HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Tips on how to make direct mail work for you with Ryan Cote
- Everyone says direct mail is dead and that email is dead. It’s not dead. It’s just changing.
- I think that really integrated approach and being everywhere helps them reach their goals.
- The challenge of a multi-faceted approach is you have to coordinate all different teams.
- I get really excited when we get a new client is using multiple strategies. Typically the results are better for the client so it’s a win-win.
- A great way to start with direct mail is postcards. And then if you add the URL redirects on to them, then you’re building up a nice warm list.
- Multiple touch points are key. I can’t think of any reason not to follow up with them with some sort of physical mail. Something they can actually hold and feel, like your marketing message in their hand.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SHARE THIS EPISODE: HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
Multiple touch points are key. I can’t think of any reason not to follow up with them with some sort of physical mail. Something they can actually hold and feel, like your marketing message in their hand.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Doug: Well welcome back listeners another episode of Real Marketing real fast. Today in the studio I’ve got joining me Ryan Cote, now he is the director of digital services and partner at Ballantine which is a third generation a family-owned a Direct Mail and digital marketing company based at a Fairfield, New Jersey. Ballantine’s been in business since 1966 and Ryan joined them in 2003. They work in areas from lead generation to marketing strategy for large and small businesses as well as not-for-profits. Ryan in this company rise above the get featured quick schema so they can attribute success to your digital marketing campaigns. He loves to geek out on technical marketing talk so I’m sure we’ll have a great conversation today as well as real-world business owners and helping them to grow their business. So welcome to the Real Marketing Real Fast Podcast today.
Ryan: Thanks Doug, I’m really happy to be here.
Doug: Well looking at your background and look at your website I got super excited because I love both a direct mail and both a digital and I do a lot of work in email and people say emails dead, I hear people say direct mails dead and obviously that’s not the case so do you want to expand a little bit about your role and you know what you guys are doing?
Ryan: Yeah happy to so I started the company like you said 2003. My role back then because we didn’t have digital in the company then my role then was marketing so I did marketing for the company, you know trade shows, SEO, the website you know various things so I basically my job was to get leads for Ballantine. And then about five years ago I brought the idea to my uncle and my father that you know we should start doing digital for clients as well because we were doing direct mail and creative I thought we should start doing digital. And so yeah that’s when the digital department was launched five years ago we just back then we just did search engine optimization because that was my skill set my strongest skill sets because that’s what I was most comfortable, but you know fast forward today we have a team of now nine on the digital side and we do everything from social media to content, SEO, paid search, email and so it’s really exciting.
Doug: Well you want to walk us through maybe a case study or example you know of how you guys have been able to combine the two I mean I just was on a podcast the other day and we’re talking about direct mail and how much I love it because there’s a very little competition in the mailbox these days on the direct mail side.
Ryan: Yeah I mean, as you said in the intro everyone says direct mail is dead and that email is dead. It’s not dead. It’s just changing you know. Direct Mail has gone through many changes versus back in the 80s and 90s so we’d still do a ton of it, it’s just different you know. Different technology for the printing presses different strategies so that’s you know direct mails not dead it’s just it’s just changed. In terms of a case length of blending both print and digital, so the one that comes to mind is we usually do it every year it’s a fundraising campaign for a client of ours that’s a school.
Basically, the campaign consists of postcards and email and then personalized URLs. And stage like the postcards go out and then the emails go out and then the other personalized URL redirects are on both the print and the digital and so they both all work together so essentially what’s happening is the alumni they’re getting the marketing message in their inbox and their mailbox and everything’s tracked with the personalized URL redirect. As far every year we’ve exceeded the fundraising goal so that’s been really exciting and I think big part of it you know and they’re doing other stuff too they’re making calls so it’s not just us, but I think it’d be part of the success is that you know the alumni are seeing this fundraising campaign you know everywhere. They even do social media about it as well if they handle it themselves so it’s really everywhere and I think that really integrated approach being everywhere helps help succeed their goals.
Doug: Yeah I agree and that’s what I found that there really is no one Holy Grail if there was that’s where everybody would be and I found that the best results we’ve ever seen really come from a combination of a variety of digital email and direct mail and we’ve done all of them together but for our listeners that aren’t familiar with the term that you use there in terms of personal URLs you want to explain what a personal URL is in direct mail and how that works and ties into the digital side?
Ryan: Yeah absolutely so personalized URLs it’s basically there are two ways to do it. I’ll explain how we typically do it well I’ll explain both ways but and then I’ll tie in how we usually do it. So personalized URLs they are it’s basically a website address so like your domain.com it’s like Ballantine.com but with your name in it so /John Doe. There are two ways to do it when the person visits their personalized URL it’s unique to them it’s kind of different that was different nowadays but it’s still different you don’t see that see them a lot. When they go to the personalized URL you can either take them to a customized landing page that has their name on it a prefilled out form you can swap out images copy there’s a lot of things you could do with it.
How we typically use it though it’s what’s called a personalized URL redirect so it’s still you know the domain.com/John Doe but when they visit that person when they visit a personalized URL it just redirects them to whatever website you want typically your main website. The reason you do it though is that you know that John Doe visited the website so with a typical direct mail campaign you always have your website address on it usually and don’t know who actually visited you know how many people visited.
With a personalized URL redirect it functions the same way as just putting your website on there but you know specifically who visited the website and the advantage there is if you have a sales team, and you’re sending out postcards or self-mailers or whatever and you have the personalized URL redirect on there you can essentially feed that team semi warm leads is like okay here’s who got the direct mail piece and here is who visited the website you know to call them. And that’s the biggest advantage of the redirects.
Doug: Yeah that makes sense I mean it gives your sales team more intelligence so instead of calling everyone on the list you’re calling the people who are the warmest, the quickest and I know we’ve done both the main feature that we’ve used before when we’ve use someone like you guys for direct mail is that we’ve sent them to a personalized page because we found that you know if we’re going to go to the effort of sending them a custom direct mail piece that’s personalized we might as well you know send them to a web page that will convert and look the same as well.
Ryan: Yeah it can be very effective.
Doug: That’s really cool. So in terms of putting these two, you know mediums together these days where are you guys getting the most pushback like where do you think what people say the biggest myth about running this type of marketing in today’s Snapchat world lies?
Ryan: I think the biggest issue honestly is that typically it’s if you’re looking at you know so for us the clients the direct mail team and the digital team there are two different teams, so it’s really a coordination I guess of all the different teams that need to be involved. It’s us, it’s a direct mail team, and it’s the digital team. So I think that’s the biggest issue is that there’s generally not one central person. You have to coordinate all different teams, different schedules and that can cause obstacles because you know it creates you know just I guess schedule delays and you know that’s no good.
Doug: Well no I think you’re right I mean it also you’ve got a couple different parties so you know my experience as you need I needed to work with the direct mail house that understood the perils and the digital side that understood it so we could get you to know them to work together seamlessly.
Ryan: Yeah exactly, yeah exactly.
Doug: So in terms of direct mail today are most of your clients that you’re working with coming to you with their house list so the example you gave where you would email and direct mail they bringing a house list or are they renting data for new acquisition?
Ryan: Yes good question it’s really combination so typically our clients will have their both their house file and give it customer lists, prospect list, and then they’re also renting names for acquisition. It depends on like a lot of our fundraising clients they have like their donor lists and that’s typically what their mailing to. Sometimes we will do acquisition campaigns to find new donors but a lot of times they are mailing to a list that they’ve cultivated of donors have given the last you know one year, three years, five years, but I would say for the majority of our Direct Mail clients, and this is just for us because on the Direct Mail site for Ballantine we typically work with very large companies and so they’re always renting acquisition files trying to find new customers and they have their own in-house list too but they’re always searching for new customers. The smaller clients they typically mail to the house file that they’ve built up their database.
Doug: Okay you know most of my experience has been renting data so we would look for maybe you know the highest quality or data we could get so they might be paid subscribers to a financial newsletter and we’d rent the direct mail list phone list and then the email and like you said then use you know multi-channel approach to go out there and get in front of them.
Ryan: You know one thing we have actually tried yet is, I’m just throwing this out there as an idea for someone to run with. I’m not sure if it’s possible so you’d have to speak with your list broker, list broker meaning the person you rent the mail file from, but when you’re renting a mail file with email you technically could upload that email file to Facebook and then basically you’re running ads to, you’re running Facebook Ads the same people that are receiving your direct mail. We’ve done that with house file mailings because it’s there, they have the permission, it’s their data so they can run Facebook ads, I’m not sure how the listing broker would feel if that counts as like an additional touch point but that’d be pretty neat so basically you’re renting an acquisition file to find your customers you’re getting their email and then you’re running Facebook ads to them from the emails matching and then you’re sending the mail to their postal addresses.
Doug: Yeah I mean with the email site it doesn’t work because you don’t get access to the list that’s kind of funny because you know you understand this because you’re in the business, but direct mail always had you know the list broker always had this great relationship with a list owner and there’s only one broker per direct mail list with email they haven’t done that it seems like just about anyone can broker the email list but you never get access because the list owner does the sending.
Ryan: Yeah whenever they offer to give you the list you know that’s probably been spammed or abused to death.
Doug: Yeah so what we do to add on to what you’re saying is we would pixel people when they hit the landing page or hit the click-through or redirect on the PURL.
Ryan: Yeah that’s good yeah and so then you can Facebook and Google advertising to them.
Doug: Yeah that’s a great idea. So what do you see coming down you know in the future so you guys have been doing this for three generations? You’ve obviously done a lot of things right to keep it a family business and to keep plugging along. So you know what are you most excited about in the next 6 to 12 months?
Ryan: What we’re seeing is it’s a few things Doug, you know we’re really excited about the advertising platforms how sophisticated they’re letting you know with the targeting that you have access to you know it’s interchanging my Facebook but you still look at you know Twitter and programmatic and all these different channels are popping up and LinkedIn you know they’re playing their advertising platforms getting a lot stronger so it’s exciting to see where that’s going. The video obviously which I’m sure you know everyone says, but it’s true if the video is really exciting.
Doug: Yeah it is yep.
Ryan: It’s a lot you could do with it. And then for us, it’s really you know it’s really the integration of all the channels. So I get really excited when we get a new client that is using us for multiple strategies, and not because it’s a bigger engagement that’s nice too but it’s also because then the whole team here is engaged with the client you know the SEO, that paid search social content, the whole team is working together on one client and I find that really exciting I love seeing it and also it’s typically the results are better for the client so it’s a win-win. So that’s you know for me you know that’s what I get really excited about and you know terms in the next 6-12 months I think I’m excited to see where the advertising platforms are going and then I’m excited to see what videos going as well.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SHARE THIS EPISODE: HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
Multiple touch points are key. I can’t think of any reason not to follow up with them with some sort of physical mail. Something they can actually hold and feel, like your marketing message in their hand.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Doug: Yeah it’s moving so fast and I kind of feel bad for the video guys because they’ve been saying for twenty years to do a video but now a video really truly finally has come into its own.
Ryan: Yeah and there’s much you could do with it you know you advertise on YouTube, uploads of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. You got one piece of content it, put on your website, of course, you could put on YouTube, ranking in Google, you got one piece of content you could do so much with it and it and it’s a really engaging piece of content as well.
Doug: So do you find working you know with your clients do you find it’s easier to take a digital client and expand their dealings with you guys to include direct mail or do you find it’s easier to take a direct mail person and also add your digital side?
Ryan: Well that’s a great question.
Doug: I’m just kind of wondering what their mindset is because I know lots of when I talk about direct mail people look at me funny they’re going like direct mail really and going yeah we send mail and people phone us that you think we sent them a gift card to Starbucks, it’s like we just sent them a letter but that gives you an example of you know how rare they get a letter other than a bill.
Ryan: Yes so this is going to be so this is based on and I’m not sure this to be a great answer so feel free to edit this out if you want but uh we do with Ballantine our print clients are very large and on a digital side we like to work with small business owners where we are having a real meaningful impact in their business and so you know the direct mail clients might be our digital team is too small to work with them they might have a marketing team it’s bigger than that our entire digital team here. On the print side though you know on the digital side I mean yeah we get a lot of digital clients that come to us for print even though it’s not our ideal work like small brochures or small business card runs what-have-you, letterhead, but they come to us because they don’t know where else to go it’s kind of like foreign territory for them and we still like to help them out of course once I’m coming to us for everything.
So right now with the way Ballantine’s set up you know we get a lot of digital clients to ask us for you know small run print orders. On a Direct Mail side we’ve had some, of course, you know a lot of association, a lot of nonprofits, but generally speaking they’re not there they’re focused you know where their production team they’re directing our production team that’s what they look at us for. Hopefully, that will change you know it’s like a 5-10 year vision here but as it right now that’s the story.
Doug: Well what advice would you give our listeners who are you know in the digital space that are saying hey we’re you know we’re always looking for new ways to increase our sales? And I looked at some of the numbers on your you know on your website when you see numbers like they surpass our fundraising goal by a 150% obviously you see that it’s working so for the people who are hardcore digital guys and have never considered adding direct mail to their media mix where’s a good place to start?
Ryan: Yeah I would say a great way to start honestly is just you’re starting small obviously and the way to start small are postcards you know it’s not like a sexy answer but I mean they’re inexpensive, they can be effective, and then if you add the URL redirects on to them then you’re building up a nice warm list it depends on your business of course that might not be applicable but I think postcards. The only the only thing I would add to that Doug is that you have to have a budget to commit to at least monthly mailings because with Direct mail and somewhat with digital you know it’s not a one-hit thing you have to continually send out the mail you know monthly is ideal and you know and then optionally throw that Perl redirect on there so that you’re developing a list of people that are engaging with your direct mail so that your sales team to follow up with them. I think if you do that way you know using the Perl redirects you’re having you have a better chance of getting a positive ROI because you’re developing that list of interested you know prospects.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SHARE THIS EPISODE: HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
Multiple touch points are key. I can’t think of any reason not to follow up with them with some sort of physical mail. Something they can actually hold and feel, like your marketing message in their hand.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Doug: Now do you guys handle the backend side in terms of a website integration with the Perl and a client’s database?
Ryan: Typically not you know typically not. Like a CRM you’re referring to?
Doug: Yeah like would you help them with the integration so you know we someone comes to you says Okay you know I heard you I heard the podcast it’s I thought it was cool we’re doing digital I’m interested in the PURLs how would you help them to execute that.
Ryan: I mean we can set up the URL you know we set up the PURLs for them we can do the landing page where we’re creating a personalized landing page if they have a CRM that allows for an available form you know that ties into their CRM we can obviously add that it’s pretty simple. We don’t do a ton of like sophisticated database work though that’s not really a service that we specialize in.
Doug: No and I was just thinking I mean you answer the question I was really thinking so someone comes to you says hey I’ve got this data already and I need to I want to integrate it what I’ll see you finding is working in direct mail so we talked about postcards are people still mailing magga logs?
Ryan: Magga logs yeah slimmer Jim magga logs which are like an I guess like a pint-sized version of the magga log it’s basically half the size not exactly but it’s a slimmer version of a magga log. Yeah, we still get a lot of those you know catalog work we on the direct mail side we do a lot of work with travel companies so you know that they love the magga log catalog booklet slim jim type work. You know we do a ton of self-mailers number ten packages that look you know those business envelope-type packages.
Doug: Yeah.
Ryan: See a lot of clients experimenting with you know the paper from like the touch to the soft feel coating that makes the paper feels really nice or even you know for some clients experimenting with really sophisticated Direct Mail like video mailers. So basically like self-mailers and you open it up video plays obviously those are very small campaigns because they’re expensive but those who are super engaging. Even like premiums you know those are nothing new but you know we still see clients doing a lot of them still mostly nonprofits but like seed packets, bookmarks, things that can make the mail a little bit lumpy so it gets opened more. We see a lot see there’s a ton of if I showed you our sample wall there are just a plethora of different formats on there that client’s experiment.
Doug: I haven’t heard the term lump email in a long time. Yeah I was I’m a big fan of that because people open it I mean you know I still love and still like direct mail and my favorite approach really is a multi-step so we would mail you know not unlike a sales funnel so we’ll listen so you’re wondering I’m talking about multi-step you run people through a sales funnel of different offers we would do the same thing with direct mail and you’d continually send to the non-openers or the non-responders and then till the phone rings or they give you their credit card number.
Ryan: Yeah one more thing to add to that too is like we see a lot of like the envelopes that are see-through you know clear we’re seeing those come back more doing a bunch of those type of envelopes you can see the see what’s through big large envelope windows you know just a lot of different ways to tweak Direct Mail.
Doug: That’s really cool I mean you know I don’t know why people keep moving to the shiny object you know when you’ve still direct mail that still brings in the numbers and you know that combination like you said with email on the phone I mean I get the social stuff but what we found personally is that we don’t get enough a lift with social. We haven’t got have been able to build a large enough following for clients or even hire enough influencers enough lift to get ROI but we always found that with direct mail, email, and a phone that we could kind of get that move the sales dial.
Ryan: Yeah I mean social media is tough because as you know it’s early stage or you know early cycle they’re not in terms of the buying cycle they might not have a need. Whereas, with like paid search and SEO they’re going to Google they’re typing in keywords so they’re a little bit later stage and they’re looking for something. Social media, yeah we can get from the right people the targeting that’s available to us. We have no idea what they’re you know what their needs are but then you’ll be what we found with like for Facebook, for example, getting opt-ins getting email opt-ins that’s worked pretty well for us. Running lead gen ads on Facebook to capture emails and then also trying to segment out the different audience that you have. So you know trying to get fans on Facebook to develop a list that we can advertise to more cost-effectively and then from there trying to get either their email or get some sort of like next step that’s worked pretty well for us. But I agree that you know yeah when you compare social to like direct mail or email or SEO or paid search, it tends to generate fewer leads at least that’s our experience I’m sure their social experts that might argue otherwise but that’s been our experience.
Doug: Well I think it’s also because there the data is more mature there’s more data so if we were to do a direct mailer for a financial client we might you know set up an email campaign or run four weeks of email it may be you know a hundred thousand dollars a week and then we put together a direct mail campaign of like a million magga logs and then sent those in a course that was you know the results were in and worked really well. So looking at kind of the future of Direct Mail and digital, is there another case study you can share on maybe something that’s not a not for profit? I see that you work in the financial area you work in a lot of different sectors.
Ryan: Yeah I obviously can. I can share a few quick these are more digital more digital wins I guess you can call it, stuff we’ve done for clients. And so with one home improvement client that we work with they’ve been client for four years now, they were doing their marketing budget was heavy into print ads and not knock print ads but in this particular case they just weren’t working for them and so they shifted a large majority of their print budget print ad budget into digital you know all Facebook, SEO, paid search content everything and they saw a lift of about a 160% in the revenue first year doing it so that was pretty exciting. Another quick little case study and it’s shows the way you can kind of think out of the box with digital because there are so many things you can do with it, we have a chemical distribution client and they’ve been a client for about four years as well, and we were doing SEO for them still are a little bit of content, some AdWords, but we noticed that they had this gigantic list of products on their site.
It was this basically one page with like here’s like 2000 products we can offer you is a gigantic page and we said well why don’t we develop a content strategy around those products so every month will knock out maybe 10 create content around what each chemical is what it does you say what have you, optimize the pages for SEO and the goal there the strategy there was trying to rank for really long tail buyer terms so someone’s looking for this chemical you know it might only get a very small handful of searches every month but when you have someone searching for that they’re likely a good candidate, a good lead, good buy for them and that really increased their lead gen substantially to the point where they had to hire a second salesperson to handle the lead flow.
Doug: That’s a great problem to have.
Ryan: Yeah it is a good problem to have it is great.
Doug: We have so many leads we need that another salesperson.
Ryan: I know, it’s not something you complain about but you still do though because it’s very stressful but it’s a good problem to have. And the third quick case study Doug is we have an insurance client they have and they sell all your typical lines like business insurance, homeowner’s, auto, then they also have a few specialty lines and so when we started working with them we advertised most of their products and I think it was way too diluted and you know it just I think what we want to see what would react the best and we noticed that one of the specialty lines really in terms of leads, it was like farm of the best-performing product that they had and so basically we shifted like 80 to 90% the budget towards that one specialty line and it just went gangbusters. Triple their lead flow and not that they can’t sell the other services or the other products that get them for this one specialty line but that business owner going to need other stuff too so you kind of get them in the door with that one product that did well, did the best in terms of leads, conversion rates and then you get them as a customer you sell them on the other products. So it ended up being a really big win and we’re actually still executing that strategy because it’s still working for them.
Doug: That’s really cool. So what are your thoughts on Direct Mail after a digital opt-in? So you know we run a lead gen campaign or someone runs a lead gen campaign and people opt in about following up right after that with a postcard or a mailer.
Ryan: I can’t see any downside to it because as you know multiple touch points is key you got them to respond visually I can’t think of any reason not to follow up with them with some sort of physical mail you know something they can actually hold and feel like your marketing message in their hand because those multiple touch points are key especially if you’re selling something expensive or complex. Those multiple touch points or key. We’re even starting to experiment with you know when someone hits the website sending them a postcard, we’ve only done a few campaigns so I can’t give you any really hard really strong case studies but I think it’s technology it’s really starting to starting to bloom and there are companies out there that do a lot of it but that’s pretty exciting so someone’s hitting your website and then they’re getting a postcard in the mail from you a few days later. From the few campaigns we’ve done we’ve seen some pretty positive results so we’re going to try to build on that and really develop it as a strong offering here at Ballantine.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SHARE THIS EPISODE: HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
Multiple touch points are key. I can’t think of any reason not to follow up with them with some sort of physical mail. Something they can actually hold and feel, like your marketing message in their hand.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Doug: That’s really neat. So stealing a line out of one of Tim Ferris’s books what’s some of the bad advice you hear in your industry?
Ryan: Oh bad advice I hear in my industry-
Doug: So I’m not asking you for bad people. I’m sure you guys go you know you’re involved in the community you’ve been around for a long time so you’re involved the community in the direct marketing community and lots of times I’m out and I’ll hear somebody say something and it just makes me cringe, I’m thinking that’s bad advice.
Ryan: Yeah I mean so with my background with SEO and as you know SEO has gone through so many changes, I still hear very bad advice in terms of like keyword stuffing and you know creating duplicate content on your site and just you know there are so many pitfalls with SEO and there’s still a lot of bad advice circulating around there because honestly, it’s changing so often that it’s hard to keep up with it if you’re not really paying attention. So I always hear a lot of bad advice around that around keyword stuffing and building you know bad links like private blog networks yeah that’s probably what I would say it comes time to top for me for you know in terms of that digital.
Doug: Okay and what about the direct mail side?
Ryan: Direct mail side really I think it comes for direct mail it really comes down to understanding the presses that you’re running on because different sizes of a mail piece can really impact the price, so you can get a lot of bad advice from an agency that might not understand the presses as well as they should. So different sizes like I said different mail piece sizes will fit differently on a press which impacts the price greatly because it affects how much paper you’re using or wasting and that can really have a large impact on the price that you’re paying. So see a lot of bad advice around the format’s that are recommended because you know a format needs to pretty need to be printed fishing needs to be press sufficient and or refer it to be cost-effective and so we see a lot of bad advice around the formats that are being recommended for Direct Mail the sizes what have.
Doug: Well and we talked a little bit before we started recording today and you know you share who some of your larger clients are so it sounds like you guys are a pretty high-volume printer, so like you said if you probably got the right equipment so it would be pretty cost-effective to run just about any size piece I’m guessing with the stuff that you’re running on your and your print shop.
Ryan: Yeah I mean so and so for full transparency we’re actually a print broker so we don’t have equipment we used to in the 80s but when you own a piece of equipment you’re kind of confined to what that equipment can do and so you sometimes you’ll see companies forcing different formats because that’s what their press can do. You know with us we have a network of about 25 plants many of them are family-owned like us we have direct connection right to the owner and so you know that’s really helpful. But it’s-
Doug: Yeah no worries I mean I work with a local print broker, we are up in Canada and I know that she sources printing all over the US and actually through Asia and all different places depending on what the client wants.
Ryan: Yeah you have to find the printer that has the right equipment to do the job cost-effectively and that’s essentially what we do here and so you know that’s our business model. And you remember the old AOL mailers and the old stamp sheets for Columbia house back in the day?
Doug: Yeah I do yeah we used to do all those.
Ryan: So whenever you got those in your mailbox that was coming from a Ballantine I get a kick out of that.
Doug: That’s really cool. Yeah I was at an email marketing conference in Las Vegas and I met the digital marketing person from Publishers Clearing House based out of New York and I’m thinking a man that was a long time ago as well where you saw all that sort of stuff that showed up after your doorstep.
Ryan: Yeah sweepstakes type mailings, yeah those are, yeah, used to get a lot of those.
Doug: Well cool is there anything you want to add or share before we kind of wind down let you get back to your busy day?
Ryan: Yeah I guess I basically created a landing page for your audience and there’s a special offer on there if anyone’s interested in getting a free digital audit of their website via video. basically go through your website what you’re doing via video and just give you advice about what we see good and not good if you go to Ballantine.com/RMRF stands for real marketing real fast, RMRF you’ll see the offer there and also you know we’d love to connect with anyone LinkedIn there’s my LinkedIn profile there as well and yeah I really appreciate you having me on Doug and I appreciate everyone listening.
Doug: Well I appreciate you’re you know your contribution I mean I love the direct mail. I like the fact you guys are doing DM and digital and growing your digital side as well. I did see that you guys are heavy into social like to see that you’re on LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been a huge win for us connecting b2b as well.
Ryan: Yeah I mean I love LinkedIn. My goal the next 12 months is to get more involved in LinkedIn pulse you know their blog platform just a great content for it and not sure what to expect but I think that’s some I’ve never tried it before I see a lot of people using it, it’s something I want to experiment with so that’s my next experiment for a marketing.
Doug: There you own something else to add to your already busy plate.
Ryan: Yeah.
Doug: So who’s one guest do you think I absolutely have to have on my podcast?
Ryan: all right this is going to sound like a shameless plug because it’s my brother. My brother Matt who’s on the print side. So he went to school so you know my thing is digital I’m under a digital side I’m a I could talk about Direct Mail as we’ve been talking because I’ve been in the family business for the last 15 years so I’m always around it, but he is like he went to the school for it. he does it day in and day out he does some very complicated stuff that I don’t know how he does and so you really want to get into the weeds of Direct Mail you have technology paper fit paper finishes what have you, he’d be your guy.
Doug: That’d be cool I mean it’s really about moving the sales dial and I think that lots of times people think oh Direct Mail sending a letter or sending this and I’m not going to bore you with this stuff that we’ve tried but with some finesse and the right people you can make a huge difference with not necessarily changing your cost but just a changing your approach, your format, like you said your colors the paper whatever so that would be really cool.
Ryan: Yeah, yeah.
Doug: So we say thanks so much for taking time on your day. It was great to connect super excited to see that you guys as a family have been working together for three generations, that these days is just you know it’s miraculous to see that happen.
Ryan: Yeah I’ve got my cousin coming on board actually here in the recording this end of August he’s coming on board in October of 2018 and so now it’ll be myself, my two brothers, my uncle, my cousin, and my father was here up to December but he retired so it’s been a long run. So now it’s our job to keep it going for another 50 plus years.
Doug: There you go well thanks listeners for tuning in this is another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast I’m super excited to have this type of conversation and to talk about you know what people may think is old-school so email, digital, and print and how they all come together so as usual, we will transcribe the notes. I’ll make sure that we’ve got all of Ryan’s contact information, his website, his URL and all that information on our site for you as well as a link to the offer for a free website audit. I checked out the page it looks pretty cool to get a video audit and feedback so make sure you click through the show notes and do that. I’m also subscribed to our email list if you want to keep up to date and see what guests are on, coming on and what’s new and exciting in the marketing world so thanks for tuning in and I look forward to serving you on our next episode.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
SHARE THIS EPISODE: HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
HOW TO MAKE DIRECT MAIL WORK FOR YOU
Multiple touch points are key. I can’t think of any reason not to follow up with them with some sort of physical mail. Something they can actually hold and feel, like your marketing message in their hand.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Get in touch with Ryan:
- Web – Ballantine
- Ryan on LinkedIn
Find out more about Ryan:
Links to other related podcasts and or blog posts:
HOW ANYONE CAN ALMOST GET ANYTHING TO THE TOP OF GOOGLE
THE LONG TAIL APPROACH TO FINDING AND RETAINING CUSTOMERS
HOW TO USE PPC CAMPAIGNS TO IMPROVE YOUR INTERNET MARKETING
Share your thoughts, comments
and post your questions below: