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Today we’re going Old School. We’re not talking email. We’re not talking TikTok, Facebook or even YouTube.
We’re talking Snail. Mail. The gold old USPS. Physical mailboxes.
Why?
Because this is an untapped opportunity for DTC brands.
My guests today are two legends in the eCommerce space - Drew Sanocki and Michael Epstein. Drew and Michael most recently ran and successfully exited Auto Anything a multi nine figure eCommerce brand. Now they are helping DTC brands grow through direct mail marketing. And while that might not sound sexy, it’s incredibly effective.
Why postcard and direct mail marketing? 20-50% of your customers don't have a good email address on file. And email open rates are only 20-30% at best. So you’re missing a lot of your current and past buyers if you’re just relying on email and SMS.
Here’s a look at what we cover in this episode:
- How should brands use direct mail?
- How to build a great postcard
- What postcard campaigns to start with
- How Ezra Firestone turned $1,400 into $4,000 using a simple postcard
- How to make direct mail part of your email and SMS flows
Mentioned in This Episode :
Drew Sanocki
- eMail: Drew@PostPilot.com
Michael Epstein
PostPilot GFO (Godfather Offer)
Axle Group Holdings
Odeo
“How Brands Grow” by Byron Sharp (Audio)
Transcript:
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the eCommerce Evolution Podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce. And today is going to be fun. It's going to be informative and it's going to be old school with a very modern twist to it. We're talking direct mail. Now, if you know anything about my background, I got my start in traditional media, TV, radio, a little bit of print. I used to do a little bit of direct mail. I actually love direct mail. But here's the interesting thing. It is an untapped, unleveraged opportunity for eCommerce brands. And so we're talking about that today. And so my guests on the show today are really two eCommerce pros, eCommerce veterans, guys that you need to know if you don't already know. And so I'm going to intro them and then bring them on here.
Brett:
But the first is Michael Epstein. Now, Michael was the CMO of Axle Holdings, so AutoAnything, and a number of other big brands. He ran marketing for that group. Had a majorly successful exit. Also has worked in SaaS. And just a really, really smart guy. I've had the privilege of being on several calls with Michael. I always learn something when I'm chatting with Michael. So Michael, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time, man.
Michael:
Always great to be here, Brett. Thanks.
Brett:
Yep, absolutely. And then the next guest is truly a legend, truly a legend.
Drew:
To go along with the old theme.
Brett:
I wasn't sure how to play that off. I wasn't sure, really lean into OG or not lean into OG. I don't know. I do feel good, Drew, that you have more gray than I do because my beard's really starting to go gray. But super excited to have Drew Sanocki on the call. And I met Drew through a mutual friend, Ezra Firestone. I got to hang out with Drew at multiple events. He's always one of those speakers that when he shows up in an event, people are like, "Oh man, we get to learn from Drew Sanocki." And so Drew was the CEO of Axle Holdings and ran AutoAnything, also ran Karmaloop. Was a CMO for Teamwork. There's even a story, and I don't know that we'll get to it, but in his previous, his first e-commerce business, I think it was your first one, Drew, you guys shared office space with Twitter, right, back when Twitter was a baby?
Drew:
Everybody loves that story. Yeah, they were across the hall. They were a podcasting company called Odeo. And Twitter was across the hall. Airbnb was upstairs. And then we were there selling furniture in the middle of all that, thinking we were the most successful out of all those companies.
Brett:
They're like, man, we can teach these guys so much. Twitter? What's that...? Airbnb? Yeah, whatever. That's so cool. And actually, Drew and I got to work on a few projects together. And I remember after one particular project, Drew, you were working with one of our team members, one of the Chrises, we have lots of Chrises on our team. But one of them was like, "Dude, I want to be like Drew Sanocki when I grow up." That was his feedback after.
Drew:
I don't remember which Chris that was or why.
Brett:
It was Chris Tyler. But he was just like, "Man. Drew Sanocki is so smart."
Drew:
I'm not sure why.
Brett:
Anyway. So fellas, we're going to get into some serious education. We're going to talk about why to consider direct mail, how to consider, how to use it, all that type of stuff. But talk to me, you guys are now behind a really cool company called PostPilot. And so, can you guys describe what that is and why you're involved? And then we'll get into the education.
Drew:
Yeah, it's probably why Michael and I are both on this call together. So we've worked together for about 10 years. We've been in e-commerce each for about 20. And so we were at this previous company together, which was an e-commerce roll up in the automotive category. And one thing we've always sort of done is use direct mail at all the retailers we've run. And we were sort of interested in the category, that we acquired the software company about three years ago, called PostPilot. PostPilot's direct mail for e-commerce. If you think of Klaviyo for postcards, that's essentially what the software app does. And we were, at first, kind of curious, running it as a side project, and then it got a full head of steam. And now having exited the automotive roll up, we are all in on running PostPilot. So what PostPilot does is plug into your e-commerce store, pull your customer data. And the goal is to make direct mail as easy as email.
Brett:
That's awesome. Really excited to dig into this. And like I mentioned, my business partner, Chris Brewer, actually used to have a direct mail company. So he's all over direct mail. I actually used to do lumpy mail back in the day. When I was first starting another agency, we did direct mail. So I'm a big believer in direct mail. I've got some thoughts here too. But why is direct mail so powerful for e-commerce? And I'll let either one of you take that. Epstein, you want to take that first? Why is direct mail so powerful for e-com?
Michael:
Sure. So in this day of kind of digital overload where people are getting bombarded in their email inbox, they're ignoring or deleting most of what's in there, and the age of iOS impacting people's Facebook performance, there's just an appetite to look for unsaturated channels that allow you to cost effectively reach and convert more of your customers. And so, direct mail has become one of these kind of must haves now for eCommerce brands that are looking to kind of fight back against 20% email open rates and iOS updates impacting your ad performance. So this is a great way to get in front of those customers and drive incremental revenue and profit.
Brett:
Awesome. And you know, one thing that I've noticed too. There was a time, so when I was first getting into marketing in a major way, and when I started my first agency, it was in 2002. And at that time, there was an abundance of direct mail. There were times you open the mailbox and it's jam packed full. And most of it is marketing mail, which is the nice way of just saying junk mail. But it was full of marketing messages. That's not the case anymore. I don't get that much direct mail sent my way. And when I do, if it's interesting, it's occupying a different head space than when I'm checking my inbox.
Brett:
And obviously, email is super important. We're all fans of email on this call, for sure, and SMS. But direct mail's a little bit different head space. You're usually reading that at a different time, in a different location. Maybe you're in the kitchen, maybe you're in the bedroom, whatever. It's a different time. Anything you would add to that, Drew, on why direct mail is such a hot opportunity for e-com?
Drew:
I think just because it works. If you said to me, "Hey, there's this untapped channel where there's not a lot of competitors."
Brett:
Your competitors aren't using it, almost certainly.
Drew:
Your competitors aren't using it. It's a way for you to talk directly to your customer. And your competitors won't see you doing it. It's not like they'll see your ads or they can sign up for your list. I would be interested. And I think, when I talk to retailers and I say, "Who's your most attractive segment?" And broadly speaking, it's always your previous buyers. You're going to do better marketing to your previous buyers than you will to prospects. So we all agree that previous buyers are the best audience. But then it's sort of this dirty little secret that you can't actually market to all your previous buyers. And the reasons, I've read something like, under 50% of your actual customers are subscribed to your list. I mean, it's going to be different by the retailer, but on average. And then on any one email send, maybe 20% of those open an email, right. And that is an e-commerce average.
Drew:
So you put those two together and it's a very small percentage of your best target audience that actually can hear from you and reads your messaging. It leaves a wide swath that you can target via direct mail, which is really the only thing that can fill that gap and go out and communicate with that group of customers. So that's why I find it really compelling. It's sort of been a secret weapon I've used for 20 years. Predates me. I mean, it went back to the '50s, and the growth of catalog retailers. But it works. The cost is capped because postage is capped. Competitors aren't using it.
Drew:
And as you said, Brett, there's a lot of neurological studies and psychological studies as to how people perceive mail. And they perceive snail mail as sort of a gift. They like it. It's tangible. It's a tangible way to sort of present your brand. And people interact with it differently than they interact with an ad or with an email. So all those put together, I think it just makes it a compelling channel.
Brett:
Totally agree. And we love remarketing, as a Google and YouTube agency. We use previous customer lists to run display ads and discovery ads and YouTube ads. And those work. And running repurchase campaigns or loyalty campaigns. But you're right. You're still not reaching everybody. You're just not. There's going to be a lot of people on your list that you are missing if you're just running email and just running remarketing campaigns. And therefore, that's where direct mail can come in and fill the gap. So that's kind of the why. What about the how? How should we be using direct mail as an e-com brand?
Drew:
Well, I think you hit the nail on the head there where you do a lot of remarketing. And I think when we say direct mail to people, people automatically think prospecting. That's certainly one part of it, just plastering a zip code with flyers. But really, the highest ROI, just like in most marketing, is remarketing and retargeting to existing customers, existing buyers. So I think starting there, and kind of working up the funnel is a great way to sort of test the waters. You start with your win backs, abandoned cart campaigns, second purchase campaigns, anything that happens after the initial purchase, and you're going to find a strong return on those types of campaigns.
Michael:
And it's an incremental return because you're targeting a lot of folks that just have not engaged with your digital channels. So you're leaving profits on the table. If you've built all these great campaigns, you've figured out the right audiences. And then again, you look at open rates or you look at your reach and you're just not reaching all of them. So there's incremental LTV and revenue to be had when you can find an effective way to reach those customers.
Brett:
Got it. So you got win back campaigns. Maybe it's a product someone should purchase every three to six months, and someone hasn't purchased for nine months, so you're sending them a postcard. Or someone who's added a cart and has not purchased, you're sending them a postcard. How are you fitting that into the flow? Because you mentioned, and I love this positioning, Drew, that this is like Klaviyo, but for postcards. So are you just making one of those follow up steps in the process a postcard, you're kind of working that in? So maybe the first couple touch points in either win back campaign or abandoned cart campaign are email or SMS, and then postcard comes next? How does that flow work?
Drew:
I think you could do a number of things. Where we've seen people get paralyzed is, number one, where should I start in terms of the campaigns? And then number two, how should I design the actual postcard? And regarding the former, I would just say, open up Klaviyo, open up your email software, look at the campaigns that are highest ROI and just clone them to postcards. If it's a discount ladder that goes out over 90 days with an increase of discount, then let's just take that same cadence and that same offer and flip it into postcards.
Brett:
So then it's running in tandem with emails? You're running the email and you're running the postcard, basically same message, same people, different mediums.
Drew:
Yes. And we get that question a lot. How should I de-conflict the two? And there's a lot of data that says you don't have to bother de-conflicting. If the same customer sees the same messaging through email, a Facebook ad and through a postcard, then AOVs, average order sizes, typically go up and conversion rates go up.
Brett:
And conversion rates go up.
Drew:
Right. And there's some theory behind that. This guy, Byron Sharp, wrote a book called How Brands Grow. And it's all about the salience of your messaging. The more messaging you have in front of a customer from your brand, the better.
Brett:
Often, the more messaging from multiple types of media, right? So not just the same thing over and over again. Multiple touch points.
Drew:
Exactly. So it's one of those, if you can afford, I would do all three. If you can't, then you certainly could do things like send email for a month. And if the customer has not responded to email, then you move into your print campaigns. We see that with a lot of abandoned cart campaigns where companies like to hit the abandoning customer a couple of times via email almost immediately. And then a week later, send the postcard if the customer hasn't replied.
Michael:
And you can segment customers the same way you do in your email service provider like Klaviyo based on what they purchased, how long it's been, average order value, all those things. Or you could even integrate directly with Klaviyo and use the same list and segments you've built in your email platform to target your postcard campaigns.
Brett:
So you could use almost the same audiences, same flows almost. But copy that over to postcards.
Michael:
Yeah.
Brett:
Do you do the same thing then as soon as a purchase happens, if it is a win back campaign or abandoned cart campaign, then that cancels the rest of the flow so that that's all built in as well?
Michael:
Yeah.
Brett:
Nice.
Drew:
Yeah. We've actually got a native integration with Shopify and with Klaviyo. So you can just pull in your Klaviyo campaigns right into PostPilots so they will sync.
Brett:
Got it. Cool. What are some of your favorite direct mail success stories for e-com?
Michael:
There's a bunch. I'd say, the one that comes to mind, you brought up Esra Firestone earlier. And he ran a postcard campaign for Boom, the cosmetics brand, and had a ton of success with it. Spent something like $1,500 and generated $40,000 in revenue from that campaign by-
Brett:
And that was a win back campaign, is that is what that was?
Michael:
That was a win back campaign. Yeah. So it was basically like, you've got customers buying makeup. You expect that customer to rebuy within a certain period of time. That's how long the product's supposed to last. You've been hitting them with email campaigns. And if they go longer than the expected timeframe without repurchasing, then you hit them with a postcard campaign and you get just extraordinary conversion rate and revenue off of that.
Michael:
And this is super profitable because, again, you didn't pay to reacquire that customer. You got a customer that has bought from you to buy a second or third time. And there's so much more margin in that. And you get them back into their kind of routine of buying again. So it extends to subsequent purchases after that, and they get more orders coming in because you've got them back on track.
Brett:
Yeah. So that ROI that you talked about, that was off that initial purchase. But the beauty of this is, if you sell a consumable or you have repeat purchases, then this reactivation of a customer can be extremely profitable because of all those future purchases as well.
Drew:
I've got two favorites.
Brett:
All right. Yeah.
Drew:
And I would say one is a PostPilot win. And the other one is one that is on our roadmap, but is just a more of a direct mail win that I like. And PostPilot, what I see a lot of customers doing are abandoned carts where you put the QR code on the postcard. And because of the Shopify integration, we can get that sort of direct link back to the cart.
Brett:
Nice.
Drew:
I see a lot of customers, you get an abandoned cart, it triggers maybe an immediate email, an email a couple days later. And then if the customer still hasn't replied or if they're not on your list, they get the postcard three, four days later with the QR code that sends them right back into the cart where the product is.
Brett:
It's their QR code?
Drew:
Yeah.
Brett:
That's fantastic.
Drew:
So I think that's kind of cool from a usability point of view, just like an experience point of view.
Brett:
And one interesting side note. This is one of those kind of unexpected benefits or shifts, digital benefits from the pandemic. It's shifted so much of our digital behavior. But QR codes, man. I remember when everyone was like, "Yeah, QR codes are dead. No one's using them. Those are long gone." But now that we had to use them at restaurants or other places, QR codes are very much alive. I'm seeing them everywhere. And actually pretty easy because you just use your camera app on your phone. And so that's really, really useful. So QR codes sending you right back to your cart. That's super cool.
Drew:
Yeah. And then you could put tracking and UTMs in the QR code too so the postcard campaign shows up in Google analytics now. So I just like that as a usability thing. And then I really like this brand Petalura, Allan Shiffrin's the CEO.
Brett:
What's the name of it one more time, Drew?
Drew:
Petalura. He's a colleague. I met him a while ago. His background's in cataloging. So, ran a printer. And he's just been able to grow, I mean, I'm not at license to say how big his brand is, but let's just say mid eight figures brand or eight figure brand, I would say almost 90% off a catalog. Isn't that crazy, in this day and age, that you could grow an e-commerce business that big off of catalog prospecting? Get the right list and then send that list a catalog. And he's just wash, rinse, repeat. And he's done it profitably. It's not like he's bleeding money as he acquires these customers.
Drew:
So just my conversations with Allan have been really inspiring and have got us thinking through how we're going to roll out prospecting at PostPilot because that, I think, is the next big win this year, is starting to get into prospecting, but doing it right, not just doing it off zip code. Putting some more thought behind how we can get prospecting audiences and look alike audiences and just some really cool stuff off a customer behavior on your website.
Brett:
Yeah, I think that will be an amazing innovation, because just doing blanket zip code targeting. That's really never worked very well. But if it's a very targeted list, and if you could somehow build that lookalike audience or behavioral audience and pull that into email or direct mail, rather, that would be pretty powerful for sure. So let's talk a little about the creative aspect behind a postcard. I think most of us understand what it takes to build a good display ad, or a good email. Email's all about subject line and opening line of the copy and have an offer, an image and stuff like that. What does it take to build a great postcard, a postcard that people want to read and want to respond to? What are some elements there?
Michael:
Sure. So I think we talked about QR codes. You can do dynamic personalization, meaning, you can insert fields like their name or other attributes about them dynamically onto the card so they're one to one personalized. That's great for engagement. You want to think about it similar to ad copy or ad creative, where it's engaging, it reflects your brand so that it's easy to spot when somebody opens their mailbox. And you want to include an incentive typically, get them, create some urgency, put a deadline on it, give them an incentive to come back and act on that with a strong call to action.
Michael:
But I think we also rolled out done for you creative services. Because we realized that, this was kind of a pivotal moment for us at PostPilot, no matter how big the brand was, eight, nine figure brands that you think have this creative team. And I'm sure you've seen some of this on the ad copy side and ad creative side, Brett. You say, I'm just going to send it over to the creative department and wait for something to come back and it can kind of get stalled. Everybody's got a lot on their plate. So we actually brought in designers in house, and we have a professional design team that will help create your campaign using best practices that we know because we've seen millions of cards and thousands of campaigns go out, and we'll just make sure that we implement a great best practice design that we're very confident is going to get you a great return.
Brett:
Yeah. And I love that because what we run into is, we work with some larger brands. And a lot of them do have a creative department. But as a kind of a comparison, we do a lot with YouTube. So we create YouTube ads. Most of the time, even larger brands don't have anybody that's a YouTube expert or YouTube person. I guarantee you, most of these brands, they've got designers, but they don't have a postcard person, like, assign this to the postcard expert. We don't have one of those. So makes total sense. Anything you would add to that, Drew? Anything you would want to point out as far as headline goes or other personalization tips? Anything you would say that makes a postcard really work?
Drew:
Yeah. I mean, I think you mentioned a couple things. I think about it more as an ad. Think more of an ad than as an email. So it's a visual medium. So all the ad principles would apply here. And then a best practice is, when you design it, think ad. But when you implement it, think email. The campaigns, the automation, the personalization, a lot of that stuff should be more analogous to how you use email.
Brett:
Yeah, totally makes sense. So design it, use design principles of an ad, but then think about your flows and your campaign more like email. Any specific tips? It's been a while since I've done postcards, but I did run postcard campaigns back in the day. But you know, sometimes you look at rules for headlines that sometimes 7 to 10 words is ideal, and things like that. You want to have enough copy, but not too much, and some of those things. And any specific guidelines there, or does that just vary?
Drew:
Yeah. I don't know about rules of thumb there. I mean just, white space and images are all great. I think it comes down to, if you're going to put a coupon code on, we like to recommend single use coupon codes as opposed to a generic coupon, unless you want it to go all over the internet. I mean, there may be a case where you need that. Automation and triggering is something that I'm not sure people realize you can do with direct mail. But define that audience. Take a VIP, for example. If you want something special to go out to one of your top customers that spends X dollars, then you can set a tripwire that kicks in when any customer spends over that amount. And then design an evergreen card that constantly is sending out when customers reach that threshold. So that's pretty compelling, as a marketer, to be able to set it and forget it.
Brett:
Really compelling. And I know you talk about this a lot, Drew. You did some presentations back in the day, I think for Andrew Youderian and also for Ezra. We talk about whales. So not just good customers, but the best customers, the whales, like they talk about at casinos, the high rollers and stuff. So what would be some ideas there? So once someone reaches a certain threshold of spend, now we're sending them a postcard that kind of thanks them and recognizes them and gives them an offer? Or what does that often look like?
Drew:
Yeah, you can do a lot with that. I mean, the general idea is, you've got these whale customers who drive your business. And usually, if you lay out all your customers in a spreadsheet and sort them by their spend, you'll see that it's the 80/20 rule. You've got 20% of your customers are going to drive 80% of your revenue. So once you realize that as a marketer, you should be thinking of those whales all the time. Like, how do I get more of them? To extend the analogy, how do I turn minnows into whales?
Drew:
And one of the ways is just a simple VIP campaign that thanks them. There's a lot of data that shows if you just reach out and thank the whale customers, they are more likely to come back and order again. So at ROIs, whether you put a coupon in that email or not, or in that postcard or not. We acquired a business last year called Handwrite, Handwrite.io. It's robotic handwriting. So you can have an email from the CEO, if you're an influencer driven brand or from a salesperson, that's like, "Hey, just want to thank you for spending $2,000 with our store."
Brett:
Yeah. This would be a postcard or something that would go out?
Drew:
Yeah. It could be a postcard or could just be a handwritten note. You could then say, here's a special offer for you. Or if you don't want a discount or give a coupon, that's fine too. Just the thank you should ROI for you. It should have that customer come back. One thing we did at AutoAnything is, the VIP's got a custom invite to sort of premium service. So, "Hey, here's your own sales rep, with his or her phone number direct line. And even though you might send that ultimately to your whole customer support team, but it's nice to kind of have the VIP think that they're getting premium service. And it's a good way to kind of conserve your customer service spend. Do you have to answer the phone for every customer? Probably not. But you'd want to answer it for your VIPs. So give them a special number. It's a great way to sort of treat them.
Michael:
We actually did a test.
Brett:
It's super smart.
Michael:
We did a test with one of the AutoAnything brands too, where we carved out a segment of VIPs and sent them a thank you note once they hit a certain number of orders or a spend threshold, and then measured the performance of that cohort versus the control group that didn't receive that thank you note, and actually saw over a 10 times better increase in revenue over the next 90 days for the group that received the card versus the ones that did not. So really just an effective way to drive brand loyalty and get those repeat customers really engaged with your brand.
Brett:
So just to make sure I'm understanding the test. So you took two groups of whales or VIPs. One of them, you did not send a thank you to, but they're still VIPs. The other, you did send a thank you to. And the group that you did send that thank you to, their spend was 10X the control group?
Michael:
Yes. And these were customers that were getting the regular email campaigns. They were both getting the same email campaigns. They were both exposed to potentially the same Facebook ads. The one difference was that one received that card and the others didn't. And we just saw much higher engagement from that group.
Brett:
Yeah. Sometimes we just want to be seen and recognized, right? We start to feel it internally if we're spending a lot of money with a particular company. And it's nice to be like, "Hey, is anybody noticing this? Does anyone see that I'm forking out these kind of dollars for this company?? And so even just being recognized is pretty powerful.
Michael:
Absolutely. You've got a lot of choices on where you could buy from. And so, how do you create these different surprise and delight and memorable experiences that keep you top of mind and make sure that you're the default choice next time a customer's in the market for a particular product? Drew talked about salience and Byron Sharp. That surprise and delight type experience is almost like a cheat code to increase mind share, and make you more memorable for when you're in the market for a product in the future.
Brett:
Are you recommending? And it almost seems like, if you're going to recognize that VIP or that whale, that maybe a handwritten note would be better than a postcard? Are you guys recommending? And do you guys do either of those, by the way?
Michael:
We do both. And so, there's a bit higher cost to the handwritten card. So it kind of depends on what type of business you are. Jewelry businesses and other businesses that have really high LTV and want a super memorable, premium experience for their customers. And it's easy to justify spending two bucks to target your highest value customer, and keep that customer loyal and coming back and potentially spreading word of mouth about your brand, because they got this handwritten note in the mail, and it was just super delightful to them. And then other brands, you can certainly do it with just a postcard too. Because you can still personalize it. You can still say, thank you. You can still include a loyalty reward or incentive for them. And those work great as well, and super low cost.
Brett:
Very cool. So kind of walk through, and I'm sure there are all kinds of opportunities here. But what does it cost to do this? So what does it cost to send postcards to a win back audience? Or what does it cost to send a handwritten note to a VIP? You mentioned two bucks or whatever there, Michael. But, can you give some examples, some ideas there?
Michael:
Sure. So postcards start at 49 cents. And that's an all in price. So that includes postage, printing everything. So typically, less than the cost of a click these days. And then, as Drew mentioned earlier, the nice thing about it is that price is capped. So it doesn't matter if you're targeting that customer during peak periods like Mother's Day or Black Friday, you're not going to pay more because it's a certain time of the year.
Michael:
You're not going to pay more because you're targeting a very coveted audience type that has a ton of competition from not just direct competitors, but people in other industries that still are targeting the same audience as you. So that's a really nice aspect of direct mail is that the price is fixed. And then we have our handwritten cards, which start at under two bucks. And that, again, includes everything. First class stamp, handwritten envelope, handwritten card on custom printed stationary. So it's a pretty cost effective tool now.
Brett:
Yeah, that's awesome. And I totally see that where, if you get a really high AOV and high LTV, high lifetime value customer, then the handwritten note is a no-brainer. For most others, the postcard is probably okay too. On the handwritten note. And I've seen, and I don't know if this is the technology you guys purchased or for something else. But is that where you write something and then it tries to mimic your handwriting? Or is it just, it looks like handwriting?
Michael:
Well, you can either select from a variety of styles that we have. And they'll have all the nuance of human handwriting with the letters looking different and the angles and spacing and all of that stuff. Or you could actually digitize your own handwriting as well. And it can copy your handwriting or your signature.
Brett:
Yeah. I was just curious about that. Because I know for me, my handwriting is absolutely terrible. I probably should have been a doctor. I've definitely written notes and not been able to read them myself. So while it would be cool and novel to put my handwriting there, it'd be better if it was somebody else's handwriting for sure.
Michael:
We've got a couple chicken scratch options for those folks who are like, "This is way too neat. Nobody would ever believe me."
Brett:
Yeah. Okay. That's that's awesome. Fantastic. How do you encourage folks to look at this as they're kind of laying out their media mix? Any thoughts on that? I love what you said, Drew about, start with bottom of funnel. Start with existing customers and abandoned carts and win backs and things like that. Any advice you would give to how you structure this in the media mix and into your overall planning?
Drew:
I think it's just, as we've seen last year with iOS 14, attribution just got killed for Facebook and even email, because I think email clients got hit later in the year.
Brett:
Yeah. And iOS 15 just killed it. We don't have open rates now. So that's a real loss of important, meaningful data there.
Drew:
Yeah. So you've got to put the dollars somewhere. I would start running tests with simple retention campaigns. Win backs, abandoned carts come to mind as probably the best. You choose, every business is different, but on average, maybe it's customers who haven't purchased in 60 days. They should get a postcard and it should say, it could either be a cross sell type postcard, "Hey, you bought the toy, here's the batteries. Come back and buy the batteries." Or it can be a discount to buy from another category on your site. So I'd probably start there, because that's the most likely to get the win for you. And test that, automate it, have us do it. As Michael mentioned, we've got a program where we'll do it for most retailers out there of a certain size.
Drew:
And then we lock that in and then you could start moving up the funnel and put those dollars towards more of abandoned carts and even some cold prospecting lists and things like that. But when I'm putting together my marketing, our marketing budget at AutoAnything, Mike put it together, it was always, what's going to ROI really over the next quarter, if not the next 30 days? That's just kind of the business that we ran. So the retention stuff was kind of a no-brainer. And you realize when you build that net around retention, every dollar you go and spend on acquisitions is going to be more profitable because you've got that stuff backstopping you.
Brett:
Yeah. I love it. And that's where guys like me and agencies like OMG, we can spend more on YouTube because now every customer is worth more. And that's good for the brand because now we can be more aggressive at top of funnel because we're making each customer more valuable.
Brett:
Do you ever use postcards? Just thinking about email flows, I know our mutual friend, Austin Brawner, talks about indoctrination campaigns. So you sign up your initial sign up to get that first coupon or whatever. That's the indoctrination sequence that would talk about the brand and the products and why you should buy from us and why we're amazing, or I've heard them called acquisition campaigns. Do you ever use postcards in that sequence? And if so, how?
Michael:
Yeah. We have a number of customers that use it for welcome sequence. So whether it's a postcard or a handwritten card. Again, depending on kind of the product and the price point, and what type of experience they're trying to deliver. But certainly, a lot of brands to send that thank you card with, again, typically an incentive to come back, because these are customers that are really warm. They've just recently engaged with their brand. They're probably the most engaged that they're going to be right after they make a purchase with your brand. It's crucial to get that second purchase as quickly as possible because, we talked about it earlier, that's where the profits are coming from. That initial acquisition cost is so high now that you've got to be able to figure out how to get that second purchase. And that's what's going to allow you to be competitive when you go out and look to acquire more customers.
Brett:
Awesome. And that makes sense. And then what about before? And I've been out of the direct mail game a long time so this may not be available. But is there a way, if you get someone's name and email, there's not a way to look up their address pre-purchase, is there? Like, if they sign up for that initial list, there's not really a way to send them a postcard. Is there?
Michael:
There will be.
Drew:
He's teeing you up, Epstein.
Michael:
Yep.
Drew:
He threw that ball up above the rim.
Brett:
And we didn't even practice this.
Drew:
Epstein's going to jump up there and he is going to dunk it right now.
Brett:
Dude. Yeah.
Michael:
Yeah, stay tuned.
Drew:
There's no possible way to do that. Is there, Michael?
Michael:
Not until now, Drew.
Brett:
We didn't rehearse that. We didn't practice that. I didn't ask about that offline. But that was what I was thinking, because that's another piece, again, thinking about I'm a top of funnel guy, right. But I know that new customers, that's only one way to grow a business. You also got average order value increasing, and increasing the number of repeat purchases. Those are the ways to grow business as well. But if you can drive traffic through top of funnel, YouTube, Facebook, whatever the case may be, get an email opt in. Now you increase your odds of closing them. But if you could throw a postcard at those people, that's pretty exciting. So it sounds like that's coming soon. TBD, to be determined type of thing.
Michael:
Yeah. Glad to hear you're as enthusiastic as we are about it, because we think it could be a really killer capability for-
Brett:
Yeah. Because I think that's, as you talk about going upper funnel with postcards. That's the first step in upper funnel. Because that could be a pretty big audience. And so, you tackle that and then you can start going beyond that.
Michael:
Exactly. These are people that have at least raised their hand. And so they're a lot more engaged and likely to buy. And that's where you start, again, versus going totally cold and just blasting people in a particular area or particular demographic group.
Brett:
Very cool. Anything else you guys are really excited about as it pertains to direct mail for e-commerce that we haven't talked about yet?
Drew:
The thing that's on our mind right now is prospecting coming later this year. The other exciting thing to me is just that it's sort of untapped. It's been around for hundreds of years actually. And e-commerce has just been hesitant. It's like a bit of a blue ocean. Most retailers I know haven't tested it. So that's kind of exciting to me. It's like this old channel that is relevant again.
Brett:
Yeah. It's old. It's proven. And that's why I kind teed it up in the beginning as, it's old school for sure, but with enough digital twists to make it really, really interesting. What about you, Epstein? Any interesting things that you're really excited about that we did not talk about yet?
Michael:
Oh, I think we covered a lot. Drew touched on some of the prospecting and other capabilities that we're working on. But in general, I think it's exactly what you said. E-com and direct to consumer is in our DNA. So we built the product that we know makes sense to direct to consumer marketer, gives them the tools and capabilities that they're accustomed to, makes it as easy as sending an email campaign. And I think we just are consistently finding new ways to continue to further that experience within the platform and just make it that much easier, continue to deliver stuff that we know matters to e-com specifically.
Brett:
Awesome. Well, fellas, and if someone's listening and they're like, okay, I'm sold. I'm in. I want to give postcard and direct mail a shot for my D2C brand. How can they learn more about PostPilot? Should they just call Drew on his cell phone, I would assume?
Drew:
Yeah, you can do that. Send me a piece of mail.
Brett:
Should they write to you, just send a letter?
Drew:
Yeah, write to me.
Brett:
No, what's the best way to find out?
Drew:
It is drew@postpilot.com. I'll reply.
Brett:
Great. Okay.
Drew:
I would say, go to the website, PostPilot.com. We've got a great offer if you want to start out where we essentially do anything for you. The customers we've acquired and that use the platform that don't stick. They have really high lifetime value. And what that allows us to do is do almost everything for a new customer. As long as you're doing over a certain amount of revenue, we can build you a campaign, design it for you and send it out on our dime and show you the results. So that's at PostPilot.com/gfo. Godfather offer.
Michael:
Godfather offer.
Drew:
Yeah, I should have said. GFO is the godfather offer.
Brett:
What is that? So godfather offer. I like it. Very cool. So PostPilot.com/gfo. Check it out. There's a cool little video there from you, Drew, which is awesome. And there's an offer you can't refuse here from the godfather himself. So I love that. I love that. Cool. Any other resources or things people should check out? I see you got some nice examples on the site from Boom and Overlander and Bulletproof. So I think it looks like there's some really good opportunities. If you just want ideas. And I know for most people, the way they get ideas for their next email campaign or video campaign is sometimes to see examples. And so you've got lots of examples of successful postcard campaigns on the site as well.
Michael:
Yep. We're going to continue to add more of those. But case studies are great ways to get inspired.
Brett:
Awesome. Well, fellas, this has been fantastic. It was a little bit nostalgic. It was motivational. It was inspirational for me to talk direct mail with you guys and to see this in action. Any closing thoughts, remarks, closing asks for the audience?
Drew:
I got nothing.
Michael:
If you haven't looked at it.
Drew:
Thanks for listening.
Michael:
Yeah. Thanks for the time. And if it's not something that you've explored before, give it a look and let us help figure out what we know is going to work for you.
Brett:
Direct mail, just do it. Just check out the godfather offer as well. So we'll link to everything in the show notes, of course, or just Google it and check out what Drew and Michael have built. Fellas, thank you so much for the time. It's been a lot of fun chatting with you, and informative as well. So I really appreciate it.
Drew:
Thanks, Brett.
Michael:
Thanks, Brett.
Brett:
Awesome. So as always, thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear feedback from you. What did you think about this show? If you haven't already, we'd love that review on iTunes. It helps other people discover the show. And with that, until next time. Thank you for listening.
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