0:00 [Music] hi everybody Welcome to meet the mailers 0:06 I'm Paul bobn for who's mailing what a direct mail 2.0 company and today I'm 0:11 talking with Justin Miller he is the founder and president of profit 911 0:16 Consulting in East Molen Illinois now before we get started if you have any 0:21 questions or feedback please comment below you can show your support by 0:27 tapping the like button for videos like this and get notified when we add new videos to the who's mailon what channel 0:34 click on subscribe now let's meet the mailers hi Justin welcome welcome hey Paul good to 0:40 see you thanks it's uh great to have you here today so I thought we'd start off by talking about you and your background 0:49 uh how did you get started in your career and what does your uh day-to-day job involve yeah so call it an 0:56 accidental move into the arena of printing mail so my my real career first 1:03 was weddings and special events ah there is a connection in that uh we were using 1:09 uh direct mail and print advertising in that business successfully but then there was this 1:14 Evolution and transition in providing Services first within that industry and and then elsewhere um and it started as 1:22 a digital marketing agency um 100% digital doing conditional follow-up 1:27 campaigns and multi-channel campaigns and all the CRM automation stuff which is so commonplace now but really wasn't 1:34 back at the time and uh it evolved or devolved as we like to say 1:40 into a direct mail only agency and now we are 100% uh Direct Mail in print and 1:47 all our other services we used to provide are gone um which puzzles a lot 1:52 of PE people why right right with with all the move and all the new tools and now ai on top of everything else why wi 2:00 in Earth and there there actually a couple reasons for that number one is it was always a foundational piece of our 2:06 marketing print and and direct marketing was and we saw that we were getting 2:12 success for my Consulting clients with that channel easier than other channels 2:18 not necessarily cheaper but easier and uh ultimately the flip side is as an 2:24 agency providing Services we saw growth on that side a lot quicker probably due to the the results we were getting 2:30 and uh day by day uh very rapidly uh we devolved into only providing direct mail 2:38 services gota gotcha so um let's talk more broadly about uh profit 2:44 911 as a marketing agency can you you know just quickly rund down uh the services that you provide sure um like I 2:52 said we've pruned a lot so we're very focused these days uh if it has a stamp and it goes out the door we probably do 2:58 it but we're most of our stuff Falls in a couple of categories um most of our 3:04 mail marketing is relational okay or referal um we don't do a lot of cold 3:11 Direct Mail which also puzzles a lot of people because that's what they 3:16 think um but we do a lot of relational marketing so we do a lot of newsletters which we can talk about a little more detail later if you want uh we do a lot 3:24 of campaigns that are specifically to stimulate referrals word of mouth and 3:29 attention and that's that's our bread and butter it looks a lot like personal 3:34 mail um we've honed in on a lot of weird intricacies that don't really fit larger 3:41 shops since we are a smaller shop in the world of print um and yeah a lot a lot of number 3:47 10 envelopes with stuff in them and a lot of self- mailer newsletters is the bulk of it okay well I mean a lot of 3:53 companies have made a lot of money and done very well for the clients doing that right yeah it's it is a choice that has 4:01 come based on what we've seen working so what types of services do you 4:07 offer maybe that your other competitors don't offer cool so so tricky question 4:13 for us because I believe the industry is fairly commoditized yeah um which I 4:20 don't see as a problem actually right a lot do but I don't think we have any 4:25 services that others don't offer it's more in how we offer them so I'll twist the question in a little bit that way 4:31 most of our clients are not buying print and mail services meaning they come to 4:38 us at objective level meaning I need need new clients or I I need to grow one 4:45 way or another and we work with them through through that entire process is 4:50 to ultimately at the end of the day arrive at a direct mail piece that will work for them uh but it's that whole 4:57 front end of taking a smaller business client that wouldn't get a whole lot of attention elsewhere and doesn't have the 5:05 sophistication to do copyrighting graphic design you know get a direct response piece out the door um or 5:13 they've started studying some of that and they're really excited about it and they're about to take a massive 5:19 misstep I think we all did as entrepreneurs you watch this owners you got really excited about something and 5:25 didn't understand the other 90% And we helped them through to maximize their chance of success so at the end of the 5:31 day what goes out the door is 90% similar to what you could get elsewhere but how we arrived at it's completely 5:37 different okay cool well I no it's like you talk a lot on the uh on the website about uh what you just briefly mentioned 5:44 which is small and medium businesses right uh we all know that postage has been going up dramatically the last 5:50 couple years and it's you know basically the biggest portion of anybody's budget 5:55 to deal with so what kinds of things can marketers do to keep C under control 6:01 while you know maybe also keeping uh you know a leg in other uh channels 6:07 communication channels yeah so small and medium businesses are our bread and butter depending upon how you categorize 6:13 most of them I would call small businesses um a lot of them are professional service providers so 6:19 they're not traditional users of direct mail right um sure there's some in financial services which is a big 6:25 category there's some in healthcare but who are serving tend to be smaller uh providers of those Services um so yes 6:32 the postage and and the overall cost of the campaign is a huge concern to them especially with rolling price increases 6:38 every six months it seems like uh in the recent past and foreseeable future uh 6:45 however I have always kind of taken the attitude and therefore trained clients 6:50 to adopt the attitude that as long as the math is still working and profitable every time that postage goes up there's 6:57 less mail in that mailbox and you know the broader industry and and the large 7:02 players that probably scares because they have their hands in a large chunk of that volume and goes 7:08 down that's obviously a problem um for the small guys they're positioned better to be able to take the hit adjust 7:16 quicker um track in a quicker Manner and ultimately like I said as long as 7:22 they've priced their services appropriately to where there's enough margin this is an incredibly viable 7:27 Channel and also not a substitute for other channels so you mentioned other channels right yeah I stopped offering 7:33 Digital Services but I'm not naive to it and it certainly has its place in marketing and they all kind of lift each 7:39 other um we just as a provider only focus on the mail side but I still can't 7:44 help myself if I see something way off to saying hey you might want to look at X but unfortunately I can't help you 7:51 build that um but yeah I I mean price increases man everyone's just got we get 7:56 hammered with it at home so at this point it is what it is is they come through we have to push them along 8:01 obviously you know our our cost internally not just postage keep going up so every six months there's one of 8:08 those price increase letters going out and uh like I said as long as they're tracking their math and and it's still 8:14 profitable at the end of the day you know the game got easier because everyone that was kind of Dipping their 8:19 toes in the water they got scared you yeah right right dumped out and that's 8:25 that's fine right and that's so important too to be able to uh track where you response is coming from and 8:31 knowing that you know the the uh response rate for a lot of digital 8:37 channels is kind of low compared to you know a mail drop that goes out for a lot 8:43 of companies yeah sure higher cost per piece hopefully more impact per piece 8:48 right so you mentioned uh newsletters before so let's get into that uh what is 8:53 it about newsletters that makes them stand out uh to customers of your 8:58 clients yeah so this is a foundational piece in well my marketing before we became an 9:05 agency long before um was a print monthly uh newsletter you know and 9:14 there's a few reasons I believe in him work first off I didn't invent the concept obviously you know I'm not old enough to do that you know I learned a 9:21 lot of the pieces I implemented from Dan Kennedy I'm a direct response marketing guy that's my world um so probably at 9:29 some point it came from him but our newsletters and what we encourage our clients to do is keep them light-hearted 9:37 personal and fun so for me this was a natural fit I came from the entertainment World initially yeah it 9:44 matched but I don't care if our client is a podiatrist it still should be entertaining and fun and this is tough 9:51 It's a struggle sometimes it's it's a branding thing sometimes and and we have to dance the line a little bit but if 9:58 they send a corporate piece monthly and it's just going to get thrown away and 10:03 they're all going to get thrown away eventually right but it's going to get thrown away without making an impact um so ours come across as as if they could 10:11 have produced them in the office themselves and we like recipes we like jokes We Like Comics most importantly we 10:18 like personal things about the entrepreneur and owner that's something a small business has that larger 10:23 business has trouble replicating right here's what's actually going on in the owner's life and and once they're 10:30 willing to share that and they've mailed that newsletter five or six months they'll never stop mailing it because 10:35 they'll start getting response so if they send formal corporate garbage yeah 10:42 you're just wasting um if they send yeah I was gonna say if they send personal 10:47 and heartfelt this is probably the best bang for their Buck of of any piece of print that could go out the door right 10:55 yeah I mean people's eyes just to you know they uh Amigo my eyes plays over when you read over um you know a lot of 11:03 corporate talk and and and corporate jargon and compared to like you said you 11:09 know uh uh birthdays of uh people in the office if you're pH office kind of thing 11:15 and um you know their personal stories because it allows the business owner to 11:20 make that connection with their uh customer or their patient or client or 11:26 what have you well and that's what they start seeing then is they start seeing people coming in mentioning something 11:31 they had read as if you're personal friends right right and then it evolves now obviously there has to be an Roi 11:38 other than making people happy right so with the newsletters uh we on the larger 11:44 distribution ones we have call tracking and recording for several clients and it it's amazing if you listen to call 11:50 recordings how many people chose to call the phone number off that newsletter uh 11:55 as their point of entry into say a medical practice that that phone number should be saved 12:01 in their cell phone of the clinic right but they're for some reason they're looking at the newsletter and that's where they got it from so reminding them 12:08 you exist is important also some of the calls are referral calls which is quite interesting which means the newsletter got passed along which being an outsider 12:15 to the industry I always thought pass along was complete garbage and and bull for a sales rep to help sell something 12:21 yeah um but now there's proof uh it does happen I don't think the mo most of people are not going to pass it along so 12:27 I wouldn't like triple your distributorship you know I mailed a thousand of these and it got solved by 3,000 not that but enough to make a a 12:35 significant impact uh does which is crucial to this particularly if it was 12:40 fun newsletter or you happen to mention their name then they're likely to show other people right and also you know 12:45 like the uh uh the um ability of that 12:51 print piece just to like sit around maybe it's on the coffee table maybe it's on the nightstand or or you know 12:57 coffee table uh desk something like that a refrigerator door and yeah that's 13:02 that's the benefit we get in print that you you don't get an email right you get at a minimum you have a few more seconds 13:08 but at a maximum sometimes it's years um we do kind of a annual magazine catalog 13:15 magalog hybrid for our own services and a couple of clients have followed suit 13:21 with what they've seen us do and it is quite amazing that that particular piece 13:27 oftentimes over a year later is mentioned yeah so it's it's just standing out being different and if you have 13:33 something there that's valuable enough for them to keep around they will keep it around yeah yeah particularly if you 13:38 have long sale cycle I mean a lot of a lot of print stuff's good for long sale cycle really helps sales reps build 13:45 that yeah I I I've seen that too in in uh some B2B uh mail is like that where 13:54 we're you know 25 years and past the beginning of the internet and there 's still a few who you know do these mail 14:02 pieces which run through their services and maybe they'll send it out once a year or twice a year but people still 14:08 refer to that because otherwise you're just getting tons of email yeah not a lot of people save their email for you 14:14 know months and months or look it does a lot of like the warmup and the heavy lifting for the sales 14:19 rep human beings even here you know sitting in the office next to me they're expensive and 14:25 limited um and you know a lot of times they're catching sales rather than 14:31 outreaching just due to limitation of time and the mail kind of helps fill that Gap and I guess gives them more to 14:36 catch but as long as it lands at the end of the day so um in listening to your clients 14:44 uh what kinds of things do they say that they are their biggest concerns right now yeah so they're they're always kind 14:52 of Shifting um I will say with the small business client ones the the biggest common theme is 14:59 a speed to response so they don't actually voice it but it's voiced in in sales objections and Roi conversations 15:05 and it's buried between the lines is you know I'm putting money out on this you 15:11 know how quickly can I see a Roi and and how how large a response should I get 15:17 you know they've heard a lot of numbers if they started researching direct mail I get a 1% response 2% response I'll be 15:24 rich so we we often are having expectations conversations around that 15:30 uh and letting them know track your percentages but you know dollars at the end of the day or what 15:37 matter more than percentage is did you make money or not um because yeah we can 15:42 take a scrape down tiny list of your best customers and get a 50% response 15:47 rate or we can send to the white abyss and get less than a one and both may be 15:52 a success depending on right um or what they're trying to do with it so a lot of 15:59 people that have never mailed before that get excited about mail believe that they're going to put 16:05 something in someone's mail box that will directly result in an immediate purchase which is the pipe 16:11 dream are are there examples sure especially in direct response marketing World 16:18 absolutely uh however it's the hardest thing to do Bar None and it may not be 16:24 necessary for success in business growing a lot of times we're taking that conversation and bringing it around to 16:30 things that will make a difference um in another way financially but in a another 16:36 way other than an immediate new client direct sale um I would say that and then speed of response so like we talked 16:42 about a lot of these things sit around a lot build on each other so like newsletters I believe is probably the 16:48 most impactful thing you can do however if you mail once twice three times even 16:54 and stop don't mail at all right right you know we think the magic number is after 17:00 five or six months like that thing starts really working um so that's a difficult conversation to have with 17:07 someone that doesn't have the budget or patience to wait for that Roi has to be had because that's really 17:14 the expectation um the other thing is the follow-ups that's that's another one um 17:21 you know I already mailed someone why should I mail them again that's a concern am I wasting money what happened 17:26 on the first one you you WI a winning list is a winning list we'll take that any day right my concern as an agency 17:33 owner which is like the flip side of what you ask is uh can the client 17:39 sustain a success when we get it so we're very cautious with what we mail and we turn down a lot of work and don't 17:44 mail for a lot of people that we consult with um because we want this thing to have a better chance than not of 17:51 success um every once in a while you get a slam dunk and it's a piece you can 17:56 roll out as a control as you and I would refer to it as but the general world not so much about a piece that you can 18:02 repeat and roll out elsewhere and then the concern is can the service provider do they have capacity to deal with that 18:08 and oftentimes they don't in the businesses we deal with which is you know a shame to us because you we just 18:15 want to repeat repeat repeat that but again that's that's the dream that's the best case scenario it's 18:21 not necessarily the norm but it's it's fun when it happens y so um you also provide 18:29 automated handwriting solutions for mail uh what kinds of um correspondence are 18:34 we talking about here yeah so there's a couple of ways we use handwriting um 18:41 usually it's an enclosure to a larger piece okay so usually it's an enclosure to a larger sales package maybe a 18:48 pre-consultation package going to someone that has your traditional literature and we wanted to simulate the 18:55 sales rep hey take a look at this before we meet looking forward to something like that so some transactional piece um 19:03 obviously there's some clients use them for birthday cards and stuff like that right or preform handwriting a lot of 19:10 clients we have built into their CRM they can type a couple sentences and Bam send it out we don't do a whole lot of 19:17 handwriting at scale here uh we typically will partner or refer that type of work out uh it's another one of 19:24 those that in the past I don't know probably what five years there's become 19:29 a lot of service providers doing handwriting Solutions so internally we don't have a massive capacity uh and 19:36 there are so many in the world that do a great job at it that we're happy to tie into their offerings um usually 19:42 discussion around handwriting is cost versus benefit as it is with everything um but that would typically be a direct 19:48 mail piece that has a higher cost than anything else and behind the scenes it's because it doesn't matter what machine 19:54 you concocted it takes more time on a machine than anything else yeah um so it's cost versus benefit and the 20:02 discussion will turn to all right how sophisticated is the buyer can they tell a difference between a really good 20:07 lasered handwriting font versus a pen on paper and if they're that sophisticated 20:12 can they tell that the pen didn't move left to right you know we're we're way down in the weeds at that point um so there are 20:20 use cases for it not a major portion of what we do I think it's a very cool technology by the way um but I think 20:27 it's better as a programmatic thing tied into a a follow-up system MH yep well 20:34 tell me about your podcast you know I look through a couple of your episodes and uh the big intro video you have on 20:41 the homepage uh and all the the dinosaur theme and everything which is pretty 20:46 pretty cool yeah so I guess we should talk about the dinosaur theme less yeah and how how does all that how does all 20:52 fit together so we are probably completely rebranding to Jurassic marketing as our leading brand we're in 20:59 the middle you'll see both of them right now profit 911 and Jurassic marketing um dinosaur started as a theme for a 21:06 presentation about direct mail to business owners and it really hit as an 21:11 entertaining engaging way to relate a quote dying Media or extinct media to 21:18 service provided um and I wrote a book called Jurassic marketing along the same themes 21:24 and at this point yeah if you to our office or you go to our website and watch the little video you see the office there's dinosaurs 21:31 everywhere we have dinosaur pinball machine and it's kind of nuts so that's that's the dinosaurs uh the the podcast 21:38 our podcast we don't take too seriously so if anyone listens to an episode they'll get that pretty quick um that's 21:44 all right though that's good yeah usually it's entrepreneurial business advice it should be entertaining much 21:50 like the newsletters um we do have some clients that listen to it it's interesting when they bring it up in 21:55 sales conversations um probably if we were more consistent on the release schedule there'd be more so it's like a 22:01 surprise when you get one now um but I will say as an as an aside it wasn't the 22:07 intent of the podcast but it's been an amazing recruiting tool for us oh I've 22:12 probably had more uh job candidates that have listened to the podcast than 22:17 clients which is really interesting because that was that was not the intent of it at all but um oftentimes in that 22:23 first or second interview with job candidates they're bringing up things they heard in the podcast so really neat 22:29 media we we haven't maximized the value of it like we probably could um but yeah 22:35 it's there it's entertaining it's just profit 911 podcast and uh it's most 22:40 likely if you listen to a random episode it's something about direct response marketing but every once in a while we get to the fringes right right yeah I 22:48 mean I think it's a like you said it's a great tool for a lot of reasons but it's interesting that um uh job candidates 22:54 will look at it too because um you know like a lot of things that puts that 23:00 human face on the on the company and uh you know having that connection early on 23:07 yeah and honestly our account reps probably should you know use it more as a tool if they need more explanation on 23:13 something say Hey listen to this episode but there a lot of ways to use it once it's produced um it's also an outlet 23:19 just to discuss entrepreneurial things and vent sometimes and like I said our it's all around small business but 23:26 sometimes the topics are a little random we had was about uh uh women's college 23:31 basketball and the Caitlyn Clark phenomenon following her around for a while and yeah it's it's neat very cool 23:39 so uh what kind of Trends do you see overall speaking for direct mail the next uh year couple 23:47 years yeah I I mean in general I think we're going to see more of what we have as far as volumes declining big players 23:54 getting out or stripping down their pieces to keep the cost down 24:00 um I overall at a macro level I I don't see more small guys using it it doesn't 24:06 matter to me though you know I'm like a tiny tiny fraction of the industry I'll keep mine um I think people are gonna just 24:14 watch that budget even closer uh when we're talking entrepreneurs let's be honest they haven't thought about a 24:20 budget right but they see the they see the charges on their card when things go 24:25 out sure um I try to keep my finger on the pulse of the industry but not get 24:32 caught up in shiny objects MH um this was an interesting industry to learn from the outside in it was kind of a 24:38 pain a lot of the processes equipment software seemed very Antiquated when I came from the digital side over to the 24:44 direct mail side right um so they're a little behind on that stuff you know DM 24:49 2.0 is probably like the most I mean the highest Tech offer tried 24:55 to tied to direct mail that's an off-the-shelf type thing right right that's that's part of the whole 25:01 intention sure yeah um you know it was a lot of what we were doing on the digital side in a very simplified manner to be 25:06 implemented easily from what I saw um so hopefully you guys continue gaining traction with that because I I think 25:12 there's there's use for it but I I don't see any macro changes uh overall other 25:18 than continued price increases I don't think anyone's stopping that monster it's out now um so it's just important 25:24 that people track and I try and keep them to the basics and try and in true and um I'm an entrepreneur myself so you 25:32 know I got caught up on a shiny marketing object for a good decade or more and I try and bring them back to 25:38 those fundamental things and the basic human psychology behind the pieces and just stay focused on that and run the 25:43 course right and track everything yeah as much as possible um should annoy you 25:50 if you can't track it sometimes you can't and there Channel bleed obviously they have to be aware of that but uh at 25:57 the end of the day yeah you you make the decisions you can with the information you have and if you 26:02 see something work by God increase it while it still works it doesn't mean it's AB yeah absolutely so what's one 26:09 direct M piece that you know you may have received recently that made you stop and pay attention and maybe even 26:14 respond to yeah so you had mentioned you may ask this question so like ah this is so I 26:21 think a little different than most people because I'm in the industry you I'm looking to see you know is this a permit imprint how much do they spend to 26:27 reach me uh so I tried to eliminate all the stuff as a marketer I responded to because 26:34 it's very easy to fall into the Trap that we're our client and I provide you some advice that's more useful than that 26:40 like if you and I receive a handwriting piece you we're trying to figure out what kind of machine it was done on every time yeah among other things yeah 26:48 I assure you that's not what the in consumer is doing though no um so I got 26:53 I got two that came to mind and and one was really simple it was a postcard card piece about an annual event for an 27:00 oranization uh as genius Network I guess I'll give him a plug Joe polish is the leader of that uh and I was not a member 27:07 at that point and that was uh the piece that grabbed enough of my attention to make me be a member now i' had been 27:12 aware of this group for over five years um the cost to join at the time was 27:18 $25,000 it's more now um so was one of those things that you know wasn't a huge 27:24 priority you knew it was there it was fairly pricey investment um but to one piece finally got them out 27:31 of the internet world into my physical desk world and it sat there long enough for me to sign up for the event so that 27:37 was one uh the second one I got from my bank which interesting they're not 27:43 always the smartest the marketers C certainly they're consumers of direct mail but not always from a direct 27:49 response hat uh the most sophisticated and I talked about in one of my podcasts actually because it was a package let's 27:56 see if I I might have it so I do hey we're we're live so I got 28:04 this and in my world this is called a shock and awe package uh but it came uh 28:12 unannounced out of nowhere going through here we have oh I ate it we did have this nice 28:19 wrapped cookie with their logo on it we had a magazine piece like I talked about 28:24 which usually sits around for a year or so okay 28:30 we have a card with some handwriting like 28:36 we talked about right card in there I think there was a handwritten one too 28:41 yes with it was real handwriting by the way right nice we have a book that was a 28:47 gift okay wow so this uh really impressed me because it it matches 28:54 everything we teach and I never you had this discussion with the bank MH and 28:59 they didn't quite you know I think they put it together on their own too like they didn't have anyone teach them that 29:04 formula but it has everything you and I talked about it has the handwriting piece that's personal and does the heavy lifting and has to stay behind it has 29:11 the impact uh obviously you can't do this at like massive scale but you can certainly do it for people that are 29:16 important enough to receive it and that it's still sitting on my desk that thing came years ago very cool 29:24 so that that was done very well that wasn't done by me no similar stuff but it it was done very well and certainly 29:31 had an impact for them yeah exactly well I think that's a great place to uh wrap 29:36 things up for today um how can people get in contact with you or with profit 29:41 911 for a consultation and uh for more information about the solutions that 29:48 offer yeah hop on profit 911. Biz there's a couple of things to do when you get there one there's like a three 29:54 minute video on on the homepage right which is should be entertaining we'll leave it at that y uh you might further 30:02 find your way to a 10-minute video that's more about this philosophies and the psychology of direct mail and if you 30:07 still want more obviously you can schedule a console that's pretty easy to find but if you still want more 30:12 information uh my Jurassic marketing book just contact us from the website send me an email find me on social 30:18 whatever uh I'm happy to send that to you free of charge anyone we got a here 30:24 if not we'll print more so a gift to you you can on Amazon and get it if you want but I'm happy to send it to anyone for 30:30 free awesome well uh Justin Miller a profit 911 thank you so much for uh 30:37 being my guest today on Meet the mailers and thank all of you out there for 30:42 joining us today as well remember that questions and feedback are always welcome and the tap those like And 30:48 subscribe buttons If you want to be featured in a future episode of Meet the 30:54 mailers please reach out to me I'm all the contact info is found in the paragraph below by tapping show more and 31:02 we can talk about how we can showcase your company your Solutions and your thought leadership as well thanks again 31:08 for watching Meet the mailers and see you next time [Music]