, you know, two, three, you know, four is really good.

Right?

Yeah. Okay.

So, so but for certain audiences, direct mail is the best way to acquire new customers too.

Right?

So if, if, if you are that the H Vac Company.

Right.

And, and you need to respond quickly to a storm in an area, you know, neighborhoods and zip codes with very, very timely messages. And you're going to, you're going to get new customers. You know, it's, it is for, for certain scenarios, it is the best way to get new customers. But, yeah, overall, you see a much, much higher response rate when you're communicating with people that already have an association with your brand.

Cool. Last, last question, because I know we're, we're, we're, we're getting a time here, but I think it's important. We talk a lot about, you know, especially in the email conversation. We talk a lot about consent.

Right.

And like, acquiring emails and like the ability to email people. What's the consent conversation around physical mail? And like, what are the best ways to gather addresses? Is it like you're only mailing people who have given you a mailing address and giving you consent? Are the laws, like, a little bit different around that? Like, what do people, what do marketers need to know? Like, around, like, can I actually send postal mail to folks and how do I get their addresses?

Well, you know, the, the regulatory and compliance framework that the world's been marching toward is another reason why folks are turning to direct mail. Again, because there really aren't. There's no notion of can spam or, you know, there's no real regulatory requirement to opt out. Addresses and names of addresses are public data.

Sure.

You can go to the government office and you can, you can pull, you know, who owns this piece of property and who lives where, and it's all public. So.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's, it's a much less challenging environment from a regulatory standpoint because of that very thing. It's a, it's public data that you're dealing with.

That makes sense. Yeah.

So the one thing I'll say out of that, that I hope the listeners take away from that is because it's easy, a lot of people will screw it up. And so again, this is a, this is a time where if you take the time to make it right and pay attention to the things that we've talked about today, yours will be the special piece in a pile of crap that they will look at. They will engage with that because you put a call to action on it will get you business.

I love that. Dennis, I want to give you our last question for today. So for any listeners out there who are now considering looking at direct mail as an option, or maybe they're rethinking their approach because they're already doing it. What is the one piece of advice you want to leave them with today about how to do this right?

So the, the, the most important thing is I, I guess the thing that I default to, similar to the things that George was, was saying, you, you have to apply the same marketing fundamentals, the same good marketing practices to this channel that you have with every other channel. And so, you know, you have to do things right? You have to, if you're going to do something, invest, do it the right way. Give it, you know, a six month, a one year kind of run and work it, try multiple things. It's easily tested, right. We've got the ability to capture response. So test, send out letters, send out postcards, send out, you know, folding mailers, try different audiences with different calls to action. All of those things, right, that, that we all know you do in email marketing and, and digital marketing. You have to apply those to direct mail. It's just a slightly different medium.

Fantastic. Well, Dennis, thank you so much for joining us today. What is the best place for people.

To connect with you if they have more questions?

Well, you can hit me up Dennisostalytics.com or hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn and so look me up there. We'd be thrilled to talk to anybody. And I really want to thank you guys. This has been a blast. This is the most fun I've had in a podcast in a long time. So there we go.

That, there we go.

Let's go.

We fold in the cheese and the fun, right, guys?

Yes.

No. And on that note, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for tuning in this week. Obviously, if you love us, please don't hesitate to leave us a review on your preferred podcast provider. But otherwise, gentlemen, I will talk to you next week.