Aaron Conant 0:18

Happy Tuesday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant, I'm the Co-founder and Managing Director of BWG Connect is a networking knowledge sharing group with 1000s of brands, startup to fortune 100, who do exactly that we network and knowledge share together to stay on top of the newest trends, digital strategies, I connect with 30 to 40 brands a week somewhere in there, just to stay on top of the Digital Trends. So if anybody ever wants to have a cool just, you know, digital strategy conversation, just ping me after the call today or shoot me an email anytime, always happy to set aside some time to connect. We don't sell anything here. We're a networking group. So it's always just a fun conversation. You're doing a lot of help right now with partner selection as well. So if you just want some insights on Hey, Amazon agencies performance marketing, hey, who do I work with for direct mail, or a mobile messaging and SMS? international expansion covers pretty much all those topics and more than happy to kind of share the shortlist of those recommended providers that come through this group networking group as a whole. So that means that a couple housekeeping items as we kick it off here, number one, a, we're starting three to four minutes after the hour. And just so you know, we're gonna wrap up with three to four minutes to go, we're give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. The other side is we want this to be as educational and informational and interactive as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question, you can drop into the chat there, you can drop into the q&a, or you can always email it to me, A-A-R-O-N@BWGConnect.com. And we'll get those questions answered real time. That being said, even if it's an hour after the call, if it's tomorrow, if it's next week, and you have a digital question that comes up, and it's anything across the digital front, don't hesitate to reach out, shoot me a quick email, we'll get you an answer and under an hour, under an hour under a day is what we aim for, we just have a lot of people in the network that we can ping and kind of get some insights. Now, as I noted, you know, talking with 30 to 40 brands a week, and when the same topic comes up or you know, curiosity or pain point as a whole. That's how we get the topics for our calls, and one this come up more and more recently. So I would say going back 15 to 18 months ago, not so much. Right now, a ton. And this is the idea of direct mail. So obviously, we've done a lot of calls around performance marketing, email marketing, you know, SMS mobile messaging, whatever it might be SEO, SEM, but not a lot in this space. But it's come up enough that we thought we reach out to the highest recommended partner in our network recommended by brands in it for direct mail as a whole. And so yeah, great friends, partners, supporters of the network over at Lob and Tatiana is on the on the line today to kind of give us an overview, but also answer as many questions as we can throw at her over the next you know, 50, 55 minutes. So, Tatiana, thanks for jumping on the hot seat today. And we'd love to have like, you know, brief intro yourself. Lob would be awesome. We'd kind of kick this off sound good?

Tatiana Afanasyeva 3:23

Yep, absolutely. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for having me today. I'm really excited to talk about direct mail. You know, it's definitely as you mentioned, we there's such an increased interest in this channel especially lately. So I am absolutely happy to answer any questions you might have course My name is Tatiana, I run marketing over at Lob. And we are the leading platform for direct mail. I personally spend most of my days talking to our customers, walking them through best practices and actually creating community of customers as well. So I you know, I spend literally my days and nights thinking about direct mail. I'm incredibly passionate about that channel. You know, I personally, I look through my mail every single day. And it's really exciting to actually see some of the customers that I talk to every single day, it's so exciting to actually receive some of those pieces of mail. So I am here to again walk you through some of the best practices really how you should be thinking about direct mail in the first place. And also let's my one ask, I guess let's make this as conversational as possible. Nobody wants to sit through an hour of a lecture that is absolutely not what I want to do. So please ask all the hard questions. I'm absolutely here to be in the hot seat and very excited to walk you through some of these best practices and also let's just you know if you have any questions at all, let's just get them all out and open and hopefully I'll be able to be helpful in this time.

Aaron Conant 4:39

Awesome. So before we kick this off quick reminder you have questions drop in the chat drop into the q&a section there the GoToWebinar panel or email them to me directly A-A-R-O-N@BWGConnect.com. So first question that I have before we kick this off is Do you ever get like flyers in the mails from companies that you're working with and you're like, yes!

Tatiana Afanasyeva 5:00

Absolutely, some of my favorite brands, sometimes Actually, no one wants to talk to our possible customers. Oh, my goodness, I really want this as a customer because I love this brand. And I want to get some discounts. So, yes, not every single time and actually. Now, you know, we are pretty much in every single household. So every time you look through your meal, they're guaranteed there's a piece of mail that was sent to customers. So now you know, it's, it's guaranteed, right? Every time you just play this game, like which one is it going to be? So yes, we are excited.

Aaron Conant 5:31

I love it. And so I see, so you have a deck here with Lob and you know, kind of kick off the conversation if there's key things in here. And then we'll just ask questions as we go sound good?

Tatiana Afanasyeva 5:40

Great. Absolutely. Well, so welcome, everybody. Again, the whole point of our conversation today is to actually be just very tactical, and walk you through, if you're thinking about implementing direct mail campaigns, we'll just kind of walk you through the process that you should be thinking about, and walk you through some of the best practices to consider, especially as maybe you just getting started with direct mail. If you have any questions at all, after anything that we covered today, please feel free to just reach out to us directly, or you can just send us an email at hello@lob.com. And then please do ask questions as we go through the presentations. So it was that? Should we kick this off?

Aaron Conant 6:16

Awesome. Yeah, please.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 6:17

Great. So just to get started a little bit more information about Lob specifically, you know, we as you can probably see, by my enthusiasm, we live and breathe direct mail. And really, the company mission is the reason why we started is to really bring mail into the 21st century, it is a fundamental, it's a very important communication channel. Yet there has been almost no innovation in the last 30 years, right. So when we talk to customers very often their processes haven't changed in a really long time. And that's why law exists, right? This is why we exist as a company. And really, our focus is to bring your direct mail into the same technology stack as you currently have as your digital channels. Right, we fundamentally believe that sending direct mail piece should be as easy as sending an email. And that's how we've developed our technology. And really our focus in ensuring that direct mail is fully integrated, it is 100% personalized, it can be fully measured, right? It's no longer this like black box that exists in the past. And it's also really fast, right? And that's kind of the core areas that we focus on as a company. So my favorite topic to discuss first, and this is the question that I get so many times, why should I be doing direct mail? Right? We live in this incredibly digital world? Why should I be especially for the folks that have never done direct mail? Right? So that's the number one question is like, why should I be doing this? And the answer to that is pretty simple. Direct Mail is just incredibly effective as a channel, right. And sometimes we actually don't even know that we've recently did this really big study was Mintel, they are a leading industry research organization where we've surveyed over 200 marketing leaders across eight different industries. And this is what we found, right. So we found this like really incredible enthusiasm for direct mail 64% of those that we surveyed said the direct mail has the best response rate out of any other channel that they're using, including email. And you can see that right, so response rates on email are definitely a lot smaller. We've also had 60% of respondents said that Marketing Leaders, so really high Action Pack the highest ROI out of direct mail versus any other channel. And then lastly, majority of that was with surveyed actually expected direct mail to keep an increase in the direct mail volume to increase in the next couple of five years. And this is to me just an indicator, right? So that the people that are doing direct mail, just find it really, really successful as a channel. And this is interesting, because what we find is that this is they're seeing this results despite of having a lot of limitations to that technology stack. Right. So even though you know that you're seeing this high response rate, it is still there's still room for a lot of improvement if you actually start optimizing, and that really introduced it technology in your direct mail process. And this is something to me, no, like I spend all my days talking to customers. And then just like seeing the server's response, just kind of really solidify that, you know, what we already know by talking to our customers. So the next question might be is, Well, clearly you knows direct mail is incredibly effective. But there's still a lot of challenges, right that customers are seeing when it comes to their direct mail campaigns. And so again, when we did the survey, the major challenges that we kind of saw across these three, the first 56% of respondents said that cost was their major consideration. cupsogue dealing with direct mail campaigns. 50% said that they struggle to maintain reliable address lists, and then just like data quality in general when it comes to the direct mail campaigns, and then 45% of respondents said that time, the amount of time that it takes to set up a campaign because it's really challenged when it comes to their direct mail execution. And the fact that they're having these struggles with direct mail show that you know, like really there's technology is lacking when it comes to this industry. All right. So the fact that you're still struggling with addresses, right, think about your email, usually, you know, like, that's not even a consideration. Right. So and even like, I suppose, speaking to a customer this morning, and he was selling on time, I think time is also like just such a big challenge, because a direct mail execution, like literally speaking to one customer this morning, it took them three months to set up one campaign, clearly, you know, they're really large organization that sends millions of pieces of mail every single week. But the fact that it takes three months to set up a direct mail campaign is just not acceptable. Right. So and these are the challenges. I think this is why a lot of times, you know, folks, just shy away from starting the direct mail campaign. Right. So the because of these key challenges, and especially now if you're leaning Alenia marketing organization, I can see how this could be a big bottleneck.

Aaron Conant 10:46

So really quick, a question that comes in, are you able to do? So you said, You're talking with brands all day, every day? Are you able to do an audit? Because if people look at it, and they say, Hey, I'm not in 64%? You know, it's not I'm not one of 64% that says it's the highest one? You know, they're going back to the previous slide. They are you doing an audit? Like? I mean, people want to know, how much time should it take? Yes, right. What should the cost be? Are you doing an audit on these in these calls?

Tatiana Afanasyeva 11:16

Yes, that's exactly where we start, right. So especially if you have been doing direct mail, and you feel like, Look, it looks like you know, based on our best practices, and we definitely have best in class, we're going to have different buckets, right? So and a lot of times, our customers will go from one bucket to another to another, but ultimately wants to get them to best in class. But not everybody is going to start there. Right. So very often, the first thing that we do is action audit to essentially tell you where you are in your direct mail sophistication, right. And like, honestly, a lot of times folks start on those like earlier phases where a lot of things are not automated, right. And it doesn't mean that you're not seeing that high ROI. And that's really where we just partnered together. That's, you know, that's what we do to in order to gradually walk you through best in class, right? And best in class, you know, this is where you just see such a tremendous performance. But looking to be quite honest, it's not magically going to happen overnight, right? You don't go from maybe like, actually not seeing that much ROI and spending three months of executing campaigns to like that, you know, the magical world where things that just fill out, and it will take a little bit of time to get there. But this is where you know, as long as you partner with the right provider, you can absolutely get to best in class.

Aaron Conant 12:19

So you're helping with an evaluation like how do you how do you evaluate, you know, the legacy? I think there's two, two sides, right? We got, you know, people on the line that this would be brand new, they just be kicking it off, or they dabbled in it. Not a lot to unplug, and then there's others that have used it. And it's either really performing well. And that's fantastic. And then there's the ones that hasn't performed but looks like it should. There's new technology that's out there.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 12:43

Absolutely.

Aaron Conant 12:44

How do you evaluate, that legacy direct mail platform? Versus everything else.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 12:49

Yeah. So you know, so we almost do like almost two audits, we start off with just your technology sophistication, right? So we're looking to your technology stack, we're looking to your data, where does it live? Right, we start there. And then we go into direct mail evaluation as well, because there are definitely certain things that may be even outside of your direct mail. And actually, I'll cover some of those best practices a little bit later in the presentation.

Aaron Conant 13:07

Awesome. Love it.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 13:08

Yeah, actually cover it. All right. So let's start off. Give me one second here. So you know, basically, you can see this, you know, like direct mail can be incredibly effective, right? So it is definitely trying to like and lead to a lot of ROI and high response rate. So you know, where do we start? So direct mail, if done right, can give you a lot of competitive advantage, right? So you can connect. And to be honest, a lot of your competitors are probably already doing that, right? We're just see this increase interest in direct mail. And at this point, you know, I would probably assume that, you know, if you're not doing that a lot of your competition are and the reason why they are doing that is because it is that channel that can lead to really high ROI and could be that competitive advantage for you. The key advantages are you can connect to his high to reach leads, right? So we do find that there are certain instances where Imagine if somebody unsubscribe from your email, or your digital communication, there's no other way for you to target that. Right. So versus you can still send them a direct mail piece right. So this could essential direct mail could be your secret weapon of connecting to not only to hard to reach leads, but also ensure that you know, there's this another touch point that you completely missing out. And right now, it is also effective, just very, very effective. When done was the right targeting right. So I'm getting like I'll go through some of those best practices. And really the way to think and where direct mail can be incredible advantage for you is when it's not just siloed as an individual channel, but when you're integrating that as part of your omni channel communication. Let's think about this. Now. You are leveraging email you're leveraging retargeting, but there is one more channel that you're missing out on, right so it just by introducing that in your omni channel communication strategies that could lead to a significantly higher ROI. So we'll get into all of those practices. But I want to start But just thinking like, Where should we start? And really starts with? What should the question that we get, like, you know, the first question we get when we start working with a customer is, what should my direct mail programs look like? Right. And this is kind of like where the first place to start. So let's just get straight into it. And this is where you know, we'd like to kind of connect it to something that you're already very familiar with. And that is email. And to be honest, actually, one of the best ways to get started quickly with direct mail is to by actually thinking about your current email address, like what you're doing in email. So let's sort of the first thing is quick cadence, right, so your direct mail should be very, very rapid. It should be just like email, you can design and roll out your email marketing campaigns in an afternoon, right. And there's really no reason why it should take you months to set up your direct mail campaign. So with modern technology, you can also set up a direct mail campaigns literally in the afternoon. And we have many of our customers that you know that they're currently operating exactly how they do email, right, it takes them only like an hour, two hours to set up that direct mail campaign. And this is really what you should be expected currently from a direct mail vendors. The second one is producing the whole setup and production of direct mail, it's really should be effortless, your organization doesn't have to worry about how to get your email from your outbox to recipients inbox, right, you literally hit send on your email campaigns. And that's it, it's kind of like magic happens and all of your emails goes out. And this is really how your direct mail campaign should also be operated at the moment. And also, you know, the next thing we talk about a lot is, you know, kind of this contract negotiation trends. And one thing that is really weird about direct mail that is very much just a legacy process. It's very often you have to negotiate with your vendors about every single campaign that goes out, right? Just imagine if you had to do that with email. But if you want to send like 10,000 emails one day, and then like another 20,000 emails next day, you will never even think about the fact that you'd have to renegotiate your contract right with your email vendor. And unfortunately, that exists within direct mail right now. And there's really absolutely no need for that. Right. So So as you're talking to your vendor, you have to ensure that you can literally send one email one day and then like 1000 emails The next day, and there's no negotiation right, your direct mail system should be able to accommodate that.

Aaron Conant 17:22

Really quick, I want to jump in because last question is literally going through my mind as well. You know, when you put up the last slide was, can you Okay, can you speak on best practices for lookalike targeting, our direct mail is going well, the past customers, but we want to expand it prospecting. So look alike. Love to hear, love it Paul, that great question. And just reminder to others. If you have questions, drop in the Questions tab, chat them over or email them to me.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 17:48

Yeah. So we, you know, like part of our presentation is going to be going through the best type of campaigns and actually definitely be talking about look alike audience, it is a perfect, perfect place to start with direct mail, we see a lot of customers who have really great success, especially if you have you know, one thing where direct mail can be really, really effective is the more you know about your customers, right, the more conviction you have about that look alike audience clear the better results you're going to get. Right? So if you have a lot of confidence, like, Look, we're actually we're working with a custom Candy Company, right? And they really, really knew their audience, like I definitely wasn't their database. Right. So they knew the new locations, then you kind of certain demographics. And when they did their look alikes, they saw tremendous ROI. We also to be quite honest, we also saw other customers that didn't have success in their look alike audiences. But it's because they're I think they were just have there's too many hypothesis and whether look alike audiences versus actual proper look alike audience, right. So that to me would be just canals flip and right back to you is that it can be incredibly effective. It all depends on how confident you are in the quality of that look alike audience. But to me, you know, like one thing to keep thinking about direct mail is think about it as like any other channel, right? So when you think about your Google ads, right, you wouldn't start with one campaign, right? You have multiple campaigns running your AV test and everything. So an exact same way. That's how you need to think about your direct mail campaigns, is that an exact same way you will test like, you know, 510, maybe more different campaigns. And you might find that, hey, for us as a company, maybe look alike audience works, maybe it doesn't interpret it, but it still doesn't mean that you cannot make direct mail successful for your other champ, right for you other type of campaign. So my number one, you know, people always ask me, like, what's the best campaign that I should be running? And like, I can't tell you that, right? Because it's all about testing experiments. And what you'll find there are things that will work for your audience and your demographic, but you have to figure that out yourself. As long as you find a vendor that allows you to be able to do that easily. Right? So like, test that right and find out whether it's going to work for you or not. So it's almost like a challenge right back to you to try it out.

Aaron Conant 19:51

No, I love it because it's like, it's like anything else, right? it you can't do one experiment experiment, right? You've got to do multiple to get to your end goal. And then you know, take that data and crunch it and then see if it worked or not, and find the one that work, change one variable eight different ways. And rinse repeat over and over again.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 20:11

Well, and see. And that's, that's actually, that's my challenge to everybody here, right is that, like, Look, I can guarantee you that it's going to be in front of your audience. So they will look at it. Right, the rest is kind of to you, right, so in to ensure that the message is relevant that the offer is relevant, that is personalized, right, that's almost like a challenge back to the marketers, what the what we can guarantee is that somebody will look like your audience will look at that direct mail piece.

Aaron Conant 20:34

No, awesome, I think what people struggle with the conversations that I'm having is kind of the exactly what you kind of laid out here. But even the previous concerns, how do I get it going, if I have limited, I have limited time, I need to prove an ROI, you know, I don't have additional cost is it gonna be a pain in the butt to deal with, you don't have time for that. And they they understand the digital space, or they have an agency that's running, you know, performance marketing for them. So it's a little bit easier to say, hey, run with this, or you have an internal team. So I am loving kind of the, hey, this is a stepwise approach, like step one, you got to find the right partner to help you do this, that's not that's going to be cost effective, that's going to allow you to do you know, multiple different testing campaigns without, you know, charging you a different rate every single time. But then the starting point is plug in with something simple, like email, and run with it.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 21:28

You know, and that's, you know, that's really To me, it's like the what you should expect from your vendor, is that right? It's like, it should be super easy to get started, it should be really easy for you to experiment and actually be able to get started. But it shouldn't take you three months to just like be able to send out a direct mail campaign, right? That's absolutely. Now there is technology that allows you to do that seamlessly. And then kind of the rest is also you know, like just as long as you find the right partner, I think you'll be successful.

Aaron Conant 21:50

Yeah, I mean, are there other like, then how do people leverage current vendor relationships as a whole to not completely upset the applecart? Right. I mean, you know, you want to modernize a direct mail program, if you have an old one, maybe you want to put a new one, you might already have some current vendors in place, you don't want to upset but we'd love to hear how you leverage 15 minutes.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 22:12

Exactly. And you know what there are and we actually have multiple customers where there are multiple vendors. And really what we started is, we really, I think the value of this modern technology is really the deep personalization. Right? So for example, maybe you have a vendor that runs your kind of typical, like acquisition campaigns, right, that is on autopilot, but you want to try something a lot more sophisticated, like a lot more targeted, a lot more personalized. That's where we tend to start off right with, and it's very common for you to actually have like multiple different vendors handling different types of campaigns. But the ones where are, you know, this technology really makes sense is where you have a lot of data, you could do a lot of personalization. But to be honest, if you're just trying to send like a dear resident postcard, you know, like, you probably are better off working with, you know, like somebody who can just like send that in mouse, what we're finding is, you know, there is, if you have a lot more information, when we get a lot more targeted, you want to see a lot more ROI, that's when you can actually kind of think about those, like very personalized campaigns. And that's why this technology is.

Aaron Conant 23:11

Awesome. Love it.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 23:13

Alright, so just kind of the last thing on this slide, direct, you know, I kind of just touched upon this is that, you know, kind of the modern dark media in the same way that your email works is can be completely, completely personalized to the individual recipient, right. And that's what we touched upon, is that, you know, all the information that you have about your customer can be put in a physical piece of mail in the exact same way that you email, right. And that's kind of this is the parallels that we have with email. And that's why you know, very often, we would have even like the team that's currently handling email is the team that will actually help out on the first direct mail campaign. So because we've even had companies that take the exact same, almost like templates, so they do an email, and they literally take the same HTML, and they slightly adjust that right, and they start working with direct mail. So that's the you know, something that if you're familiar, or if you're currently running sophisticated email campaigns, you know, that's just something to think about.

Aaron Conant 23:59

I mean, there was another question that came in was just around who typically handles this within the organization? Is it? Is it a separate person? Is it you know, is I mean, you just said this email team is it is that commonly who it falls to at the beginning?

Tatiana Afanasyeva 24:11

So depends on your organization writes, and we'll get into that a little bit. But if you have a very small and lean team, very often, this would sit within somebody who is handling your email or handling your CRM, right. So somebody who is kind of like, very familiar with your data, or because data is absolutely key for this to be successful. So that and then sometimes, you know, as you start seeing more ROI, right, as you're starting scaling your campaigns, this is when we actually do see a dedicated person. So start off with somebody handling email and direct mail, then if you see you see success rate, then clearly add more resources. But we do these teams tend to stick within digital organization, right. And that's kind of a little bit of a shift, where traditionally You know, sometimes direct mail extra set, sometimes even outside of marketing, where we see that that there's like a full separate team. And now we're seeing more and more of this in our customers, most of the folks that we work with tend to be part of the digital team, right. And that's when I was like, that's the mind shift as the introduction of new technology, where like it is somebody who is running current, the digital is going to be a lot more comfortable bringing this type of direct mail versus maybe somebody that even have gone direct mail for a really, really long time. Right. And that's because of the way that technology works right now.

Aaron Conant 25:21

Awesome. Love it, though. Just reminder, if you have questions, drop in the chat or the q&a or email them to me, we'll keep getting an answer.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 25:28

Yep, absolutely. So really, you know, the kind of quick takeaway here is that direct mail should be as effortless and automated as your current email campaigns. And if it's not, let's find a way how you can get there. So the next question, so actually, speaking of departments, right, so marketing departments, I would love to share just a little bit about, you know, what we see. And again, look, we're not going to get into like the full, you know, the marketing department looks like, but there are definitely some best practices and things when it comes to your systems or your data, that will be helpful when it comes to running your direct mail campaigns. So let's talk about that a little bit. Now. So your marketing department. And you're like, of course, you know, every marketing department is different, I think every marketing department could probably run better. You know, like, as I think about my own marketing department, you know, there's lots of things to still like improve as we continue scaling. But to give you a direct mail team, the same capability as the rest of your marketing team, you need to take a very close, close look at how your marketing department is structured. Right. So the things that we evaluate, it's actually at the end of the first thing we do is we mentioned, we do kind of this audit and evaluation. And that's when we're looking to kind of these three different buckets. The first one includes just essentially your technology, right? Your technology tech stack, like databases, platforms that you're using, or the software that are using, how do you currently look at your goals, your metrics? You know, so all of these things are very important. We also look into your current practices, right? So like, what are the other channels that you use? And how are your workflows set up? Right? So are they integrated? And this is also where we really evaluate whether or not you know, your direct mail exists? Like, if you're currently doing a lot of direct mail, whether it's completely outside of your existing marketing workflows and systems, we find them very, very often, right? So you have like fully integrated technology, second workflows, right? So you know, you send an email, you send an SMS, all the data flows into your CRM, right? And then you have direct mail, right? It's completely outside. Right? So that's, those are the things that we take a look at, and are valued. And of course, there's like, you know, kind of human factors. Do you have our kind of culture do you have on the internal marketing team? How do you work with your other vendors? Right? So you know, are they on your Slack? Right? And you quickly instead of communicating with them, or you know, does it take you like, you know, months and like multiple emails to go back and forth, right. So I think all of those things are very important, because at the end of the day, we see direct mail as part of your omni channel technologist separate. And we really, you know, my one asked for everybody stopped thinking of direct mail is existed completely outside of your marketing organization, right, because like, the number one job is to actually bring it into your marketing, and to market and or, you know, we're clearly not going to be looking at the entire you know, all the different things that goes into your marketing department. But we will definitely talk about some of the best practices, specifically, today, we'll be focusing on the technology and the workflows. Because those you know, those are the things that kind of the first ABCs that we take care of when we start working with customers. So let's talk a little bit about your, your marketing department and your current technology stack. So the way that your organization handles marketing data will tell you just really a lot about the kind of transformation you might need to do, before you go in to implement your direct mail programs. Very typically organizations have one or more systems that handles their data. So they have like a CRM, or CDP customer data platform that handles all of your customer, you're kind of working in Cubase, and all your data, if you have that, that's absolutely great. And then really, there's no reason why systems can't like kind of this, you can't have a centralized system that also integrates directly or workflow into that there is not typically what we find very often, like direct malevsky, right. And I mentioned that before, it just exists outside of your system and tools. And really, your goal is to have a single data system that unifies everything into one major viewer, because what you really want to see is you want to be able to have visibility across all of your channels and what's working, what's not working. You also want to just have like a holistic view of your customer, right? And all the different touch points, that communication that the customer is receiving, right? And this is why we really, really encourage you to ensure that when you pick in your direct mail vendor, it can integrate into your existing workflows, right? Whether you use marchetto, if you use braze. I mean, there's so many of them. And really, if you pick the right vendor, it shouldn't matter to them which system of record to use, right? They should be able to just seamlessly integrate. For example for us, we already have native integrations, right so if you use Marchetto or your Salesforce, you can just plug it right so um, and that's I think should be the goal because you know, if you are talking to somebody if you think about direct mail and It doesn't integrate to your existing knowledge, just that, trust me, it's going to be problematic for you. And that's just that's such an antiquated way of doing things. So to me, if you're considering that, and that's not part of your consideration, I would highly, highly encourage you to make sure that you can, you know, everything's connected. And you will see, once we get into the type of direct mail campaigns that work best, you will see why this is so important, right? Because for you to be able to like trigger direct mail piece of business relevant event, you have to be able to, you know, connect those data points. And this is, you know, one of the like, that's, to me, it's like the thing, we actually probably spend significant, like, first getting time, like where, you know, the first thing that we tackle as our customers is this, right? It's an integration. And we are, you know, highly, highly encouraged to make sure that your everything is integrated. The next thing that I would love to talk a little bit about is templates seen, and then kind of assets, right? So the next thing when we evaluate, you know, when we do that audit, when it comes to our customers in the existing workflows, we look the next step, you know, after systems and data, we'll look into templates and assets. So, you know, it matters a lot where they're, you know, like, do you have some companies have a lot of set templates for campaigns, you know, that like, very well organized? You know, they'll see, okay, this is our first 30 day retention campaign, right, and they have everything ready. And the templates are very nice and organized. Those of others that just have constantly do ad hoc, right, so for every single campaign, they actually come up with, like different templates. And, you know, that's, you know, if that's the process you have, right now, it's just important for you to then be able to have those resources, right, those kind of creative resources, using templates is absolutely key for automation. To be honest, like, you know, if you have to design a template each single time and HTML, and you don't have those resources, that could be a bottleneck, right. So having been able to produce templates easily, or even have a standard set of templates is going to be just going to help you get your campaigns up and running much quicker. And that's, um, you know, our recommendation for best practices is to make sure that, and also, the really easy way to get started with templates is really grab your email templates, especially if you have like a really great sequence for let's say, you know, new member onboarding, right? Or maybe like 30 day retention, you know, somebody who has have not purchased, but maybe increasing lifetime value, right? If you already have those, that's great, because guess what, you can just grab those templates and just automatically use that for a direct mail campaigns. But you know, the after you are done with workflows, the next step is assessing your existing templates and how you actually handle it in that process.

Aaron Conant 32:27

It's a really good question comes in relatively creative. Are there any trends that you're seeing success with?

Tatiana Afanasyeva 32:32

Yes, there absolutely are, again, I will kind of give a caveat is that you will find out what works best for your own demographic. But there are absolutely I mean the best practices, the more personalization, the better. It is pretty amazing for me to see, with each single personalization, how much increase in ROI you're getting, right. So for example, we have folks that started with just like, Hi, first name, right. And that's honestly at this point, that's just the basics. But remember, when we've introduced like, Hi, first name on email, right, that was like such a big thing. But that was, you know, that was like, what, like 20 years ago, almost. So like, was same thing about the same way it was, I was direct mail, you know, you can definitely start with small personalization. But even adding the second presentation, such as unique code, read, increase conversions are best in class, you know, honestly, customers, their entire template is HTML. So every single piece of that, of that like postcard, let's say it's personalized to the individual, like, the coolest example that I have is actually ThredUp. I'm a customer, if you guys don't know, but they are probably the biggest online thrift store, I absolutely love their product. And what they do is they send us like beautiful postcards, of images, that items that they think you will like, based on their recommendation engine, I've also received an item that was still in my cart that I forgot to purchase, you know, like 90% of my shopping online, he just like add something to your cart and totally forget about it. When I received an image was the jeans that were still in my cart that was to me was going on that was like one that much the moment when I just like that's extremely of personalization that you can do. Now again, like, Don't get scared, right? It might take you a while before you're able to like literally grab something that might be in your cart and put them like in a piece of mail. But, you know, the more personalization that better Imagine if you as like, just think about yourself, right and if you're receiving this like piece of like postcard or letter that it clearly knows you and shows that the you know that the brand knows you just like you that's when you have that kind of like magical moments, like oh, not only do I love this brand, but they also know me and they know what I like, right? So and that's of course will always be best practices. Now, even our customers that have been doing like ThredUp, has been a customer for like, like five years now. Right? So it definitely took them a little bit of time before they're able to get to that level of sophistication. So don't be scared, you know, we can get there. But best practices, the more personalization, the better. It is like that's it that's kind of like a no brainer. Okay, so let's talk next about like, this is my favorite thing. Let's talk a little bit about workflows. So just take a look at what you see in here. Um, you know, most companies, if you have been doing direct mail for a while, and maybe some of you have, your workflow might look like this, this is a real workflow from a real customer. This is how the direct mail process used to look like, right. And that's actually to me, you know, every time I look at this chart, like, it gives me an anxiety, right? It's like, my goodness. This is why, you know, a lot of times when we start working with customers, you know, that's when they tell us, it takes them, you know, like three to six months to get a product out the door. Because this is what I used to, like we're traditional workflow used to look like, right, they're extremely, extremely complex. They involve like multiple different handles back and forth between your creative agency between your printer between proofing between your internal teams, where it's a typical workflow involves about 55 different steps, right? So we, you know, we've analyzed this for, and we have a lot of data on that. And this is not an exaggeration, that's literally how it looks like, again, like this is from you know, a larger customer, right? Again, they send quite a lot of mail. But what we find in even customers that have sent me be like, you know, 500 postcards, or like letters, or even checks them just for week, still, then we see a lot of this, like, unnecessary complexity in their workflows. And that's really because, you know, because that's how traditionally look like, like, like legacy direct mail workflows grew up organically, right? And then they really kind of, you know, because there just wasn't as much automation, they just keep adding a step and step by step, right. And that's when you like, left was this like, insane chart? And actually, no, like, we had our designer put this together. And that's just, you know, seeing it all in one page, right? That's what to me is like, just makes it look so real. Because sometimes when you go through your kind of day to day, right, you get used to, okay, I send an email to my vendor, they send me a proof, you know, I think sometimes when you go through those workflows, you're going to forget just how complex they became. And when you put it all in, like this one chart, and you just stare at is like, oh, my goodness, why is this still looking like this? So if this is how your current workflow looks like, Don't worry, there is like, you know, there's a better way we can get you to much simpler way. But, you know, this is something that I've been in this industry for a really long time. And we're still seeing this again, and again, and again. Right? So and this is just because of those, like legacy systems and tools and processes to just started, you know, get extended and expanded, expanded. So let's talk about like, workflow, you know, and like, what really works? How should it look like? You know, like, really, the goal here is to streamline and automate it as much as possible, right? So things like your workflow now can look just like your digital workflow, right? So it should not have the complexity of what you've seen on the previous chart. And, you know, really, you probably starting with this, like, slow, complex process, right? Very antiquated was a ton of stakeholders typically includes multiple external partners, right? So And really, the goal was kind of this transformation project is for you to get to a single, unified and very streamlined workflow, right, and working with the right partner to get you there. And of course, the benefits, you know, we don't have to go through them. But it's, you'll save, this is actually where, you know, when we remember, in the earliest slides, we saw that cost was one of the key considerations, right, and key challenges that a lot of folks were, like, reported when we did that survey, but the reason why that cost was creeping in is because of that workflow that you saw before, where it's, and once you intervene to create a very, very streamlined process, a lot of times what we actually found, there's like an entire organization that used to only handle direct mail can now actually be put towards other much more beneficial, you know, process, right. And that can be paying attention to like instead of working on other things versus just like this unnecessary workflows, first of what works for fun is by introducing new technology, the cost of your direct mail campaigns are actually going down, right, so and that's like, so there's huge cost savings, but just introducing automation, really streamlining that insane workflow. And you can also just have a lot more flexibility and actually being able to fully integrate direct mail as part of the channel communication strategy. So that's kind of the goal was your workflow. So the next thing, you know, a lot of times, especially if you are working, you know, if you've been doing direct mail for a while, we often actually a lot of our customers ask us for, um, you know, how can I help me ensure, you know, help me make this project happen with an organization and that's, like champ digital transformation and just ensure you know, getting like, a big overhaul can take a little bit of time, right. So we often also work with our customer to make sure that they have a very solid business case, right for introducing the right and really overdoing this overhaul because I direct my programs. And there aren't so many benefits, right? So we can get into a few of them. But clearly, there's a ton more. But creating a single complete picture of your customers is incredibly important, right? Imagine if you now know and you will be able to know exactly what your customers preferences are and how to communicate with them. You really reduce that complexity that can just get out of like, you know, like getting getting really, really crazy. It's actually it's very, very helpful when it comes to cost optimization. Right? This is the one if you if your CFO or your VP of finance, if you think they're going to be The bottleneck, actually there is pretty like, you know, there's like literally calculation that you can do in order to demonstrate cost savings. And then also from your IT team. So if you, you know, if you may be worried about getting this through your CTO, or maybe your IT team, actually, those are the teams that tends to be your best friend while implementing technology, like, you know, like always in modern technology, because this is an API. So all processes are lot more secure, right? There's no more FTP transfers extra, if you think about the, your IT team is going to be your best friend and making this you know, pushing this project forward, right? Because you are actually taking a lot of security vulnerabilities and you transform in that way, especially if you're working with an API such as Lob as an API. Right? So think through a cost savings, improved security, right? It's just like one holistic picture of your customers. So and that's to me tends to be you know, that's kind of the key things that I'll go into business case, or essentially justification for implementing a new direct mail technology,

Aaron Conant 40:55

In a way like the KPIs and the ROI that are typically get built in that's a question that comes over KPIs and ROI bring to that conversation as well. You know, budgets are being pulled 100 different directions right now. And people are in testing, learn with multiple different avenues. And, you know, it's interesting, this is direct mail, but because it's so integrated into the digital, you know, side of commerce, it's Yeah, it falls more into the ditch. I agree with you. It does fall as fast.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 41:27

We've even heard customers referred to this like a digital direct mail. I know, it's really confusing, right. But it just tells you, right? Because like it feels it looks like an actual market. And I'm trying to think of maybe I need to invent a new word for this. Right? Because like direct mail is definitely not, you know, I think this is a digital direct mail. Right. So like, because it resembles more of a digital channel on that there's a physical outputs. And going back to KPIs. Absolutely. Right. So we'll help you put together a business case, but it goes into one, you know, like, just increased ROI, right. So we definitely have some benchmarks around where you should be seeing in your campaigns. And it's also just a cost savings around your process, right? We mentioned, if you reduce your workflow, when you reduce the time it takes to set up campaigns from like 90 days plus Rachel, like one afternoon, but just think about the resources, right, that you're actually saving when it comes to direct mail execution, because there's like a very, very great calculators that we personally have, were absolutely happy to send that around, that you can use to actually put together very specific justification for the ROI that you expected. The one thing where I would really caution you is to before you test an experiment, you know, we'll send you best practices, but I would be like, we're cautious around committing to those, you know, those type of ROI. Because at the end of the day, usually like it will take you a little bit of time to optimize that. But we can tell you, hey, like our best in class is seeing Lima like 30% left in their campaigns by sending out like certain types of campaigns, use it as a benchmark tested yourself first and then see right how you can get to that point. I would be you know, like, honestly, that's just best practices never going to take somebody else's best in class performance, right? and assume that you're going to have that yourself.

Aaron Conant 42:59

Yeah, it's almost like it's a physical asset from your digital campaign, essentially, is what it is.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 43:08

Yeah, yes. And you know, what, maybe like, give me a little bit to advocate thinking about maybe the new term for this technology. So let's get and if we don't have that much time left. So I really want to quickly run through our running you first campaigns, right? Because this is where you know, like, the next question that we get is okay, what should I be doing? First, what type of campaigns should I be running? And we have some ideas for there. So some of the use cases, right, that we see like, these are all the use cases. I mean, the honestly, the use cases are unlimited. We've had customers think of like such crazy use cases, I've literally never even considered, but the typical buckets are here, right? We work with a lot of customers running acquisition campaigns, right? So you know, some of you guys have asked about that. Absolutely. Direct Mail can be very, very powerful. We also see a lot of base focus on conversion, right? So this is a little bit almost like acquisition plus, right? So imagine if somebody already started doing their journey, but they haven't completed that before first conversion. But a typical example of that somebody you know, maybe like, added an email, but haven't made a purchase cited an application, right? So maybe they gave you some information, but haven't completed the buying cycle. That's what we call conversion campaigns. upsell is really, really powerful. Right? So, you know, if you already have information about your customer, that's when direct mail can be really, really effective. renewals? Absolutely. Right? So if you have kinda like almost like a life cycle campaigns, direct mail can be your best friend, when backs are huge. You know, actually, a lot of you, if you're looking through your own direct mail, you can probably see, you know, like how much mail falls within all the different types of campaigns. And then also, just engagement, right? So this kind of like lifecycle marketing, almost think about this. If you have like an anniversary, you know, coming up on maybe somebody's birthday, right, so this is where we also see a lot of direct mail campaigns. We'll get into them in a little bit more details. So let's start off with acquisition or it's not and I'll get through these pretty quickly so that you can ask questions. So You know, acquisition, I think we probably are very familiar with that. It's a really great starting point, you can use essentially, any consumer data that you have to make it more effective. It works really well. The one thing to think about is, you know, again, like, the more that you know about your customer, the better, right, probably the least effective ones that we see. And it's when it's like, completely not targeted, right. So, you know, I get like, dear resident, and you know, here's a coupon for dog food all the time, I don't have a dog, right. So that's like a total waste of waste of energy. So you know, our recommendation acquisition is to, you know, if you have a little bit more like the more information, definitely use it, right. So if you have a look alike audiences, like do that, right, versus just a pure, you know, like, hey, let's just almost like spray and pray. The unique codes also work really well, these codes, you know, like, adding at least unique that URL, or maybe unique redemption code can be really helpful in tracking your ROI. It's like an exact same way. Right? So how do you do with email, right? So if you have personalized code that works much better for you to track your ROI. And really our success? Like it's really the more data, the more data you have, the more targeting, like the better targeting you have the better disposition campaigns, there's definitely, you know, acquisition is where you can waste a lot of money, if you are in if you just don't have a solid strategy. So our recommendation there would be absolutely yes, direct mail, you can be used for acquisition, the more data points you have, the more confidence you have when it comes to that list, or even procuring that list, the better retention, like the better ROI, are you going to see from acquisition, but we definitely see a lot of folks that stuck with that position. Because you know, left times now when it comes to your own KPIs, like we definitely see, right, like, people want more, right? You want more customers. So this is why acquisition comes up a lot, right? Just because like your main KPI as a marketing team might be to actually just get more customers and conversion, right. So this is the one that I've kind of mentioned earlier is conversion is really the type of campaign where you already had some pre qualified leads, but they haven't purchased yet. Or maybe they haven't converted. But imagine maybe somebody started a loans application, right? So and then they haven't completed it. That's very often somebody may be is like, trying to purchase something, right? So maybe they started an application process again, but there's so multiple steps. This works really, really well when you have a slightly complex and maybe longer application system, right? So if you're an insurance, if you're in financial services, right, we see that a lot. Or if you also have a large item, right for consideration, right? If you purchase a new car, you're purchasing like us so far, where it's a lot of times, you know, there, it takes you longer time to convert that customer, this is where direct mail can be used very successful as the next or maybe almost like a reminder, right? So this can definitely interest should be trigger based, right? So that trigger could be somebody started, somebody gave you certain information have not completed, right, that could be an automatic trigger that send a direct mail piece, we often also see this as used by sales team. So for example, we have a native integration for Salesforce, right? So imagine if you have, we're working with a luxury design company, right. And what they do is they help you remodel your home, right? You can imagine, you know, that's a pretty large commitment. And so the way so that customer is using us, you know, using this drama for conversion is every time they had like a first initial assessment, right, you'll see what their sales rep, that sales rep clicks a button in Salesforce that sends them a direct mail, right, as another reminder, just because they know that for purchases like that, you have to be top of mind, right, and they almost have this point system, where every single week they have some kind of interaction right up until a purchase, right. So that's a really, really great way to think about direct mail as just another like interaction point that might not be your email or SMS, right, or the things that you will already use. And so let's go to the next one. upselling Oh, this is like one of my favorite ones. You know, this is again, I don't think I need to explain much upselling is like literally increasing the lifetime value of your customers, or even introduce a new product, we often see if there is imagine if let's say you're all birthright, when you're releasing a new pair of shoes that you know, your customer might like, this is a great opportunity, right to just ensure to keep upselling your customer. And this is the one that also just works really, really well if you have a lot of information. This is also what can be opportunistic, right. So you know, if you have a new line coming out, you can also just use that to send out to pretty much you know, like all of your like high valued customer base. And then success tips is integrate that with your other omni channel campaigns, right? This is the one that could be really, really successful. It also to me, the more information that you have, the better your attention will be. And what I'm selling is a lot of direct mail is focused on selling just because you know, like it's you already have all that information. So your chances of success are like almost guaranteed, right? Just because of the amount of information how precise you can make this. So upselling is definitely a big part of what we help customers do. I'm just looking at a time here. And then lastly, let's talk just a little bit about getting that right. So this is kind of like the last thing almost that I want to leave you with. And we've kind of talked about this all throughout the presentation today. But really how Considering your junk mail, things that are most important to do the first one, and this is actually the one that I find people forget about, because you assume that you have that it's just going to happen. But address data is really, really important. So make sure that when you selected a vendor, they actually have very good Address Verification software in place. So imagine if you are because the one thing about check me out every single direct mail piece that goes out, you are going to pay for that, right. So if you're sending mail to some addresses that cannot be delivered to you are going to pay for those mailings, right. So we actually, you know, we worked with some customers that worked with a traditional printer that didn't have a good Address Verification software in place, imagine that they had about 20% of their mailings that could not be delivered to that is, you know, you spend me of like you spend money for each individual mail piece, right. So just ensure that you know, address quality and justification is just like it just like it's it's a must have, when it comes to your vendor, it's often something that you just don't think about, because when it comes to like, email, you know, we kind of all forget about all those bounces, you know, there's already software in place. So just keep that in mind. I tend to like remind that to our customers, because you just forget about it, you just think, Oh, I have addresses, you know, they must be correct, no, no 20% of addresses that are entered online contain a mistake, right. So just make sure you actually have that all sorted out. The next one is, just make sure that you have very solid, you know, we talked about templating, right. So make sure that because look, if you cannot find a way how to easily manipulate your template, right how to ensure that you can AV test, then you're just not taking advantage of the modern software to make sure that you have like, and then the vendor you work with allow you to do very easily templating, it should be in a dashboard, you should never have to send a template to a vendor, right? That's my like an absolute like nogo. Because if they like if they have to do it themselves, that means you just that's just not a modern technology, right, you should be able to log into tool in exact same way how you do email, and being able to manipulate your template and create your own template, right. So make sure that's also part of your consideration. Because this is where we see a lot of bottlenecks happens. And that's why you know, when you saw that complicated workflows, that's why it's because like, you have to constantly have to like imagine if you have to update a template, you have to send it to your vendor every single time. They're just a nightmare. And then lastly, you know, I do really encourage you to look at API's, this is API's are the key for you to be able to integrate your system and workflow seamlessly, right? So the fact is, the reason why, you know, we can plug into any of your CRM any of your databases is because we're an API, right? And that's really the nature of our technology. So if you're working with somebody, that's actually this is also where you're secure ITT will love API's, right? That's what like, what we consistently hear is that API's just make integration so much easier. So I would definitely encourage you, and even as part of the consideration, top your developer, see if they, you know, they like the technical specs. And then also they do the IT team is going to be your best friends, right, that they will absolutely love this vendor. And then lastly, and this also is something that we tend to, you know, like, it's could be very much under the hood, which is the print delivery network. So one of the reasons why we are able to actually get to the mailbox really, really fast. For us, it takes about two days. And you know, the longer like the four days is the longest, right? So like speed is also important. But the reason why we are able to do that is because we have, we have a network, we have the largest print delivery network in the United States. So this means is we can do intelligent routing budget, if you send in one campaign and someone is going to Chicago, someone's going to New York, well, we will route it to the printer that's closest to the end destination, right and that ability want it, it helps you speed. The second one gives you a lot of redundancy, right. So today, we talked a lot about like the marketing use cases. But there's also a lot of you know, legally required mailings that you need to send out, right. So like redundancy is very important, right? If there's a snowstorm going out on the East Coast, well guess what, we could just reroute things to a different printer, right? So that's not a problem. So make sure that you also have that. Right. And those to me is kind of like the key things that I would like to leave you with, right? So think of direct mail, it's let's let's maybe put let's call it like I'm ready to commit to this term, distil direct mail. So you know, think of it as that, you know, it's no longer your snail mail, you know, this technology has changed dramatically. And just to make sure that as you think about direct mail, one, it is absolutely free to do that your competitors are probably doing that already. So because it is one of those like new communication channels, but it's not available to so we encourage you to try it experiment it, you'll find what works, there will be some things that might not, but just don't you know, it just is a new channel that is not available. And that is that is all I have.

Aaron Conant 54:28

Thanks for the rundown there is it's amazing. Tatiana, thanks for your great friend and partner support of the network. And I encourage anybody on the call today to get a chance to have a follow up conversation. They're doing some really great things in this space. They're helping a lot of different brands in the network and come highly recommended. So we're setting some time aside especially if you want them to kind of do a deep dive and kind of do that help out with that audit on your current campaigns. But they're they're taking what's traditional direct mail program and revolutionising it for In the digital era here, so 100% worth a follow up conversation. Look for an email from us to I'd love to have a conversation with you on digital strategy, see what's going on and your site. And then also, that's where we get topics for next call. So if you have pain points, don't ever hesitate to just shoot me an email and say, Hey, I'd like to chat on these. With that, you know, again, encourage anybody put some follow up time on the calendar with Tatiana. Thanks again, for your time today. It says great friends, partner support is the network. And with that, we're gonna wrap it up here. hope everybody has a fantastic Tuesday. Everybody, take care, stay safe, and look forward to seeing you on a future event. Alrighty, Thanks again, everybody. Thanks Tatiana.

Tatiana Afanasyeva 55:34

Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Bye