Book Club Discussion - The Direct Mail Revolution by Bob Bly

It’s nice to get people with three different business backgrounds to discuss a book – which is what we did today with Bob Bly’s Direct Mail Revolution.

Will direct mail still work for Aviation Marketing? Is it obsolete? Has COVID killed it?

Mickey prefers Tik Tok, John swears by Direct Mail, and Paula thinks it should be used in conjunction with other marketing efforts to justify the expense.

See the whole discussion here.

Michael Gamonal:

My name is Mickey Gamonal. This is the ABCI book club, and today we are discussing The Direct Mail Revolution by Robert W. Bly. As the title says, this is all about direct mail. How to make direct mail profitable, and how to use snail mail in today’s market.

Michael Gamonal:

The Direct Mail Revolution, which is an interesting title. A revolutionary about direct mail. But we’ll get into it. My name is Michael Gamonal. I am the CEO and founder of Gamonal Tutors. Right now, we are doing ASVAB Domination. If you or anyone you know is going into the United States military, they need to get into my ASVAB Domination program to make sure that they’re getting all of the best study resources and asking all the right questions of their recruiter. Go ahead and look me up, Gamonal Tutors. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, all over the place.

Paula Williams:

Wow. Yeah, We’ll have to talk about TikTok sometime, because I think that’s a cool thing.

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah. I’d love to.

Paula Williams:

Cool. Paula Williams-

Michael Gamonal:

Go ahead.

Paula Williams:

Oh, go ahead.

Michael Gamonal:

No, It’s all you.

Paula Williams:

Okay. Paula William, ABCI. We do marketing for aviation companies, and we do Venn for You workshops on various topics, starting with social media as our first topic for our Venn for You workshops. We will have to do one on direct mail sometime next year. That will be a good time.

John Williams:

John Williams. I do a lot of the backend stuff for ABCI as well as the occasional business consulting.

Paula Williams:

Right. Cool.

Michael Gamonal:

Cool. Well, good warmup. We’ll just go over… We’ll talk about basically what we thought of the book. Personally, I thought it was a little dry. I don’t know if I’m… I’m not that interested in snail mail personally, because I am into things like TikTok. I’ve got so many subscribers, but at the same time, the thing about something that gives you a large audience quickly for free, you probably don’t have very good attention from that audience.

Michael Gamonal:

You may have an audience, but they’re not captivated. They’re not necessarily as good as what direct mail could be. From what I understand from the book, the benefit of direct mail is that it’s a little bit more of an intimate channel of media to get people’s attention, because you’re using the written word to communicate directly with them rather than fancy dances and songs and so much of that fluff that’s really popular right now.

Michael Gamonal:

There is something to be said for a little more substance, that I think can come from direct mail. But in reading this book… It’s definitely the book to use if you are doing a direct mail campaign. He covers all of the bases, how your flyers should look, or how your sales letter should look. There’s a chapter on just about every type of mail letter that you could create. Overall I’d give it four stars for technical use, but probably two stars for excitement.

Paula Williams:

Entertainment value.

Michael Gamonal:

I don’t get all that excited about direct mail, but if somebody has had a great deal of success from direct mail, I’m sure this kind of book would be the exact thing that they’d look for.

Paula Williams:

Absolutely. Dave, Pearl, and I, and maybe some other folks in our group have taken classes from Bob Bly, and he is a interesting dude. He is really a hermit. He does not travel to conferences or anything else. Before it was cool, he was doing Zoom. We’d have a big conference that everybody had paid thousands of dollars to come to, and all of the rest of the speakers are live, but everybody flocks to the Bob Bly workshops because he knows his stuff.

Paula Williams:

And he would never show up in person. He’d just be this face on the screen, because he doesn’t travel. He’s total opposite of the aviation industry, because we love people who need to be there in person. That’s what the whole industry is about. But he does know his stuff and he is not the most riveting speaker, and that’s okay.

Paula Williams:

He actually is more entertaining in person, because he has this self-deprecating humor that doesn’t come across in print at all. Which is interesting, because he’s a great… The things that he writes, the campaigns that he writes always get fantastic results, even though they’re boring. He breaks that rule about marketing, that the primary sin of marketing is to be boring. And I think that’s partly because of… It’s the anti-TikTok. It’s the anti–”be there in person, have a screening revival in your workshop, with everybody getting up and waving their hands” and stuff like that. He’s the opposite of all that.

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah. This is the equal and opposite reaction to the stakes being raised on the other side. The more and more bells and whistles and elephants riding unicycles we have, the more we crave something that’s a little more just strictly based in logic, a little more sensical.

Paula Williams:

Right, exactly. And he makes fun of the elephants on unicycles and things like that. It is really effective when he does writing for campaigns and things like that, but it didn’t really come across in this book. I don’t think so. It was not entirely successful in his… that’s a fair point about that. But anyway, cool.

Michael Gamonal:

What did you think of it, John?

John Williams:

No. I actually learned a few things that I didn’t know about direct mail. One is, I always thought this, but there’s actually done a study that shows that when you read something in paper, it stimulates a part of the brain that reading it on a screen doesn’t. And so you actually makes more sense to do this.

John Williams:

And then of course, 80% of consumers, at least 80%, give a quick read to the direct mail they get in their mailbox even if they throw it out. That’s not necessarily the same with Tiktok and Facebook, but at least they look at it and heck, sometimes that’s all you need if you’ve done it right.

John Williams:

Then he gives a list of reasons that he won’t do anything but direct mail. Because it can reach prospects that online marketing sometimes can’t, it’s response driven, pays for itself and you can measure it scientifically and precisely, it stands out and it can be tested, be rolled out with confidence and it is selective. You put all that together, you’re crazy not to do it.

Paula Williams:

Right. Back up to the part where you said it pays for itself. I think one of the biggest objections people have to direct mail is that we have all of these free ways of marketing our stuff. Why would I pay money for printing and postage when I could just take the same thing and stick it on Facebook for free?

John Williams:

Well, let me quote Hans precisely.

Paula Williams:

Okay. I happen to have it right here. Because it’s on paper.

John Williams:

Talking about and lead generation B2B direct mail where the size of individual orders is larger than in consumer mail order. A single sale can sometimes cover the cost of entire mailing. For instance, a mail I wrote to promote an MRI machine only sold one unit. The product cost was 700,000, and the entire cost of the mailing to 2000 prospects was less than 5,000, giving the manufacturing ROI of 140 to one.

John Williams:

The package that is profitable, that is one that generates $1.50 to $2 or more in revenue for every dollar spent is literally a money generating machine. You simply keep mailing to more names and more lists and keep collecting the money until sales fall off and the piece stops being profitable.

Paula Williams:

Right. Exactly, but that depends on many things. He’s got a neat little diagram where he talks about… let me find it really quickly… the things that are important in a direct mail campaign, the things that are critical for success. It’s a pie chart and it’s really cool. 40% of the success of your direct mail has to do with the quality of your list. And then something like twenty-something percent has to do with the offer. How good is your offer for that list-

John Williams:

He talked about renting lists all over the place. Why you would do that and how you would use those lists then, to generate your house list-

Paula Williams:

In aviation, we’ve got the benefit of having captive audiences because everybody has to have FAA ratings or licenses or registrations for their aircraft and all of that’s public information.

John Williams:

There are more than 60,000 postal mailing lists commercially available for rent. 60,000. That’s a lot.

Michael Gamonal:

I remember reading about that from Dan Kennedy too. I know that he talks about how you can rent lists all the time. And it always seems like this weird dark web thing. I never understand, how do you get a list of a hundred people who are your ideal prospect? Do you guys know a little bit more behind that?

Paula Williams:

Yeah. There are list brokers and there’s some of them listed in the book and I’m going to share some links to some of them that are kind of general. And then there are some that are more aviation specific. If you are one of our customers and there’s an aviation lists, then we’ll get it for you.

Paula Williams:

If you are in a different field, like Mickey for you, probably what you would do is go to InfoUSA or one of the list brokers and talk with… unfortunately you’re going to have to talk with a sales person because there are so many parameters that you’re probably going to want. You’re going to want people who are likely to be interested in the military, who have expressed interest in the military, who like 5.11 or who like certain TV shows or whatever. You can talk with this broker about what are the options to get a list of a thousand people in the United States that are your perfect prospects and you’d have to figure out what that is.

Paula Williams:

And before you make that call, I would put together, if you could do anything, what would you want those people to be? Would you want them to be grandparents of people who are going into… There’s a lot that you could do with that. And the more specific your requirements are, the more likely you are to get exactly what you want.

Paula Williams:

Some things they can’t do, but a lot of things that are kind of surprising, they actually can. Especially now because they’re using data from big data, from Facebook, from a Gartner group, from other places where they’re collecting data from the media and from other sources. And collating that against the factors that you want. Subscribers to a certain magazine, watchers of a certain program, age, income, all that stuff can be collated into a list.

Michael Gamonal:

That’s so cool.

John Williams:

And he also gives us an example of cost, where it says you just count the orders or inquiries that come in from mailing, you know whether it was profitable. For example, say you send a direct mail piece at 2000 prospects, your costs, including postage rent and mail lists and printing is 70 cents per package for a total of 1400. The mail-in generates 40 leads. Therefore, your cost per lead is $35. Response rate is 2%.

John Williams:

With followup, you persuade eight of these prospects to buy, your conversion rate is eight out of 40 or 20%. Your cost per sale is $175. The product sells for a 1000 per unit, you’re good. If it’s less than that, then that’s something different.

Michael Gamonal:

It’s not as good. It’s not as profitable anyway. And that’s the beauty of direct mail. Even if it’s not profitable right away, it’s very possible that your letter is sitting on somebody’s desk somewhere and could be profitable months from now.

Paula Williams:

Right. For your postcard is… and this has happened to us before. Your postcard is sitting on somebody’s whiteboard. They’ve stuck it there with a magnet until they’re ready to do whatever. And then they call you two years later and say, “You know that offer you had about this in October of 2017, are you still doing that?” And the answer is “No, but let’s see what we can do for you.” There are a lot of people that keep those things.

Paula Williams:

Another point that he makes that is, you don’t want to blow your whole budget on a direct mail campaign because if you rent the list and then you do an expensive mailing, it takes all of the things that we’ve talked about, where it takes three, five, seven, nine, 20 contacts with that person in order to make the sale.

Paula Williams:

The first postcard is kind of a throwaway. The second postcard is not quite a throwaway. The third postcard is where you start to make sales, at least in our experience. To the same list. If you buy a list, you want to use it for six months or a year before you give up on it. With four or six mailings, at least.

Paula Williams:

If you’re planning on something like that, you want to plan that into the budget and say, you know what, let’s buy a list. And if we’re going to invest in the list then we want to get the most out of that list, that makes sense?

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. It’s pretty impressive how much goes into a mailing campaign, and the fact that you have to be… It’s not something for a program that you’re running for a month. On the one hand you want a good offer that generates motivation, but on the other hand, it’s not something that you’re going to send it out today and get a thousand inquiries tomorrow.

Paula Williams:

Right. Yeah. There’s short horizon marketing tactics and there’s long horizon marketing tactics. This one is a long horizon. SEO is way out there. Stuff that you do for SEO, you will see results from that not sooner than 90 days from now, most likely. There are people who will tell you different, but that’s our experience, that you see the maximum benefit about 90 days. For direct mail it’s even longer than that.

John Williams:

But, back to your costing, you can do it on a shoestring budget. He says, and we know this, you can write, design and print…. that simple yet effective that mailing can produce on a small budget. Mailings can be complex packages of inserts, color brochure with pop-ups, other elaborate gimmicks, or you can send something much less expensive, a one page letter in an envelope or even a simple three by five postcard.

Paula Williams:

Right. I’m not trying to sell direct mail is a panacea to anything, because I think you have to have a combination for it to be effective. Direct mail is your second step. You get a customer’s attention with TikTok and then get them to give you their information. Then you send them a postcard. And what that does is it takes you off the web and you become real, because you’re tangible. You’re something that they’re holding in their hands that they can show their parents or show their recruiters and other people. And it adds a lot of credibility at a time when everything on the web is so suspicious.

Michael Gamonal:

Absolutely, yeah.

John Williams:

He also says it’s got drawbacks and he lists them. “When you try and generate leads for expensive products, the sales potentially large enough that a few sales will pay back the cost. But direct mail use to sell low press consumer products via direct order is always at a slim profit margin. A slight shift in response, your cost per 1000 can quickly transform a losing package into a winner, or vice versa.” And then he goes into increasing postage rates, which we know about, production costs, which we know about, no hipness factor.

Paula Williams:

[inaudible 00:18:29] not hip. Bob Bly is anti-hip.

John Williams:

It’s like banking. They have KYC, know your client, or your customer. [inaudible 00:00:18:41]. The most common mistake that keeps businesses is that its “One flop and done” mindset.

Paula Williams:

You’re going to have to say that again, John. That’s an edit point.

John Williams:

The most common mistake that keeps businesses from increased sales and profits through direct mail is the belief that they tried direct mail once, it didn’t work, that means it will never work for them. And we have had campaigns that didn’t work at all. And then the next time we get four or five and the time after that, a few, it just comes and goes.

Michael Gamonal:

And that’s the kicker. I feel like that’s something we bring up time and time again in this book club is that you always… Everything is telling you, it’s not really selling a magic bullet. We always want it, we are always in the search of that perfect sales letter that’s just going to have people throwing their credit cards at you. But it never seems to be the case. It’s always a long game. It’s a marathon.

John Williams:

Yeah. But then he gives you the 10 fundamental principles of how to do it. Write in direct mail style, put a response first, don’t allow brand guidelines, to interfere with performance. The offer is prominently emphasized, [inaudible 00:20:14] and guarantees are included, calls to action are repeated and prominent, target direct response buyers, have a back-end. Sales of additional products to customers who bought a first product. Be a tightwad. Direct market is unlike Madison Avenue, who are careful not to overspend. [inaudible 00:20:33] everything.

Paula Williams:

I think this falls into the category of… Everything for aviation is long cycle marketing, which may or may not fit your business model if you’re in some other category. But if you’re in it for the long haul and if you’re after long-term relationships, then it will absolutely work. If you are selling a consumer product like music downloads or something like that, it may not be the best venue. Then you’re going to be a lot better off with TikTok.

John Williams:

And even though what you said about TikTok and not having that many people that are serious, but all it takes is one. They didn’t cost you anything to do that or very little. And if you get one serious inquiry that buys into it, then you’ve got your ROI.

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah. Funny enough, TikTok actually has a special going on right now. If you open a business account they give you the $300 ad credit, and then they’re going to whatever you pay for ads up to the first 2000. But I can’t say whether or not that’s beneficial yet. Honestly, I’ve just been doing an organic tick-tock account, so I’ve just been playing for free. I’ve gotten quite a few text messages, I’ve gotten pretty lucky. And it’s because people spend hours and hours just scrolling through. It is a pretty sweet, it’s pretty cool, but it’s not… I can definitely see a benefit to mail as well.

Paula Williams:

Right. I think your TikTok is actually brilliant because I’m seeing people attracted to that speed, somebody solving a problem and going, “That’s exactly what I need to do.” And then they contact you immediately by texts, and it’s just so easy to do that you’re getting that first contact with people.

Paula Williams:

I’m thinking in the case of your business and probably a lot of others, if you use one thing to get people’s attention and maybe get them to raise their hand, and then use direct mail further into the sales process where you’re saying “Here’s the details of our programs,”

Paula Williams:

It’s easier for them to read on, on paper, maybe, and it’s easier for them to share with their parents or their recruiters and say “Check this guy out. Do you think this is legit?” It’s a whole lot easier to do that than to hand them your phone and say, “Look at this TikTok, do you think this guy is legit?” You know what I mean?

Michael Gamonal:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:23:22]

Paula Williams:

It’s a different part of the sales process, right?

Michael Gamonal:

For sure. It’s a front end marketing. Absolutely. I think you’re right. And I think you’re right in saying that mail should be the second step. I think you should only send mail to people that raise their hands. I think that’s a pretty good point. Shooting mail out to cold clients is… It’s just scary. It would be scary for me anyway.

Paula Williams:

Well, and then you never have to buy a list. As an example, our clients use a thing called leadfeeder on their website. And this is one of the campaigns we have an article about. When somebody visits your website, you can do a little bit of sleuthing to find out who that person likely is. Somebody comes to our website, is likely a sales manager or a marketing manager or something along those lines or a C-suite person. Then what we do is we send postcards to all of those people saying “Fill out our survey,” or “Answer a quick question for us,” or “We’d be happy to send you a free copy of our book,” or “information package,” or something along those lines. They don’t know that we know that they came to our website.

Michael Gamonal:

Right. But they’re thinking, “Wow, these guys they’re everywhere.”

Paula Williams:

Right.Exactly. We know that these are people that we want to work with because they’re on our top 10 list or they’re people that we’ve checked out. And so we know it’s worth the postage. We’ve got a little stack of blue folders in the other room, that we can just stick in a folder and put a stamp on and send out when they visit our website. And it looks like magic and it’s high tech, but it’s also very low tech.

Michael Gamonal:

Gives you a ton of legitimacy. They look at this website and they think to themselves, “Wow, these websites are getting out of control. They’re so clean and smooth.” But then when you send them an actual folder full of stuff that’s where they really think “Dang, that place must have a multimillion dollar office or something, they-

Paula Williams:

Little do they know. On kitchen table, but you know anybody can do that fairly low budget right now and look really big, and look very together. You can just get some generic things printed and then maybe make something really small that has your expirable offer. So you got to have a course catalog, and maybe a background piece about Mickey Gamonal, and about Gamonal Tutors, and put all that together into a nice little package. And then just put a little postcard that you can just print off on your printer and say “For the next 30 days, you can get into our December program for… with this promo code” or something along those lines.

Paula Williams:

Then you have all the elements of direct mail without the expense of a list, renting a list and having a lot of crazy stuff printed and things like that.

Michael Gamonal:

Very cool. Very, very cool. All right. Well, we’re going to be wrapping up here in a little bit, but the last thing I want to ask about is this graphic I thought was really cool. Where you just pick any two. I don’t know if it’s left to right to left for you guys, but it shows you can either pick quick top tier or cheap. Speed, quality or price, and you can only pick two. Are you guys familiar with that?-

Paula Williams:

Oh,yeah. We talk about that in our sales courses all the time. If somebody’s being unreasonable, then you have to refer them back to the triangle and say, pick any two.

Michael Gamonal:

That’s cool. That’s what… you use it as a tactic when you’re selling, you use that to say “You can pick two of these three.”

Paula Williams:

Exactly. Somebody’s beating you up on the price, you can say “Okay, let’s see what we can do to make you a smaller product or to meet your needs or something that is not as expensive.” You can always negotiate a sale based on those three factors. [crosstalk 00:27:37] Sorry?

John Williams:

You can’t have it all.

Paula Williams:

No.

Michael Gamonal:

That’s great. [crosstalk 00:27:47]. Do you guys have any final points, anything that you wanted to say about the book?

Paula Williams:

I would say, just like any tool, if you have a Phillips-head screwdriver, it’s good for certain things and not others. Direct mail is a Phillips-head screwdriver. And it’s great when you have the right case for it. But we see a lot of people throwing out postcards, especially in this industry, to everybody and being discouraged because it didn’t work, and giving up on direct mail. It is not a panacea, but it also is not ineffective. I think people get the wrong idea about it.

Michael Gamonal:

What does “panacea” mean, that’s the answer to everything?

Paula Williams:

A miracle drug that cures everything. The snake oil of… Not the magic button.

Michael Gamonal:

We’re covering suffixes and prefixes in my class right now. So I’m like “pan “means everything, “acea” means in relation to. I’m trying to break it down. I see. Okay.

Paula Williams:

Yeah. Cures everything. All right. Cool. Good word.

Michael Gamonal:

I’m telling my kids, I’m like, “You guys got to start using these words.” That’ll lock it in. It’s one thing to write it down-

Paula Williams:

They are going to start speaking Latin.

Michael Gamonal:

Exactly. Cool, does anybody else have anything to say or should we wrap it.

John Williams:

Probably should wrap it.

Paula Williams:

Yeah.

Michael Gamonal:

My name is Michael Gamonal, ASVAB Domination with Gamonal Tutors. You can find me on TikTok. Maybe one day soon, I’ll come to a mailbox near you. We’ll see what happens.

Paula Williams:

Paula Williams, ABCI. We help aviation companies sell more of their products and services using whatever tool is the best for the job.

John Williams:

That’s the marketing phase, I do the business consulting phase if and when it happens. We just started getting questions from time to time, like [inaudible 00:29:53].

Paula Williams:

Exactly. If they need marketing they come to me, if they need anything else they go to John.

Michael Gamonal:

Awesome.

Paula Williams:

Cool.

Michael Gamonal:

Cool.