Brian Kurtz, a direct-marketing veteran, explains how five core offline principles—creative, testing, list relationships, over-delivery, and segmentation—apply to online marketing and back again. His O2O2O framework shows why multi-channel thinking beats choosing between online or offline.
Questions this video answers
1,300,000,000 (1.3 billion) pieces of mail.
From $5 million to $150 million in revenue.
Recorded live at the Genius Network annual event; uploaded August 29, 2017.
Approximately $25 million in one year (he stated 'We once paid $25 million in one year in postage').
Chapters
I'm Dean Jackson. He's Joe Polish. And this is the I Love Marketing podcast.
How to go from offline to online to offline success. Discover the important direct marketing lessons learned from 30 plus years of experience and over 1.3 billion pieces of mail with Brian Kurtz. Brian Kurtz was formerly the VP of Boardroom, Inc. And took the company from 5 million to 150 million in revenue. He's mailed over 1.3 billion letters and is one of the greatest marketing minds alive. If you would like access to the full interview, the show notes, and the special resources for this episode, please visit ilovemarketing.com 304 that's ilovemarketing.com 304 recorded live at the Genius Network annual event.
Our next presenter is my friend, Brian Kurtz. Brian has been the VP of Boardroom, Inc. Taking the company from 5 million in revenue to up to 150 million in revenue. He's mailed 1,300,000,000 letters. He's one of the greatest marketing minds alive. He'll never say that, but he is. You know, as much as I've always hated that term, he's forgotten more about marketing than most people ever know. It's actually very true in this particular case. He's an amazing dude and he's all about giving, and he just really cares. And so I just want to give it up for Brian Kurtz, who's going.
To talk about some awesome stuff. Thank you, Brian. Thank you.
No, I've known him for 20 years almost.
Yeah, I knew him when he had a ponytail. I saw him for real. I saw the ponytail for real. I pulled it, I think. So yesterday I was in the hallway and someone said, oh, Brian Kurtz, you're the direct mail guy. And so, yeah, 1.3 billion pieces of mail. I licked every stamp, guaranteed. But listening to Brendan today, I was inspired because I started thinking about a more transcendent way to think about myself. And I want to see myself as a direct marketing guy who spent 32 years learning a lot of stuff, and I want to share it with all the next generation of marketers that I can and then, of course, learn a lot from them and then sponge off them and all that. My son said, you know, you're going to do 32 years worth of your experience, dad, in 10 minutes. I think that's about eight minutes too long. My family is very supportive of my career. So my concept today, O2O2O offline to online to online to offline is the basic. It's not Zero to zero to zero that Eunice thought I was just a zero. So there's two concepts I want to just stress today when it comes to online and offline marketing. The first, and I'm going to read this because I don't want to get it right because I have it on a slide. The best online marketing techniques being practiced today all have their roots in traditional direct marketing practices. And I would add that there's some room for improvement. And the second thing that I want to cover today is why be defined by a channel? My brother Michael Fishman always says, why would you want to call yourself an Internet marketer and define yourself by a channel? And then Gary Bensivenga took that one step further and said, why not be a solution in multiple channels? And we're talking about being solutions as marketers and as people who have products and services. We're not just selling more shit to more people. And that was actually a slide at a conference with an Internet marketer. His first slide was how to sell more shit to more people. And that's not the game I'm in. That's not the game I'll ever be in. So that's my mission going forward and why I wanted to be on this stage. And it's a privilege to be on this stage. So let me talk about a few direct marketing principles from the past five of them that I think need to be talked about a little bit today so that we can at least not ignore them as we do everything on the Internet. The first is creative. And creative is not just a byproduct. It's not something you just as Dean Graziosi said yesterday, it's not flashing arrows on a squeeze page. Creative takes work. Good copy takes work. I'm going to give you three quick things that I want to mention on that one is Joe always says, and I love this quote from Gary Halbert, every marketing problem can be solved by a great sales letter. Right? I think that's close to the quote. Isn't that the second thing I want to say? And I want to call out John Benson for a minute. My buddy John and I did a one day event. How many people were at our one day event two years ago at Boardroom, we had about 50 of the best copywriters in the room and Paris had to do one. And basically after that session, what I realized is that while John was teaching video sales letters, what he was really teaching was copy approaches and direct marketing and direct response techniques. And then we had dinner with Gary Bensivenga and He wanted to meet Gary bensivenga because he had learned so much from him. And that night I bought two URLs that night on GoDaddy. I bought online offlinedirect.com and it's all direct marketing.com because I really believe that everything that we're doing today online is direct marketing. And it's the ultimate direct marketing medium. John, he is the evil genius of video sales letters. And then just one quickie. A guy in one of my Mastermind groups recently said he had the best subject line he ever had on any email. And the actual wording that he used was was based on an ad that was written by Max Sackheim in the 1950s. Just saying. Okay, number two, statistical significance and a B testing. Does anybody know what that means? Ok, statistical significance means that when you're doing two tests that you actually have results that you can rely on. So therefore you can roll out to one or the other as your winner. Do you know how many people on the Internet don't do that? A lot. Not people in this room, of course. Nobody here. And then as far as a B testing, make sure your two list universes that you're testing are demographically similar. Why would you want to test two universes that aren't? These are just basic tenets of direct mail direct marketing, that if more people follow it on the Internet, I know they're already crushing it already, but they could crush it even more. Number three, your list. I always say everything is not a revenue event, but everything is a relationship event. And there are so many people here that have spoken on this already. I'm not going to dwell on it. But when you're dealing, and I think because email is so cheap and because you think you can pound your list into submission on a regular basis, why not just mail them every day? But what Ben talked about today, he mails them every day, but he's not selling them every day. And we couldn't do that in direct mail. When I used to walk up the hill and barefoot in the snow 12 miles to school, I paid a shitload of postage. A shitload of postage. You ever pay postage? Anybody ever pay postage? We once paid $25 million in one year in postage. I'm not bragging. It sucks. Postal service got a lot of my money. But what I'm saying is that we had to be so conscious of everything that we did in direct mail. Number four, give the customer more than they ever would have expected. I'm not going to go into that even more because I Think Marie covered that beautifully. But don't abuse your customers. You want to think about things like lifetime value. Watch what the best people online in the launch world are doing because they're delivering a lot of content before they start selling. You look at the 30 day calendars. There are people in 25k that have 30 day editorial calendars and on two of those days they're selling something. They're just delivering content. Delivering content. And then number five, list segmentation and database. I'll just mention I was at Strategic Coach and I learned a lot by being there that day talking to your guys about that a 9 million name database could be the same as a 900 name database. And you don't want to talk to all your customers the same way, which ties back into creative and list. So that's my quick doctor principles. I had to do that really quick. That was 32 years worth of knowledge. That's it. Now on the multi channel approach, the second aspect I mentioned, I have a case history which I can't go into in detail.
But.
But I will tell you that using more than one medium can make all boats rise. So I have a case history. In fact, if you go, I have a squeeze page. Dean. Hallelujah. Right. So go to Briankurtz me and there's an interview there that Perry Marshall did with me and I have three case histories and one of them is all about how we did an infomercial for the treasury of health secrets. Anybody ever see that with Hugh Downes and Arthur Johnson? I think we only did about 225 million on TV on that. I'm no Dean Graziosi and I'm no Kevin Harrington, but we were pretty good in the infomercial business. But what I really wanted to stress there is that we went from infomercial back to direct mail and then online and all boats rose. And that entire campaign which I outline in detail and feel free to download the interview. That was probably north of $300 million when we put everything together. But it was not just about taking one product and on one medium. The final thing I think I want to just mention is this concept of nothing. Now I'm going to bring it back around. So someone who thought I was the direct mail guy. I am the direct mail guy. So nothing scales like direct mail and nothing still scales like direct mail. The problem with direct mail today is that you can't get the list universes that we used to get. But the response rates are still there. And imagine being in a world of 4% and 5% response rates. How do you like that? And a world where you don't have to get the credit card up front because you can do credit screening up front. And a world where you can do regression modeling to a list universe based on hundreds of characteristics of your customers. Not too personal, but personal enough in terms of their transaction data to really understand how to mail them and what segments to mail. All of those things are coming and a lot of the best Internet marketers are already doing that and a lot of them aren't. And again, I feel like it's my duty to bring that kind of intelligence to the online marketing community. I wanted to say a couple of quick things. I still have a minute and 20 seconds. Well, I did that really fast. So Joe and I, we were talking last night a little bit about branding and Joe did this article which I thought was pretty good. Branding is bullshit. And then we did a little riff, I think at one of the 25k meetings. And the thing that I will tell you though, even in direct response, and this is a quote again from Michael where he says it doesn't just know how known or unknown your brand is. So that, yeah, I wish I had a Nike swoosh to sell. Bottom line, personal, I don't. But what I do have is a list that really understands my brand. They know because I've been farming that list for a long time. We have a 9 million name offline database and whenever I position my brand to that list, it makes all the difference in the world. So I wouldn't abandon branding as something you just. I wouldn't spend millions and millions of dollars just to create a brand. I think that's all I want to say.
