Direct Mail Success: Unlocking the Key Factors for a Winning Campaign

Welcome back to another episode of “It’s The Bottom Line that Matters!” Today we have a fantastic episode in store for you. If you’ve ever wondered how to supercharge your marketing strategies and get the best return on your investment, then this episode is for you. Today, we have a special guest joining us – Travis Lee, the president and co-founder of 3D Mail Results. Travis is an expert in direct mail marketing and has helped countless businesses generate significant returns using innovative and effective strategies.

In this episode, Travis will be breaking down the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why) and how of direct mail. He’ll discuss the value of direct mail in a world dominated by online and email marketing, highlighting the ability to precisely target individuals and control who sees your marketing materials. Travis will also share his frustration with online marketing and why he believes direct mail offers unique advantages.

Whether you’re a small business owner or a marketing professional, this episode will provide valuable insights into the world of direct mail and how it can be leveraged for maximum impact. Travis will reveal key tactics and strategies for creating successful direct mail campaigns, and he’ll even recommend a must-read book for anyone looking to dive deeper into this marketing approach.

So, grab a pen and paper, get ready to take some notes, and let’s dive into this exciting conversation with Travis Lee. But before we get started, make sure to visit his website, ⁠3dmailresults.com⁠, where you’ll find additional information about the products we discuss in this episode. From bank bags to pill bottles, Travis has some truly unique and attention-grabbing direct mail ideas that you won’t want to miss.

It’s time to unlock the power of direct mail and discover what truly matters when it comes to marketing. Stay tuned for an enlightening and informative episode of “It’s The Bottom Line that Matters” with your hosts Jennifer Glass, Patricia Reszetylo, and Daniel McCraine and our guest, Travis Lee!

About our guest: Travis Lee is a seasoned marketer with a passion for direct mail campaigns. He firmly believes in the power of this traditional marketing approach and its ability to deliver measurable results. Travis enjoys the fact that direct mail allows him to specifically target and connect with a well-defined audience. Whether it’s a list of 100 or 10,000 recipients, Travis knows exactly who he is reaching out to and can tailor his message accordingly. He emphasizes that he doesn’t aim to criticize online or other forms of media, but rather believes in using every available tool to create successful marketing strategies.

Transcript (auto-generated; may contain errors):

Jennifer Glass:

Hello, and welcome to another episode of It’s the Bottom Line That Matters podcast. We are dedicated to your success. On our show today, we’ve got a really interesting conversation all about direct mail. But it isn’t just those junky pieces that every now and then you get. And by the way, I’m saying junky, but it’s not junkie if you think about how you can use it to your advantage when you get those pieces. But as we look at direct mail though, There’s a lot that’s involved in the process, a lot that is involved in the idea behind it, and, really, an incredible amount that is there to help us figure out where, what, who, when, why, and how we’re trying to really get taken care of when we talk about direct mail. But Daniel and Patricia and I can certainly talk about direct mail with you, But I don’t think that there would be a better person to really talk about direct mail than somebody whose life revolves around direct mail. And so we have a great guest with us today who’s going to help break down direct mail and the 5 w’s and the how on what we need to know about direct mail.

Jennifer Glass:

And I just realized I just said what to. But as we look at it, We’ll go from there. But before I bring our guest on, let me tell you a little bit about him. Travis Lee is an internationally known as an expert in getting direct mail delivered, opened, and read. He’s a cofounder and president of 3 d Mail and generates huge returns for thousands of businesses each year who uses innovative and effective marketing strategies. His unique yet tested marketing methods have helped to add 1,000,000 of dollars in sales to a wide variety of businesses from Kitchen Table run sole proprietors to national and multinational businesses, mailing millions of pieces of mail a year. His techniques and strategies move seamlessly between the business to business and business to consumer world and consistently provide positive returns of two hundred to over 35 100% for his clients. Travis, wow.

Jennifer Glass:

Welcome to the show.

Travis Lee:

Well, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here and, You know, hopefully, impart some wisdom on what many people consider to be an old fuddy duddy type of type of marketing media that’s Still alive, still kicking, and still making a lot of money for the businesses who use it. So looking forward to it.

Jennifer Glass:

Thank you. So, Travis, let me just ask you. I mean, I read 200 to 35 100% ROI on the direct mail, programs that you do. And I’m curious, just like I’m sure a lot of our listeners are curious at this point. I mean, that just sounds extreme.

Travis Lee:

How do

Jennifer Glass:

we start to even quantify that kind of a return?

Travis Lee:

Yeah. You mean so with direct mail, it really is one of those things where you can track it, you can measure it because you’re because you’re You’re only mailing and you’re only working with a certain group of people. Right? And you know exactly who those people are. I mean, so, Yeah. If we get a list of 100, 1,000, 10,000, we know who’s on that list, and we know who we’re mailing. And that’s what makes direct mail so great for many many different reasons. Right? So this is not to bash on Online anything or any other media. Right? So, you know, we use everything at our disposal.

Travis Lee:

We use we use online and email, and we use all the stuff available To us. But what’s great about direct mail is, again, you know exactly who you’re mailing to, and you can really Pinpoint who that person is. So you’ve we’ve got our list and we can you know, I’m sure we’ll talk about how we choose the list and that kind of stuff later on, But we’re able to track it really, really well because we know who’s in that pool, and we also know who’s not in that pool. And so one of the things that I know that frustrates, you know, like the online marketers of the world is as soon as you put your message out there, It’s there for almost anybody to see, and in fact, they have databases of places you can go to see what Ads are running on Facebook. So if you’re a dentist, you could go see what every dentist is running. If you’re a software provider, you could go see what every software provider is is is doing. And so it allows you to do to do a couple things. To completely control that list so that only the people that you wanna see it see it.

Travis Lee:

And we were talking a little bit on the top of this, but before we started, we’re all kind of fans of Dan Kennedy. And Dan Kennedy said that Direct mail is the only media where you can make your business in the dark, and I put quote marks around in the dark Because, again, you control that message. And so while some of those per you know, returns might seem high, They’re not uncommon. That was 35 100%. Is that a little bit of an outlier? Yeah. But depending on what you’re selling, you know, we you know, One of our very 1st direct mail campaigns way, you know, decades ago now, we actually got that 35 100% because we had the perfect list. We had the perfect profile, And we were selling a $30,000 computer system. Right? So when you’re able to target very well and you’re able to match that message to that person very well, You can get those results, and that’s what direct mail can do.

Travis Lee:

I think it’s still even with all the technology we have today, Still is better than most of the media out there when it comes to controlling that message. And then, again, with some modern technologies, we can really track it down to the last penny.

Jennifer Glass:

I’m really surprised. I mean, the 200 to 35 100%. And here I was thinking the 27% response that I got on a piece that I sent out years ago in the university where I was working, blew my expectations. I mean, the post office even said they never saw anything like that. You know, it was a mailing just to our alumni database.

Travis Lee:

Yeah.

Jennifer Glass:

Because we changed over our online community, and, it was at the time when the 1st generation of, Ipods was out there. And so I was giving away a drawing. You know, if you sent back the postcard, I gave away a drawing or I entered you in a drawing to win, this iPad that we bought. And it was great because Apple had special, You know, education, nonprofit institution pricing, so it didn’t cost us the $300, whatever it was, you know, significantly less. But I got, You know, grandparents sending in stuff for their grandkids because they’re like, I gotta enter my grandkid into this because I know they’ll know what to do. I don’t know what to do with this thing, but they will. And, I mean, I reactivated people that we literally had no idea where they were because they were given this piece of information by somebody, and they sent us their email and their contact information, and we reactivated lost alumni as a result, which was ultimately the goal. Yeah.

Jennifer Glass:

But, I mean, 27% blew away everyone’s expectations, and here you are 200 to 35100 percent. And it was like, wow. And I understand the list is segmented and targeted, but I was going just to our alumni database. So that’s also segmented and targeted. But yes.

Travis Lee:

I think Patricia’s gonna say exactly what I’m gonna say.

Patricia Reszetylo:

Go ahead. You’re talking about a percent response rate, Jen, and he’s talking about an ROI. So ROI, of course, you spend $1,000, We’ll say. Just more easy. You know? You you spend $1,000 on the mailing, and you get, what, 35,000? I don’t know how many.

Travis Lee:

That would be that’s it. Yeah. That’s where the number comes from. Yeah. So you’re Right. You I mean, you took the words right out of my mouth. So while response rate is important And it’s not to be overlooked. And so let’s back up a little bit.

Travis Lee:

So a response rate means we mail out x amount of pieces. What’s the percentage of people who respond? Now that’s a leading indicator, but it’s not your best indicator of direct mail success. So Well, I don’t wanna take anything away from your 27% response rate. That is absolutely incredible. And you I mean, that was awesome. Thank you. We’re looking at this stuff, we’re looking at, yeah, we’re looking at response rate, but like Patricia said, we’re ultimately only concerned With the return on our investment rate. Right? So if we spend a dollar and we get $2 back, Is that good? So are we profitable at that rate? And then if we are, how can we multiply that effect? Now there’s some businesses where you need to be, Yeah.

Travis Lee:

You maybe can’t be at a 2 to 1 ROI. You need to be a 3 or 4 or 5 or a 10 because you’ve got your cost of delivery and your cost of goods. What I mean, we all have We all have costs associated to the thing that we deliver. You know, even software companies with their 90% Profit margins have a cost to deliver a a product or a service, and so that’s what we’re most concerned with. Again, re response rate is important because it puts people in to your point, it puts you reactivate them. You get them reengaged. You get them going. It’s a good mar it’s a good measure of, are we effective with our message? Meaning, can we get people to pick up the phone, go to a website, Scan a QR code, but ultimately, we want them to buy.

Travis Lee:

And so when I work with my customers, my we call them clients for the most part. When we work with our clients, What you know, the for the most part, I don’t have a I don’t have any control over their sales process once that Once that direct mail does its job of getting the phone call, the website, visit the QR code. Right? Scan. Right? We’re not we’re not babysitting the entire sales Process. Right? So for us, response rate is very important when we’re doing it for our clients because we can say, hey. The marketing is working. If you’re not getting the ROI, Then there’s something in your sales processes that isn’t working. So you’ve got 2 different numbers.

Travis Lee:

1 in the 1 is an indicator to the other, But, ultimately, it’s that 2nd number, the return on investment that we ultimately want. Right? Because, again, if we go to a slot machine and we put a dollar in and every time we get $2 back, You’re never leaving that slot machine. You’re gonna go find a buddy to put the dollar in. You’re gonna go find you’re right. You’re just gonna take turns putting dollars in. That’s exactly right.

Jennifer Glass:

That’s exactly right. Make you leave and go to a different casino when

Travis Lee:

you give it all back.

Jennifer Glass:

That would’ve been a true story.

Travis Lee:

Yes. That’s exactly right. Yep.

Daniel McCraine:

Well and so, Travis, you’re talking about the the return on investment and also that response rate, and you’ve thrown out some other things I think our listeners need to pay attention to about the list segmentation, everything else. Now you are known, 3 d mail, you’re kinda known for Putting things in the mail that’s part of the mailer, how much of that is gimmicky? To some extent, it’s a gimmick. Right? A little bit.

Travis Lee:

You can’t

Daniel McCraine:

open it. But on the other side, the reality is there has to be a good message, which you’ve already talked About there has to be a valid offer that people actually want. How much of what you do is gimmick versus The the actual message and the crafting of the offer, the rest of the the the marketing, that goes into it. And then We’ve got follow-up questions, I’m sure, about what are some of the most fun things you’ve ever mailed. But, anyway, let’s just start with that

Travis Lee:

question. It’s a great question. So Those of you that aren’t that are just listening, I’ve got a little bank just to illustrate to you what what Daniel’s saying, we got the gimmicky stuff. Right? So we have, like, For example, we have these little bank bags. You know, remember when you went to the, you know, the retail store or the or the supermarket, and they would put all their cash in these bank bags. Right? Well, we actually mail these things. Right? So like I said, we’ll put the letter inside. We’ll actually put their postage in the mailing address right here, And so now this thing shows up in their mailbox, this this vinyl real zipper bank bank thing.

Travis Lee:

What we tell people is a couple things. So first off, is it gimmicky? Yes. But I think most advertising has a its fair share of gimmicky to it. Right? So think about think about Super Bowl commercials. Right? Every single Super Bowl commercial with very rare exception is gimmicky. Right? Because you’ve got talking frogs, and you’ve got people jumping out of airplanes. Right? I mean, so it’s all Kinda gimmicky to begin with. And so we it’s a fair question.

Travis Lee:

So we say a couple different things. First off, With your marketing, doesn’t matter if you’re using direct mail, billboards, yellow pages from eons ago, online, offline, social media email. Regardless of the media, you have to get your message open, heard, read, listened to, paid attention to. And so if your message doesn’t do any of those things, then it doesn’t matter if it’s gimmicky, if it’s not gimmicky, if we If they don’t see it and read it and hear it and listen to it, it just doesn’t matter. So that is our a number one goal with any kind of marketing, Regardless of media, regardless of what you’re going after, who you’re targeting is to get it looked at and read. Now to the second part of your question, We tell people if you send something like a bank bag again, I’m on if you’re just listening, I we have these little pill bottles, these little orange pill bottles like you get at the at the pharmacist, and we open them up and we put a message inside of there. Right? And so What we tell people is the gimmick is only going to get that attention for those first 5, 8, 10, 12 seconds, right, which is what we need. You still need a good compelling message inside matched to a good list with an offer that makes sense to them.

Travis Lee:

I mean, obviously, you know, the the extreme version is we’re not gonna we could have the best the best gimmick in the world. We could have The Shakespeare of copywriting, writing our copy. But if we are selling shade to Eskimos, we’re gonna have a tough time. Right. So all those things have to kind of be in line with each other. You’ve gotta have a good message to a good list with a good offer. And if you’ve got good in all those spots excuse me. You have good in all those spots, you end up with a great Ad, if you have just okay in any one of those 3 spots, you’re gonna have just okay results, and so we call it our 3 legged stool.

Travis Lee:

List, offer, media. When those things are all congruent, when each of the 3 legged stools are all the same length, then you have great success.

Daniel McCraine:

So a case in point, one of the worst mailing campaigns that I’m receiving right now, it’s it’s ongoing. There’s a preschool in my area Who has chosen to do every door direct postcard mailing to the entire neighborhood. And, I’m of an age I don’t have preschool children in the house, and I imagine a very small percentage of the houses in my neighborhood actually have Preschool age children. There’s a campaign

Jennifer Glass:

kids who are.

Daniel McCraine:

There’s a campaign that has completely missed the mark. Every Door Direct is not a good campaign for them. They should buy a list of households with preschool age children.

Travis Lee:

Yeah. And and to I mean, that’s exactly I mean, that’s a great illustration of that. So, you know, I’m not against like like I told you at the very beginning, I’m not against Any kind of media. We’ll use any media that gets attention, that gets and then ultimately gets results. But you’re exactly right. They were persuaded by the cheapness of the media, right, which is EDDM. And so those who don’t know, it’s every door direct mail. You buy a mail we don’t even have to buy a mailing list.

Travis Lee:

You essentially say, I so, you know, everyone has a mail carrier whether they walk around or drive around. Everyone has a mail carrier, And you say I want every person that on that route to get my message. So that’s EDDM in a nutshell. We could spend a whole topic just on that, But they’re seduced by the cheapness of it, and I see that a lot with other media. So people get seduced by email because it’s Cheap. Right? That’s another kind of one that we run into a little bit. And to your point, I think you’re exactly right. They would Probably save money in the long run by getting a list of young parents with young kids.

Travis Lee:

By the way, all of that is Easily available. It’s all I can go get a list of married couples making x amount of money in in these ZIP codes and have children under the age of 5 in the home, And now I’ve got that target they’ve got their target on their back for me, right, and I’ve zeroed in on them. And we see that a lot. We see that Just we call it just an overly broad message. And so they tried this shotgun approach. You know? They they rack the shotgun. They Shoot. They blast it.

Travis Lee:

Whatever they hit, they hit, and hopefully, it’s one of their own. Right? Hopefully, it’s somebody that they want in there. They want somebody coming in. So, I think you’re right. I think that’s a great example. They would probably save money in the long run by doing more micro targeting than just that Blast to everyone in the neighborhood.

Daniel McCraine:

And they would see an ROI on their efforts.

Travis Lee:

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Now now now who knows their math? Right? So, you know, it might be a case where, hey. If they just pick up 5 students, that might be all they need to be profitable. Right? I mean, my kids are out well out of preschool age, but when we got the first one in the preschool, the second one went into preschool. Right? So it was this. So, you know, there was kind of that trickle down effect.

Travis Lee:

So, you know, without knowing their results, Hard to make hard to hard to, you know, cast stones, but my gut tells me they’re probably doing that, casting stones and not hitting much.

Jennifer Glass:

So, Travis, let me ask you. When we’re looking at the targeting of the list because, I mean, you mentioned, like, in Daniel’s Example, if you were to go and you can get the married couple earning x with kids under 5.

Travis Lee:

Mhmm.

Jennifer Glass:

How would you I mean, obviously, there’s the avatar, the ideal prospect that every marketer needs to know. But Is there anything else, though, that would really help us nail down the demographics so that we get a better result in terms of what we’re really trying to due so that we know we’re gonna have the highest ROI possible?

Travis Lee:

So one of the things that is available to us now, and this has been around for probably 10 or 12 years now. So it’s in the direct mail world, it’s relatively new in terms of technology. We actually have these things called reverse analysis So, where we do a look alike of your current list. So we can actually let’s say you’ve got your A 1000 customers. And you’ve got your top 300, your top 20 or 30% who are your a level customers. You know, they they you know, it’s Eighty twenty will. Right? So your top 20 is gonna give you 80% of your results, and that’s that holds true for almost anything in business. We can actually take that Top 20 20%, 30%, and we can upload it and do a reverse analysis of it.

Travis Lee:

And then it’ll come back, And it won’t tell us individually what each person has, but it’ll give us the aggregate of everybody. So it’ll tell us If they’re married, if they have kids, education level, they basically give us about depending on which report we want, we run 30 to a 100 data points about that person. So I’ll give you an example of how we’ve done this in the past. I have a client, In the Midwest, I think Wichita don’t quote me on that. It’s been a couple years since we worked since we did this analysis with him, but he’s got 10 dry cleaning locations. So in the dry cleaning world, he’s like the king. Right? No one has 10 locations. So he’s he’s the big guy in his town.

Travis Lee:

Well, he’s got his list of Thousands and thousands of customers, and so we only took in his case, we only took the top 10% because Small you know, lots of people in a small clustered area. Right? So anybody that’s even taken 1 stats class knows that’s a good Makeup for a an analysis of what the makeup is. And so we ran that analysis, and it reinforced a lot of what we knew. Right? So it’s gonna be married couples. It’s gonna be white collar workers. But what we found which was surprising was that and I won’t get the number exactly right, but it was some very, you know, 86, 88, 90% of his customers still had children in the home. Now that was kind of you know, you might think, alright, dry cleaner, That makes a little bit of sense, but what happens when their kids age out? Well, for whatever reason, that was like an outlier. So that said 80, 90% had kids in the home.

Travis Lee:

We would be silly to go and buy a list that didn’t include kids in the home because 90% of his a level clients had kids in the home. Now there was a bunch of other factors too. Right? Income level, if they were married, they own 2 or more cars, right, all the stuff that you would probably think of, But that kid one was an outlier for us. Now we know we gotta get the ones with the kids. And so that’s an example of what you can do, and, you know, That’s just one example with 1 dry cleaner. Every business probably has kind of that outlier that would tell you 1 or 2 or 3 things that tell you that You have to get this.

Patricia Reszetylo:

Well and when you have data like that,

Jennifer Glass:

I mean, you could

Patricia Reszetylo:

sell them dry cleaning. You can sell them a lot of other stuff too.

Travis Lee:

Exact well, exactly. Exactly. And so he starts getting into other. Right? So now he gets into, regular laundry delivery. Right. So not just the dry cleaning stuff, but we’ll come. You leave the sack on the front porch. We take it.

Travis Lee:

By 9 PM the next day, it’s back on the front porch all folded up and ready to go. Right? So you’re exactly right. It gives you insight into other things. He’s got a commercial division on top of that, which we didn’t even talk about. But, yeah, I mean, once you’re able to pinpoint those people, marketing gets I don’t wanna say marketing gets easy because it’s always hard to sell something, But it gets easier for that for that business owner.

Daniel McCraine:

Nice. So then, Travis, there may be a a fair number of our listeners There’s who are not familiar with your company at all. Can you tell us a little bit, I’d like to go back to what kind of the core of what you do. Tell us a little bit about 3 d mail, both the company, and tell us about what is 3 d mail.

Travis Lee:

You bet. So, you know, when we started out and I’ll Show some of the more examples, and we’ll describe them in case you’re just listening. When we started this business, we were only what we call three d mail. So, again, I’ll show the bank bag again. We’ve got the little pill bottles. I’ve like I said, I brought up some more fun, show and tell stuff. We have these boomerangs. So these are real plastic boomerangs.

Travis Lee:

They actually work. You throw them, and they mostly come back to you. We use these for reactivation. Right? So, Jennifer, for your reactivation, Hey, miss mister and missus alumni, we want you back. You know, come sign you know, re sign up, reengage, whatever, but we want you back so we send these boomerangs. And so I’ll give the brief version of how we got into this business. My father owned another business. I was fortunate enough to start this business with him.

Travis Lee:

He owned another business, and we used all these little knickknacks and tchotchkes and mail pieces to grow that business. And then as we got as we as we got kind of more known as we were doing this stuff, people came up to us and said, How do you do this? What are you doing? How are you getting these pieces? And we’d say, well, we go to the we go to the dollar store, and we walk up and down the aisle until we find inspiration. Right? Well, Then it became, why are we telling other people to do this when we could just do it for them? Right? And so We started buying stuff. We had good connections with with buyers and manufacturers, so we started buying boomerangs and bank bags and things like that, And now we started selling these things. So three d mail is actually to kinda loop back to your question, we really mean three-dimensional mail. It is not postcards. It is not envelopes. Although we now have morphed into doing anything direct mail, the front door to our business are still these little pieces.

Travis Lee:

So we’ve got little bags of shredded money. Those of you that are listening, this is a we actually get shredded money From the treasury department, and then we put them in these little business card sized bags, and now we can say quit wasting your money on a, b, c, x, y, z, Or let me help you stop wasting money on a b c. Right? You know, so it really is at its core Like we talked about earlier, getting the message read, and I wish we could just send A little tiny 4 by 6 postcard and be cheap and dumb like the like the, like your preschool and do the cheapest thing possible to get the results that we need, but we know that just in marketing, that doesn’t work all the time. In fact, it rarely works. So we’ve gotta kinda do these things in order to get attention so that we do get our message read, seen, heard, and then hopefully we’ve got Good message, good market, good media so we complete that 3 legged stool. So I think I answered your question. If not, fire back at me.

Daniel McCraine:

Right. Yeah. And so the the whole point is, sometimes it’s an item that’s stuffed inside an envelope. Sometimes you’re mailing the item itself. Right?

Travis Lee:

Correct. Which is That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Daniel McCraine:

Another question that I’ve always wanted to ask you. I’ve known about you for a while. We’ve We’ve all been members of the same, marketing community for a long time, and I’ve I’ve I’ve heard about your name for a long time. But I’ve always wanted to ask you, What is the most unusual thing you have ever mailed?

Travis Lee:

That’s an easy one. So we were working we were working with a a coaching group, And they were a coaching program. So they they had a they had a franchise of coaches. Right? So big company franchise of coaches. The coaches are coaching other businesses. And so they wanted to put on a a large event, a large seminar boot camp type of thing. The coaches were all gonna bring their members, so it was kinda like It was kinda like member appreciation meets, you know, training seminar. Right? Well, to offset those costs, they wanted to bring in Sponsors who complimented what they did.

Travis Lee:

So they wanted software people and phone people and email, you know, email service providers, all the, you know, All the things that as small business owners, we would wanna be exposed to. And so they came to me and they said, we wanna do something really, really cool. This is our hit list of our best vendors. They’re gonna spend anywhere from a couple $1,000 to tens of 1,000 of dollars for boost space and all that kind of stuff. You know, your typical trade show seminar. And they said, we would give our right arm to meet with these people. So what did we do? We found mannequin right arms, put them into boxes, and with a note that said, We would give our right arm for 15 minutes of your time to talk about our upcoming event. Now I butchered that.

Travis Lee:

It it was sexier and funner, even more fun than that, but But we like I said, we found we found these long boxes that fit exactly a right arm mannequin arm. We were able to force source mannequin arms, And then we put a bunch of stuff. You know, we put a sales letter inside. I think we put, like, kind of this straw Stuff in it to cushion it. Right? So when they took it out, it kinda went everywhere, and, that is by far the craziest thing we’ve ever mailed. We’re right manic right right arms from mannequins. And so that one, did well for him, did great. They were happy.

Travis Lee:

Yep. They probably got a couple. Hey. Why are you sending me this, like, arm? This is really kinda strange. But for the ones who got it, the ones who laughed, the ones who bought, That’s all we’re really concerned about. Right? I mean

Daniel McCraine:

Right. Right.

Travis Lee:

If we piss off 10% of people to really have fun with our other 90%, I say mission accomplished.

Daniel McCraine:

Oh, that sounds like a lot of fun. I have had friends in the past who worked for the USPS who have Told me if you could attach a stamp to it, we would mail a watermelon.

Travis Lee:

So yeah. Yeah. So there’s

Jennifer Glass:

watermelon. Well

Travis Lee:

It’s been several years now. And when I and I’m talking 14 ish years, but there there, the I think I don’t wanna put a name to it. There was an association out there. Don’t remember who it was. Not important. They went and mailed, like, 25 different things. One of them was just a balloon with with a stamp with the proper postage on it and with a with a with a marker, they wrote the address on it. It got delivered.

Travis Lee:

They mailed, if you’ve ever been to Hawaii, I think it’s the big island. You can actually mail coconuts. So you actually paint on the, You paint on the address with some you know, the little sticky paint they got there. They put the postage on it, and you mail little coconuts. The most amazing one that I saw with this study, again, 14, 15 years ago now, is they took a clear envelope With a $100 bill. So $100 bill clear all I mean, it was it there was no mistake that they were mailing a $100 bill. They mailed again, I don’t remember the specifics of it of it, but they mailed multiple of them. It wasn’t like it was 1.

Travis Lee:

It was more than 1. Every single one of them got delivered. Every single one. $100 bill. Everybody who saw it knew exactly what it was. So that’s kind of my My what’s the right word here? That’s kind of my excuse for the post office. So most of us when we when we when we go to the when we our experience with the post office is long lines, and waiting to mail a package for Christmas, and there’s 72 people in line, and the 4 people at the counter take their break all at the same time. Right? That’s That’s what we all experience from a retail perspective as a post office, but their core job of getting the mail delivered On time and to the right people.

Travis Lee:

They are actually exceedingly good at it. Right? When you think about the billions of pieces of mail that they deliver Every single year, and the and the and the the default rate being almost nothing. I mean, it’s compared to the Billions of pieces they send. Their core business of getting your letter across the country for 60 something cents in 3 to 4 days is actually phenomenal. So to your point, you can mail it.

Daniel McCraine:

Way, email cannot claim that kind of a delivery rate.

Travis Lee:

Not even and not even not not an not an open rate, not a delivery rate, not an engagement rate. You know, the The USPS does these big studies every 5 years. So they the last one they did in 2020, the next one will be in 5 years. They found that Direct mail has an average shelf life of 17 days, meaning it sits in your house for 17 days. What email sits in an inbox for 17 days. That’d be on the podcast.

Patricia Reszetylo:

But that’s an exception.

Travis Lee:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s, you know, procrastination is different than, you know, you know, actually Seadily with the email, but but point taken. Maybe.

Jennifer Glass:

So, Travis, let me ask you. We talked about the deliverability, And that brings me to a different thought, and that is seeding yourself to get your peace. In email, of course, it’s really easy just to make sure that you’re including yourself on there. Sometimes in direct mail campaigns, you’re going to want to do that as well, for various reasons, but I’m wondering, what is your guideline in terms of seeding yourself? Is it all the time, some of the time, depends, none of the time.

Travis Lee:

I so just to so seeding yourself on the list is a great question, by the way. That just to clarify, that means we’re putting our name or people we know on the list so that we know when the mail gets delivered. That’s what we need. So we’re gonna seed the list with addresses. So I’ll use my PO box at the office. I’ll use my home address. Like I said, I work with my dad, so we’ll use we’ll use their home address. Big general rule of thumb, you should always be seeding your email your mailing list With at least 1 trustworthy mailing address, one that you can you control, you look at, you know when it arrives.

Travis Lee:

I always, Now I say always and, you know, whenever anybody says always, you know it’s not always. Right? But 99% of the time, I will put my work address and my home address on anything I mail out for our company so I know what that it’s getting out. Now having said that, Over the last couple years, the US Postal Service has a technology now that we can tap into that will Literally tell you at a per piece level which ones are being delivered and when they expect them to be delivered. So we call this USPS mail tracking. It’s actually a little trademark name they have for it. This is relatively new. It doesn’t do it for everything, So you can’t mail out, you know, 5 little postcards and do this. Right? So it needs to have it needs to have a a barcode on it is kind of the is the deal.

Travis Lee:

So you need to be sending it presort mail. You need to be sending a package, things like that. It can’t just you can’t just throw a stamp on a letter and then track it. But then what we’re able to do is we have a dashboard where you can actually go in and see when each piece got delivered. So That now gives us kind of this level of confidence that we know these things are being delivered. Now I use that technology when we send mail, And I still put my own mailing address on it, right, just to be double sure. So, you know, now you can take that technology. Let’s say you’re let’s say you’re mailing your in house list for an offer.

Travis Lee:

To your point, the the the alumni one that you did earlier was awesome. So you’ve got all their information. You’ve got their name. You’ve got their address. You’ve got their emails. You got their phone numbers. You know, you’ve got their full Full suite of information. Well, now what can happen is we can use that mail tracking technology, know that 97% of them are gonna be delivered on Tuesday, Wednesday.

Travis Lee:

We can send out an email on Monday saying check your mailbox. This is coming. It’s really important. We can then send another email on Thursday that Says, did you get it? It arrived. I know it arrived. I can see it. Right? And so now you can use all this technology to your advantage. When we talked at the very beginning, I said there’s some technology advances in in the USPS that we’re taking advantage of now.

Travis Lee:

That’s one of them. So Seed yourself always, but now they have other checks and balances that the post office is pushing out there Because of the bad reputation. Right? So that no. No. No. You can’t tell us it didn’t get delivered. This got scanned. It got delivered, and here’s the time it went onto the onto the post office.

Travis Lee:

I don’t think they scan it when it goes into the mailbox, but the last scan is when it goes onto that onto that last mile delivery. Wow.

Jennifer Glass:

So here’s another question completely, moving past that somebody who’s looking to get started. Yeah. They never dealt with direct mail before, and they’re listening to this because they’ve been sold email, So, you know, Facebook only kinda thing. And they’re hearing, well, there’s so many more advantages to direct mail. What does somebody really need to know to start planning out a good direct mail campaign? And is there a magic budget number that would really, like, put them over the top? And, again, I know that that’s really open ended in terms like, well, what are you trying to get and all of that. But is there, like, you need a 1,000 pieces to go out to get the most possible return. What is the you know, how would someone get started?

Travis Lee:

Yeah. So so the to answer the second question first is It depends to a large degree. So what kind of budget do you need? What size of list do you need? It’s going to depend largely on the universe that you serve. Right. And so if I’m a b to b marketer and there’s only 500 people in my world that can use what I have, right, whether it be Software, a piece of equipment, or whatever. Right? When we get into the b to b space, we get really niche sometimes. Right? Patricia, I know you and I have done all kinds of over the years where we get really, really niched with some of your companies. Well so that might mean all 500 in that universe.

Travis Lee:

Right? So if you work with manufacturer, it might be trying to reach out over time to all 500 of them. Now if you’re a restaurant and you’re in a big city and you’ve got A half a 1000000 people who conceivably be a customer of yours, well, now we can kinda do pockets of that area. Right? Big general rule of thumb if you’re gonna be a consumer mailer. You probably need to be looking at a couple 1,000 pieces. Doesn’t need to be tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, But with a few 1,000 pieces, generally speaking, you can probably know at at a very high level if it’s working or not. Right? And so you send out a piece and you get goose egg, you get nobody calling. Alright. Some some list off for media, one of them is wrong.

Travis Lee:

But if you send out 500 pieces, alright, we’re getting phone calls for this. We’re getting inquiries. We got a few sales. Alright. Now let’s try to Expand that a little bit. Can we go to the next group of 500? Can we go to the next group of 500? So that’s what I encourage people to do for the most part is to Test small and then grow bigger and bigger and bigger as needed. To your first question about how can people Kinda know where to start. This is completely self serving, but I’ve got a book.

Travis Lee:

It’s called the simple three step process, that ensures direct mail success. This really is a one zero one guide. We talk about list. We talk about offer. We talk about media. That is going to give you that 30,000 foot view That you need to know, am I am I on the right track? Am I going the right direction? And, again, it’s completely self serving, but if you go to travisalee.com, that’s my name, travis, the letterale.com, You can pick up a copy for it for about 3 or $4. So, again, completely self serving, but if you’re looking to how do I know this? How do I know if I’m going to the right direction And not have to take, like, a 17 hour course. It’s about a 90 minute read.

Travis Lee:

You can know if there’s a place in your marketing funnel for this kind of stuff relatively quickly.

Jennifer Glass:

And the follow-up on that is, is there a particular amount of time that I have to budget for from concept to out the door fulfillment.

Travis Lee:

Good question. A lot of that is going to depend like a lot of marketing, are we willing to pay for speed? Are we willing to To wait. And so if you wanna do it yourself, a lot of that is going to depend on how quickly you move. Right? So In our world, we have a lot of do it yourselfers, so they come to us with a a message, a letter. They wanna send a certain thing. Yep. So if you wanna streamline that, you would hire an agency to do that. Right? And so they have the copywriting.

Travis Lee:

They’ve got the list. They’ve got all that stuff. So some of that’s gonna depend on the complexity of the job. Again, if we’re a restaurant and we’re offering 2 for 1 appetizers Or we wanna send out a birthday card to everyone. Isn’t that I mean, we can go get a list of everyone with a birthday in October and send them a free a free meal. Right? That can be done relatively quickly. But if you’ve got a more complicated sale, if you’ve got, you know, If it’s just a little bit more involved than you know? Everyone gets what a restaurant does. Right? So we show up with a restaurant offer.

Travis Lee:

We get it. Dentists to a certain degree. But if you sell anything that’s complex or a little bit you know, need some more explanation, You know, it can often take, even when hiring an agency, 4 to 8 weeks to get something in the mail. So, Fairly broad answer, but because it’s it it just kinda depends a lot of the times as well.

Jennifer Glass:

Thank you. So, I guess, if we’re looking at the timing, are there seasons when It may take longer, like, other than Christmas time when the mail is crazy with all of the additional packages. Are there other times of the year where it may move quicker or slower through the system just to build that in also? Yeah.

Travis Lee:

For the most part, no. Thanksgiving to Christmas is going to be a bottleneck. You can add a day or 2 here or there for most deliveries, but even then, you’re only adding a day or 2 for the most part. It’s not like it adds weeks, Or even a week. But if you’re pretty much from January 1 to Thanksgiving, you’re gonna get your mail delivered. Now there’s different levels of delivery. Right? So 1st class is gonna get delivered in 3 to 5 days, presort, which, you know, bulk rate, c class mail. It’s been called all kinds of things over the years.

Travis Lee:

That’s gonna take 7 to 12 days. But for the most part, it’s Pretty darn consistent. Like I said, the you know, in my little rant with the post office, you know, half hour ago or so, they really do get the mail delivered well. And if they’re core competency, they’re good at that. Now when you flood the market with 300% more mail because there’s packages and Christmas cards. You know? Think of all the cards you get over Christmas from your friends and your family and your neighbors. Now multiply that by 300,000,000 people, and so now you’ve got a lot more mail. But even then, those things get mailed awfully quick.

Travis Lee:

So, I think the better question and the better answer is, What are the seasonalities of your business? Right? So where is the time that is there a time that’s better than not? Right? And so Yeah. Gyms and weight loss, companies make, like, 80% of their business in the 1st 2 months of the year. Well, we have to be marketing in Jan December, January, and February if we’re selling weight loss or gyms.

Patricia Reszetylo:

Yeah.

Travis Lee:

And we’re probably worthless mailing October, November, December. Right. Because I mean, I guess we could make the pitch, hey. Get fit for Christmas, get fit for this, but it’s gonna be a tougher sell. So it’s more what are the seasonalities? What are the ebbs and flows of your business and your industry? We slow down over Christmas. We I mean, from Thanksgiving to from Thanksgiving to Christmas, we slow down. And so the challenge for us every year is what can we do So that this we so that December doesn’t suck. Right? Because every business has those ebbs and flows.

Travis Lee:

And so, you know, as much as you can, you want those Ebbs and flows to be, you know, more linear and not so up and down. So

Daniel McCraine:

Sure. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, Travis, this has been a a fantastic conversation, and we’ve had a lot of fun already. I I think this might have to be a a multipart, conversation because I know, you could go on and on and on. I could you

Travis Lee:

give me a stage and a microphone, I could do days and days and days on this stuff. Yeah.

Daniel McCraine:

We do wanna be respectful of your time. Thank you. Of course. And and so thank you so much for being, On the the show with us today, I do wanna give you a a couple minutes here. You mentioned already where people could go to get your book. That was travisalea.com, to pick up a copy of that book. So if anyone wanted to reach out to you, if they wanted to engage your Services, what would be some other ways that someone could get in contact with you?

Travis Lee:

Well, thanks. I appreciate the opportunity. If you’re new to direct mail, that book is gonna be the best Place to start. So if you’re wondering where to go, how do I start, what’s a list, how do I get a mailing list, what’s an offer? So if, like, any of those things We’re like, I don’t really know what that is. The book is the best place to start. You can also check us out at our main website, which has all The chotchkies I showed, the bank bags, the boomerangs, the pill bottles, and that’s 3 dmailresults.com. So I’ll spell it for you. The number 3, the letter d, m a I l r e s u l t s dot com, and you can go there and you can You know, actually, if you’re just listening, I know I’ve showed it to you, but those of you are that are just listening, you can see the stuff we talked about, see the bank bank, see the pill bottle.

Travis Lee:

There’s a contact us form in there to get in contact with my team. They can help you out. You know, you can always give us a call. 888-25018 Team 34, we got people here to answer the phones as well. We’re not shy to talk to people. So between those 3 ways, those are the best ways to get in touch with us, And then my team can kinda point you in the right direction. Okay. I think this is what you need here.

Travis Lee:

This is what you need here. Hey. You’re ready to go. Let’s get something in the mail for you. So Those are the best places to reach out.

Daniel McCraine:

Fantastic. And we’ll make sure that those websites and the phone number is listed in the description. So again, if you’re listening to this, make sure you check the description of this episode, and you can get the the websites and the phone number again. Patricia, I know I’m gonna give you the last word since you’ve done a little bit of work with, Travis and with his company in the past. Give him a little bit of a shout out here if you would.

Patricia Reszetylo:

Well, I I always go back to one day where I, You know, went out and I got my mail, and I got one of those bank bags. I don’t even remember who it was that mailed this thing to me, But I remember the bag. It just really, really stands out.

Travis Lee:

Yep. Yeah. And we’ve been working with Patricia off and on for, well, probably close to 12 years now. You go back you go back to our old office, which which was 8 years ago, and I know we worked with you several years before that. So

Patricia Reszetylo:

I’ve, yeah, I’ve been around that particular marketing club for,

Jennifer Glass:

Oh my god. It was 2008,

Patricia Reszetylo:

I think, when I started.

Travis Lee:

Yep. And that’s about the time that we would have started this business. So they all kind of run together. Was it 2008 or 9? All I remember is that the economy sucked, and it wasn’t the best time to start a business. That’s all I remember.

Patricia Reszetylo:

And here was Patricia doing? Patricia was importing Rocks from Pakistan. Ship them across the ocean. Shipping them across the US. Ugh. What insane. But

Daniel McCraine:

Yep. Nice. Nice. So, apparently, it turns out that a recession is a great to start a business.

Travis Lee:

It’s it’s not horrible. It’s not horrible. I mean, it it it’s you know, we joke around here recessions, You know, if you can keep your head above water, it sure calls the herd a lot over you know? So it’s

Daniel McCraine:

Right.

Travis Lee:

You know? Every time there’s been a dip, we usually come back better. But, You know? Yeah. So you still lose a little bit of hair, and there’s a few sleepless nights in there, but but but we push on.

Daniel McCraine:

Nice. Yep. Yeah. Well, again, Travis, thank you so much for being with us today. And so with that, everyone, we’ll go ahead and close out this episode. And this has been another episode of It’s the Bottom Line That Matters, podcast. So we thank you for listening today. We invite you to, to like, to subscribe, and to share our podcast with others.

Daniel McCraine:

So thank you very much for listening today.