Growing Your Business with Direct Mail with the United States Postal Service

Thank you for joining our webinar Growing youg Business with Direct Mail. My name is Eddie and I'll be moderating today's session. Before we begin, I would like to mention a few technical details due to the number of participants attending today's event. The phone and voiceover IP lines will be muted during the session to minimize background noise and to ensure that everyone can hear the presenters. We will be having a question and answer session at the conclusion of today's presentation. If you would like to submit a question, you may use the Send Note button at the top of your screen or the chat box and address your questions to all moderators or presenters. Again, if you would like to submit a question at any point throughout today's presentation, you may use the Send Note button at the top of your screen or the chat box and address your questions to all moderators or presenters. If you are having any technical difficulties with the webinar interface, please send a note to me, ATT CES Moderator. At this time I would like to formally begin today's webinar and introduce Bridget Pollock.

Hello.

Thank you Eddie thank you everyone for joining us today.

I am Bridget Pollack.

I am the Vice President of Marketing at SCORE and we want to thank you all for the work that you do in your small businesses and let you know a little bit about some free resources that are out there to help you further your success, overcome any hurdles that you may have and achieve your dream with the help of SCORE and other resources from the fda. Next slide please.

So what is score?

SCORE is America's Small Business Resource. We provide SCORE free one on one mentoring, advising, guidance either in person or online via email or Skype. We provide local and online educational opportunities, workshops, seminars and other events and a variety of business tools and templates on our website at www.score.org. the advice that is provided to help you succeed in your business is by mentors and volunteers who have been there done that experience to help you start, grow and succeed. They have been entrepreneurs themselves. They have extensive business knowledge and background that they want to share with you and again you can meet with them time and again for the life of your business. All for free. We've helped more than 10 million clients people with businesses since we started 50 years ago. This is our 50th anniversary and we've seen a number of success stories such as Jelly Belly, Vera Bradley. We've also helped raising canes and a number of small businesses throughout the country. Next slide please. As I mentioned at the beginning, we are a resource partner of the United States Small Business Administration who is celebrating National Small Business Week this week. There are also Small Business Development Centers, Women Business Centers, and a number of other resources out there to help you with. Again, free advice, free support to make sure that you have the tools and resources you need. Next slide. At Score, we have over 320 locations across the country with more than 11,000 volunteers, plus, as I mentioned before, the online mentoring and resources. So wherever you're located, we're there to help you succeed. Next slide. How do we help? I'm talking about mentoring and advice and I'm saying that it's free. What does that mean? Any business question that you have, we have someone in our network of 11,000 volunteers that can help you. You can come in and ask about your business planning. You can come in even before you start a business plan and just have an idea, product and service review, financial insights, marketing and promotion recommendations, resource planning strategies for improving vendor relations, customer care programs, and much more. If you have an HR issue that you'd like to work through, if you're thinking about opening a second location, importing and exporting, there are a lot of things that we have experts who are volunteers that again, have been through it already that will share their knowledge with you to help you succeed. Next slide. So just to reiterate, how can we help you? There is the free Face to Face mentoring in each of our chapter locations and you can find the nearest location or ask your question via email at. We offer educational sessions on a myriad of topics ranging from business planning to marketing and financing. We have facilitated networking sessions where you can meet with peers to discuss issues that are critical to you and your business. And again, the wide selection of online resources, templates, assessments, blogs and other tools that you can use to supplement your learnings when you're working with a mentor, regardless of who that is, I do encourage you to get a mentor, whether it's through SCORE Small Business Development center or Women's Business Centers, because we have seen that the more help that you get and the mentoring that you receive from someone who is trusted and experienced, the more likely you are to succeed. Next slide. You can go to the next slide too, please.

So get started today.

You can contact us to start or grow your business. Or if you have that knowledge and you'd like to share it with other people, become a SCORE volunteer. Visit us online at www.score.org but get help somewhere if you are struggling or if you want to take that next step in your business because there are resources out there that can help you. You are the lifeblood of our economy and we appreciate everything that you do. We want to make sure that you have the tools and the resources you need to be successful.

And we promise that we will give.

You the help that you need, the support that you need, and the opportunity to achieve your success. With that, I will turn it back over to the moderator and if you have any questions at the end, I will be available.

Great. Thank you very much, Bridget. Now for everyone, here to welcome you to today's presentation is Manuel Vasquez from the United States Postal Service.

Good afternoon, everyone. Like Eddie said, my name is Manuel Vazquez. I'm with the United States Postal Service small business team. Before I get started, I want to thank each of you for taking the time to participate in today's webinar, growing your business with direct mail. We are delighted to be part of Small Business Week and hope you find our webinar to be informative and helpful. It's with great pleasure at this moment for me to introduce today's speaker, Elena Neely, Director of mailing services, new products and innovations for the United States Post Service Headquarters. Elaine is responsible for the development of new product innovations to retain and grow revenue for the mail product line. At the Postal Service. Elaina manages a team of marketing professionals that focus on strategies to increase the effectiveness of mail as a marketing channel. Her team develops and recommends solutions that continue to make mail relevant in today's business world. This includes integrating mail with today's technologies and making mail simple to use for small businesses with solutions like the everyday direct mail program, Every door direct mail program. Thank you. Now, without further ado, I'd like to turn it over to Alaina. Thank you.

Good evening. Good afternoon. Wherever you are, it's a pleasure to be with you. I AM here in D.C. it's a little after 6 o', clock, so wherever you are, thank you for being here. This is one of my favorite topics. You know, I've been in the postal service for 28 years and a good percentage of that has been surrounding around the mail. And it's such an exciting medium because almost like tv, everybody thought other media would take over TV and the same what they think about mail. Oh, the mobile. Oh, the Internet is going to. No, actually people still look forward to going to their mailbox. In fact, it's your gateway to the household. So today what we're hoping to do is tell you a little bit more about the medium and kind of guide you as to what you can do to get started with it and tell you some success stories and we'll leave you with a valuable resource that you can use to get started. But let's just talk about it for a minute. You know, every business, small or large, are in business to either get customers, keep customers or sell more stuff. It's always one of those objectives in mind. And so that's what we want to talk about is how you can do that. Let's talk about understanding the value of direct mail. You have the ability with direct mail to increase your sales, whether it's a product or a service. In this highly competitive marketplace, there's competition coming from everywhere and you never know when it's coming. Like I happen to live in a town where there's a pizza shop on every corner, but we just had three in less than three months. New shops that come in and you can build your own pieces. So the competition is there. But how do you establish your brand? Direct mail has the ability to help you do that. And then you can keep your existing customers, the ones you already have, loyal to you. All of you have been stimulated in some way, shape or fashion about what you're going to do. And it normally become from a direct mail piece. I mean, I don't know how many Macy's cardholders are on the line, but you know those coupons when they come in the mail, that stimulates you to just have a chance to stop by. And we won't even talk about the car repair, to go over to get a car repair, just to go to the mall, the retail purchase. What about the loyalty program? But as you can see, there are many different opportunities that you have to accomplish something. And no other medium like direct mail has the ability to do all these things all at once, very effectively. It's an over 200 year media channel that is just growing. Now when you want to acquire new customers, just think about some of the stats that are out there. 80% of customers take time to look in the mail. 40% of them use coupons. We consider the person who is in charge of all the mail, the CEO of the household. Just think about which one is that. Are you the CEO of your household when it comes time to get the mail or is it your wife? Whomever it is, they take time to go through the mail on a regular basis and decide what's relevant and what's not. And you know what's relevant because it makes it to the household. And so what we know for sure is that 75% like to discover what's in there and they Take time to go through it. So all you really have to do is think about your own experience with the mail. Now let's talk about it as a retention strategy. The 8020 rule. If you haven't heard about that, you it means that 20% of your customer base gives you 80% of your revenue. Believe it or not, that is true for the Postal service as well. 90% of our revenue comes from our business commercial customers, not the retail window. So it seems like, how could that be? You have 38,000 post offices. Well, it's really true because of large, large businesses that use the mail to grow their business. We get 90% of our revenue for them. So you have to keep track of your best customers. You need to know who they are. You have to keep contact and understand how they appreciate your product, how they use it. So as you develop your business, you're also keeping in touch with what your best customers customers want. Direct mail has a way of amplifying other media. It's not just standalone. It does that very well. I mean, how many people get a catalog and then they're able to place an order right there? It works all by itself, but it also has an opportunity to connect with other media. It bridges the gap. I know you guys have heard a lot about multi channel omnichannel. How do you use different media in different ways to reach different clients? Well, it's true market segments are different, how they interact is different. But what we know for sure is that mail has a way of connecting you to media. I don't know if you've used the QR code before, but using the QR code gives you the opportunity to connect yet to another channel, to actually make a purchase right then and there. Some of the stats that we have we won't even point out, but I can guarantee you that they really make a difference. When you think about whether you want to use the media or not. When you think of 58% of all households in 2009 had incomes over 65,000 made a purchase from direct mail they received. It makes you start thinking about how can you connect with those particular clients. You have to be somewhat personal when you do make contact sometimes because there's an opportunity for you to use data to actually speak directly to the customers that you want. When you actually use apps and web technologies and things like that, you want to make sure that you're connecting with that customer. I don't know if you guys heard of Pearl personalized URLs, but that's when you actually go to Internet and it has your name connected to it or something like that. You have the opportunity with data to have really rich experiences with your clients. Not sure if you've experienced augmented reality, but one of the first people that used augmented reality was the Ikea catalog. And basically what happens is you take a phone or an iPad and you put it over the mail piece and it almost comes alive. And it gives you an opportunity to see yourself in a three dimensional way into that mail piece with possibly an opportunity to tap somewhere to view a commercial, to actually see somebody speaking. It's really creative. And if you haven't learned about augmented reality, I would recommend that you do so. But what we know for sure is that print mail piece that's really targeted towards you from that client who sends it, gives them a way to engage with you like never before. One of the things we do at the US Postal Service is that we run promotions. And many of you may have heard of them, but we have promotions to get you to try this new technology. And we do have that on our website as well. You could go to ribsribvs.usps.gov and you can learn more about our promotion. They actually offer a discount on your mailing. So how do you get started with direct mail? How can you begin to use the medium that Montgomery Ward and Richard Sears took advantage of many years ago to begin? And why are people still seeing the value of it? Let's talk about how you can get started. So what you really have to do is decide what is it that you want to accomplish? How many new customers do you want to acquire? Do you want to just drive traffic? Do you want to drive traffic to the web? Do you want to drive traffic to your retail store? What is it that you really want to accomplish? Do you want to get a lead just by that direct mail piece? Then you have to identify the best customers. And if you don't know who the best customer is, you have to start trying to find out. If you happen to have a restaurant and you don't have an opportunity to take people's names down, then you're missing a boat. Because not only are they your customers, but it's an opportunity for you to see who are the clients that are coming in and what can you learn about them. There's data that you can get on what does the zip code look like that you're in that will tell you.

What is the.

Household size and things like that. So you have the opportunity, and I'll talk more about that. You develop your message Then you design what it is you want to do and then you're going to measure the results the first time out. But let me just say this, there's a 40, 40, 20 rule. When you use direct mail that means that 40% of your success is going to come from who you target. So you need to make sure that you target the customers you want to come. And then 40% of the is the offer. There's a reason why people respond to mail and it's normally because you really hit something with them and make them an offer. I often relate to the Macy's because I'm a Macy's holder. And if there is one piece getting in, it's that 20% off anything you purchase for that day. And that's the one I like. And then I like when the catalog comes in and it's buy now, shipping for free or buy now, pay later. So you have to think about what the offer is. The 20% is everything else. What does the creative look like? You know, is it a postcard, is it a flat size piece? Those are unbelievable when you hear it for the first time. But it's really true. Target the right person, make sure you got the right offer. So some of the things you want to consider is when you target, you want to look at sometimes geographics, you might want to look at just the surrounding around the store. You may considered national. If you're trying to drive to a website to get business, but you want to hone in on who it is you specifically want to reach. Are they within a certain age? Do they have a certain kind of income, do they have a certain household? Because you want to think about if I can get the household to come out, how much more money can I get? So we have an opportunity and there's partners in the industry. I don't know if you know it, but the mailing industry is a one industry. That means when you look at list brokers, mail providers, customers, believe it or not, all the people that make up that job and all the money spent, it's a large industry. And the reason I'm telling you that is because there's people who can support you in this effort. It's not like we're just telling you something about a media and it's a black hole as to how you can get help. But the one thing you want to do is make sure that you're making sure you keep contact with your current customers and your database is the most valuable asset you have. Who is your existing customer? It's going to lead you to who you target. Let's talk about more on targeting the lists that are available. You can select different things that you want. So you may want, if you're a restaurant, you may want to target a mile radius around the store. You might want to target buying behavior. So there's something that the catalog industry uses quite often. It's called rfm. And RFM means how recent did they purchase, how often do they purchase and how much do they purchase when they purchase? So if you kind of look at, you may have a group of customers that buy from you often, you might have customers that only buy every six months. But boy, when they buy, they spend a lot of money. And then you might have people who recently purchased from you. But every one of those people you're going to maybe treat a little different. But once you learn more about who they are, they will lead you to more potential customers like them. When you get down to the geographical location based efforts, we have a program called Every door Direct mail here at the postal service. It's a tool and the tool allows you to target geographic and it gives you the opportunity to look in a certain mile radius. And we actually can pinpoint the age, the household income and the size. So those are extra benefits to it. But the people who would be like most likely to do that would be like your local dry cleaners, your real estate agents. They may know exactly where they have a house and exactly who they need to target from an income standpoint around that area. And one of my other favorites because I'm from Detroit is the whole auto dealers. I love to actually talk about auto dealers, understand how they work. They normally work on a 10 day cycle and they normally have to give sales on a regular basis. And so there's nothing like a program that you can drop a mail piece and get it printed out, drop it in the mailbox and get it out within a few days. So that's something that you have available to you with that product. But as a general rule, you have the ability and a location localized marketing strategy to really hone in because we deliver in those territories that you're looking for. As you can see, this is just a visual of the tool where you can just see like take a 10 mile radius and that's how you're marketed to today. I mean when a new store comes to your area, a new bakery that has the ability to make an offer, they're looking at the mile radius, your flyers that you get from your supermarkets, they know that the majority of their customers come from a mile radius around the store. What that is, we don't know. But that's something that you can test. And so this is another opportunity for you to get specific about where you want to go. So let me tell you about a case study of how somebody used the mail. These guys, they were a homegrown outdoor. They offered services like snow cleanup, lawnmower and all that. And they really wanted to figure out a way how can we get consistent business. We don't want the onesie twosies, we want consistent commitment. So they promoted a 12 month lawn and snow service to middle to high incomes because they knew specifically that these are the people who could afford a 12 month commitment. They called the program M.O. and Snow and they made an offer for them to come in. And here's the most interesting thing. They sent out 5,000 postcards and they were able to get 13 customers. And you say, wow, 13 customers out of 5,000. Well, the reality is that each commitment was $1,200 and they were able to gain $15,600 on that one campaign. And so this is what you have to do. Another thing is you have to look at your roi. A lot of, you know, lawnmower, amount of people may not need a year commitment lawnmower, but they went highly to the people they knew could respond. But depending on your business, they may need you more often. They may need you. You may have a restaurant where they may come once a month or every other month. So mail gives you the opportunity to reach out and measure your campaign. You may not be able to measure it in other media, but you can measure it with direct mail. So let's talk a little bit more about maintaining customer relationships. We talked about data earlier and understanding what your customers buy and when they buy and all those things that gives you an opportunity to market to them again. If you knew that they came into your store at Mother's Day last year, then you can reach back out to them with a Mother's Day offer. So that's why it's important that you know what your customers do with you. So with that information, you can build a loyalty program. You can understand their needs a little bit better. You can drive traffic when you really need it. And the best thing about developing good relationships is that people talk. They tell other people about it. And don't surprise and delight them with a gift. They're going to tell three or four people. So use that to their advantage. Give them an offer to give you a referral. So word of mouth marketing works especially when you're good to your best, here's some other tactics. We thank customers after an immediate purchase. That's a recency. You have a customer, you thank them immediately. That's why sometime in your catalog purchase you get a box and they have an offer right away or shortly after, you get a mail piece where somebody is offering you to come back with a discount. So this is something you can easily do. You can send out a simple card with a discount, letting them know that you recognize the fact that they came to your establishment. Another thing is to find out what they're thinking, what their experience was like. Gain some information so that you can improve your business, but reward them for it and invite them back. There's a reason why when you go to Macy's. Yes, I'm using it again because we want to stay with that so that you can get to groove because they do it better. How many people have gone to Macy's and they give you a coupon right then and there. If you come back within the next desired period of time, we'll give you 25% off any purchase. They're taking advantage of the moment and there's nothing wrong with that. You capture that customer, you've got them in the door. That's right. Hone in on it and look to expand and gain greater market share and share of wallet. If you know there was a bad experience, hope to win them back with the opportunity for you to apologize for an experience that they had. And then for definite, take some information about maybe they became a customer in July, maybe they became a customer in December. Maybe you're a tax company and you know they're going to need you at a certain time. Take that moment to keep in touch with them. I know my tax guy sends me a newsletter quarterly even though I only do business with him once a year. But he wants to keep in touch and make sure I know he's keeping me informed. So sometimes you use direct mail, not so much to acquire, but you use it to recognize and make thoughtful gestures. So we talked a lot about successes. Let's talk about this one where it was integrated with another media. In this particular case, it was for a local tavern. And so they had a loyalty program for special occasions and birthdays. We just talked about that. So here's a company who did it. So they had a need to update their list. And by the way, if you use first class, you're going to find out if a person moves or not. So a postcard could be very effective at cleaning up Your list. But in this case, excuse me, they wanted to offer because they wanted to get the customer in opportunity to win a free dinner for two, come to the website, follow win free dinner for two and then you provide your birthday and anniversary date. So they captured data and then they led them to another site where they were able to update their data. So they got several things done in this campaign. They were able to get that brand recognition because you made that contact, get more information that they could do further marketing with. And they got an email, so that's integrating your other things and they got a response rate. So now they have customers to send out to. They got an offer to now get them into the business again so they can become of that as we get to the end. I just want to really focus in on some key stats that I really want to point out. Again, 76% of consumers have been influenced by a purchase that they got from something in the mail. And then on top of that, people think, oh, the extra baby boomers and the millennials, they're not really too much into mail. Well, 75% of all 25 to 34 year olds have made a purchase as a result of direct mail. And then on top of that, direct mail connects with young buyers with ages 18 to 24. Most now I bet you didn't even believe that because most people would think that they're not seeing the mail. It's really how you engage what is it that you're sharing. If it's relevant to them, they'll respond. But the beauty is that no other medium can reach them as quickly and as effectively as mail. So what works and what doesn't? Well, we say test, we say test. We want you to see how it works for you. Test the offers that you make, test the markets that segments in the geographical areas. And once you hone in on that best customer profile, then they are definitely the ones you want to repeat. So we are here to help you and I don't want you to think that we're not. So we're going to provide you with resources. This is a particular source that allows you the opportunity to connect and you'll have an opportunity to have somebody if you just don't know how to do it. Take you from one step to we don't want to leave you out there. And I'm sure you've probably seen our commercials with Spiderman and we talk about our agility, but the one thing we want to say is do something amazing for your business. Thank you.

We're going to Go over some of the questions that we may have here. We had a request for the presentation. Yes, we will be able to post that presentation. I believe that would be on the. There'd be a site for that. Eddie, is that correct?

I'm sorry, man. Can you say that one more time?

Presentation. Will it be posted? I believe it would be posted on. I think on the SBA side, I'm not altogether certain, but that may be the case.

That is correct. SBA will make a recording of today's webinar available on their YouTube channel. At the conclusion of Small Business Week.

We are going to go to the questions.

Let's see, we have here.

I am a printer and provide evm. Okay. I am a printer and provide EVM to my customers. What software would you recommend for starting. I'm sorry, what software would you recommend for starting to do bulk mail, standard mail for customers, and mailing lists?

Well, eddm, as you know, if you're using eddm, doesn't require a mailing label. Doesn't require. So you can use EDDM in two ways right now. You can enter it through retail and there's a price structure there, and there are some limitations, but it's actually a product that is something you can enter at your local post office. You don't need a permit and you don't need address labels. It's the convenient small business product that we introduced three years ago. Now, every door direct mail is also available through one of our larger mail handling facilities at bmeu. And for managing that process, you can use our online systems, including Postal wizard, which translates your mailing into a language that our mailing systems can understand. And you mentioned software. There's a variety of software programs out there, mail management, pre sort software that can help with larger mailings. But if you're starting off with lower quantities, you perhaps won't need that, especially if you're using eddm. But I would check with your post office or someone at the BMEU for recommendations on the software. There's a number of programs out there.

Well, Keep losing. It keeps moving.

Manny, I know you have a ton of questions that are coming in and it's difficult to keep up with them. I've copied some and pasted them into a separate document. Would you like me to read some of them out loud for you?

Okay, that would be great. Thanks, Eddie. Appreciate that.

Sure.

Absolutely. Let's actually proceed with one that has just come in. Give me one second. How should a small startup business, for example, a plumbing company, plan for a direct Mail program. And how should we budget? How much should we budget? Excuse me?

Well, you know, this is going to.

Depend on the size of business and how much marketing dollars you have available. We've used a $3,000 figure over the years when we've talked about every door, direct mail, what that purchase is in terms of radio advertising, cable advertising, web or Internet advertising. With direct mail, if you spent $3,000, you could get 2,000 pieces printed, you could get those designed, and that would pay for the post office. You'd be able to reach over 2,000 customers in your immediate area. And the benefits of EDDM is that you, you have your own piece. If you're starting a new business, you can announce a store opening or you can have coupons included in that piece that will draw customers from the neighborhoods right around your business. So again, I don't know your budget, but if you're thinking of somewhere in the area of $3,000, you have a lot of options. And every door. Direct mail. Direct mail is probably your best to get the word out that your business is open and ready.

I had a question about the cost of eddm. You want to address that?

Ed?

Sure.

EDDM is a direct mail product. You can the larger mailers, you can use our existing large mailer facilities, BMEUs, and the price can be as low as 15.7 cents per piece, postage per piece. For entering mail at a local post office, you don't need a permit. You don't need to fill out 23 pages of a postal school statement. You're able to bring your mail into the local post office, bring up to 5,000 pieces. The mailing statement is a half a page, and you're able to enter the mail there and pay 17.5 cents per piece. So it's a little higher if you're going through retail. But for smaller businesses, there's usually a post office down the street or around the block. And it's a lot easier, especially for starter companies to try direct mail, to try to see if this is something that's going to work for your business and you can do it right in your neighborhood.

There's a question about local post offices. Does all local post office accept EDDM retail?

Yes, they do.

You can just go ahead and prepare EDDM and bring it to your local office.

Well, you can do things if you're using our online tool. You can pay online and bring your mail to that local post office that's designated on your online confirmation, or you can create the mailing and pay at the post Office for the same order. Yeah.

We have a question about business to business compared to doing a business to consumer. Business to business. You can't use eddmp, can you, Ed?

Not really. This is really a consumer targeted product. There may be some applications, but again, this is something that as a direct mail product that is used to acquire customers, build a customer base and promote a particular business, a business to business promotion. You're probably more suited to, to a standard direct mail type of program where you already use direct mail.

And we got questions about how do you know if your direct mail piece was delivered? I think you know, a way to really look at that is Helena touched on it, the call to action, the offer. A good way to really measure the effectiveness of direct mail campaign is to have some sort of response vehicle in there, maybe come in free offer, maybe a coupon offer. Then you can. So you send a piece out and then you get a sense how many of those pieces will return back to my office to the retail. I did 1,000 pieces and I had 50 customers come in to redeem a $5 off on a purchase. That's where you start to see the effectiveness of a piece. How well did that piece work for me? Another way to do it, if you want, you know, Helena talked about, Helena talked about first class mail as a way to test the list. You know, for first class, you get returned. If the recipient moves, you get a return. You know, you get a new address, a forwarding address. So you get to see whether or not they moved. So there are some, there's some techniques that you could use to help see how effective the list was the direct mail campaign worked for you. See what else we have here, Eddie, if you see some questions, you can feed them to us.

Sure, absolutely. Let me go to another question that we received here. What one inexpensive thing can we do right away using direct mail that will have the greatest impact in our local market?

The one thing that you can do is understand who your best customer is and begin to test where they are. Work with someone to understand where you can find more like them from the geographical area that you're looking for. But understand the best customer that you have so that you can quickly hone in on more that look like them so you can get the same results.

Another thing, if I could add to that, the list is very important. You know, you want to make sure that list is current. You know, you could spend, you put together a beautiful piece, but maybe you use a list and half of it comes back to you. So it's really important to make sure you have a clean list. And we have programs, address hygiene programs that you can run on our website available. You can check, you know, you can run that list through and make sure that you're not sending a list out to addresses where people no longer live there and they don't leave a phoning address. So that's a big cost factor. Right there is the list. So before you put anything in the mail, you want to make sure you have a good strong list that's going to your message is going to indeed reach customers. And I guess the beauty of EDDM on a geo piece is there is no address, is that correct? Right.

You don't have to buy or rent a mailing list so you don't need to address the piece you postal customer. You print that when you print the mail piece itself and that's what you bring to the local post office. They send it out within two days and it goes to every address on the carrier route. So every household that you want to reach is reached with every door direct mail. And that's the most cost effective mail product a small business can.

Seem to get. A couple questions related to bringing EDDM to your local post office. What we call that EDDM retail, right? Ed, that's correct.

EDDM retail was the first mail direct mail product that we ever allowed to be entered at a local post office. And as I said before, we don't require a permit. A permit can run up to $300. In place of a stamp, you have an adisha that you can download from our website. You need to have the indicia, the local postal customer in the address block. And then your piece can be brought to the quantities. Anywhere from 200 to 5,000 pieces can be brought to any local post office where they can accept the mail. And you can either pay online or you can pay at that post office.

And the website on the screen now will take you to what we call our small business page where you can do shipping and mailing. And one of the links on that page is Everydoor direct mail. It will take you right to the everydoor direct mail page and it has information on how you can start doing EDDM retail. Like I said, it's a very difficult process to put together and it's ideal to bring customers in in your local geographical area.

There's a question here that asks if there's a way to target market with every door direct mail. That's a great question. One of the things about eddm, whether you're bringing the mail to a local post office or you're bringing it to a VMU is the ability to see your neighborhood. You have an idea of what it looks like. You know, there's a school here and there's a couple churches over there. When you get into the EDDM website, the first thing you're going to see is a map. Once you put your location in, you're going to see a map of your neighborhood. You're going to see all the streets. You're going to see the schools, the hospitals, all the businesses. They're all going to show up. And so when you look at that map, you can determine where you want to mail, how many mail pieces you want to. And in addition, we introduced demographics less than a year ago. And the demographics on the EDDM online tool allow you to select by household size, the number of people in the household, household income, and age. So you can use one or a combination of all three of those demographic filters to target the customers that make most sense for your business. Looking at a new pizza store, a new restaurant, you probably want to look at households with a large number of people for pizza. Maybe you're looking for a younger group or the people who most likely are going to want to buy your pizza. If you're offering lawnmower services, landscaping services, as Elena said earlier, you can choose the households with a higher income. You can look at 70, 80, $100,000 income. Again, you can look at the neighborhood, see them on the map, know what their income is. They're going to be the most likely customers to respond to an offer from a landscaping firm. So there is targeting available for eddm, and I encourage you to look at the site and look at the map and start playing around. It's free and you'll learn a lot about your neighborhood.

Do we have a time check?

Yes, right now. We still have 13 minutes left in the webinar.

Very good. Do you have any current questions you'd like to share?

Sure, absolutely. Let me go on to one of the questions that has arrived. How long do you suggest running a direct mail campaign?

Well, the question is, depending on who you are targeting, it could be an ongoing thing that you do. You certainly want to take learnings from what you do, but it depends on what your need is. If you have a need to get customers in on a regular basis or you're a seasonal kind of company, that will determine how often you run a direct mail campaign, you're always going to possibly be fluctuating your list and who you're actually going to go after because that will dictate how much you prospect as opposed to how much you reach out to your existing customers. So those are things that will be found in your strategy and your goal for your marketing plan for your business. But you don't want to beat one customer to death 16 times and they didn't respond. You know what I'm saying? You want to continue to hone in on what was that customer look like, how come they weren't successful as opposed to who was successful and how do I get more like them, what kind of referral program could I put into place? So if you got all the customers that you want, now is the time to really work on keeping those customers and then seeing what else you need to do to get more share of their own wallet those existing customers.

And there's a lot of question about what a. If you have a web based company, what could you do for demographics? I guess the question basically is if you're a web based business, how can you use the mail? It's really not calling for more of a geo mailing, more of a demographic mailing. That's when you really look at what is a product, what is my service, who is most likely to buy my product, what value does my product or service offer a customer that they want to buy it? Once you start understanding that intelligence of who are my best customers, what attracts my customers to what I sell, you get an understanding of the potential list that you can buy or rent to sell your product. I'll take an example. It may be women between the ages, maybe an income level, maybe different job, what careers they have. It depends on what you are selling. Maybe it's a collector market, you sell collectibles, maybe sports collectibles. What lists are out there that could connect me with people who are most likely to buy sports collectibles? Maybe it's a sports list, maybe it's collect a list. That's the type of information you want to look at. So in that type of business, a web based business, you're not looking at a geo area, you're looking more of a national, more tuned into a specific.

Audience and you have to say do you have the data on that client? Do you only know their email? How much data do you really have? Would they buy more if you you reach them with a flyer offline catalogers do it every day. They have your data online. You're an online buyer, but you're stimulated to come and buy a catalog or a brochure. A good instance is Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime Has a desire to reach new clients. They want more people to come on Amazon Prime. Well, they have a list of people already, but they're not Amazon Prime. So they reached out to these particular customers with a direct mail piece to try to get them to upsell with an offer to join Amazon Prime. And that's a great instance where you come offline, go hard copy to drive exactly the behavior you want back online.

Right.

And there's been a couple of questions about lists and the postal Service. Postal Service does not sell or rent lists. We don't keep. But EDDM is a service that doesn't require lists.

By law. We're not allowed to sell or maintain any types of lists with eddm. The reason we're able to hit every household in the neighborhood is that we are using address locations and destination points. So we're not usually using a list that identifies a particular person. We're using just that address point.

And the website that we have offered that's up on the screen now does provide resources. So if you don't know of a resource that can help you hone in on getting started, there's a tremendous amount of valuable links that you could take at that point. But you can also. We knew that this might come up. So you can also reach out to Manny afterwards if you have specific needs.

Yeah.

And I'll give you my email. Eddie, would you be providing my email and a message?

Absolutely.

I will be sending a note to all with Manny's email address shortly.

Yeah.

There's a lot of questions about cost. It's hard to determine what a direct mail piece would cost because there's a lot of factors. Are you doing a postcard? There's a sortation. There's what we call worksheet discount, depending on how you prepare the mail configurations. If it's a postcard, it's a lot cheaper than a letter. But if you go on the website, we'll direct you to how to better understand the different costs. What works best. You can do a lot of postcards for less than you can do a lot of letters size mailing on a campaign. So you've got to figure out, okay, what is my budget? What do I want to invest in this campaign? What's the most cost effective, most efficient way for me to do that is postcards. The answer. I can run many postcards, but it also depends on what you have to say. You only have on a postcard, you have limited amount of space. If it's come in and get a. Come in and get a Free car wash. Yeah, you can put in a postcard. But if you're a medical office and you want want to address a specific service that you offer, very hard to do that on a postcard. So it depends on what's your message, what is it you want to convey and that kind of determines the different configurations. Maybe it's what we call a self mail, a trifold where you have a return mechanism. You know, you want to offer a product and here buy it. Now you tear off, everybody's gotten those. You tear off the, the mail back piece and you send it in with a check or credit card information. So it really depends on what is it that you want to achieve. But the mail could help deliver that. But a lot is driven by the message. The message is going to drive the configuration and that's going to make a difference. Determine how much a piece may cost, a campaign may cost.

Yeah, a lot of people, they already have print budget, you're already printing and if you're a restaurant, you're already printing menus, you're already printing pamphlets and things like that. All you have to do is put a simplified address on if you wanted to get started and test out this particular product. Every door direct mail. But those relationships that you have already established with printing can possibly provide you with very good rates when you're ready to get started. I think we're kind of wrapping up some of the questions that we have. Unless you see something else that we haven't caught.

Just add one more thing about resources. Whether you're using direct mail or every door direct mail, there are a number of direct mail agencies, there are list brokers, there are list managers in your communities. They can help you in looking at the different options you may have for smaller businesses. There are a number of printers and mail service providers around the country who can basically provide an end to end solution. They can use a mapping program to show you where you can mail, they can provide an EDDM product or they can provide a direct mail depending on the business size and where you want to mail. So I would suggest if you're starting out with a small budget, I would seek out a printer who provides this end to end solution. And I've seen a number who provide mail pieces as low as 39 cents each. And that includes all the processing, the postage and production and printing. So again, for a small business that's probably your best option starting out.

And so having said all that, and I think we went through a good percentage of the questions, the main thing I think is to understand that if you're in the business, to get business, to get customers, to keep customers and to sell more items. Direct mail is a solution for you. It is a unique opportunity. It integrates well with your other media strategies. And the bottom line is measurable. You can't always measure your other media. It gives you the opportunity to measure how much do you make on every order that comes in and did it pay for your cost? What was the overall benefit? And then how often do you keep those customers? How much do they come back? You can measure the lifetime value. It's a significant reason why it's still here. It's still going to be here and why you should take advantage of it. So I appreciate you coming. And thanks to Manny and Ed for joining in to help out as well.

Absolutely. Thank you, Elena. Thank you, Ed. Thank you, Annie. And thanks to Bridget from SCORE as well. Thanks to all in the audience for joining our webinar today. This concludes our webinar and you may now disconnect.