Can Direct Mail + Inbound Play Nicely Together?
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack?
Intro:Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge. Never fear, hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub Heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers.
Intro:Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.
Max Cohen:Of course, the of course, the first week you get it right is he's not here.
Liz Moorhead:He's here. Devin's not here.
George B. Thomas:I started cracking up.
Liz Moorhead:So HubSpot HubSpot is in no way responsible for all of the silence from Devin. They disavow any connection to the silence that Devon will be bringing
George B. Thomas:to you. Kid you not. I kid you not. I got the audio into my Rodecaster two, and Slack went, and then it was him saying he wouldn't be here. And I was like.
Max Cohen:That's so funny.
Liz Moorhead:I bet it was personal. I know.
George B. Thomas:It's like he knew or something.
Liz Moorhead:I know. Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another epic episode of the Hub Heroes podcast. I am your host, Liz Moorehead, as well as our resident content strategist. I am joined as always by the one and only George b Thomas and Maximilian Cohen of Close One City and Happily. Guys, I'm hyped for today's episode because we have a special guest.
Liz Moorhead: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
George B. Thomas:Yes.
Liz Moorhead:And online Yes. Or seemingly disparate and, quote, unquote, outdated outbound tactics with inbound. Careful. We did with that with we did that with ABM. We did that with SMS texting in our last episode.
Liz Moorhead: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 I had I don't have a metaphor here. We're talking about direct mail today, folks. There we go. We're talking about direct mail. So, Dennis, thank you so much for joining us.
Liz Moorhead:Tell us a little bit about yourself.
George B. Thomas:Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So, as you mentioned, I'm CEO of Postalytics. We are a direct mail automation software platform.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm. And and, you know, believe it or not, those things seem, oxymoronic. Right? You know, direct mail and automation and software. Like, how how do those things fit?
George B. Thomas:And that's kind of the point. Right? Like, direct mail's 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.
George B. Thomas:Let's bring this into the twenty first century, surround it with software, integrate it with HubSpot, and make it a part of the modern marketing stack.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:No. I'm just kidding. I I'm just kidding. Maybe. I don't know.
Liz Moorhead:How can Pet Rocks fit into your attract, engage, and delight strategy in 2024?
George B. Thomas:There you go.
Max Cohen:Find out next week.
George B. Thomas:That's 2025. Pet Rocks is 2025. So you know?
Liz Moorhead:Just not we're not there yet. We're not there yet from a from a technology perspective. But okay. So I actually wanna 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?
Liz Moorhead:What immediately comes to mind? Max, I see you.
George B. Thomas:He's having a moment.
Liz Moorhead:You are emoting, sir. Bring those feelings up. Share them with them.
Max Cohen:Well, you gotta put me on the spot like this when my first interaction with Dennis has gotta be asking me how
Liz Moorhead:I feel about it. Wearing yellow sign you're wearing yellow sunglasses, and you look like you're about to pull me over for a speeding
Max Cohen:ticket. So glasses. Alright? So we don't fry my brain looking at the computer. The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear direct mail, Dennis, don't take any of this personally.
Max Cohen:Recycling. It's the first thing comes to 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'm coming to this conversation willing to have my mind changed because, listen, I feel the same way about crappy email marketing. Right?
Max Cohen:That also goes right in the garbage, right, when I get it. Same thing goes with bad mail that I get too 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?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen: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's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. I feel like I interact with the wrong ways of doing it a whole bunch.
Max Cohen:Right? So despite, George and Liz, what you think, I'm I am I am I am totally willing to have my my mind changed and be enlightened on the good ways. Right? And, also, I have a feeling that HubSpot added that postal mail activity for a reason. For a reason.
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen:Yes.
George B. Thomas:So let let me tell you that, Dennis. 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.
George B. Thomas:What's funny, Max, is I too am a big, a 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.
George B. Thomas:But as soon as carnival or Royal Caribbean send a direct mail pamphlet that my wife and daughters 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 by the way, they're not sponsoring this podcast. But carnival, if you're listening in Royal Caribbean, we can talk.
George B. Thomas:But but I know that as soon as that pamphlet makes it into my real world mailbox I'm in trouble.
Max Cohen:George, I have a question for you. How many, how many timeshare presentations have you sat through?
George B. Thomas:I have never sat
Liz Moorhead:through a
George B. Thomas:timeshare prep.
Max Cohen:No. Actually, maybe twice as much. Carnival crew sold your stuff off of the direct mail. There is no chance in hell you have not sat through at least 14 timeshare presentations. George.
George B. Thomas:Maybe two. Maybe two.
Max Cohen:Alright. Sorry.
Liz Moorhead:Oh my god. 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.
Liz Moorhead: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'm definitely with you. Well, not all of us can be you. Do you have your steering wheel today, bud?
Max Cohen:Grab it. I'll grab it.
Liz Moorhead: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 two thousands 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.
Liz Moorhead:And I know, George, you and I have some examples that we wanna dig into later in this conversation.
George B. Thomas:Absolutely.
Liz Moorhead:Because it just makes me it makes me wonder, like, am I just not am I not the buyer persona that gets 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, not me. And it makes me really bummed out. So, Dennis, I wanna 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.
George B. Thomas:Sure. Well, you know, I think there are a lot of folks that have negative perceptions of of direct mail from, the the old, days of junk mail, and and, you know, the the the volume of junk in your mailbox, in 02/2007, '2 thousand '8 was the peak of mail volume, and it's been on a 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
Liz Moorhead:of Absolutely.
George B. Thomas:You know, spray and pray. You know, it's just an impression. We're spending money. Get it out there. Right?
George B. Thomas:And that's what that's what became of the channel in the late nineties, early '2 thousands. Right? And and but what 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. Mhmm. And so all of a sudden, the 70% of your audience who's not open 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.
Liz Moorhead:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:And and so, you can use workflows inside of market automation tools like HubSpot to precisely target individual people with a single piece of highly personalized personalized mail. And you don't have to worry about the economics of print Yeah. That, you know, are are driving typically people to do huge batch and blast types of campaigns where, you know, you need to send a hundred thousand pieces out in order to save a few pennies per piece. You know, all that's been kinda removed by technology, all those issues. So now it's much more of like a surgical strike.
George B. Thomas:It can be.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:That surgical strike that is a part of a bigger campaign.
Max Cohen:Yes. I'd I love that. Yeah. I wanna can I ask a question about just, like, the economies of scale, all that kind of stuff? So, like, something that I've done recently, I started a I started a hat company, and I sell these, like, hats online and stuff.
Max Cohen:But I don't have, like, a warehouse.
George B. Thomas:Hold on. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not gonna mention what it is.
Max Cohen:I don't have a warehouse, but I
Liz Moorhead:use I use a
Max Cohen: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 know, then you'd kinda sent them out blasted them out that way, and then maybe ended up with, like, a ton of waste and stuff.
Max Cohen: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 wanna target a list of, like, 384 people, I just wanna send 304, you know, pieces of 384 pieces of mail. Right? Not, like, say, oh, I'm gonna go, you know, order a bunch. They're gonna arrive at the office. We're gonna package them up, and we're gonna send them out.
Max Cohen: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 wanna send, choose the envelope, write you know, figure out what's on it, maybe do some personalization tokens and stuff like that.
Max Cohen:And, like, you might just be sending out one piece of mail. Right? What's what's 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?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Yeah. And and and, you know, there have been several changes. But, you know, the the big thing is this. In order to for a printer to execute on on a print job, you have to have an operator.
George B. Thomas:Yep. 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.
George B. Thomas: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. Yeah. You know, there's there's some press operator who's getting paid, you know, a hundred and $20, and, you know, they're spending, an hour, you know, start to finish on this run overseeing this piece of very expensive, sophisticated equipment.
George B. Thomas:And 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. Yeah. I divide it by a hundred thousand pieces, well, you know, you know, some economics are happening. But what what's happened since then is companies like us have come along and said, hey.
George B. Thomas:You know what? We're gonna standardize direct mail around some really popular, formats.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Yep. 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 and into these templates that can be then pushed out to print partners in aggregate with, you know, hundreds of other companies Yeah. Every day. Yep. So you could send one piece of mail.
George B. Thomas:You could send 10,000 pieces of mail. You could send a hundred thousand pieces of mail. They all get treated exactly the same way.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:They're all priced very competitively. And, and and they take advantage of the scale that we bring to the equation, that we bring to our print partners
Max Cohen:Yep.
George B. Thomas:But allow marketers to not have to worry. You don't have to worry about print economics. You have to worry about postage.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:I I I like to 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 and going 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. No. Of course not.
George B. Thomas: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 kinda what we're doing for physical mail.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Got it.
Liz Moorhead:We're
George B. Thomas:saying, you don't need to go find a printer. You don't 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. Yeah. You market.
George B. Thomas:Be a marketer.
Max Cohen:Yeah. And so We
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Love it.
George B. Thomas:So there's a couple things I wanna 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 them 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:And so think about where that fits in with inbound and HubSpot. Liz, let's keep chugging along.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Because here's what I wanna 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 very 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?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So, the one I'm gonna 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 gonna 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.
George B. Thomas: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 the example that I'm gonna 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.
George B. Thomas:And so we were kind of in the same boat. Anyway, here's the example. I was training an HVAC 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. I got to my usual spiel where I said, so let's go ahead and delete those humans.
George B. Thomas:Oh, wait. Let's delete those
George B. Thomas:humans
George B. Thomas:from the There we go. From the database. Right? And, to which the owner said, hold up. Hold up.
George B. Thomas:Hold up. Hold up. Hold up. I don't know if we're ready to delete those yet. And I said, well, why not?
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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 wanna send them a letter or send them a postcard or see if I can get them to call in. Right?
George B. Thomas:And so now 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.
George B. Thomas:Now we're talking about using post analytics because that could be the send and then the phone call. So now the the the e 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 marker going, this guy just took me to school because there is an audience that isn't gonna do what we think they should do, and we should have a way to serve them.
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:I'm Love it. Love it.
Liz Moorhead:I love Oh,
Max Cohen:I'm I'm having What
Liz Moorhead:do you got?
Max Cohen:I think I'm having a a little bit of a coming around on all of this. And I'm trying
Liz Moorhead:You having a breakthrough? Are we having a breakthrough?
Max Cohen:I'm I'm I'm drinking some of my own medicine here. You know how I always say, you know how I 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. It's like, I'll say the, your your future buyers are growing up on TikTok and Twitch, not not Google and Facebook. I mean Yep. Right?
Max Cohen:Yep. And I see I know where you're going. I think 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 prefer to communicate He's
George B. Thomas:having such a hard time pissing.
Liz Moorhead:It's like watching a pony it's like watching a pony learn to walk. This is great.
Max Cohen:What do you say? 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. And so
Liz Moorhead:I wanna be careful about us being a little bit too agist there.
Max Cohen:I'm not
Liz Moorhead:gonna hear why. I'm saying the audience
Max Cohen:is just
Liz Moorhead:like Let me finish.
George B. Thomas:Damn it.
Liz Moorhead:Because the the example that came at 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.
Liz Moorhead: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 to 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.
Liz Moorhead: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.
Liz Moorhead: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?
Liz Moorhead:So it it's both. It's both and.
George B. Thomas:And and, you know, often in in those what we call highly considered purchases
George B. Thomas:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Big ticket items. Yep. They're often not decided by a single person. So think about college recruitment. We have a lot of, you know, higher ed institutions that are driving out, you know, highly, highly personalized, 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.
George B. Thomas:When when you're buying a car, when you're buying, you know, a a a really expensive thing, you're buying insurance policy. You know, these are things that have to be kinda 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And and so There's a
George B. Thomas:long tail
George B. Thomas:on those carnival brochures, bro. I'm telling you. That those suckers lay on my kitchen table for the longest of times. I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'd 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 will hand it back over to 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.
George B. Thomas:It's like a a top of mind always type scenario when you do one person's roof sending mail. Right? The neighbors. Dennis, what you're 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.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:Well, you know, I I'll 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?
George B. Thomas:But but there's some sort of package, some sort of thing that you're holding Yeah. And you're reading versus looking at an ad on a a screen. And the brand recall was 70% higher on the thing that you hold in your hand. You're in you're you're using more than one sense. Right?
George B. Thomas:You're using multiple sensory things in your body Yeah. To deal with this message. And 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?
George B. Thomas:You have to look at it because it may be something you need. So you have to make that decision. And it's you you you you put it aside. You throw it away. You keep the couple things that are of value that you wanna dig into further, you come back to them.
George B. Thomas:Where do you go? What 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.
George B. Thomas: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 to 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 a part of those stories.
George B. Thomas:Okay. So I have to I oh my gosh. So, there's so much good right there, by the way. Like, rewind and relisten 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.
George B. Thomas: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 fourteen no. Maybe sixteen 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.
George B. Thomas: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 papers 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.
George B. Thomas: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 turt it out and hope for the best. It's a let's let's use this to make a yes. I said turt it out, Max.
George B. Thomas:Let's make it let's make it Yeah. I mean, I could've used a different word, but, you know
Max Cohen:Or keen or scared and scared. It a special.
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Let's make it a special doing great, guys. We're doing great.
George B. Thomas:Doing good. Let's make it a special moment. Like, let's make it an experience in that moment.
Max Cohen:Speak speaking of experiences, and and, Dennis, I've been looking at the, you know, whenever I look at integrations, I always like to go into 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 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 if someone, like, hits
George B. Thomas:Dang. You just got nerdy, bro.
Max Cohen:Someone hits the website, it's it's doing, like, smart content and, like, personalization tokens. Yeah. Dude, that is crazy.
George B. Thomas:That is And and and we have we actually, have have been doing this for quite a while where we're able to generate a unique URL for every single person
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:That is gonna receive a piece of mail. That URL could be a URL. It could be a QR code.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:And then we you know, there's a a lot of the the data that is driving the personalization of the mail piece. We're able to repurpose and sprinkle tokens into the HTML of your landing page. Uh-huh. So, you know, we have customers that are sending out direct mail that is completely data driven and personalized based on a wide variety of of factors. So different images, different content blocks.
George B. Thomas:Right, all this type of thing is, you know, zeroing in a piece of mail that is 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 gonna lose people.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:So this is about conversion rate optimization as well. Right? This is, yeah, 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. Mhmm. And so having that continuity will raise your response rates significantly.
George B. Thomas:And so yeah. So the mail is a part of a digital experience. It happens to be physical. Yeah. Right?
George B. Thomas: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.
Liz Moorhead:Okay. So I wanna 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 well, 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.
George B. Thomas:Mhmm.
Liz Moorhead: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 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 nos, the don'ts, the bads.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Dennis. Sure.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. I I I say the the number one thing that that we see, are are people who say, hey. You know, my my email marketing is on kind of a long term decline in effectiveness. You know, I'm I'm I'm running out of other channels. I wanna try direct mail.
George B. Thomas:So I'm gonna 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 gonna send one postcard out to a thousand people one time. And and if we hear back, you know, if we have some response, great.
George B. Thomas:We'll keep going. And and my response is, okay. Well, is is this a cold solicitation? Are these people who know you? And and the answer is often, no.
George B. Thomas:These are not people who know me. This is a cold solicitation. I said, alright. Well, if you had a sales rep who made 100 phone calls and left 100 voice mails and never did another thing, what would you think of that sales rep? And inevitably, they say that rep is fired.
George B. Thomas:He's out. And I said, well, that's gonna it's what's gonna happen to your direct mail? Because you you you you 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 one zero one applied to a different medium.
George B. Thomas:And that's really a big emphasis of of where we're trying to, you know, lead the market. We've just put together what we call Postolytics Academy, and, we're so excited about it. And it's designed it's a free set of online courses. I don't know where I would've 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.
George B. Thomas:Right? So, it it's a huge thing for us is to kinda teach the fundamentals of direct mail marketing to the world.
George B. Thomas: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, the 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.
George B. Thomas: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 gonna 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 gonna do. No. First of all, it doesn't even have to always be cold.
George B. Thomas: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, how the how do you think I'm gonna read this?
George B. Thomas: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 is I'll 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 a nerdy designer, and I wanna 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 do?
Liz Moorhead: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 clear next step, they're gone.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas:So, like, you like, the again, we're creating a little bit of a matrix of things to think about when you're gonna 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. Anyway, that's that's my thing.
George B. Thomas:Make sure you have a call to action on these bad boys.
Liz Moorhead:Maxie, what about you? What are your what are your don'ts, your no no's?
George B. Thomas:He's already setting up to do a post analytics run for his happily or or hat typically as Chad put it.
Liz Moorhead:I mean, I do I I do Shilling for big hats.
Max Cohen:I do have some mailing addresses, I guess, so I could probably move some hats that way.
George B. Thomas:Cross sales up sales, baby. I think
Max Cohen:I'd be thinking, like, I'm trying to figure out because, again, I'm 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 gonna be, you know, that good. If anything, it might be more detrimental because it's like, oh, you're giving me a physical task. I throw something away that I didn't want.
Max Cohen:I wasn't expecting here. 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?
Max Cohen: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.
Max Cohen:But, like, what I'm trying to figure out, the big thing I'm 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 gonna work when you have an audience that likes to have likes to be communicated with that way? Right? Or is it does it depend on what you're selling?
Max Cohen:Or is it like a stage
Liz Moorhead:Honestly, that was our next question. So, Max, you're doing my work
Max Cohen:for us.
George B. Thomas:I was gonna say
Max Cohen:Let's say that.
George B. Thomas:Have a question for
Max Cohen:me? Trying to figure out.
Liz Moorhead:Like, what
Max Cohen:are the rules of thumb around it? 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?
Liz Moorhead:Like a cheese. Fold in
Max Cohen:the cheese. Layers. It's like a croissant.
Liz Moorhead:Just me? Okay. Yep. Alright.
Max Cohen:I got you.
Liz Moorhead:I'm alone.
George B. Thomas:So, you know, I think your analogy between direct mail and email is spot on.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:And in fact, that's often how I try to explain Postolytics to people. I say, it's kinda like email, except it happens to print and mail.
George B. Thomas:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Right? That so our software kinda works like email. It looks and acts and feels like email when you're setting up campaigns. So, it it so the principles are the same. Right?
George B. Thomas:You you you have a a 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.
Max Cohen:Sure.
George B. Thomas:And so so 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.
Max Cohen:Interesting. Okay.
George B. Thomas:That is absolutely the low hanging fruit.
Max Cohen:Yeah. Big because probably it's 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.
Max Cohen:So yeah.
George B. Thomas:The drones are coming, but we're not there yet.
Max Cohen:Yep. So
Liz Moorhead:Smoke signals, falcons with little caps on their heads.
George B. Thomas:Where are
Liz Moorhead:we at with those?
George B. Thomas:Oh, I like falcons with caps.
Max Cohen:That's telepathy. Yeah.
Liz Moorhead:Big fan.
Max Cohen:Okay. So it's interesting. So, like, trying try 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 a list of people whose unopened emails, like, hit a certain amount.
Max Cohen:Right? Like, you know, HubSpot's already helping you build
George B. Thomas:a workflow in HubSpot unengaged contacts. Through your last five emails. And when you find somebody that hasn't opened an email in in five or six touches
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Drop them into
Max Cohen:a
George B. Thomas:three or four touch direct mail sequence.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. And and and trigger triggers, you know, some different mail pieces out with some different offers over a period of a couple of months and see what happens. Yeah. 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 reengaged, and then try to get them back on email because email costs less.
George B. Thomas:Yeah. Right? True. So if if you can use email, do it. But if if it's not working, don't just keep pounding it.
George B. Thomas:Right?
Max Cohen:The
George B. Thomas:definition of insanity, we all know what that is. Yeah. So so you you've gotta use other tactics, and and that's where we try to plug in and make that a a seamless process to to use some different direct mail techniques
Max Cohen:to
George B. Thomas:get that audience engaged again.
Max Cohen:George, I wanna I wanna poke a little more, but you you have a question to ask you.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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 ninety 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 sixty days and send them direct mail.
George B. Thomas:If in unengaged, you know, email list, then set up the like, so there's literally two ways right there that you could 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.
Max Cohen:Alright. I have two questions, two separate ones. So is are 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?
George B. Thomas:From a response rate perspective.
Max Cohen: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 gonna open up this shit they sent me versus, oh, I had a great experience with these people. I'll I'll I'll open this envelope.
Max Cohen: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?
George B. Thomas:Yeah. So so response rates are double when you are sending direct mail to a warm audience.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Exactly. Got it. Exactly. So so, you know, we see eight, nine, 10 percent response rates you're sending to a a warm audience. When you're sending to a cold audience, it's, you know, two, three, you know, four is really good.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Right? Okay. So so but for certain audiences, direct mail is the best way to acquire new customers too.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Right? So if if if you are that, the HVAC company Yep. Right, and and you need to respond quickly to a storm in an area, you can you can hit, you know, neighborhoods and ZIP codes with very, very timely messages, and you're gonna you're gonna get new customers.
Max Cohen:Yeah.
George B. Thomas:You know, it's it is for for certain scenarios, it is the best way to get new customers. Yeah. But overall, you see a much, much higher response rate when you're communicating with people that already have an association with your brand.
Max Cohen:Cool. Last cut 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?
Max Cohen: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?
Max Cohen: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?
George B. Thomas: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.
Max Cohen:Mhmm.
George B. Thomas:Because, there really aren't there's no notion of can spam Yep. Or, you know, there's no real regulatory requirement to, opt out addresses, and names of addresses are public data.
Max Cohen:Sure. Yeah. You can
George B. Thomas:go to 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 it's all public. Wild. So, so, you know, there's it'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.
Max Cohen:Mhmm. That makes sense. Yeah. Interesting.
George B. Thomas: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.
Liz Moorhead:I love that. Dennis, I wanna 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?
George B. Thomas: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 to this channel that you have with every other channel. And so, you know, you you you have to do things right. You have to if you're gonna do something, invest. Do it the right way. Give it, you know, a six month, a one year kind of run-in in in in work it.
George B. Thomas: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.
George B. Thomas: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.
Liz Moorhead: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?
George B. Thomas:Well, you can hit me up, dennis@postalytics.com or hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. And so, look me up there. We're we'd be thrilled to talk to anybody. And, I really wanna thank you guys.
George B. Thomas:This has been a blast. This is the most fun I've had in a podcast in a long time. So
George B. Thomas:There we go.
George B. Thomas:You guys know how
Max Cohen:to bring it. Yeah.
George B. Thomas:Alright. There we go.
Liz Moorhead:We fold in the cheese and the plum. Right, guys? Yes? No? And on that note, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in this week, obviously.
Liz Moorhead: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.
George B. Thomas:Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hubheroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the league of heroes.
George B. Thomas:FYI, if you're part of the league of heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.
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