642: Lead Generation and Marketing Strategy: Direct Mail, Search Engine Optimization, and Pay Per Click Advertising with Ryan Cote

Speaker 1 0:00 Marketer of the Day episode 642, lead generation and market strategy, direct mail, search engine optimization and pay per click advertising with Ryan Cote. Hey

Robert Plank 0:17 everyone, and welcome back to the marketer of the day podcast. We're chatting with Ryan cote, who is the director of digital services and partner at Valentine, which is a third generation family owned direct mail and digital marketing company in Fairfield New Jersey, and so from lead generation to marketing strategy for small businesses, Ryan and his company rise above the get featured quick schemes so often attributed to digital marketing. And Ryan loves to geek out on technical marketing talk as well as work with real world business owners about growing their book of business in today's online world. So Ryan, glad to be talking to you.

Speaker 2 0:55 Thanks. Robert, likewise, happy to be here.

Robert Plank 0:57 Yeah. So, so print marketing, digital marketing. What do you have to say

Speaker 3 1:01 about

Speaker 2 1:02 it? Yes, it's been my life for the last 15 years. Now it's a family business, so it goes way beyond that. My great uncle started a company in the mid 60s. Obviously, we just started with print back then, and we added digital about five years ago. So now we we do both print and digital. And by print I mean direct mail. Direct mail marketing, like the stuff you get in your in your mailbox. So, yeah, we love it.

Robert Plank 1:25 Great. So, so is there any specific type of direct mail that you do the most of, or like the most like, do you like the the letters or the postcards, or what's your favorite?

Speaker 2 1:37 So we do, you know? So we're, we're brokers. We're the, you know, we're essentially print brokers, the middleman between the plants and the customer. So we do all types of print, I guess, in terms of what's most popular. So obviously, we do a lot of postcards. Those are inexpensive for marketers to use, but they're also limiting. So we also do a lot of self mailers, self mailers, just so your audience knows that would be more of like a multi, multi panel postcard. So something that folds out opens up, and maybe it's like, you know, you think of like three postcards, kind of stitched together, almost that stitch, but like, you know, laid out together. And we do a lot of nonprofits. So nonprofits typically are using, like, letter packages. So, you know, they're called, officially, number 10, you know number 10, number 10 envelopes. So that's a letter that you would a package that you would open up inside be a letter and a little, a little slip, and maybe some premiums, like a like a bookmark or a packet of seeds. So we see a lot of type of stuff, but obviously the most common, the common formats, are your postcards, your letter packages, and then maybe, like, a simple tri fold self mailer. That's the stuff that most, most marketers use most frequently.

Robert Plank 2:47 All right, well, fun stuff. And so are these mailers used, like, as, like, cold blasts, or are they for, like, customer reactivation, or, like, what's usually the purpose behind these mailers?

Speaker 2 3:00 Yeah, good question. I mean, it's both. I mean, it obviously depends on who we're speaking with. So for if you're talking about nonprofit, they'll do both cold acquisitions, so the rent names of people that they want as donors, but they aren't donors yet. But then, of course, they're going out to their previous donors to ask for more money. You know, we work with a lot of travel companies, so that's, it really is both, I guess, for any type of customer. So for travel, they're, they're going out to a cold list trying to get them to travel with them. But then they're also going to their to their customer base to get, you know, repeat, you know, repeat customers like, Come travel with us again on your cruise. So it's, it's usually both cold acquisition, and then repeat customers when it makes sense.

Robert Plank 3:46 Okay, and so when you're dealing with, you know, like nonprofits, travel companies, postcards, self mailers, cold acquisition, warm customers and all this stuff. Do you see any sorts of like, do's and don'ts or like, are there things that you recommend that people do do with their print marketing and things to stay away from?

Speaker 2 4:08 Yeah, so things that come to mind here is, you know, so we're talking, we're talking about direct mail, and this is really for digital too. It's, it's you can't rely on, like, one hit wonders. You have to. It's the repeated mailings that repeated touch points on digital that you know, because everyone's so busy nowadays and everyone's getting hit from every which way with marketing messages. So it's really hard to rely in on just one mailing, for example, to get results. Of course, it could happen, but it's the repeated messages. So you're they're seeing your message in their mailbox every month or every eight weeks or what have you. So we always stress to clients that if you're going to do a campaign digital or print, you have to, you have to, you have to rely on the multiple, multiple touch points to to get results. We also see a lot of our kind of touching upon what I just said about everyone being so busy and what have you, and require multiple. Touch points. We also see a lot of our clients really starting to try to stand out. And this is more of like our larger clients, like on the direct mail side. We work with some very large companies, and so they have the budgets to kind of experiment, but they're also in very competitive landscapes, so they, you know, we see a lot of them starting to test really crazy formats. So we talk about postcards and self mailers, which are pretty, pretty standard. We have some clients that are testing like video mailers, where it's literally a bit like a folder, a small folder that when you opening up, when you open it up, video plays. Obviously those are very small volume campaigns. You're not sending out a lot because they're pretty expensive, but obviously that's going to cut through the cut through the noise, a video mailer like that. Something a little bit more cost effective. That still stands out is we're doing more and more like these clear see through envelopes. I think they're called poly packs, if I'm if I remember correctly, but they're basically, it's an envelope that's see through. It's clear. It's plastic, and so that just something you don't see every day, and it, it kind of creates curiosity, because they can see what's inside, and you kind of have to open up to see more, you know, even though, you know, it's a marketing message. And so it's like things like that, where we see our clients, our marketing clients, they're starting to get a little bit creative, just to, just to be different. Because, you know, sometimes different, as you know, with marketing, sometimes different works because it's, you know, when you when you do more standard types of marketing campaigns, it sort of becomes noise. And so that's what we're seeing. A lot

Robert Plank 6:32 of awesome, yeah, and it's always fun to to see some of the things that stand out in just the the junk mail that I get, if I see an envelope that's a weird size, or if it's a bright red color, or if it looks handwritten, and I have to look at it really closely, and I'm like, Well, I think it's handwritten, but it might have been like, something with, like, a special font or some kind of machine, or like, getting the, like, the the yellow letters, getting a letter that's written as if it was on on a legal pad. And then when I, like, hold it up into the light, I can kind of tell, like, okay, they printed. They printed, like, if it was written with blue ink on one side, a handwritten and then on the back there's, like, a little bit of a bleed through, as if it was a pen. And like, yeah, some of those things are kind of fun to look at and fun to just to be like, Oh, that's, a good idea. That's a fun way to stand out. And so I had no idea that video mailers were even a thing. So like, what are those sorts of things? Like,

Speaker 2 7:30 yeah, it's usually, it's a small and I want to go back to the handwritten part when I'm when I'm done with this point, because it's something, something interesting to share about that. But, um, so remind me, if you can, but the video mailers, usually they're, you know, they're small, so they're, I think, the one, the ones we've done, they're, like, maybe six inches by nine inches, if I remember correctly. And then you open it up, and it's a small little video, so it's got like, an insert where the video and the video screens maybe, like two inches by three inches, and it play it. Obviously, there's a battery, so it has a life. It's not going to go forever, but they open it up and the video, the small, little two by three inch screen, is right there. And once it recognizes that the video is that the folder has been opened, the video starts playing. And so we've had clients that use that for like, for example. I won't mention the name, but we work with a large cruise company, and they use that to promote this casino that they were opening on one of their, one of their, one of their cruise ships, and it was sent out to, like their, their, I guess, their high end gamblers, you know, and so trying to get them to come on to the cruise to see the New casino, and so those were high value customers for them, and so they they spend the money on the video mailers. So that's that's typically how it works. It's not like a huge folder, it's a small little folder with a small little video, okay,

Robert Plank 8:53 but, and eventually we'll have the technology good enough where when they open the envelope, it'll, like, send a sell signal and report back, and we can track that or something, right? But that's amazing that that that technology exists. And I mean, like you said, I'm sure it's not super cheap, but probably cheap enough where, if you knew your cost per lead there, and you knew that they were a repeat customer, and they were had a likelihood of going on that cruise and gambling and paying you a bunch of money, but it's worth spending that extra amount to have something that that stands out so pretty cool. And then you said, to remind you about that the handwritten letter, you had some thoughts on that.

Speaker 2 9:30 Yeah, so it's interesting. So yeah, sometimes it's it's fonts that are made to look like pen, but you can kind of see that it's not real ink. But there are also now machines that that we use for some of like our nonprofit clients, for example, it's machines that uses an actual Bic pen. So the pen is sort of uploaded into this little arm and the so it's a machine writing, but it's actually the machines using an actual Bic pen. So it's. Really hard to because it's actual ink. And you might notice some like consistencies, where the A's are always the same, but then they add, they add some varying shapes to the letter, so you can't really tell it's exactly it looks like a real human is writing it. And then, in some cases, we have clients where they want actual people writing the letter. So then those are more, smaller campaigns where we have people that will actually write out messages on the envelope or in the letter, there's actual person writing it. So there's different ways. There's different levels of personalization you can get with handwritten fonts, from fonts that look like ink when they're not the machines that are actually using a Bic pen to then, you know, actual people creating actual people writing out the messages for smaller campaigns,

Robert Plank 10:42 right? A plotter, right? Like, there was a machine in the mall when I was a kid, and you could customize a greeting card. And then there was, like, a little bit of a glass window, again, you can see in there. And there was this, like the arm would like, pick up a marker and like, scribble, scribble on your even, like, make your your card right there in front of you with an actual marker. So you'd end up with that result of something that's quick, just push a button and it's done, but then it also looks personalized. And so like, what, as you're describing, all these different kinds of, you know, possibilities like the usual, like playing a postcard or self mailer, or two people writing things by hand. What size of orders do you you people typically do. I mean, I know you said you have huge clients, but if people are listening, how do they know if they are big enough or intending to do a large enough order to be worth your guys's while?

Speaker 2 11:39 Yeah, so in our case, and there's we tend to go on the bigger side. So like a typical mailing for us, is 50,000 pieces of mail. And now, of course, if we have a, you know, some of our large clients, they'll send out a few 100,000 pieces, but then they'll also have a small little campaign where we're doing 200 video mailers for them, or or they were doing 5000 postcards, but it's part of an overall, larger annual program. And that's, that's fine, but like typical campaign for us is 50,000 plus, you know, on the digital, on the print side, we have very large clients, but on the digital side, we're working with more, more small businesses, you know. But that said, there's, you know, there's printers out there that specialize in the small stuff, they have the they have the presses, the printing presses, that are a good fit for the smaller campaigns. So even if you're a small business and you want to get involved in like sending out, like 5000 postcards or 1000 postcards, there's definitely a company out there that can help you. So don't shy away from direct mail if, if your volumes are small, because there's someone out there that can help

Robert Plank 12:41 you? Awesome. Yeah, and like you said, there's, there's all kinds of possibilities of having that whole entire sequence where you might do, like the big blast, and then one go around you might do, like small, something smaller, with the video postcards. Like I have a client who has a lot of recurring members in a membership site. He does, like a monthly webinar, and he sends a postcard before and after it like beforehand, saying, hey, register for the webinar, since you're in this monthly membership. And then after the webinar, if you missed it, then come back and get it. So, so, yeah, lots of, lots of ways to to mix things up there. And so as far as you saying that you do like these sorts of, these sequences, these campaigns. Is there anything that you feel like sharing, like, sort of interesting, like, do you have fun doing, like, the, like, a once a month thing, or over the course of, you know, weeks? Or, like, what's one of, what's some of those multi mailing campaigns? Sort of like, well,

Speaker 2 13:39 I think something that's interesting, that might be new to your audience, but maybe not, is kind of bridging the gap between print and digital. So you can get a, you know, if you have a mail file and you're getting, let's say it's a House file, mailing is your customer list. You're typically going to have post, you're typically gonna have addresses and your email addresses. And so basically, what happens is you can create this multi touch point integrated campaign where you're sending out emails to these people. You're also sending out mail pieces, whether it's a postcard or self mail or a letter, and then you're also uploading the spreadsheet to Facebook or LinkedIn, and you're running ads to these people in their newsfeed. So you know, with the technology that we you know that we all have available to us now, we can essentially hit our list in their mailbox and their inbox and their social feeds, and so maybe that's creating all the noise that I talked about before, but this is what we have available to us as marketers now, so might as well take advantage of it, because, you know, you don't know where you're going to capture their Attention. It might be in their mailbox because there's not as much competition in the mailbox, or it might be in their inbox because they tend to respond better to email. Or maybe they're always on social media, and so you're gonna get them on you're gonna get them in their social media feeds, and in some cases, you're getting them they're seeing your marketing message in their social feed, and maybe they don't even. Really recognize it. They sort of see it, but they're not it's not really registering, but then they get your email, or they get your postcard, and then then the message connects with them. And so I think it's pretty exciting that we can reach people in all these different channels now with the technology that we have available to

Speaker 3 15:14 us,

Robert Plank 15:15 yeah, and just place an order, push a button, and it's everywhere, and that way, yeah, so that way that there's all the noise out there, and so now they just they see us in all these different places, and also keeping in mind that some people just prefer certain things, right? Some people prefer to see their ads on Facebook or in the in those postcards. And what you're making me think of is I talked to a guy once who had a call center, and he was really big on like the phone marketing. And what he pointed out was that with the phone stuff that worked better for the older crowd, right? Because, I mean, the young people these days, they don't want to answer their phone. They're afraid of reading a text message. They just want to get they just want to see what it is on Facebook. So is that, is there anything like that with the print mailing like, are there certain industries or certain demographics of customers where the print mailing works really well compared to everything else?

Speaker 2 16:08 Well, I could just be gone. If I look at our our client base, you know, it's heavy in nonprofits. Nonprofits uses a lot of direct nonprofits use a lot of direct mail. You know, the typical donor is a little bit older, you know, so they typically respond to mail. And although younger people respond to mail too, but you know, it's typically older people that are donating, at least right now. And so nonprofits use a lot of direct mail, plus, you know, they need a mechanism to send the mail, send the donation back. And then a lot of the nonprofits are trying to push that to on to online as well, especially to appeal to the younger audience, because that's their challenge right now, is to get younger people to donate, but then you still need a mechanism to send the send the donation back. So they have to, they have to use direct mail, because it has to be a package with a return, return envelope where they can send money back. So nonprofits is huge plus. But nonprofits, you know, it's important to you really can't use a postcard unless it's for a very specific like just a reminder type of campaign, because you need to tell the story the mission. Usually there's a premium involved. You know, there's a, there's a sort of a story that has to go into the mail piece. It's nonprofits, for sure, travel, absolutely. Because, you know, typically it's brochures showing the cruises and the itinerary and all that. So definitely travel. We do fair mountain finance. Those are the three, three main ones for us. I feel like I'm losing I'm forgetting one, associations, museums, I guess you kind of want those under nonprofits. Those are the big ones for us.

Robert Plank 17:42 Okay, great, nonprofits, travel, finance and associations and then. So, I mean, I can tell that you have a lot of fun with this. You love what you do. And so you mentioned that you you do that the print stuff and the digital stuff. So like, what specifically with that digital marketing? Are we talking Facebook ads or SEO or something else.

Speaker 2 18:03 Yeah, so for us, and that's, you know, that's a big part of what I'm involved with here at Valentine. I could talk about the print because I've been in the family business for 15 years, but I my day to day is digital. And so for us, you know, for us, we have in house for from search engine optimization, the paid search, social content, email, web development, those are our core offerings that we do every day. And what we get, what gets me excited is I love when we have a client that uses us for multiple channels. Because, you know, we have different different team members here that specialize in different things. So if I get a big kick out of when I see like the team collaborating, working together on a client, you know, maybe the SEO team is sharing keyword ideas with the PPC team, the SEO team is sharing keyword ideas for the with the content team to come up with topics for blog content. So i That's why I like about digital, because it's very collaborative. You kind of like, it's like a puzzle putting all the different pieces together to get better results for clients. That's what I get a big kick out of. That's what we do. That's what we do a lot of you know, we we try to push, like, the multiple into the integrated approach, where the team is working together, trying to put together the different channels, to to kind of elevate the overall results

Robert Plank 19:12 awesome. And do you think that it's important to be on all these channels at once, or do you do you think that companies should focus on a handful at first or like, what are your thoughts on that sort of thing?

Speaker 2 19:27 Yeah, that's good question. So obviously it's going to vary on a case by case basis. I, you know, I so there needs to be multiple touch points. So I think having multiple channels is important. But I also, I also could argue that need to have focus. So I would say there is, I don't think you need to be everywhere. I think you need to be on social media, but it doesn't need to be on every single network. You need to be on Google, either SEO or paid search, ideally both, because you want to cover both of your bases. But obviously it just depends on your budget. But what I what I would say, is that you. You know, every channel needs to be on the same page with the same goal. And if you're running a campaign, the same messaging and, you know, the same end goal. So I think every channel needs to be working together. But I don't think you need to be on every single thing. You know, obviously, if we all had endless budgets, then it would just we can go crazy. But most typically, most typically, most typically, we don't, especially with our typical client, which being a small business. So I think you need to use multiple channels. It just needs to be strategic and focused with an end goal in mind.

Robert Plank 20:32 Okay, that makes perfect sense. So, yeah, have the focus be on. Be where you can be, but don't be spread so thin that everything points people everywhere else, ideally have it all working together to have that, that similar end goal. So with all your you know the say, your 15 years experience with the family business, with the print stuff, with the digital marketing stuff, are you seeing a number one mistake that business owners are making these days?

Speaker 2 21:02 Number one mistake. I am still surprised, and this is not meant to be as insult. If they're not, if you're a business owner, you're in a marketer, so you don't you know, you don't know what you don't know. I'm still surprised at how many clients we get where the websites are not mobile responsive, and that the call to actions are very weak, or they're missing altogether. You know that the web and the websites poorly designed, and I think if you fast forward five years, that's going to all sort itself out, because I think we have on the digital side, we have some very random niches that we that we operate in, like, a lot of manufacturing, industrial it's really cool. How many businesses are out there, like, the types of businesses are out there, and even those, like, you know, manufacturers of like, rotary shaft seals, even they know that they need a website, a good website, they need to be on digital so I think if you fast forward five years, you know, everyone's gonna catch up, and they're going to know the importance of that. But I think, you know, I think when you're going into digital marketing, the you know, the foundation is your website. It needs to be mobile responsive, it needs to look fast, it needs to look good. Doesn't mean to be fancy, but needs to look good and needs to be well thought out in terms of call to actions, like, when someone lands on my website, what do I want them to do? Is it? Call me? Is it fill out a form? Is it opt into our newsletter? What message do I want to convey to them? That needs to be all really mapped out very well, because everything else you do is going to point to the website, usually, and so that needs to be well thought out. So that's what I would say. The number one mistake is, is just not, not doing that.

Robert Plank 22:38 Yeah, having your basis covered. And those are all things that that, like you said, a lot of a lot of business owners, just haven't quite caught up yet, and that's totally okay. I mean, you're making me think of 20 years ago, I had a family member who was trying to sell a house, and he and he was convinced that listing his house for sale on the internet was the way to go. And and everyone thought it was silly, and it probably was at that time. But nowadays, if you were selling a house and you didn't have it online in some way, in some kind of directory, then you'd be crazy. And so yeah, just a matter of maybe some some things are too soon for their time, and then all these other industries have to get caught up. So really good things for us to think about how that website that's mobile responsive that has the call to action, that loads fast, that look good. It looks good, all things that we we as marketers, notice and keep in mind. But if someone eats, breathes and sleeps, manufacturing, maybe a website has been the lowest thing on their priorities. But now that it's the modern day and age, then we all need to get caught up. So if people liked what you had to share with us today, which was a lot of really great advice. I mean, I love that video mailer thing. It's good to know that that's out there. How can people take the next step with you and your company? How can they contact you? And what should they be checking out?

Speaker 3 23:53 Yeah,

Speaker 2 23:54 I would say two things. Definitely connect me on LinkedIn. Ryan cote, R, you know, R, Y, a, n, C, o, t, and then Ballantine connect me on LinkedIn. And then our website is ballantine.com it's b, a, l, l, a, n, t, I, N, E, like the beer, but no, no relationship. And yeah, just definitely reach out and connect with me. And I'd love to speak to anyone that just wants to talk about their digital marketing, their print marketing their print marketing and and just bounce around

Speaker 3 24:24 some ideas.

Robert Plank 24:25 Fantastic. No harm in having that quick conversation. So Ryan cote, valentine.com collect with connect with him on LinkedIn, and that web address, so that it's spelled out, is b, a, l, l, a n, t, I N, e.com that's valentine.com so we'll see you over there on the website, and we'll see you when you connect with Ryan over on LinkedIn. So thanks so much Ryan for stopping by and for sharing with us some really cool ideas about print and digital marketing.

Speaker 2 24:54 Thanks for having me, Robert, and thanks everyone

Speaker 3 24:56 for

Robert Plank 24:56 listening. Please subscribe, rate and review our show. At marketer of the day.com/itunes and like us on Facebook. At marketer of the day.com/facebook

Speaker 3 25:08 you.