Strategic Factory Blog

[Transcript Start]

Justin Newcomer: Yes, we’re good now. All right. Well, I’m glad we started off on a lighthearted foot there. It’s fun. Funnily enough, I just found out I’m part of a DG group here where it’s called Junstin and Amy, so I might be a Junstin. We’ll figure that out. So my name is Justin Newcomer. If you’ve engaged with our direct mail department here, you’ve probably spoken to myself or one of my coworkers. I know we’ve had some that’ve spoken to like my coworker Megan, or possibly Olivia. But we’re the kind of team that would you would be speaking to if you’re interested in kind of starting a direct mail campaign.

So quite simply, what is direct mail? I think you all kind of have a general idea of what that is, but essentially it is a physical correspondence that you send out to potential clients, prospects, donation incentives, with the idea that you’re trying to elicit some kind of response. That response can be anywhere from buying your service, providing a donation to your calls, signing up for an event that you guys are having. You know, it can be any of these types of things. And the type of piece that you send out could be anything from a simple postcard where you’re conveying something pretty quick, like “Hey, I’m having an event next week, come visit me,” or it could be something more verbose, like, “here’s a catalog showing all the different types of service offerings that we have to kind of showcase for.” It could even be something as far as, like, sending out a sample of what you produce. We’ve had people send out samples of ceramic tiles to kind of showcase what they can offer to clients. So it can be anything that you send up physically to try to elicit that kind of response.

Why use direct mail? Tons of forms of marketing out there, why is direct mail a powerful channel? Well, over half people that engage with direct mail think that it is the reason that they will engage with your business and look up more about you. It’s something that they receive that makes them feel valued. You know almost everyone, and I’d be surprised anyone here says otherwise, but almost everyone goes home and opens the mailbox when they get home immediately or pretty close to when they get home. Right? It’s usually the first thing I do before I walk into my house. it’s something that…you’re already going to be in front of them anyway. If you don’t have content in front of it, you’re just leaving that potential real estate open for them—right? You know, I engage with it all the time when I get home and over 70% of people sort through their mail right when they get home. That’s just something that you just kind of naturally do. That’s kind of ingrained in the American psychology: I go home, I open my mailbox, I grab my mail, I go inside, I sift through my mail, I put aside the ones I’m interested in. I put aside the ones that were tossed; the ones I’m not. It’s already going to happen anyway, so you’re just leveraging that ability to be in front of those people at that time.

The majority of people that, you know, receive direct mail will download an online offer. By first seeing that mail piece, you’re more likely to get them to look up more about you. You know, the first thing I do when I see email pieces, I look up, I go online, look up their website. So by having that mail piece, you’re already in front of them showing off that brand and what you’re offering,  and just makes you seem more reputable because you’re providing them content through multiple streams. Half of consumers preferred direct mail. We’re going to be touching upon a couple of reasons why, but essentially: how many here get digital advertisements through multiple channels all day, every day? You go home, you look at your emails or your work emails, you get all those ads, you’ve got things in your spam filter. You go home, you watch YouTube, you see ads on that. You go to Gmail, you become almost “eye blind” to it, is the phrase I like to say.

Physical direct mail. It’s a form of communication that forces them to engage with your content in some manner, even if it is just them picking it up and then putting it down. They have to spend that time to engage with that content. So you want to leverage that behavior by providing them valued content. Most people act on direct mail immediately or part of that will also be they go to visit that brand website. You know? I can attest, I personally do this every single time I’m interested in a marketing collateral piece. 100% of the time. I’m going to stop and look up your website and try to learn more about you—If I’m interested in your service.

So we’ll be talking on a couple of things that we can do to leverage this behavior to then hopefully increase your ROI, essentially, on that direct mail campaign. Some statistics, you know, 60% of the volume of your mail is going to be some kind of marketing collateral. I’d like to say that that’s probably kind of seesawed down or up, you know, since COVID. A lot less of mailbox is marketing collateral, since COVID, there’s a lot less of other marketing messages in your inbox. But also a lot of people switched over to more online bills. So that means that there is less noise or clutter in that mailbox and that makes it so hopefully you can draw the recipient into your message over the other competing messaging that they would have in there.

When it comes to response rate and ROI, naturally, a house-curated mail list is going to perform the best, right? You know the type of people that you want to reach out to or the people that have already engaged with your services. Those are probably the people that are most likely to reengage with you later. But that’s not to say that prospecting does not work. We’re going to be touching on a couple of things why. But essentially you need to build up where you are now. You need to grow to the next level, right? And that’s where profit comes into play. And our direct mail still has the highest ROI of marketing channels. And that’s because a couple different things we touch on, but that’s because of the tangibility and the personalization that we can definitely add to it.

So what is direct mail? What makes it unique from other marketing channels? Right? It’s interactive and tangible. Something I was talking a lot about earlier today with individuals was, you know, when you look at an email or you look at a digital ad, it’s just something that’s flat. It’s an image, maybe some text content, but it all kind of looks the same. You kind of digest it in the same manner every single time. So again, you become blind to it or you just start to overlook it. You don’t even pay attention to it. Mail is tangible, which means that you can do a lot of things to it to engage with the client or make it more, you know, more appealing to them. I like to use the example of, you know, if I get a scratch and sniff or scratch off anything in the mail, I don’t know who here’s going to admit to it, but I scratch it 100% of the time. I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s fun and engaging. And even as a marketer, I know what it’s doing to me, but I still engage with it.

If I get a mail piece that has a soft touch laminate on it, it has this nice soft feel, maybe a  fabric feel, I’m going to engage with it because it’s different, it’s tangible, it’s something interactive, something unique. You know, even things like, you know, augmented reality is a hot topic thing that’s been around recently. You can do things like including that in your mail piece. Even things just like a nice finish, a glossy finish that makes your images pop instead of sending out a flat postcard, you know, that has a nice, great picture of a favorite company spruced up with some gloss coating and that’s going to make it pop.

You know, these are things that people aren’t used to seeing in their mailboxes. And by doing that, you’re standing out from your competition. You know, then the other benefit is it’s targeted and personalized. So we’ll be talking about this a little bit here shortly. But you can create your mail campaigns to be a lot more focused down to the ideal candidate individual that you want to relay your message to.

I mean, with email blasts and online banner ads that ae you’re being retargeted on, that’s not personal to you outside of it capturing your data and knowing to market to you. It’s not going to give you that personal offer that is unique, very much specific to what you’re looking for and other things that we can do is, you know, we’re going to capture some data on the individual. You know, what’s their gender, what’s their age, what’s the demographics that we have access to? Let’s leverage that information and create a more dynamic piece of artwork.

An example I like to give is we work with a spirits retailer and they’re able to capture a data point on what the last spirit that individual purchased was. Then on their next follow-up piece they send out every month, “here’s the next offer,” they actually have a dynamic piece of artwork on there that alternates depending on what that client purchased. That makes it more relevant and more personal to that individual. There are a lot more likely to engage with that piece because you’re speaking to them with what they want to know or what they’re looking for, as opposed to “you’re sending them a message and hoping that it lands with them.” So by leveraging these demographic data points, you can make your mail piece that much more relevant to the recipient and they are a lot more likely to engage with your messaging.

When it comes to direct mail, it’s a very versatile form of marketing. Like I said with email and digital ads, it is what it is. Everyone knows how it kind of displays on the different channels. They know how it reads, they know what content it’s going to be relaying. They know it’s going to get you to a website by clicking on it. It’s expected. With direct mail, there’s so many different forms that you can take in terms of relaying that content to the individual that makes it more unique to them, more engaging to them. You know, like I said earlier, saying something as simple as a postcard versus a full-length catalog that really displays your offering—It’s a lot more varied in terms of how you can relay your content.

“I’m just having a simple event and I want people to sign up for it?” A postcard is great for that. Low cost, low effort, gets out, it’s impactful, gets the information across. But if you’re a high end brand and you really want to display all these different options for clients, then you might want to look toward the more of a catalog or a brochure approach where you can showcase more of your products or offerings, or that full-color imagery. So it’s a lot more versatile as opposed to just a flat marketing message and you can definitely leverage that to make it more engaging for your recipients. And again, there’s not as much competition when it comes to direct mail. Your inboxes have gotten a lot skinnier since COVID. The amount of marketing messaging, in general, has gone down because a lot of people switch to digital because of budgets—not being sure about—or not knowing how to engage with people because they have no idea where to engage with them.But direct has always been a strong channel and by other people dropping their messaging out, that means it’s more eyes on your content and it’s that much more impactful for those recipients. So if you’re not leveraging that behavior, your competition will be and you definitely want to be in front of that.

So what are some do’s and don’ts with direct mail? So if you engage with my department, we’ll be going through this with you. Essentially, the first step is you need to define your audience. It doesn’t matter how much time we spend on anything else that we’re talking about here. You know, your content, your call to action, your offerings, your artwork, your imagery—doesn’t matter if you’re not sending it to the right person. So you’ll be working with our team, kind of identifying what are the demographics, age, income, gender, what is the geography, you know, are you looking to send out a national campaign? Are you opening up a new storefront location and want to send out a five-mile radius? Because you know that typically people travel that distance to elicit your service. You know, these are important factors to make sure you’re drilling down to that ideal candidate for your marketing message.

Other things with the audience is psychographics. So we can actually leverage consumer behavior, purchasing habits. You know, I have sports equipment, so I’d be more likely to engage with at discount for some of that equipment. You can leverage all these data points that are already being captured anyway. If you’re just if you’re not utilizing them, then you’re kind of wasting your effort in that way. And because we’re defining that audience, we can then make the piece personal like I talked about earlier. We already capturing these data points: age, gender, demographics, and what have you. Let’s send out a postcard that has different imagery for males versus females or using our state, in example. Maryland is very proud of our flag, very noisy flag, we’re very proud of it. So if we’re mailing to mailing list, throw a Maryland flag on their showcase that you’re a Maryland business. Or if you’re maybe out of state, maybe include their state flag, make it more relevant, more personal to them. If you’re already capturing information about your audience, whether that be information you might currently have or information you’ve learned from prospecting, leverage that behavior.

With today’s technology for production and equipment, it doesn’t really cost anything more to have an alternating postcard where it alternates artwork as you’re doing the run. As long as we set that up ahead of time, we can have two, three, four, ten iterations of that postcard that change dynamically based on those demographic filters. It’s leading money on the table. It’s easy effort to just increase that much more value to that recipient, make it that much more personal to them.

But after you define your audience, you need to make sure that a clear and concise call to action.  Everything else can be great. You could be hitting the right person. You can provide amazing content or information about your services. But if they don’t know how to reach out to you or you don’t provide them that channel, how to engage with you, you’re going to lose them because they’re not going to want to go through the effort of, you know, necessarily going online and digging to your “how to contact us page.” It’s not making the experience easy for that recipient. So you want to provide a clear call to action, which is not just, “How do you get in contact with me?”, but give them multiple ways to get in contact with you. I can speak personally—if you only give me the option to call to use your service, I’m probably not as likely to engage with you as a competition that might say call or text or email me, because that’s just how I am. You know, there are people that prefer to pick up the phone and call. So by not providing that option, you’re also leaving those people out as well.

So you want to give the most ability to people to access your content the easiest way possible. The other thing with the call to action is, well, what makes you stand out from your competition? Why should they use you over this similar service in the same location? This is your time to catch them on the hook now and really dig into why they want to use you as opposed to competition. So now we’ve done that, we’ve sent out the mail piece, we want to drive traffic to your website and we’re going to be touching on a lot of reasons why we can leverage that. But essentially two reasons are going to be your attribution and your lift and we’ll go on to some technologies we have in place to kind of help with that. But these days, like I mentioned earlier, the consumer behavior, you’re going to go to people’s websites. I go to the website of anyone I’m interested in. I might even dig around their social pages because people don’t only want to engage with a business that offers some service they’re looking for. Sometimes they want to engage with a brand or a company that is similar to them or has like values or at least values they can agree with. So they’re going to look you up and look up information about you. You want to drive them to that website so we can leverage that behavior.

And finally, running A and B tests. So we’ve defined everything. We build the perfect campaign. We have identified the audience. We have the call to action. Well, now how do we know what works and what doesn’t, right? Marketing, you’d be lucky to get on the first shot. The perfect marketing campaign where you have the perfect hour, everyone’s responding, you know, it’s not how things work, right? It’s all about iterating and improving what works, getting rid of what doesn’t, you know? And this could be anywhere from the content with a messaging that you had on there. The call to action could be performed better. The imagery that you supply could have been different. The audience maybe wasn’t the best or maybe even the timing wasn’t the best. I had worked with a long care service who sent out a postcard right when spring hit, and they didn’t get a lot of traction, but they did get a lot of web hits because people, while they weren’t ready, they were at least interested enough to go to the website, learn more. But then they sent a follow-up piece, a couple of weeks later. They got a lot more traction on that because they had already built the brand from that first piece and now they’re reengaging with them on that second piece at a more relevant time as well. So A and B, testing can be run at the same time when you’re sending out maybe two different creatives to the same segment or two different segments to see how each reacts or it can be done campaign over campaign while you’re iterating and showing what works and what doesn’t as you go along in your marketing journey.

So it’s very important to iterate and kind of strip out what doesn’t work and what does work and our team can be there to help you through that and guide you on that as well. Then, you know, we said of the piece, we’ve done everything great. What are some things you don’t want to do? You don’t want to forget the follow-up. The first thing I talk to people when they’re interested in starting a direct mail campaign in general is, well, what do you plan to do after this? What is the next step after this? You don’t want to just send out a campaign and just say, “Okay, I’m done with my marketing”. You know, this is going to work or it didn’t work and you only did it one time, right? Marketing is all about repetition. I don’t know who here can say “I got a piece of mail or I saw an ad and I definitely act upon it right then and there.” It’s about repetition and building the brand, building the awareness of the service offerings and hopefully hitting them at the time that they’re in that buying mode, right?

When that lawn care service worked on that second mailer, you know, they were hitting people when they’re more a mode where people are looking outside like, “Oh yeah, it’s been a couple of days. You know, my lawn is getting high now. I now need to engage with the service.” And if they have three postcards in front of them and the first one was the one they saw a couple of weeks earlier as a preliminary one, they’re more likely to have their eyes drawn to that one because they’ve already been exposed to the brand, the colors, the messaging, the potential offerings. They’re more likely to engage because they feel more comfortable that these people are around, that they’re reaching out to you through different channels. They’re more reputable. So it’s very important to follow up because otherwise, you’re not going to have any success in marketing if you’re just doing a one-and-done walk away. It’s all about repetition. And we have some tools that not only provide attribution to kind of show you what’s working, and what’s not, but also allow you to engage with these individuals through follow-up campaigns as well, which we’ll touch upon here shortly.

And finally, don’t forget to tell your sales team that you’re sending this out. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard like, “Oh, I sent out this mail piece and it hit homes on a Thursday. And our call centers are staffed on Monday through Wednesday, so we were inundated with volume.” Well, we need to know that or your sales team needs to know that so they can pivot to the drop date or make sure they have staffing in time or even so much as making your sales team aware of what the messaging is. So that way when people are calling in, you’re not having conflicting messaging or competing messaging. Everyone’s on the same page and saying the same message. It’s very important for your sales to be apprised of when it’s going out, what it’s saying, maybe even get buy-in from them. You know, they’re the ones talking to the clients, get their buy-in on what they think might be relevant to market as well.

So these are very important things to kind of address when you’re kind of discussing setting up a direct mail campaign. So we’ve talked about all this stuff about what to do, what not to do. Well, how can Strategic Factory help? I usually like to drill it down as simply as: we’re happy to kind of start or stop at any point of a mail campaign. If you come to us and say, “I got my content. I got my audience here,” totally fine. But if you say “I’ve never done direct mail marketing before, I’m not sure where to start. What do I do?” You’ll sit down with our team. We’ll start by defining that audience like we spoke about. What is your ideal client? What does that look like? What are the demographics, psychographics, geography? What is the goal of your campaign, you know? It would be totally different just trying to get people in the door for business then an open house where you’re providing an awareness. So you know, we’ll kind of sit down with you and work through those.

We also have content writers on staff. So if you say “I have a perfect call to action, I definitely know what I want to say, but I don’t know how to express it,” our team can kind of help you putting that into more of a marketing kind of fluffy way. When it comes to the design, we have a full fleet of designers on staff, so if you say, “Hey, my designer tapped out or I know what I want to show, I know what imagery I want to have, but I just don’t know how to put it together in a very palatable way,” we can work with you in that regard as well. Then naturally, when it comes, you know, we can actually do the production of the pieces as well. So when it comes to the actual printing of the postcards, delivering the mail piece to the post office, we handle it from start to finish and we’re happy to jump in at any point in that process. So, you know, we’re here and going from this, the next thing we kind of talk about is everything I’ve been mentioning about retargeting and what our next steps and how you do additional touch points and attribution. We have a platform that we have called direct mail booster, so Alex will be talking about that and essentially it’s something that we’ve always offered to our clients through our agency department, whether they were interested in these digital services or digital advertisements. But we found that creating a direct mail-centric platform that kind of ties it all together just makes the experience that much more useful, more relevant to the end user as well. And we’ll be touching upon that pretty in-depth about how you can leverage that to increase the response in direct mail, while also proving to you that it’s working—because that’s always been the biggest thing with direct mail. So with that in mind, I’d like to pass this over to Alex who will be kind of diving into the direction of this platform, and then after that, we’re happy to take some questions.

Alex Saunders: Thank you, sir. I’m going to go over here and switch it up a little bit. Get crazy. Okay. So it’s very apparent that direct mail works. Direct mail has always worked. It’s just been difficult to track it. So what we’re here to do with direct mail booster is to boost your direct mail, right? We all want a better response. What we’re not doing here is replacing your digital marketing strategy or enhancing your direct mail by integrating these digital technologies that you and I use every day. Facebook, Instagram, Google. We’re there every day. I don’t want to cannibalize any of your existing efforts. What I do want to do is make sure that those people that you guys are mailing to see your message more than just that one-time touch. It’s the most expensive touch. It works. But if I can now enhance that somewhere between 8 to 32 additional touchpoints, that response is going to skyrocket, right? The more somebody sees something, the more that they’re going to remember it. We know that 80% of sales are made between the 8 and 12th contacts. So, again, if you’re just putting one piece of direct mail in front of them, you’re simply just scratching the surface. You surely wouldn’t put up a billboard for a day and take it down. But sometimes we think, “Let’s just do direct mail one time” and think it’s going to work. You’ll get a response, but you could get a better response if you followed up with people and you say it in front of the right people at the right time.

The other biggest value add to this platform is a real-time trackable results dashboard where you’ll be able to log in and see exactly how these campaigns are performing. Direct mail has always worked, but again, it’s been very difficult to track it because we live in a digital world. So not only are we enhancing your direct mail campaigns, but we’re also helping you guys track and understand what is working and what could be working better. So we’ve got up to 13 different digital technologies that we can layer onto your direct mail campaign. Every direct mail campaign starts with a mailing list, right? Ideally, prospects that make enough money to buy your product, that fit your ideal persona of a customer. We’re going to mail to them, but we’re going to mail to them maybe one time, one touch, right? But now we’re going to upload before they even get the mail piece. We’re going to upload that list into Instagram and Facebook and now I’m going to target those exact individuals that you’re mailing to. So think of this as kind of like a pre-warm-up or a prime the pump, if you will. I don’t want direct mail being the one and only time these prospects are seeing you.

So I’m going to show them some Facebook and Instagram ads as a warm-up so that way, when they get that tangible piece in the direct mail that they can’t ignore, do you think they’re going to remember it? You think they’re going to recognize it? More likely to remember it because they’ve already seen you. Right? So these are the exact people that are going to be on your mailing list. We’re going to find them on Instagram and Facebook and in the dashboard. What will be able to show to you is out of your mailing list of 20,000, we reach 6800 of those people on Facebook and Instagram. We displayed 16,000 ads back to them, and 92 people have already responded to the direct mail piece by clicking on it and going to your website. Yes, ma’am.

Guest: So from the Mail, how are you making a connection? Is that because you got the phone and in the email address from the list? How does it connect to the platform?

Alex Saunders: it’s pretty easy to find people’s profiles just on a first name, last name, and residential address basis. Now, if you have an existing house list that has emails, the more data I have, the more accurate and the better I can find people. But all I really need: first name, last name, and an address. We upload that and then we find those same exact recipients digitally. Good question.

Mail tracking. Just about every piece of mail that goes out of this facility here has a barcode on it. So that way we can track exactly when those pieces are being mailed out and predict when they’re going to hit homes. If any of you have done direct mail campaigns before, you probably know that postage is one of the most expensive costs of any campaign. The least that we could do is give you guys peace of mind in knowing what you’re paying for is actually being delivered. So in the dashboard, you’ll be able to log in and see exactly when we mail the pieces out. You can predict when they’re going to hit in homes based on live-time USPS data and of course, confirm exactly when they’re delivered.

It’s also helpful to time your other marketing efforts a little bit more strategically. Do any of you now utilize more than one marketing channel? Like you do direct mail, but you also run some Facebook ads or you do some email marketing? So do you send email follow-ups when you typically do a direct mail campaign hit or miss maybe? Okay. So if you’re sending out an email that says, “Hey, donor, you probably saw this in the mailbox,” you wouldn’t send that prior to them actually getting it. That would kind of be silly, right? So it helps you time those other marketing efforts more strategically based on when those pieces are actually hitting in the home.

QR codes. Those have been around forever. If COVID did anything, it was bring those back out of pure convenience and typically we’re used to a static QR code, right? Where we scan it out of convenience, it takes us somewhere so we don’t have to type in a URL. That’s great for end user, but as marketers and as business owners, what can we do with that data, that quantitative data? There’s not much, right? It’s great to see 100 people scan my QR code, but what do I do with that? So instead of a static QR code, now we use dynamic or personalized QR codes. So let’s say you mail to a list of 20,000 recipients. Each individual postcard will be variably printed with a unique personalized QR code. So mine is different, Justin’s is different, and yours is different. So that way, when your direct mail campaign goes out, we can actually report to you the physical addresses and names of people that are taking that call to action and making it to your website. What more can you do with that data?

Guest: You give us the actual email addresses?

Alex Saunders: We give you the mailing addresses and the name so you can actually follow up with those that are showing interest versus saying, “Oh great, we got 100 QR scans, but I can’t do anything of that.” Right? So it’s all about attribution. The name of the game is giving you guys the data so you know who to follow up with and what to follow up with them about.

How many of you guys in this room have informed delivery through the USPS? Okay. And you ladies, how often do you open that email?

Guest: Every day.

Alex Saunders: Of course you do, right? And for us that have it are open right on this is 100% in this room. How many of you guys do email marketing to either prospects or existing clients? What’s your average open rate on that?

Guest: It’s about 32%.

Alex Saunders: That’s pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty good. Okay. Yeah. To existing clients or existing donors. Yeah, that’s a pretty good open rate. So average open rates on it or anywhere from 15 and 32 is actually the highest that I’ve ever heard, when I ask that question.

Guest: I was going to say 10 or 15%

Alex Saunders: It’s typical, right? It’s pretty low and that’s okay. It’s not the one and only channel. But with informed delivery, these people signed up for this. They want to receive this email and it’s coming from a trusted source, it’s coming from the USPS. So the open rate on this is astronomical. So that mail piece that’s going out to your prospects, now they’re going to see that in the top of that inbox and there’s a little clickable ridealong that they can click on to make that donation or to set that appointment, whatever your CTA is. It’s a way for them to digitally engage with your mail piece. And they haven’t even gotten the physical tangible piece yet. So again, what do you think is going to happen when that actually arrives in the mail? They now have eight touchpoints, right? So it’s all about warming them up. It’s all about delivering that message where people are when they’re there. So what you guys will be able to see in the dashboard are how many emails were sent to the people on your mailing list and email opens and then the exact addresses of those that clicked on that ride-along ad and made it to your website. So you have your PQR lists that you can follow up with. You now have your informed delivery match lists that you can follow up with and the campaign is just getting started, right? We’re not even to the meat and potatoes of it yet. So you already have all these attribution points.

Call and text tracking. How many of you guys track calls that come into your organization now? When you guys sent out a direct mail campaign or you do any marketing, how easy or how difficult is it for you guys to track attribution? Do you ask people how they heard about you? And typically, what do people say?

Guest: I found you online.

Alex Saunders: Right? Right. I found your online, the Yellow Pages, the phone book. And eventually, they just say, oh, I found online or I Googled or whatever. Right? We have to rely on the prospect to disclose where they heard about us. And that’s not really a solid form of tracking, so to eliminate that human error element on your postcard or your letter, we would simply just dedicate a local or a toll-free number to those mail pieces. So that way when I dial that number as a prospect, you guys answer the phone like you normally would. I’m just tracking and recording all those phone calls that are coming through, so now we know exactly where those people heard about you. The only place that phone number existed was on that direct mail piece, so we have a direct 1 to 1 attribution. Now, as Justin said, I don’t want to talk to people on the phone either. I absolutely hate it. After an eight-hour day, the last thing I want to do is call and make a doctor’s appointment for my kids. But if you give me the option to text without having to have any human interaction, I’m all about it.

So it can say call or text appointment to 800 12345. I text that number as a prospect. We shoot them back an SMS response that says, “Hey Alex, click the link below to book your appointment.” I click that I’m on the website, boom, I’m done, I’m in car line and I’ve got my kids. I don’t have to talk to anybody. It’s all about convenience to the end client, but more the attribution factor. So you guys can actually export this list out of the dashboard and then go to town doing whatever follow-up you see fit for your specific industry. So direct mail piece goes out. The majority of people are going to visit your website. Over 90% of people—that is the very first thing that they do.

What happens when they leave your website? Some don’t even know who this is, right? They’ll go to your website, majority of them will leave and then nothing happens. That’s the end of the cycle, right? So did the direct mail not work? Direct mail created the reach. It got the people to your website, but they left. And now we’re not following up with them. It’s like pouring sand into a bucket that doesn’t have a bottom right. You’re driving all these people to the website. We got to follow up with them. Right? But how do we do that? Online follow-up, which are your Google ad. So now when somebody visits your website from either your direct mail campaign or from any other marketing effort for that matter, we’re going to make sure that every single person that visits your website, we put an ad back in front of them that says, “Hey, you left this in your cart. Hey, you forgot to book your kid’s appointment.“ We’re going to remind them because as consumers, we are inundated. We see how many messages a day? Too many, right?

Justin Newcomer: Thousands

Alex Saunders: So we put those blinders on. But I need to do this. But I forgot about it. So instead of people leaving your website and going over to your competitor, we’re going to keep you top of mind for that, right? So you’ll be able to see all of the data in the dashboard as far as how many people have visited your website and left, the ads displayed back to those folks, and people that have clicked on the ad made it back second, third, fourth, fifth time. Now, what’s the last thing that you shop for online?

Guest: Probably clothes on Amazon.

Alex Saunders: Clothes, of course. Right. So we all know that abandoned shopping carts, we’re kind of pros at this point, right? We’ll put it in there. We’ll leave and it’ll say, “Wait 15% off or free shipping,” right? We still leave and then we wait for that coupon to come. Right? So we as consumers have gotten a lot smarter about how to shop for things, we know if we show some interest, we’re going to get an offer right and we want that free shipping in that 50% off so you can do those exact same things. But again, your direct mail is creating that reach, getting people to your website. We just have to follow up with them and work them through that sales funnel. Now, I could almost assume or I can almost guarantee that you put those clothes in your shopping cart in Amazon, and when you log back in on Facebook, there it was right?  “Siri’s listening to me!” No, you just went to a website, you showed some interest and now I’m putting this back in front of you to say, “Hey, you forgot this,” right? It’s all about that reminder. So it’s about the same message to the same person over and over and over again, creating that true omnichannel experience. And again, it all starts with that direct mail piece. So you’ll be able to see how many visitors have left your website. And we found on Facebook and Instagram ads displayed back to those folks and of course, those that are clicking on the ads coming back second, third, fourth, fifth time.

Now, something I want to make very clear. This is not to replace your existing digital strategy and this is not meant to replace your direct mail campaign. It’s not pick one, it’s not pick the other. It’s combined those two efforts together and that’s where you’re going to see the maximum response. Now, lead match. Lead match is the crux of the whole direct mail booster platform and what this does now come in and identify residential addresses for people that are abandoning those shopping carts. It tells you with 95% accuracy who was on your website, what they were looking at, how often they were on those pages, and how much time they spent. So now you put that dress in your shopping cart, you leave, I have residential address so I can put a personalized postcard back to you with that dress and say, “Hey, here’s your address. That would look great on you. Here’s 50% off and free shipping with a QR code.” Do you think you’re more likely to scan that and make it back to the site and buy it? Of course you are, because you’re already interested in it, right? So it revolutionized the way that we think about doing direct mail. Instead of the old spray-and-pray approach, follow up with the people that are right in front of you.

Does anybody know how many people are on their website, maybe on a monthly basis? If you had to guess? A lot, right? A lot. And how many of those people are actually converting?

Justin Newcomer: Very few.

Alex Saunders: Not enough, right? So now you guys can identify those residential addresses and the idea is put that message back in front of those people who are most likely to utilize your product or service when they’re in that buying motivation. Now, how many of us have been on YouTube before? Of course we are. And how many of us get so annoyed with that video that comes up? And as soon as that little skip button comes up, we skip right past the advertisement, Right? Of course. So that advertisement can be you. So you want to put that message in front of those people where they are, when they are. So YouTube ads is also a part of the platform that we can get in front of those people and I’ll tell you, video is the king of all digital content right now. So like for a nonprofit, tell people your story. Get them to experience that instead of just saying, “Hey, donate now and here’s a picture of whatever,” right? Give them a personalized experience.

How many of us have a Gmail account. You do? Have you ever logged in on a desktop and saw the top two little emails, but they’re actually ads for brands trying to reach out to you? Next time you log in and take a look at it. But basically, anybody on your mailing list that has a Gmail account, we can also put those digital emails in front of them. The idea is to get them to click on it. It’ll say little ad, but then it’ll kind of be in bold. It’s in either the first or second spot. Yeah. We can also get into that space.

Now, geo-targeting. Have any of you ever heard of geo-targeting? I know you’ve experienced it. Okay, so when I touched down from Tampa here, the very first thing that I saw when I opened up my Facebook was an ad for Camden Yards. They’re out of town today, tomorrow. So I don’t know why they’re promoting to me, but I am in their opportune area. Right? The opportune time for me to get to Camden Yards would be now, not when I fly back to Tampa. So for you as a nonprofit or whatever other organization, when people are in your service area, promote to them. But these aren’t people that you mail to because maybe they live out of state, right? It’s extending past your mailing list and getting in front of as many people as you possibly can.

So that’s through Google, we’ll geo-target people that are within a specific area. But we’ll also do that same tactic on social media. So same cohesive follow-up. We identify those people, Facebook and Instagram, if they’re in our targeted area, and then as soon as they leave, they’re gone. They didn’t convert. We’ll go back to the mailing list. Have any of you used geo-targeting tactics before? Addressable geo-targeting kind of takes geo-targeting to the next level. So instead of identifying everybody within a specific area, now we’re geo-targeting just on the household level. So this works really well for certain industries that we’ve got some privacy restrictions like financial, health-related, anything faith-based. We can always utilize cookie-based retargeting with privacy restrictions. So we get around it here because we’re identifying people within a household. So for instance, say my kids are 16, 17 years old. Colleges are reaching out to them left and right. They’re mailing to Bryce. You think Bryce is checking the mail? No, who’s making that decision? Me and Dad, right? We’ll give you an opportunity to, but we’re fronting the bill.

So now at the household level, you can reach Mom, you can reach Dad, you can reach all the smart TVs that are within that household instead of just putting one piece of direct mail to them, you now have more eyes on that product or service. So it’s reaching out to more people than just that individual that you sent the mail piece to. Now, hopefully, you can see the apparency in the benefits of direct mail booster. But if you can’t, all in all, direct mail works, but direct mail works better when you integrate extra touch points and you track it. If you have no way to track and you don’t know what’s working, and what’s not, you’re simply throwing money against a wall and seeing what sticks. So one piece of direct mail goes out? You’re going to get a response. One piece of direct mail goes out with 32 additional touches following up with the right people? What do you guys think is going to work better? You know, it’s kind of simple math, but we have to be strategic about how we do it. Right? So we really want to understand what your needs are in the direct mail campaign and strategize with you as far as what technologies to use, maybe ones that wouldn’t work as well for specific campaigns. Questions, thoughts, comments, concerns? Yes, ma’am?

Guest: So one of the things that I was thinking, We’re getting ready to do a quinceanera expo so being able to…there’s a couple of challenges that we have. You know, first off, everything has got to be bilingual, like Google Translate doesn’t cut it. It’s not…when they see something that’s translated that way and they’re a native speaker, they know it’s not right. So can you like…we have a list of clients. We have people that have come that we’ve done work with. But like in terms of targeting an audience like that, where we’re looking maybe down the PG County area where our location is, you know, segmenting to something in that area

Alex Saunders: As far as the mail list goes or digitally or both? Okay. Do you want to speak on the mail list side?

Justin Newcomer: When it comes the mail is naturally, you know, if you have a house list where you’re kind of segmenting out based on what language they can speak, we can use that and set up the campaign specifically so each one is being served specifically what would resonate with them. If you’re going for the prospect side, there are demographics and data points that we can capture and try to drill down to. That wouldn’t be as accurate as your curated house list. But yeah, we can set up thpse dual campaigns that would run in tandem, but they will go to different audiences with the same message just in different languages.

Alex Saunders: And then once we have that list, that is the data set that we would use to upload digitally and match with those exact same people. Now we can also set sort of lookalike audiences, you know, people that fit that ideal demographic based on buying habits, like some keywords, key search phrases. If they’re in Amazon searching for anything quinceanera-related, you know, we’ll put an ad in front of them. So those people may not be on your list, but we will majority target the people that are on that list first and foremost, and then we can always branch out. But for you, I mean, and not just for you specifically, but the lead match, I mean, lead match gives you that prospecting list that are already in front of you, right? People that are already showing interest the event. But if they’ve never come before giving you the information, there’s no way for you to have that. So some of our clients that utilize direct mail boost actually start with lead match. We give them that pixel and then we can generate that mailing list to use in addition to your in-house lists and combine the two. So there’s a couple of ways that that we can actually utilize that to help you gather that list, but we can always acquire it as well. Yes ma’am?

Guest: My question to her questions is, is language one of the fields that you can identify when you’re sourcing the list?

Justin Newcomer: I don’t believe so. Off the top of my head, I can’t say so, but I think ethnicity is definitely one of them that is available for a data point. But I can definitely check. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think so.

Alex Saunders: I believe there is digitally just, you know, when you go online and

Justin Newcomer: yeah, digital, yes,

Alex Saunders: you set those preferences,

Guest:  That may be helpful.

Justin Newcomer: Yes.

Alex Saunders: Yeah. I mean, there’s a ton of certain selects that we can find on those lists. I mean down to driving a Ferrari and owning a parrot, you know.

Guest: My suggestion is in counties, like Baltimore, they have specific hotspots populated with Hispanic people.

Justin Newcomer: That’s where geo-targeting can come into play.

Alex Saunders: Yeah, that’s where the geo-targeting can come into play snd with the lead match, you know, let’s say you have a thousand people on your website. If you want to hone in, say give me a zip code or 21502, which my home in Cumberland, we can identify just people in Cumberland that have visited your website and those are the people that you download and then follow up with, but it’ll help you identify where those hotspots are and then we can kind of reverse engineer those data sets. Yes, ma’am.

Guest: So with all this stuff, can a person like block you or stop you? Like, how do you like get work with them?

Alex Saunders: Sure. So so as far as like, “hey, I don’t want to see this ad right?”

Guest: Right, like “I don’t want to do this ad. Stop texting me.”

Alex Saunders: Stop it. Take me off your email list.

Guest: Yeah.

Alex Saunders: So all in all, you’re not going to make everybody happy, right? You will turn some people off. But those people probably aren’t your ideal customer anyway, or your ideal donor. So, yeah, we’ll have a handful of those people. But the way that this works is based on algorithms. So if you continue to go back, look at that dress, put it in your cart, go through it, you’re going to move up in the relevancy rankings. So if you continue to engage with my content, I’m going to continue to show it to you. So if you see it, once you click hide dd, or you never respond to it, eventually you’re going to fall down in the relevancy rankings. So it’s focused on people that are actually engaging. I’m going to push more to them versus just let’s “run some Facebook ads that anyone and everyone and see what happens.” It’s all based on the user experience and what they’re doing. If you’re on Facebook 100 times a day and I’m only on ten times, I’m going to get ten and you’re going to get 100, right? So you may get 25 touch points, and me, I only get ten touch points. But still ten and 20 is better than one, right. But you can always take people off your mailing list, right? Like for a nonprofit. I would suggest for like your VIP donors, yeah, maybe let’s not pepper them with all this. Right? They’re already donating. They’re already very loyal. And that could go for any industry too. So whatever list we want to upload, those are the people that will go to town with the follow-up. If there’s anybody that you want to exclude, we just take them out of that list.

Justin Newcomer: But using a nonprofit example, we have nonprofit clients who, they don’t necessarily put up an ad, so to speak. It’s more like a click here to hear our story, and it’s more of just providing them relevant content that even people that might have already donated, they still want to see what their donation goes to or what that mission was or stuff and get more information that way—what the impact was so it doesn’t have to be a straight up ad. You can also provide relevant content to them through the channels as well.

Guest: Also if you guys have seen before, but like with the boost or whatever, what if, like we don’t have time to like look at the dashboard and go over the hits? Do you guys give us a call or something?

Alex Saunders: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s no point in collecting any of this data if we’re not going to use it. Right? But with that, there’s a lot of data points that we’re collecting. It can be extremely overwhelming, especially if you’ve ever looked at any of this before. So part of our partnership here and part of doing this with the team is kind of like a 30-day checkpoint. Mail goes out. We’re three weeks into the campaign. We want to hop on a call with you, go through those results, make sure you understand what the things mean, where the benchmarks are. If we’re above if we’re below, whatever we need to tweak. We will absolutely walk you through that. It’s not a set it and forget it and it’s this magic thing. It’s we’re going to make tweaks until we get that secret sauce, too, until you’re seeing what results you need. But absolutely, we will help you and you have access into it. So we’re here for any of those questions and to really strategize with you guys as far as what next steps go.

Guest: What’s your time to get going based on I mean, I know there’s different factors of like how prepared the client is, but what is the typical timeframe for sending out a direct mail?

Justin Newcomer: So that could wildly change depending, I guess, how ready you are as a client as well, because many of our clients have to set up the backend to make sure they can receive this content as well. But I mean, I would say the fastest that we’ve moved was probably seven to ten business days from starting from scratch, so to speak. But naturally, like, if you’ve already engaged with us on a campaign, the second is going to be that much faster because we have access to your backend. We already have those things established, you know. So each one iterates faster and faster.

Alex Saunders: And we’ve set up—I’m sorry to cut you off—We set up all of this for you, right? The only thing I need access to is I need you to add Strategic Factory and advertising partners on your Facebook business page. If that is totally foreign, we can help you with it. Give us logins. We’ll do it for you, we’ll hold hands and walk through it. So sometimes that can take two days, sometimes that can take 20 days. If you have no idea who the admin is or passwords or whatever, we’ve seen it all. Somebody who set it up 100 years ago. Right? So we’ve got bypasses, you know, that we could get it set up, but we handle all of it for you, all the moving parts. We based the digital creative off of the direct mail piece to create that omnichannel approach. So there’s a piece of code that goes on the back end of your website. Again, if you need help with that, we’ll do it for you. We’ll walk you through it. But it’s pretty seamless. We’ve been doing it a while, so have no fear. We got you covered. Yes, ma’am.

Guest: Do you work with other Chick-Fil-A people?

Justin Newcomer: I can’t say necessarily. I mean, we work with—not Chick-Fil-A, but we work with, I guess, franchises or things in similar positions. But I can say we at least do direct mail for Chick-Fil-A. I know we’ve done other work and other avenues for them.

Guest: Right. So related to that, we haven’t really done direct in a long time.First, I’m sure you’re going to have everybody come and go. So I like this because it ties in with everything. So I already have a crop of people are coming, right? So I know a lot about them, right. To target them. Now, I could see integrating. This would be really great. If I can corporately allow you to access that data, we import that into this so that we can use those contacts.

Alex Saunders: I would say if there’s a way for you to export that, like in an Excel file, we could absolutely use that data set to kind of connect all these points here. Now as far as kind of like APIing this platform into the app, that’s probably far-fetched, but we can add any data that you can extract, we can use it, upload it in, and that’s how the whole thing starts, right, is with that physical list and the digital creative. So whatever data you can get and provide us—great.

Guest: Okay, they’re going to show me where the demographics are of people—I know I need to hit them for delivering that. We’re not hitting on that. Okay. But I can only get them or maybe physically going and knocking on the door right now.

Alex Saunders: We don’t have time for that.

Guest: No,I know they like to take the food. So you have to have a better way to kind of use that.

Alex Saunders: Yes. So for you the geo-targeting would work really well. We pick those hotspots and we get out the message in front of as many people as possible within those locations. Yes. Yes.

Guest: So I’m Anna Grace, I work for facility engineering. and we specialize in building automation solutions for commercial clients. So all of our marketing is B2B. So would this kind of strategy works for us?

Alex Saunders: Yes, we just set it up a little bit differently. To make it most effective, I need a contact name. So like, if you guys were trying to reach the owner, Keith of Strategic Factory, but all you have is Strategic Factory’s address, I don’t know who to reach out to, right? I don’t know who the decision-maker is. So essentially, I’m reaching out to Justin. You’re reaching out to Amy. You know, you’re getting your message in front of people at Strategic Factory, but it’s not the right person. So I need a contact and then, yes, we can go to town and do the same things. Now, with B2B, there is no informed delivery. That’s the only thing we wouldn’t get. And the match rate sometimes is a little bit lower because we’re matching, we’re mailing to a business address, but I’m matching back a residential address. So sometimes a match rate is low. But if that postcard comes into Strategic Factory and the receptionist thinks that it’s viable enough to get it to Keith, Keith goes to your website from his home address. Now you can bypass Strategic Factory and you can mail it directly to Keith at his home. And do you think Keith is more likely to open that? Yeah, right? So it does work and it works really well in the B2B space because you have those challenges with the physical mail of those gatekeepers, right? You can mail a thousand times to Strategic Factory, but if receptionists keep throwing it away, Keith has never seen that message. So it works very well to penetrate through that because at the end of the day, Keith is a consumer; Keith is a human. He is a business owner, but it doesn’t change the way that he responds to things. So yeah, absolutely. Let’s maybe talk offline about that with your rep and we can come up with a strategy that’ll work for you. Yeah, great question. Yes.

Guest: I have tons of questions. Can we talk about this dynamic QR code?

Alex Saunders: We can!

Guest: because that is amazing. My name is Argie and I work for Provided Partners, and it’s a super niche like we are a health insurance plan that only targets the people that live in nursing homes and you’re talking about getting to the right person. We want to get to the owner-operator of the nursing home, not the DON, not the administrator. While that helps, We want to get to the people that own it.  Sometimes they’ll pass it through and sometimes they won’t, right? Right. We have done one direct mail. We did no follow-up, like everything you’re talking about we really don’t do. A lot of our business comes from like personal interactions. But what I like about this dynamic is if they scan it, what content will they get back?

Alex Saunders:  The address that you mailed to. So if you printed on that postcard. Keith Miller A Strategic Factory, 123 Main Street, but the receptionist scans it, it’s going to show that Keith did, because that’s Keith’s QR code. So there’s no way to differentiate, like, if the receptionist scans it versus Keith, but you’ll know that somebody at that address scanned it. So I don’t know if that is still would still be a challenge.

Guest: But it won’t give you an email

Alex Saunders: No, for privacy reasons, it only spits back a residential address. But let’s say you’re mailing to 200,000 people in nursing homes, but you have the thousand records of those that actually made it through kind of that first initial funnel. Now, you’re not mailing to 200,000 people again, you’re just following up with the thousand that, you know, the addresses and the names, like, you can put another follow-up piece in front of those people.

Justin Newcomer:  Or if there are larger prospects and it warrants it, you can actually make the actual more physical sales call to those individuals knowing they’ve already engaged that much more with your services as opposed to those other 190,000

Alex Saunders: Yeah, you could call in, “Can I speak to Diana? Blah blah blah blah blah”

Guest: alright, my second question is When you talk about social media, your Facebook and Instagram, the people we’re trying to get are not going to look at ads of nursing homes. Do you do stuff for LinkedIn? Do they even have ads on LinkedIn? How do you get to a B2B?

Alex Saunders: So for all of us, does everybody have LinkedIn? Yep. Okay. How often do you log into LinkedIn?

Guest: Like, never.

Guest: A lot.

Alex Saunders: How often do you log into Facebook and Instagram?

Guest: Every day.

Alex Saunders: There we go.

Guest: Yes, I’m going to go to your Facebook if that’s what I’m looking for, you know what I mean?

Alex Saunders: But when that administrator goes home, the kids are in bed and they’re mindlessly scrolling and they see something that’s going to be relevant to their business, they may not respond right away, but they’ll see it. It’s another impression. So that way, the next time that you reach out to them, they have that impression. So, you know, kind of just remind yourself that even though it’s B2B space, we’re still consumers, we’re still humans, we’re still on Facebook. Now, you can run LinkedIn ads. I would say do it in tandem with this. LinkedIn ads are three times, almost four times the cost now of what Facebook ads are. And that’s not really the platform. That’s not what that platform is meant to do. Right. Whereas Facebook, you know, it’s kind of gotten into this ad, right? So people don’t want to go to Facebook anymore. They’re on Instagram, they’re on Tik Tok, they’re doing those things. So we’re constantly chasing the next best thing. So that’s kind of why we don’t want to get into that space because it is as expensive as it is. But I would say if you guys do it individually with the same content, you would still get a better result with it. But it’s just not a part of the DM booster right now.

Justin Newcomer: But even those business entities, you know, if they engage to some level of with your content, then they’re going to take their phone home and while they’re sitting at home doing whatever they do at home, they’re going to see your messaging and while they might not go to your Facebook, the next time you send that follow-up piece, they’re more likely to engage because you’re more reputable to them. They’ve seen you around, they’ve seen your brand, your messaging, so they’re that much more reputable to them.

Alex Saunders: What else is on your list that’s extremely difficult?

Guest: You know, Iw as saying, we’re such a small niche and it’s so hard, it’s impossible, and yeah yeah yeah and I’m thinking like if this is going to work and how much money will I have to put into it, but maybe we could talk later.

Alex Saunders: Yeah. Well, what is one new, new client worth to you?

Guest: I mean, to go into a new state they have to pay like 5 million dollars. So it’s like, we can make a lot of money, but it’s so specifically targeted.

Alex Saunders: I think the lead match for you, too, would be a good starting point for you to be able to start to identify those residential addresses of those people. So maybe we kind of reverse engineer it like we were talking about a little bit, because again, there’s a lot of factors: mailing list, the frequency, the follow up, like you said, I think there’s little things that we could do to increase that response. But I’d like to know a little bit more about the ‘

Guest: So what is a house list? You keep talking about a house list and a prospects list. Is a house list something we’ve already created, someone we’ve already tried to reach out too via email or call? What if our house list is just every single nursing home in Maryland? Like that’s not really anybody that we—

Alex Saunders: Yeah, you know, technically it’s still a cold list, right? When we say houseless, like for a nonprofit, it’s houseless would be past owners, right? People that have already donated. Those people are so much more likely to donate again or, reengage with you because they’ve already engaged with your business in some way, shape, or form. So when we talk houseless, it is a provided list. But what you’re saying is, yeah, I’ve got a houseless but it’s every nursing home in Maryland and only three of them have actually made contact with us, right? So for you, it’s a little bit different because it is so niche, right? You don’t have this huge audience. So we got to strategize on how to penetrate that and do it a little bit better.

Guest: So I’m Amy.

Alex Saunders: You’re Amy? I’m not Amy.

Guest: I have a wedding planning business and so with that informed delivery, you can target specific zip codes? Is that what you’re saying or like, what are your categories?

Alex Saunders: So informed delivery, you sign up for it personally, right? It’s a total opt-in. So let’s say you bought a list of people that, I don’t know, just created a wedding registry, right? You’ve got a multitude of zip codes that we’re going to put a mail piece in. We upload that list, let’s say 5000 people, we upload that and maybe only 4000 of them are signed up for informed delivery. The people that are signed up for it on your list, those are the people that are going to get that email. But now this is going to say, you know, come to our event or free consultation or whatever it is. So the people that are opted into it are the people that are going to see it, and it’s not going to be 100% of people on your list. The saturation is high. But where these areas are that we’re talking about, I’m not 100% sure, but it’s all based on the mailing list.

Guest: And would you do something, like, are you familiar with The Knot?

Alex Saunders: Yes. Yeah. My sister-in-law, funny story, my sister-in-law was featured in it 15 years ago. Yeah.

Guest: Oh, so they and this is like, you know, if you have time, which, I don’t have time.

Alex Saunders: What’s that?

Guest: For a while ago, when I started my business, like, you could actually type in The Knot and, like, start typing in Baltimore, Maryland. Like all their websites will come up. The couples that make websites. So you do anything like that that interacts with like a specific app or website that you can pull that’s like public knowledge?

Alex Saunders: That sounds more kind of like SEO-type stuff, like search engine optimization, which is part of what the agency side here at Strategic Factory could also help with. Like your pay-per-click SEO-type stuff, which isn’t necessarily what this is, although those are under the Google umbrella. That’s like you paying $5 every time somebody clicks on or types in the word wedding registry or whatever it is, which it is effective depending on your budget. But maybe that’s a question to ask for for the agency side. Amy, who is the VP over there, she could probably answer that a little bit better than I could. But I’d probably assume the answer is yes.

Guest: You could like coach the bride and groom. “Oh you made a website, you’re getting married? Let me grab you.

Alex Saunders: Yeah. I don’t know if that is public data. I know when we’re purchasing mailing lists, like we can purchase people that did do a registry. Yeah, let’s figure that one out.

Guest: Or even like Amazon, you could create a bridal registry

Alex Saunders: I would assume that somewhere somebody sells that data, right? Yeah, we’ll figure that one out. Yeah. Okay. Yep. Good question. All right. Anything else that we can think of?

Justin Newcomer: Can you speak at all about the, like, the cyclical nature of the campaign? Yeah. Like how it starts? Like where it starts. Because I know we talked about how it starts before the mailing starts.

Alex Saunders: Yes. So a direct mail booster campaign runs for about 30 days. So let’s say we mail out tomorrow, which is June 9th. So June 9th mail goes out. This campaign will run. All of these touchpoints will run until July 9th. Come July 9th. We want to hop on that strategy, call, you know, review those results, look into the dashboard, and then at that point, we can decide whether we want to mail again, whether we want to grab our leads, whether we want to continue the digital side in a maintenance mode, or if we want to do absolutely nothing, because our events over, we met our goal, and we exceeded it. So typical campaign runs for 30 days, but if you do multiple mailings, that just rolls over and we have the opportunity after the mail is come and gone to just kind of keep it on a maintenance mode where we run Google, Facebook, Instagram, we continue to track leads that go to your website on those off months that you’re not mailing. Some of our nonprofits, they mail annually at the end of the year, and that’s all they do. And then they run the digital DOM booster the other 11 months out of the year because that’s what works for them. So it’s malleable based on what your needs are, based on what the goals of the campaign are. As far as pricing goes, if you’ve done digital marketing before, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how cost this is. Even on our lowest volume quantity, you’re still in less than the cost of the stamp for all eight technologies to run for that 30-day period. There’s no additional budgets for Google, Facebook, anything like that. It’s custom coded based on how many mail pieces you’re sending because we need that many credits, 5,000 mail pieces. We need 5,000 credits that run for 30 days. So if it is something that you’re interested in strategizing, you’re talking more in-depth about what the campaigns would look like for you. We can do that. We can absolutely provide pricing and do whatever you guys need us to do.

Justin Newcomer: And typically within our pricing structure, we’ll also take in the design content as well. So we know that a lot of clients may not have engaged digitally before, so we’ll actually do this design service for you where we transform that piece of artwork into all these banner ads for Facebook, YouTube ads, what have you. So we’re here to work with you every step of the way.

Guest: And with that, like you offer free first-day coaching or is it like we purchased like a session that like we have something with you, like, “Hey, can you just hop on this virtual call and show me how you’re doing that?: Or you know what I mean? Like trying to get more info of how things are working.

Alex Saunders: Oh yeah, that, that would be part of kind of that initial strategy to understand what your needs are and what you want to make out of it. And then going through that and saying, “yeah, this is what you need to do.” I don’t think we would ever make you pay for—you have to pay me and then I’m going to tell you how to do it—Absolutely not. Ultimately, if you’re not getting a good response, it doesn’t do me any good. You’re not going to have a good response. You’re not going to come back and do business with us. We want you guys to succeed. So, whatever that looks like, we’re here. I think I’m getting kicked off.

Ashley Carr: I just know that some of you have places to be and it’s about 4:30 now. So I just want to let you know the time. Feel free to continue the discussion. We are not taking you out. Ask all the questions that you want. Grab more food. If you want a tour, just let me know. I’m around and yes, the floor is still hers.

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