← Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Is Direct Mail Back? The 2026 Growth Strategy for Service Businesses
00:45:08
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- [00:00]
A
Today we're talking direct mail.
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B
Direct mail is like this old dinosaur marketing activity or it's like the secret thing that nobody knows about, but it still works.
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A
The way to succeed is, like, constant experimentation. Hey, this is hard. This is super high touch. So that means you can win if you execute well. So it's like scientific method.
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B
We're science based, baby.
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A
Someone out there is winning with this channel.
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B
Like, mistakes people make is they do it one time. So they just, like, do a blast. Oh, it doesn't work. Okay, so I'm gonna move to say.
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A
Something that should be kind of obvious, but I. I think that people mess this up a lot. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. During the day, I run a plumbing H VAC and electric company in northeast Ohio and Indiana now. And for fun, I run a podcast where I talk about scaling our business we with our friends. Today, I'm joined on the show by my good friend Sam Preston, the CEO of Service Scalers. Welcome to the show.
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B
Welcome, everybody. I'm excited to be here and talk direct mail.
- [01:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. This one should be fun. So we're. This is our continuation of the series clicks to Calls. Which this is kind of funny because this has nothing to do with clicks at all, but it is direct response, and some people absolutely kill it with direct mail, which I think is so, like, so cool.
- [01:27]
B
Unless you're using a QR code on your mailer where they click it. Go to your website, become a lead, or directly to a Fortnite. Yeah, I think.
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A
I think we can still click to call. It can get there. It can get there. Okay, before we get too deep into the topic, I would be remiss if I did not mention that you're hosting a workshop in a month. And every day I find out more about it. But you're hosting it in Stowe, so you're hosting it at my facility. So that should be fun. It'll be nice to see you and.
- [01:58]
B
You even know we're coming.
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A
I think Kristen told me, like, last week.
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B
I wish he had never told you. You just found out the day of.
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A
I'm finding more. I'm finding out more about it almost every day. I'm honestly, I'm mainly just, like, glad that I'm in town for it. But so, yeah. So you guys are hosting a workshop. It's called Book Solid. And I think it's just teaching folks how to really run with the ball on their marketing and home service.
- [02:27]
B
I'm really excited about it. We just built out the itinerary this morning. And so we first take a high level approach to understanding marketing and then we drill down where I teach you about all these different channels. This is not a beginner's one on one course, but what we are going to do is try to help you understand what it, what it is each, each different channel, the campaigns or the strategies that actually work in those chann how to understand what's working in your marketing, what's not working in your marketing and then based on what you're doing, help you build out a 98 plan to get more leads to fill your call board and do have an amazing 2026. So it's going to be really good. We're going to be bringing in experts in each one of these different channels. We even brought in a different marketing agency to talk like traditional marketing and how to win on those. So it's going to be really good. I'm very excited.
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A
Yeah, that's sweet.
- [03:23]
B
And if you haven't, go get yourself a seat because it's going to be legit. You might even get to see John in the wild.
- [03:29]
A
Just like. Yeah, yeah, no, you probably will. Like, yeah, pulling my hair out because so we did, I think we've said this on the show a little bit, but we, I, we bought a business on day one was the 1st of January. We've been actively, like, we took control of a business early January, the same day actually. But we are actually going to own it this week. So that's pretty cool. And it's February 4th or 3rd today. And then we have three or four other active conversations. So like we're going to attempt to get one done in March. So we'll see. That could be like closing week. But we're going to try to get, you know, we, we wanted to. The original plan was, hey, I want to buy two to four businesses this year. Well, two's done. And it's, you know, we're 32 days into the year and we wanted to go from one location to three locations and have a new state under our belt. So like that's about to be done. So we're really excited about that. But what will probably happen is, you know, the deal engine's working. Honestly, a lot of folks from the podcast, which has been really fun. Like the two that we just did are from the show. Like people that reached out and said hit like, hey, I'm interested. And then two of the other conversations that we have going right now are also from the show. So that is really cool. So one that's kind of fun to plug. If you want to partner with me. Lmk, we're actively partnering, we're actively acquiring. If you're in the Midwest, we're down to have a conversation, so let's dive in. Today we're talking direct mail. This one simple swap earned one contractor over $53,000. You've got money going out to suppliers all the time and you've got cash sitting in your checking account between jobs. Are either of those earning anything meaningful for you right now? For most owners, the answer is no. The ACCA financial platform helps contractors earn 2.1% cash back on credit card spend and up to 3% APY on the cash sitting in a liquid checking account. So whether money is going out or sitting idle, it's working just as hard as you are. One contractor, Cosby Heating and Cooling, switched their card on file with their main supplier. The result? Over $53,000 in cash back. Beyond that, you can create vendor cards to prevent overcharging and dedicated supplier checking accounts. So you only keep what you need with each vendor and the rest of your cash stays protected. So if you're already running seven figures in revenue and want every dollar, spend and cash to work harder, visit acca card.com or click the link in the description to apply or schedule a demo.
- [06:19]
B
So what I understand. I know. I know some basic stuff about direct mail, mostly from like conversations I've had with clients. I did do a little googling to see like what I can learn and common mistakes. But take me through it. If I'm a beginner. I feel like direct mail is like this old dinosaur marketing activity that no one does anymore. Or like from my clients who absolutely love it. It's like the secret thing that nobody knows about, but it still works.
- [06:52]
A
Well. I think that can be said about a lot of legacy media. So like tv, hey, does TV still work? Well, yeah, of course it is. It's the cheapest way to reach the most amount of people. Like it's it still is today. Does radio still work? I feel like there's a lot of does that still works and then when you do, and that's just because like we're currently programmed to think that, oh, it's the digital age, like mail doesn't produce. But when you double click or when you talk to a few other people like, yeah, hey, it works. Someone out there is finding results with that medium. And I, I don't remember what our topic oh, it was with ppc. We talked about this last week with PPC Someone out there in your market is winning with this channel. Like somebody's doing it. And the example that we gave last week during PPC was direct mail, which was really funny. We had this little get together in Charleston in September, right?
- [07:45]
B
Yep, yep.
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A
And we had two good friends of mine, so Matt from Caldad and Brandon from Preferred and they, they were both doing, they both are multi location shops and they were both doing direct mail in the same market. Same market. And for one of them, they were getting a 14 times return on investment, which means that for every dollar that they spent on direct mail, they received $14 of revenue. So like 14 is humongous. Our, in our business, like we measure success at like 6, right? So 14 is like, holy smokes, do that all day long. Never change, never stop doing it. Yeah, I like, I don't have, you know, we've hit 14 occasionally but like never like, you know, regularly. So. Yeah, so 14 feels really good. And, and my friend Brandon, he was like, dude, we're getting like a one times. Like we're not getting anything. Like we might even be negative some months and we're mailing the same people. Yeah. So it was, it was the, it was the funniest version of someone in your markets doing it and they just happen to be in the same room that day. But someone in your market is killing it on direct mail. So yeah, I've. We have tried direct mail over the years. Right now we're not doing any direct mail. So like, big caveat. We've done a lot of direct mail over the years. We've spent a tremendous amount of money on it. We've had sometimes good results, sometimes bad results, sometimes great results, and sometimes negative. So like all over the freaking board. I think I can talk about the wins and I think we can just spend a little bit of time on like, what is direct mail? How's it work? Why is this maybe a good time? We actually just had Isaac Zimmerman on maybe two months ago, three months ago. We were out at his shop in October and we did a live show there. And a lot of what our conversation was about was about his success with direct mail. And he's spending I think $100,000 a month right now as a plumbing business doing direct mail, just driving more and more leads. And what was kind of funny about direct mail is it, it's direct response. And if we think about direct response, that's meta, that's TikTok. Like it's all the same thing. Right. Arguably there's just much more competition on Meta or TikTok or whatever for attention. But you're doing something to elicit an immediate response. Direct response marketing. So that's what mail is. So we're going to send someone mail, we're going to design it, we're going to. All the energy that we would put into designing a great Facebook ad, we're going to put that into a mailer to try to get a response out of this person. Honestly, I think the conversion rates are supposed to be pretty similar. Like 1 to 2% is going to be good. I think 1 to 2% is probably good for meta ads. I. I don't know. So yeah, it. It very similar to me. Just I think less competition.
- [10:53]
B
I love that my. I worked with the guy who built the potato direct response campaign. Do you ever see this?
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A
Which one it was?
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B
It was the original one. So it's a B2B outbound like mailer campaign where business was would pay him to write notes on a potato. He would then send that potato to somebody's office and they would get it and read it and respond. He built, built that and actually just sold it to somebody else who then made it really big. So that's the idea is you want that moment, I guess to have like, oh yeah, like this is unique. Maybe, maybe not a potato, but you could try that. But like, you know, this is unique. I have a message and I want to get a response from it.
- [11:42]
A
Yeah. And I think there's a lot of different ways to do that. So let's dive in. All right, first, what is direct mail? I think we can define it pretty quick for those of you younger folks out there that have never heard of it. So it's physical marketing that is delivered to your home. So postcards, flyers, letters or like Valpack has these bundle things and I think any of those are fair game. I think that from what I've seen as I've like talked to people and experimented with our ourselves, it just, it changes every couple of years as far as like what's going to work the best. And I think the experience that it's again very similar to Facebook ads. The way to succeed is like constant experimentation. Like you find something that works really well and then you just, you experiment with like tests and you just keep trying. But letters are interesting. Postcards are interesting. Flyers are interesting. Valpak's interesting. I think one of the fun things about mail is that like with. With Facebook ad, the goal is how do you get their attention. So like sound, color, movement, like all the things that's going to capture someone's attention. With mail, it's the same thing, like, how do you stand out inside the mailbox? How do you get someone's attention? And I think that's kind of a fun component where you get to spend a lot of time like, hey, should I do a gigantic postcard or a small postcard? Should I make the postcard look like the utility company sent it? Should I send a letter and should it be a huge letter? I had a friend and I had a friend send certified mail once and, like, it got a horrible customer reception because. Because it was like, they. People hated it so much. But, I mean, open rate was a hundred percent.
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B
Oh, yeah.
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A
Yeah. So it was kind of funny. So, like, you can really experiment from, like, hey, I'm gonna leave this flyer on your door to, like, I can send you certified letter or I can send you a box or whatever. So you have a lot of, like, creativity has no end with direct mail. And I, I almost think you need the more creative, probably the better because you can approach it differently. And if you approach it like Facebook or, hey, how do I get someone's attention? You're probably going to do pretty well.
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B
When I was researching it, like, mistakes people make is one of them is they do it one time, so they just, like, do a blast.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Like, oh, it doesn't work. Okay, so I'm gonna move on.
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A
Yeah.
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B
So for you, do you know, like, what is the. Like, how many times you need to send something out for a test to know whether it worked or not before you, like, start?
- [14:24]
A
I think, I think this is like, who are you mailing? So there's three different audiences that you could mail. I'm going to make it four. Four different audiences you could mail because customers has two segments, which I was going to just make one, but we have members, so, like, we have a membership. So we could go direct mail our members and say, hey, it's time for your whatever, or I have a garbage disposal tune up, or, you know, whatever the hell, they're more likely to do something than, like, me sending a Valpak mailer to a million people. So I think when you are. When you're working on direct mail and when you're talking to people about direct mail, I'll go through the other three really quick. But who are they mailing to? Because the ROI that somebody has for the fourth category versus the first are super different and very different conversion rates. So you just want to be thoughtful about that. So the, the first one's members they're the most likely to spend money with you because they already do. The second is active customers, which is probably going to be like, they've used you in the last two or three years. So they're an active customer, but they're not a member. So again, they're more likely to spend money with you. They have seen you within the past 24 months. They, they're in your email system, whatever. The third is inactive customers. So somebody that I did work for 10 years ago, they touched us once, we can remind them, hey, we unclog your toilet. You want to unclog your toilet again? You know, just pitching ideas. I don't, I don't know. I'm out here being scrappy, sour to me. Yeah, that's really good, really good pitch. And, and then the fourth one is people who have never been customers. And I think that this is what people often think of with direct mail is like these mass mailing campaigns where I send a million letters at the same time and I cover my whole neighborhood or area of business, you know, whatever it is. So, so those are the four different groups that you could mail to. And you obviously will expect totally different results by whoever it is that you're going to mail to. Like, I'm going to, I should expect a different result if I spend, if I send a thousand letters to people who have never heard of me versus people who actively pay me a membership fee once a month. Right. Like, I should expect very different results. So on, on the far end, you know, hey, this guy's never heard of me. Maybe they're brand familiar just because we're a big company around here. Maybe that's a 1% conversion rate. So if I send a thousand letters, I will get 10 calls. Yeah, maybe that's great. On the other side, if I send a thousand letters to members, I'll probably get something like 60 calls. Like, I will get a lot out of that because they pay me money actively every month. So there's a lot of trust already built up and I've already stood out to them and they've already made a buying decision to buy from me. So yeah, just be really cautious. One, when you're thinking about direct mail, who are we direct mailing? And that's a really important first place to start. Like, if you're direct mailing members or active customers, you're going to get a great result. Like, they're actively using you, they liked you, they paid you some money. If you're mailing people who have never heard of you and they're an hour away. Maybe not. That doesn't mean don't do it. It's just like that's clearly harder. Yeah.
- [17:44]
B
Okay. And so when you're thinking of it, you know, at your size, are you like, let's say y' all wanted to run a direct to mail campaign. Is that something your marketing manager is dealing with? Are you outsourcing that to an agency or are you doing that internally, something else?
- [18:00]
A
Yeah, we've done both. So we've done agency. Like someone has to do the design. So mail is like high design, it's high touch. So like you have to be iterating pretty frequently. So yeah, we've done it in house, we've sent it to agencies. We've used valpack. They have like internal design tools. I think that the best, the folks that I know that do this the best fully insource it. Like they, they produce it internally because you, because it's very similar to meta ads. Like you have to be able to iterate fast. Like you have to be able to go shoot the next video and do the next thing. And hey, we lost people right after the hook. What do we do? It's the same thing with letters. The hook is they open the letter. Did, did we, did, did they carry through to the where we wanted them to? Did they read it? Did they call? So I think it's a very like high touch marketing source. But I, I think it can be super, super productive.
- [18:58]
B
Yeah, no, yeah, I mean I, I, I have people, I have quite a few clients actually that swear by direct mail like it was a thing that their company's been built on for the last 20 years. Even the people that have bought the company, they're like, hey, this is like one of our best lead sources. And so like I think it's a serious one. And something like I've thought about bringing internally for the agency so we could offer as a service. Have not need to find the right person to be able to do that. But I also think it makes a lot of sense that if you are going to do this, to internalize this and make sure that's always being iterated on.
- [19:32]
A
Yeah, I think the iteration is probably the difference between like 6 times and a 14. Like you can get a response if you want the greatest response in the industry. Like it's going to take the greatest amount of effort you have to give. Like you don't just get to like delegate that.
- [19:48]
B
Yeah, I agree.
- [19:49]
A
Why mailers matter in 2026 one because.
- [19:52]
B
I think it's Sexy. You know, I think I. You know, LSA right now, gbp. Like, I think those are sexy. People are going there. I mean, it's still, like, a lot to get out of those different channels, but everyone's going there, you know, not a lot of people are gonna list. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, it's. It's definitely easy.
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A
What's like it. When I say easy, I mean, it's like, low friction. So if I. If we wanted, we could go do that and launch an LSA campaign fairly quickly. Mail takes two weeks. Like, there's a lot of friction between, like, hey, I want to do this mailer, and people got it in their mailbox. Like, there's a lot that goes on. You have to pick a vendor, you have to choose the homes. You have to identify how you're choosing the homes. You have to design it, you have to print it, you have to mail it, and then it has to get mailed, like, delivered, and that takes a week. So it's just. There's a lot of moving parts with mail. So it's not that it's easier. There's just, like, way more friction with mail, which I do think creates huge opportunities. The same as, like, canvassing or, like, retail or events. Hey, this is hard. This is super high touch. The only way to do well here is to execute well. So that means you can win if you execute well.
- [21:12]
B
You know, I think as you've been talking about going into, like, areas that there aren't a lot of competition and buying businesses there, I think you're probably going to find some of those same areas that don't have a lot of competition in mailers, and I think that's where the big opportunities are going to be and figuring that out. You know, I've been preparing for this conversation and, like, been, like, kind of excited to go out to my mailbox, see if there's any mailers in there. Just, like, check it out. Nothing. I've got nothing right now, so maybe that's the time of year.
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A
All right, so if you're listening, we have to mail Sam's house. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is in. That is interesting, though. Yeah, that is interesting. Oh, I. I do wonder. I'm. I'm really obsessed with this idea on, like, underserved markets. I. I just think it sounds okay. So there's, like, there's two different components to scaling a service business. I'm going to dumb this down. Like, obviously, there's a lot more than this, but you have to get leads and then you have to get the people to sell those leads and like execute on them and like that. Like, yes, there's a lot more. But like, yeah, I mean that's, you know, it starts there, right? Like your core two problems that any business has. I don't have enough leads. I don't have enough people. Right. Like, it's. Yeah, there's other stuff, but those are the big ones. So I'm obsessed with like being able to solve the first one by just going where nobody else is at. And I've always loved that idea. I've always loved, hey, nobody else is doing this thing. That means I should probably do it. Because, like, if there's no other fish there, like, let's go fish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or be a fish. I don't know. I messed up my line. But like, yeah, I think, I think it's cool. So we're. Yeah, I think we, we're looking at these businesses that are just growing. Really, like the fastest growing businesses that I know are in the middle of freaking nowhere right now just because there's nobody competing with them. And I, Yeah, I kind of love it. So, yeah, maybe direct mail in a more rural. Like, hey, pick a city that's 45 minutes away from you that has 50 to 100,000 people in it, that is like, they only have two plumbers and just mail a shit out of for six months. You'll probably own the whole city. Like, they'll make you the mayor.
- [23:37]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No.
- [23:39]
A
And you can do it for like five grand a month probably. You could do it for nothing.
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B
I also think this because it's such a branding type of marketing. Like, you get your logo in front of them, you get your colors, you have a chance to, you know, be professional. They're basically seeing an ad. Like, this is the moment where they do go to Google and they do search for you or search for like your service and you pop up. They're like, oh, yeah, I've seen that before. It's kind of like trucks where you, when you brand them, like, I, I think this helps your entire marketing at some point. Specifically if you're trying to own an area.
- [24:16]
A
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- [25:38]
B
Yeah.
- [25:39]
A
To me, that's the. Why this matters in 2026 is if everyone else is over here, maybe I should be looking over here and maybe there's some alpha to win over here. And I, I honestly, I think that's over the past 10 years, that's been a big part of our growth story and is continuing to find those pockets where people aren't. And the pocket that I'm currently obsessed with is like geographic pockets. It's been mainly like lead driven. Like, oh, yeah. I don't think people are driving leads here. Let's go here or here. But now I'm like, hey, geographically I can get $10 million over here and nobody else is trying for it.
- [26:11]
B
Yeah.
- [26:12]
A
I think we should just do it. Like, I'm pretty sure I can win. So that's why I think it matters in 2026. Less competition. It also, there's a, this is kind of funny, but there's a spark of legitimacy with direct mail. And I, which, you know, I think like 20 years ago was probably like, not the case. But I think in, in, in 2026, like, if someone's mailing me, I'm like, okay. Like, I know a couple of things about this business.
- [26:47]
B
Yeah.
- [26:48]
A
One, they definitely are going to serve my home. Like, because they, they mailed me, right? Like, I'm not on Google. Like, do you drive out this far? Like, no, you fucking mailed me. Like, yeah. And this was a real thing. I actually chose my landscaping vendor, like, for my home from direct mail because I couldn't find anybody. And I kept calling all these freaking people and they're like, yeah, you're not on our route, or whatever. So this was a real, like, part of my consideration was this. This mailed me. I have to be on his route.
- [27:18]
B
And.
- [27:19]
A
And I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's high trust. You assume they're kind of a real business, which is kind of funny because, you know, anyone can fake anything on the Internet. But, like, this guy mailed me. You know, he's got. He's got some marketing budget. The. The design looks pretty good. Like, I think this is a legitimate business. I'm going to let him mow my lawn and take down my trees or whatever. So, yeah, I. I think there is, like, a spark of legitimacy and trust that's gained just because I've experienced it as a consumer. Like, I have brought on services for my home from direct mail because it. It. Hey, it caught me at the right time. Yeah. I just moved into the house three years ago. I didn't know how to find a landscaper. My old landscaper. I wasn't on his route. I tried calling others. The other people, they. I wasn't on their route. This guy happened to mail at the perfect freaking moment. And I'm like, I know I'm on this dude's route because he mailed me. And. And like, yeah, four years later, he's, like, still doing our landscaping, which I think is kind of sweet.
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B
I think it's got a lot of sense for landscapers. Like people that mow the lawn.
- [28:27]
A
Oh, yeah. Like, you get one landscaping pools. Yeah, totally. Power washing. Very route driven. Because you could just hammer a neighborhood. Yeah, I'm sorry.
- [28:39]
B
And then once you're in, like, one neighborhood, then you get referrals in that neighborhood. And then when you're planning out your routes for your team, it's just like, all in this neighborhood. Like. Yeah, I. I feel like that's going to work really well.
- [28:51]
A
Yeah, no, I think so too. I think so, too. Okay, let's hit how to actually get them to perform. I have a friend.
- [29:04]
B
You have a friend?
- [29:05]
A
I have a friend. I have a friend.
- [29:06]
B
One.
- [29:06]
A
His name's Isaac. He. I have one friend. One single friend. And. And he doesn't even think I'm a friend. So, you know, he doesn't like me that much. He's not that into me. So I have one single friend, and he's got. He's. He's like, Driving a ton of success through direct mail. Right now. He's loving it. And it was funny. I went to his office in Chicago and we just like, he opened it up and he's like, here's how we're doing it. And he's using a service called Postmates. He's using a service called I don't remember what he had, like a tech stack. There was HubSpot involved in there at one point. And he's in Chicago. So, like, really big market. Lots of people mail like 11 million or 8 million or whatever people to mail. So a lot of people. But he was really locking it in. So what he did was he found a. Hey, this, this letter works. So he found his first one that works. Like, I'm going to send this letter and it's going to consistently drive a 9 to 11 times return on investment, which is humongous. Again, like, dig for digital. Six times, five times. Like, we have some below that. We have some. We do have some above that. But six times is sort of like, we'll accept it. Like 11, 12 times. Like, you can scale that thing to the moon. Like you just found your path to, you know, whatever million you want. So, yeah, he found this letter and then he started just iterating and testing outside of that letter. So, okay, hey, this works. Okay, hey, this works. I'm going to keep iterating, I'm going to keep testing. And he now runs. I think he's running like 20 different campaigns a month to a bunch of different. I think it's 40,000 letters a week. It's some, like, absolutely outlandish number. Gets sent from his business a week to all these customers. But it's what he focused on was one offer that drove the response that he wanted. And then he just came up with 19 other ways to word it or 19 other ways to do the graphics or the photo. Hey, does it work best black and white? Does it work really well? Fully colored in blue? How about red? And it's. It's very like, it's direct response marketing, it's meta ads. It's all these things that, like, I'm going to do this thing and I expect an immediate response. And here. Or like how to build a landing page, it really is, like, very reminiscent of that. So you build one, you test it, you get the ROI you want, and then you just build more next to it and you just keep building and improving and tweaking. What we have found a lot of success with it feels a lot like canvassing for us. H Vac tune ups work really well. Water heater promos work well. The we're in your neighborhood campaigns work really well and design is a really big part of it. So for like the H vac tune ups, tons of people have done this. I'm not inventing this, but people use it looks like the gas company did a postcard. It's a bright yellow postcard. It's time for your tune up. It was due on X. The last one you did was X. It looks like the gas company or the power company sent you a postcard. So that elicits a pretty big response. But yeah, I, I think the iteration and the finding the offer that works and then coming up with a way to deliver on that offer is probably the big way to handle direct mail and just continuing to iterate as many times as you can. Does the shape of the letter matter? Does the length of the letter matter? Is it better at 50 words or 500 words? Is a postcard better? Like every iteration of that, but based on my, my, my core that produces a consistent result.
- [32:45]
B
Yeah.
- [32:45]
A
So it's like scientific method. You're going to find your baseline and then you're going to test against that baseline. We're science based, baby, for science. This is science. This is an art and a science. I think the other things that drive like high results, consistency. You said this like, do I do a one off. Do I do like consistent mail every week, every month, every whatever. How often am I touching that inbox or that mailbox? We're a big fan of twice a month. That seems good. Again, it depends a lot on who you're mailing. Are you mailing an active member, an active customer, inactive customer, like someone you've never talked to before? Someone you've never talked to. Might take six months of receiving direct mail before you get a call.
- [33:25]
B
How big do you, do you think you need the audience size to be, for it to make sense?
- [33:29]
A
Like if I, I think it depends the business.
- [33:32]
B
Yeah.
- [33:32]
A
Well, 100 people, if they're active members is a lot of people because you might get, I mean you might get 20 or 30 leads off of that.
- [33:39]
B
Yeah.
- [33:40]
A
But 100 people, if you've never talked to them before is probably, you'll only get one.
- [33:45]
B
Okay.
- [33:46]
A
If it's, it's a 1 to 2% conversion rate for non, like for net new contacts.
- [33:52]
B
Okay. So if you're needing 100 leads a week, then you have to have at least a, you know, a thousand.
- [33:59]
A
Ten thousand.
- [33:59]
B
Ten thousand.
- [34:01]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which like is not that much to me. 10,000 letters. So I would. I would say it's not. Well, it could be 10,000. 10,000 people, which, like, that's not that much. But you could also mail the same people just like. Yeah, on repeat. Again, it takes a bunch of contacts. So you almost want to show up in the inbox more and more and more. Or mailbox more and more and more.
- [34:22]
B
Okay, so If I'm wanting 100 leads, is that for wanting 100 leads a week? Yeah. Four weeks in a month, then you probably need 40,000, right? Or am I getting too much in the math?
- [34:34]
A
No, I think you're right.
- [34:36]
B
Okay, so you need 40,000 people. If I want 100 leads a week and I'm just emailing those same people. And obviously, again, this is not the, you know, already members, already customers, brand new people. This is kind of where we're going to try to get net new people into the door.
- [34:49]
A
Yeah. Now, I'm going to say something that should be kind of obvious, but I, I think that people mess this up a lot. What is the offer? It's an important part of the equation. If you're spending money on marketing and you're there to drive a return on your investment, what are you marketing? So, like, I've seen people do direct mail for like, sump pumps. I'm like, yeah, you could do that. That the. The ticket on a sump pump might be like 700 bucks. It's going to be really hard to drive ROI on a $700 average, average ticket. It's going to be hard to drive it on less than that. The people that I, I think this is the sort of the hidden secret sauce of direct mail is what are you selling? Like, what is the offer, and what are you going to do when you get out there? So again, Isaac, who. He's a great example of direct mail right now. Well, the thing he's selling is a sewer replacement, and his sewer replacement might be like $15,000.
- [35:51]
B
Okay.
- [35:52]
A
If his ad campaign costs $45,000 and he's sending to 100,000 people a month, then he only needs three to break even. If you're. If you're mailing less, like, you might only need one to break even. So how big is the thing that you're selling and is the offer that you're putting in front of this customer? Like, is it going to get the behavior that you want on the big thing that you want? If you're selling, roofs pop off. If you're selling, like, doggy backyard cleanup, like, at a Hundred dollars a month or whatever. That might be hard, honestly, it might just be hard to drive ROI off of that because the ticket is so small. Yeah.
- [36:34]
B
I mean when we thought and think about like writing, writing like ad copy, we really generally like to focus on job to be done. So what is the job that somebody's trying to do and then help them do it right. You, you want to take that pain away. And so the example I always give is, you know, you got a dad who's just worked a 12 hour shift. He's going, he's driving home and he remembers on his way home it's his turn to feed the family tonight. So while he's driving, he sees a pizza joint on the left. That pizza joint could market and advertise in any way. It could talk about how hot the pizza is or how cheesy it is or how it's the best in all the kingdom. But right now what I think is the best copy is to say make it easy to feed your family tonight.
- [37:24]
A
Yeah.
- [37:24]
B
Because I'm definitely pulling over. I'm grabbing a $15 pizza, 20 pizza.
- [37:27]
A
Yeah.
- [37:28]
B
And I'm going home. So I think that's what I would do when I'm focusing. The copy here is, you know, I don't, I don't know if. And you tell me like how often does somebody in a house just know they need a, to replace a sump pump or, or you know, something that like I would focus on, like, you know, what is the job that they're trying to do? And that job might be like cool. Keep your house cool, lower the energy bill, like focus on the things that they're trying to do and then make it easy for them to have that problem solved.
- [37:58]
A
I think it's both. I think it, how do you take that, how do you like come up with an offer that solves someone's existing pain point and how do you make sure you're not solving for too low value of a problem? Like hey, make sure your water bill doesn't go up. Well, that's a pain point. Like maybe my water bill super high or like my city's raising rates but like maybe my solution is die testing a toilet which is 150 bucks. Yeah, like that's just going to be hard to drive ROI on versus the, you know, the, in that in Charleston, the two people that we were talking to, the one guy that was driving a 14 times ROI was selling H vac systems. His average take is probably like 16, $17,000.
- [38:42]
B
Yeah.
- [38:43]
A
One single system probably paid for the entire campaign every month. And then you're like, in the positive. So the way that I like to think about it is what one. But we, we dumb it down to how many of these things do I need to sell to pay for this campaign? Do I need to sell one and then the campaign's in the positive or do I need to sell 50? And if I'm, if, if it's 50, then, like, I'm probably doing the wrong thing. Yeah, I've sent a bunch of like, wrong campaigns out where I just focus on too low of a value. And I, and I was always doing it because I was like, oh, everyone advertises for systems. I want to be the guy that advertises for, I don't know, like this plumbing repair. But it's like, yeah, well, everyone does systems because that's the thing that's going to freaking roi. Like, no, that, that makes sense. No, to me, I'm talking to myself. Oh, John, John, from five years ago, you were, you were young. You were young.
- [39:40]
B
If only you could talk to yourself.
- [39:42]
A
I, I have opinions on myself.
- [39:46]
B
The other thing that I've seen when I was like, looking up for like, hey, common mistakes people make, and I think this is true, is only putting their main offer on one side of the, of the thing. So, like, people see your ad and they just move on in their mail. Yeah, but if you, if you get the wrong side, like, you have one side, that's just their address. The other side's your offer. Like, you're missing out that address. Site is just as important. And so making sure that on both sides that you are getting your, your one second chance to hook them into making a decision.
- [40:24]
A
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- [43:29]
B
When would you in a business implement a direct mail campaign? You know, 1 million, 2 million, 5 million, 10 million? Like, at what point would you bring this in and go, hey, this is worth testing?
- [43:41]
A
I think when you have testable marketing budget, which I believe happens later on. So probably like 10 million. When do I have enough money in the budget that I would not miss 10 grand a month in experimentation?
- [44:01]
B
Yeah.
- [44:02]
A
So that's unlikely to happen early on because if, you know, 10 grand a month in mail when you're really small, like that could bankrupt you. Yeah. If it doesn't work. Whereas like, you know, you can, you can test later on. Yeah, we, we test a lot. We're on like year three or four of just like constant iteration. Whether it's mail or radio or meta or whatever, we're always testing something new. And it, I mean that's a, it's a blocked off portion of our budget. Like we're going to experiment with this five to ten grand a month and we're going to iterate and try to find the next channel that drives success. But early on it was really just like Google, Google, Google.
- [44:42]
B
And the caveat to all that is if you're, you know, bought into a business, you know, say 4 million and it already has direct campaign and direct mail campaigns that are working.
- [44:50]
A
I keep pushing. Yeah, yeah, we cover direct mail. Thanks everyone for tuning in. I'd love to hear below in comments if you've had direct mail work or not work for you, like what you think you'd do differently. Next time make sure you like and sub and otherwise we'll hit you up next time as we talk. Clicks to calls See ya. Peace.