Meet the Mailers: Direct Mail with a Personal Touch

In this episode, Paul talked with Justin Miller, President of Profit 911, direct mail marketing agency. Based in East Moline, IL, Profit 911 prints and mails millions of letters, newsletters, and postcards each year for clients around the country.

To learn more about Profit 911, visit their website at Profit911.biz.

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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]