Transcription
****Please forgive any and all transcription errors as this was transcribed by Otter.ai.****

[intro music]
Shark 0:16
Welcome back and thank you for joining A Shark’s Perspective. I am Kenneth "Shark" Kinney, your host and Chief Shark Officer.

Shark 0:22
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Shark 0:45
And now back to the show.

Shark 0:47
You'll likely get hundreds of emails that are ignored in digital ads you often completely ignore that are well in the 1000s. But how many pieces of direct mail do you get anymore? When you talk about a marketing campaign? Direct Mail is often not part of the conversation with most digital marketers, despite often being over indexed on some digital channels. But performance marketers know that it shouldn't be forgotten as part of your mix. Then some questions arise should you consider investing more in direct mail? How should direct mail work with other channels in a campaign in his the mailbox, the new inbox?

Shark 1:17
Dave Fink is the CEO and co founder Postie, a marketing technology company that leverages direct mail to perform like a digital channel.

Shark 1:25
And on this episode, we'll discuss direct mail, over indexing on digital, cross channel optimization, leveraging data for better performance marketing, using great creative not just on digital channels but also on direct mail, finding enough expertise in a channel, cost for paper and ink, the sophistication of ad platforms, measurement, surfing, dolphins, TV, mailman calls to action, and a lot, lot more. So let's tune into a digital marketer gone 'postie' with a shark who gets a stamp of approval on this episode of A Shark’s Perspective.

Shark 1:59
Dave, thank you so much for joining us today on A Shark’s Perspective. Would you please tell us a little bit about your background and your career to date?

Dave Fink 2:05
Sure. First, thanks for having me. I've spent probably close to 25 years now in consumer internet. And I think what's kept you my career interesting, at least to me is that I've had the opportunity to oscillate back and forth between being on on the brand side and helping grow mostly direct to consumer brands. Or, you know, alternatively, you know, jumping in with marketing technology companies and building marketing software that that helps enable direct consumer brands to take advantage of emerging channels and competitive advantage. And, and, and, you know, right now I'm I'm, you know, with my my current company, I'm on the marketing technology side. But I I absolutely love engaging with, with the brands that that we that we work with. And I think I have a lot of empathy for what marketers and but big and small companies struggle with on a daily basis.

Shark 3:08
So I know what we're going to talk a lot about today is what you call the mailboxes, the new inbox. And as somebody that's worked heavily in Legion for a lot of my career, both in digital marketing, TV, direct mail, and all those I think this is a fascinating subject because it starts to combine a lot of the channels. When you talk to marketers today about direct mail, what is generally the response that you get, whether they're marketing or digital marketing?

Dave Fink 3:35
Yes, great question. And did you specifically use the the time today, but you know, Posty has been around for about six years now. And I think the nature of the conversation has evolved even during those, you know, that kind of relatively short period of time. Today, my experience is that, that that more marketers are aware that direct mail is a powerful channel. And they've been tipped off, you know, whether it's from a colleague or something they've seen in the competitive market, that that that direct mail can be managed more like a digital channel, leveraging data and optimization and more dynamic integration with their full marketing stack. And that that historically wasn't wasn't the case. Direct mail was, you know, for many brands was a big portion of their marketing budget, but was always kind of managed off in the corner versus integrated with their omni channel strategies, which typically were digital first. When we started Posty the number one thing that we heard over and over again was like, get me off of social get me off of you know, this, this this hamster wheel of of, you know, kind of a singular fail point in my growth channel and and I say that, you know, that that was like literally almost worse. forward, what we hear time and time again from brands. And what they didn't really mean it, you know is, is, you know, I didn't want to stop advertising on Instagram and Facebook etc but but they did recognize that, that they were way over indexed and one specific channel that had a lot of power over them. And when we start talking about direct mail as as a marketing channel, not just you know, a, you know, a piece of paper or or a postcard or catalog or an envelope, all of a sudden, they started realizing that, that this, that this is about marketing tactics, strategies and KPIs. It's not about a specific channel. And that's, that's the conversation we have, you know, nowadays, more than ever is, is not so much about direct mail, but what are your marketing objectives? What are the challenges and pain points that you have what you know, what are the targets in your p&l that you need to hit this month, this quarter this year? And and then exploring if direct mail is is a good fit for them? And those are really fun conversations.

Shark 6:03
Yeah, what is old is definitely new again. So what when you talk to people now? What's the general hesitancy? If somebody is hesitant to do direct mail? Why is that? So?

Dave Fink 6:15
I think there probably two potential blockers that that I think that are slowly dissipating. One is how do you do it? We have no expertise in in house, knowing our team has ever done direct mail before. That's a scary channel. We know a lot about programmatic and display and and retargeting and search and social but we don't know anything about Yeah, offline, or certainly direct mail. So that's one challenge, and concerns or concern. The other is cost. And, and like all marketing channels, that are quantitative in nature, you need to make an investment in a channel and go through kind of that that mental commitment of being willing to invest, test and optimize, to get the full benefit of the channel. Those are two hurdles. And, and, and very rarely they end up being being blockers, they more just become conversation points that we address, as we get to know brands and brands get to know us.

Shark 7:19
Well. And oftentimes, too I think for a lot of marketers, it's also about audience targeting, they know how to retarget someone because that's been a specialty for many years, but the person living next door, a direct mail list or mail to everywhere, they don't know how to target those people as a whole as well. So I think that's interesting.

Dave Fink 7:37
Sure, yeah. I mean, if you think about, I mean, look, we'll take we'll take, you know, Facebook and Instagram, and, you know, most marketers have become pretty savvy about how to, you know, leverage their first party data against Facebook's, you know, data graph to be able to build look alikes, and run segmentation and certainly, you know, social retargeting and, and I kind of, you know, I like to tease even myself that, you know, the reality is that the sophistication of Facebook's ad platform has made us all look really smart as marketers over the last decade, I think we have gotten smarter, and our expectations are higher, but But you know, those platforms, because of their, their size and scale, have been able to invest in data science and, you know, structural data engineering, and, and really given us tools to, you know, to target our prospects consumers with with pinpoint accuracy and get ready, you know, get get really efficient, at least in our tactics and targeting. The reality is direct mails offer that for, for better part of the century. Absolutely. It's just been a very analog process, or it's been, you know, a black box where you contract with, you know, a data provider, and they're kind of doing it all for you, or an agency is doing it all for you. And, and for us, what, what really got us to even think about making this investment and building a company around the channel was, you know, seeing the value of technology in digital media, and we spent a better part of two decades, you know, focused on digital, but recognizing that, that, that anybody can be reached via their mailbox. You know, it's nobody owns anyone's mailbox. It's not the walled gardens that are social or search where you're always paying that tax to reach consumers on a specific platform. Because there's, there's no shortage of really interesting data and with modern, you know, mathematical technology, or, you know, tools and technology like machine learning, you know, the ability to build predictive models and measurement. Your direct mail data can be used in conjunction with a brand's first party data to be just as As targeted just as efficient just as effective as you know, as again search and social and retargeting and programmatic, you know, and there is direct measurement there. And those things like were really exciting to us but but was what was missing was the technology layer. They're just there, there wasn't a, a set of tools to actually make the channel behave dynamically and kind of line up with the expectations of how marketing teams and individuals engage with their channels right now. And so that that to us was kind of that final layer to help bring, you know, advertisers to direct mail, but not thinking about as a channel where you're procuring paper and ink and lists, but where you're, you're able to attack your marketing objective goal pain point, you're leveraging the channel alongside of all of your other channels.

Shark 10:55
One of the things that I absolutely love about direct mail as well, and you mentioned measurement I wanted to briefly touch on is how you're looking at measurement with the brand's you work with because email, which has been highly oversaturated, that your click through rates are going to be two to 3%, at best response rates are going to be less than a percent. But direct mail is I think, roughly in what the 6%, five 6%. I mean, it's a it's a remarkably higher based on the number of pieces that you send out.

Dave Fink 11:24
It certainly can be it also depends on on the specific, you know, use case, if you create everything, yeah, versus CRM and reengaging, you're just in customer bases. But the response rates are exponentially higher than you would see from a digital channel, which is important, because there's a there's a cost associated with the channel. But but you know, we're a quantitative platform, there are measurements built into what you know, we do in every campaign is is tracked and measured and analyzed. And, you know, we see day in day out from, you know, hundreds of millions of pieces of mail 10s of 1000s of campaigns and 1000s of advertisers that the response rate, you know, leads to positive ROI or achievement of the brand's specific marketing objective. Yeah, I mean, look, the beauty of direct mail is that you're starting with, you know, with, with, you know, data, right, you need to tell the US Postal Service where, you know, to deliver each specific ad, and most brands have some level of direct relationship with their consumers that are capturing, you know, data on those individuals to be able to build long term relationships with them. And so there's no shortage of capabilities, both, you know, kind of traditional, you know, being able to match the address of a purchaser back to an address of a, you know, ad recipient. But there's also digital fingerprints that can be used to also provide insights into conversion rate, response rate, return on adspend, etc. And that's what makes this channel so powerful. And the reality is that this is the, the the ability to, to target and measure in direct mail is nothing new. You know, there were direct mail based brands that were doing this well, before there was an internet. It just was wasn't super clean. It was analog, it was done on spreadsheets, and and now there's software that can can clean that up, which leads to better results, better understanding better insights, more efficiency.

Shark 13:32
When you think about this, though, we oversaturated so many different inboxes, if you will, how do you go about with the clients, you work with coordinating direct mail with other digital marketing efforts?

Dave Fink 13:46
Well, it's certainly case by case. Right? There's there's no cookie cutter. If you do this, then yeah, then, you know, it'll work like every other brand. Yeah, this campaign. So your strategy is, is a big component of kind of aligning direct mail with the rest of your marketing stack. And and I think what's, what's interesting for us is that because, you know, we're, we're a platform, you know, that technology solution allows us to work with, you know, a high volume and a tremendous range of advertisers ranging, you know, from Fortune 40 advertisers in a number of different products or service verticals, down to your $10 million year digital native bread that was stood up a couple years ago and is fast growing. And I think the insights that we as a platform have the individuals that are you know, building tools and technologies here at Posty. You know, have over over kind of the traditional, more analog maybe agency driven direct mail execution is that we're able to to learn at warp speed and and And certainly, you know, we focus on being the technology layer and, and the platform. You know, we think about ourselves as the direct mail channel management solution. But we also, because we're educating the market, whether that's teaching a brand who's never done direct mail, how to, you know, think through, you know, strategies and tactics, or whether that's engaging with 300 person marketing team that that's sending, you know, 10s of, if not hundreds of millions of pieces of mail a year and teaching them some more modern use cases for the channel. It all starts with understanding, you know, the specific marketers goals and objectives, brainstorming with them a bit, helping them understand the full capability of the channel. But from us, it always starts with the marketing goal. It's it's not, it's not, again, direct mail in a vacuum. It's, it's, you know, what channels are you working with? What have you learned so far? What's working? What's not working? Where are you finding challenges? What do you need to accomplish this year? Then let's think of everything from, you know, you know, targeting execution, timing, scale, optimization, creative, you know, all those levers that you're pulling on search and social or programmatic? Those are the same levers that that you can be pulling in direct mail. And, and and again, it just, you know, it's a matter of understanding each Marketers need.

Shark 16:24
Obviously, this depends on a case by case basis, but let's talk about a use case for small to medium sized businesses that are going to blanket an area with direct mail pieces, when and where are you starting this? Were you engaging with direct mail as part of the mix that includes digital email, social, other channels, etc? And what's your approach to leveraging that data in order to move a campaign forward?

Unknow

n Speaker 16:46
So we think, you know, we start kind of in the in the biggest buckets of marketing goals, and you kind of, you know, work your way down. So the, the, really in all channels, they're there, you know, when you think about the full file, you know, oftentimes with growth brands, the Holy Grail is prospecting. It's new customer acquisition, it's how do you help my business grow by finding, you know, new high value customers? And, and direct mail has always, you know, a tremendous portion of direct mail budgets have gone into prospecting. On the other end of the the kind of marketing funnel, you know, is all this CRM tactics? And that can be anything from lifetime value extension tactics? How do you build more value from your existing customers, increased frequency of purchase, increase average order value drive referrals, cross sell upsell, but then there's also the reengagement portion of CRM, right? You know, if you're a data driven company, you have a segment of your, your customer base, that's lapsed, and you're looking to reengage them direct mail can be a highly effective tool there, then, you know, with all of the, you know, first party data assets that that most brands have been created, whether that's, you know, digital, first party engagement data from websites, microsites and lead funnels, etc, you know, all that data can be used in to kind of lubricate, you know, the funnel and drive efficiency from, you know, dollars that you're already investing, you're pushing traffic to your website, whether that's through brand awareness, or whether that's through paid media and and a very small percentage of that kind of site traffic is revenue generating, how do you increase that and certainly channels like email, SMS retargeting had been, had been effective, but direct mails, you know, K, can leverage that same data and be integrated into those funnels. So so when we typically, you know, think about the channel and engage with a brand, depending on who you know who the the partner is, on the other end of the zoom, or the, the the phone these days, and what they're responsible for, what their focal point is, you know, helps us understand whether we're talking about full funnel or whether we're tackling one of those those kind of stages in the marketing funnel. And then from there, it's exactly what you said, which is, how do you find out? You know, what's working? It's, we do a ton of discovery with our clients, because we want to understand what are the channels that are working? What are the channels that are no longer working? What are those tactics? How does your brand think? How do you leverage data currently, and depending on on, on kind of that, you know, what's uncovered during during those kind of discovery conversations? We can certainly offer a lot of strategy but a lot of times it's just it's getting getting the brand to understand the studio to uncover the strategies that they believe are going to work because they have more knowledge about their brand in general. It's just helping expose them to the full capabilities of the channel.

Shark 19:54
What types of call to actions are you typically seeing work well

Dave Fink 20:00
So certainly anytime you can create urgency, yeah, I mean, you got to get someone to engage and choose to act now. Because the reality is they're gonna see three 410 of your competitors messages, you know, the longer that it goes between the time that you engage them and, and, and when you actually get them to your store, picking up a phone, you know, going to your website down on your mobile app. And so that that, you know, that doesn't have to be, you know, promotion, discounting, certainly, you know, those, those, those mechanics are kind of quick wins. And most most brands that that we engage with, do Taz you know, promotions or limited time offers or gift with purchases? Certainly draw a connection to your benefit statement and why, why it solves a problem and why that problem is present and needs to be solved right away can can be effective as well. It's also not just the the, the the offer. And the headline, what we've seen over the last several years is, you know, the kind of old creative that that maybe, you know, we used to think about direct malwares It was cheap, yeah, designs and coupons and dotted lines. You know, that that's not what works in an Instagram newsfeed ad. It's not really what works in an email anymore, or it's in a bed or anymore. Why why is you know, why would that work in direct mail. And so when you look at the type of creative that the advertisers we work with are leveraging for the most part, it's, it's really beautiful design that, you know, that mirrors everything on their website, everything in their social ads, they feel it's, it's more breezy, it's more emotional, they're using lifetime Earth sorry, lifestyle photography versus and imagery versus just relying on product photography. That makes a difference. I you know, is just an anecdote, I was walking through a neighborhood and I passed, you know, one of my friends and he was on the way to his mailbox. And so I just, I took a walk with Him, we were catching up and I kind of had a little twinkle in my eye, I was fascinated, see if something that we you know, one of our campaign campaigns, we're gonna land in his in his mailbox. And, and I like you can't make this stuff up. And we want to do some volume. So it's not super surprising, but it was one day of the year who knew. And I watched him go open his mailbox and pull out you know, a few, a few bills, a few like traditional like, kind of pieces of direct mail. And then there was there was a there was a oversized postcard that that was a campaign that we delivered. And it literally like it just jumps out at you because the brand was leveraging all the same, you know, overall marketing and design tactics they use in their, in their Instagram. And it was just a totally different experience. And he and he like as he was sifting through metal kind of look at something and it was it was a female athletic wear company. And and and his statement was like oh, like Yeah, I think he said something like, like, you know, Why can't your company do something like this? And I said well that actually was from our company but that that's the beauty right? It's it's it's it's just another canvas right and so we think about data and targeting we measure we talked about that but the end of the day you know it's you have like the opportunity to engage and wow and create emotion it you know, in someone's hand in the comfort of their own home in a very personalized way. And I think that's that's the power of direct mail you put that together with all the quantitative testing optimization, the machine learning the look alikes, the automation trigger your use of your first party, you know, behavioral they like all those things that can be applied to you know, your executional component of direct mail and then you invest in in design and thoughtfulness around what you want your brand to represent. That's how you create that that urgency it as much as as a as a discount or a promotion or an offer.

Shark 24:17
Well Dave, I assist of everybody that's been on the show you spend some time out on the West Coast What is your favorite kind of shark and why?

Dave Fink 24:25
Oh man, I'm terrified of sharks so I have a lot of respect for for you our actually our head of head of operations is a big scuba diver and I'm going to connect you with with with him because excellent have some fun conversations but look at someone who who serves. If I see a fin I'm just waiting to confirm that the dolphin so the dolphin is moving Eric shark.

Shark 24:52
Fair enough. David's a special time the show. Are you ready for the five most interesting and important questions that you're going to be asked today. I'm excited Alright, number one, we're going to talk famous postman Cliff Klavan. From cheers or Newman, the postman from Seinfeld.

Dave Fink 25:09
For me, for sure.

Shark 25:12
Alright, number two talking calls to action for direct mail QR codes or a unique phone number

Dave Fink 25:27
it's an interesting time that you're asking, I will try to keep this brief. But if you'd asked me pre COVID definitively, I would have said why 100 numbers, although we're all about using digital fingerprints, to to, you know, provide clean attribution. Now that the US is finally starting to use consumers are finally starting to get trained with menus at restaurants, all the access through QR codes. It is possible I've suddenly been been thinking about could we finally hit a tipping point where where QR codes are, are commonly used. They just historically haven't been here in the US. I know it's different in Europe. So I would go 5050 Right now partly because you get to pick a favorite. Oh, gosh, you're gonna hold me to this. I'm gonna go QR code because I like evolution. And I like I like I like creativity. And and I think we're kind of in that that maybe tipping point. So that's good to hear. Yeah.

Shark 26:31
Well, it is also a loaded question because it depending on the complexity of the product or service teaches, but I had to box you into an answer either way. Right. So I read in your bio that you'd worked with some well known folks, in fact, including the Olsen twins, Mary Kate Olsen, or Ashley Olsen. They're probably not going to listen to this. So your answer is going to be say,

Dave Fink 26:53
ah I'm gonna go with with Ashley just because I like the name Ashley.

Shark 27:04
Okay. Yeah, I they're both cute. And they're both richest can be I like them both. I that one could have been either one. Because I don't know the difference from the other. All right. You're living in Texas now. But you were living in California for a lot of years. Texas or California? Or Californians. But you enjoy that 400% state tax and overpriced gasoline and perfect weather.

Dave Fink 27:28
I can say we would definitely providing we can cover the car, the basic needs and expenses. I'd be happy to pay more live in California. Part of it is we Yeah, 20 years versus the one year in Austin. So just, you know, comfort.

Shark 27:51
So number five. And the most important question that you're going to be asked today is biscuits or cornbread,

Dave Fink 27:57
cornbread 100%. It's nice. I love cornbread.

Shark 28:04
Alright, so Dave, where can people find out more about you more about Posty keep up with what you're doing thought leadership and more?

Dave Fink 28:12
Certainly, you know, postie.com. We have a brand new website that has, you know, a pretty deep amount of information both on the channel, what we do, how we can potentially be helpful to your business, you can certainly reach me at my corporate email address. It's dave@postie.com. And then LinkedIn is great, great places as well to pretty active there. And if you reach out to me, and I can be helpful, happy to respond.

Shark 28:45
Perfect. Dave, thank you so much for being with us today on A Shark’s Perspective.

Dave Fink 28:49
Thanks for having me. This is super fun.

Shark 28:57
So there was my conversation with Dave Fink, the CEO and co founder of Postie, a marketing technology company that leverages direct mail to perform like a digital channel.

Shark 29:06
Let's take a look at three key takeaways from my conversation with him.

Shark 29:09
First, as he said, costs and knowledge tend to be the two blockers and a lot of marketers recognize they're over indexed on a lot of digital channels. But the hurdle becomes for most really understanding that they don't know that much about direct mail, and how to weave all those things together. You want your ads to stand out, consider a channel that your consumers haven't ignored, especially a channel that's not as crowded as a lot of other channels.

Shark 29:33
Second, he jokes that those platforms have made us really smart as marketers, and it's sadly so true. There's so much pinpoint accuracy and helps us become really efficient. But direct mail has a lot of those capabilities. As he said it's just been an analog form. So another reason to at least consider direct mail. Is this gotten a lot cleaner than you probably think it is.

Shark 29:52
Third, what a great reminder about creative fires are more sophisticated and they expect better design even in direct mail. So many people have you Use junk creative for direct mail purposes, and amazing content creator for Instagram. Direct Mail isn't the minor leagues just because you feel like Instagram is the majors? You should be mimicking the creative across channels anyway, but make sure you leverage great creative for better results.

Shark 30:15
Got a question? Send me an email to Kenneth at a shark's perspective.com.

Shark 30:19
Thank you again for the privilege of your time. And I'm so thankful to everyone who listens.

Shark 30:23
Thank you to my sponsor, the amazing team at Drips!

Shark 30:25
Please consider writing a review and letting me know your thoughts on the show.

Shark 30:28
Never mail it in per se. You know this shark won't. So join us on the next episode of A Shark’s Perspective.
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