Direct Mail: A Huge Competitive Advantage In Today’s World with Joe Polish and Brian Kurtz

Episode Summary

Does Direct Mail have a place in today’s electronic world?  Brian Kurtz and Joe Polish believe a simple postcard or letter can totally transform your business.

Here’s a glance at what you’ll learn from Joe and Brian in this episode:

  • How a simple postcard or letter can totally transform your business
  • One of the biggest mistakes people make with direct mail (and how to avoid it)
  • Do THIS with your 10 best clients to differentiate yourself and your business
  • The difference between house lists, outside lists and how to effectively mail each
  • What internet marketers miss that causes them to leave a ton of money on the table
  • A super simple strategy for getting A LOT of brand new customers to buy your products and services
  • The story of how Joe went from making $2,300/month as a carpet cleaner to making $12,300/month
  • The “41-39-20 Rule” and RFM strategy that grows your business
  • A simple way to increase the amount of money your clients spend with you
  • How the USPS (United States Postal Service) can become your most valuable partner
  • The “O-to-O-to-O” strategy you can use to increases your conversions and your cashflow
  • Joe and Brian discuss the future of the United States Postal Service

WHAT'S IN IT FOR THEM?

Get the first chapter for FREE and a limited-time viewing of "Connected: The Joe Polish Story"

Show Notes

  • Given the choice of only having one method to reach a market, direct mail is Joe’s pick.
  • Direct mail is like making sushi, you probably shouldn’t do it at home.
  • Direct mail is not an either/or proposition, it’s something you can do together with other mediums.
  • Using only one channel to reach your customers is a big risk because that channel can be shut down.
  • There is less noise in people’s mailboxes than ever before. Your least crowded inbox is the one you grew up with. Nearly everyone, young and old, checks their physical mailbox.
  • In the age of social media, sending a physical postcard is a differentiator that will make you stand out from the crowd and earn your customer’s attention.
  • What would the value of sending your ten best customers a FedEx envelope with a handwritten note be? Brian always has at least one package going out every single day.
  • With all the content marketing online today, you can give away the steak via direct mail and really stand out to your customers and combat the notion that content is cheap.
  • Use the things you are learning online and develop them offline to make your engagement much better.
  • The lifetime value of a customer that comes from direct mail will be higher than any other medium you use.
  • Engage your customers wherever they are, that means you don’t have to stick to just direct mail or just the internet, but can bounce back and forth between the two.
  • The postal service struggles because it’s a monopoly, but it doesn’t get all the funding it needs to do its job. Even still, they do a solid job reaching people in the remotest parts of the US.
  • If you looked at your emails the same way you would your direct mail, at least philosophically, how much better would your emails be?
  • Good content in a print newsletter is a major differentiator amongst all the content put out online.
  • If you do direct mail right, it becomes easy, lucrative, and fun. It’s like putting a salesperson in the envelope and then the USPS delivers the letter.
  • If you’re reaching out to a list that is a few years old, make sure you update the addresses of people on the list.
  • One of the mistakes that people make with direct mail is thinking of it like email. There is no such thing as a mass mailing when it’s delivered directly to one person. Direct mail is like delivering your message in person, you’re sending the letter in lieu of you.
  • A ten thousand dollar offer deserves one hundred thousand dollar thinking.
  • You need to have a second, third, and fourth product in line to offer your customers. That’s how you optimize lifetime value.
  • It’s not about B2B or B2C, it’s about H2H. Human to human is the way direct mail functions at its core.
  • What you can do with a physical piece cannot be replicated online.
  • Recency, Frequency, and Monetization is the basic formula than successful direct mail campaigns have been based on forever, but it equally applies to online campaigns as well.
  • You can never sell two things at once.
  • Single variable tests are crucial when it comes to discovering what’s working and what’s not.
  • The  40/40/20 rule says that the success of any direct mail campaign is 40% due to the list, 40% due to the offer, and 20% due to the creative. You can have the best creative in the world, but if it’s sent to a list that is not interested in your product and you will get zero sales. Spin it around and send a mediocre offer with mediocre creative to an interested list and you can still see some success.
  • The right list is always your existing clients. Your house list is your gold mine.
  • If you can do direct mailing to your own list, that’s great. If you can do a direct mailing to someone else’s list that endorses you, that’s even better. If you have a winning formula, who else can you get that offer in front of?
  • Manual marketing is what you do when you’re selling, ELF marketing is when you automate everything and turn it into direct marketing.
  • Most online marketers are sitting on a postal list of their past customers without realizing the value of that info.

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