Latest / Leading Local Insights / Direct Mail's Digital Revolution: A Conversation with Valpak CRO Jay Loeffler

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Direct Mail's Digital Revolution: A Conversation with Valpak CRO Jay Loeffler · Leading Local Insights

• 0:34
  Nicole Ovadia: Hello and welcome to BIA Advisory Services' Leading Local Insights podcast.
• 0:39
  Nicole Ovadia: My name is Nicole Ovadia and I'm VP of Forecasting and Analysis here at BIA.
• 0:44
  Nicole Ovadia: I'm thrilled to host today's podcast, where we will focus on one of the largest spending media direct mail.
• 0:51
  Nicole Ovadia: This media consistently leads our forecast in terms of ad revenue, yet it's a media we don't talk very much about.
• 0:58
  Nicole Ovadia: Well, today that changes and I am so pleased to have with me today.
• 1:04
  Nicole Ovadia: Jay is the Chief Revenue Officer at Valpak and he has been with the company for over 18 years, which makes him one of the most highly respected experts on direct mail.
• 1:16
  Nicole Ovadia: We're going to spend today's episode picking Jay's brain to dig in on direct mail, discussing what's going on, what opportunities there are going forward and what's happening in 2025.
• 1:29
  Nicole Ovadia: We know it's going to be a very exciting year for local advertising.
• 1:32
  Nicole Ovadia: There are categories that are poised for significant growth and brands that are using different mixes of media, and we think Direct Mail is positioned uniquely to take advantage of these emerging trends.
• 1:44
  Nicole Ovadia: So we're going to focus on unpacking and understanding those advantages today.
• 1:48
  Nicole Ovadia: Jay, thank you so much for being here today and please say hello to our audience.
• 1:53
  Nicole Ovadia: Nicole hi, How's it going?
• 2:00
  Nicole Ovadia: Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:00
  Nicole Ovadia: I'm really excited to have this conversation.
• 2:01
  Nicole Ovadia: Awesome, and so you are not.
• 2:02
  Nicole Ovadia: This is not your first time joining this podcast, and so what I'd like to do is start by setting the stage and just talking some general terms.
• 2:09
  Nicole Ovadia: So for 2025, BIA is forecasting local advertising spend will be up about five and a half percent from 2024 to 2025, excluding political, of course.
• 2:20
  Nicole Ovadia: This basically will result in about $171 billion being spent on local advertising overall, and in terms of how the money is going to be spent, we're forecasting 52% will go to digital media, while 48% will be spent on traditional.
• 2:37
  Nicole Ovadia: This is the first year that digital will overtake traditional, which is a trend we've been keeping our eyes on for a couple of years, but it's finally coming to fruition.
• 2:47
  Nicole Ovadia: In direct mail, that is estimated to take in about $35 billion in 2025, making it the largest media in our forecast, right behind mobile.
• 2:58
  Nicole Ovadia: Direct mail will take in 20 cents of every dollar being spent on local advertising in 2025, and this represents about 4.5% growth, excluding political, into 24, of course, slightly behind the overall average of 5.5%.
• 3:17
  Nicole Ovadia: So, Jay, if you can tell us a little more about what you're seeing at Valpak, I understand that your company has unique access to consumers and buying behaviors.
• 3:26
  Nicole Ovadia: That allows you guys to see trends well before any of us Do these estimates seem to line up with your numbers, Like how's 24 been and what are you thinking overall for 25?
• 3:38
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, fantastic, it's a great question.
• 3:40
  Jay Loeffler: So, in terms of your forecast, you know we're anticipating growth rates from an industry, from a macro perspective, to be very similar to what you're forecasting.
• 3:48
  Jay Loeffler: You know we, I like to say, have our finger on the pulse of the local economy because we have 50,000 plus advertisers across 140 markets.
• 3:57
  Jay Loeffler: So we survey our own customers and some businesses are sharing with us that their top concerns for 2025, 56% are concerned with rising costs, 54% with cash flow and 41% on growth and expansion.
• 4:13
  Jay Loeffler: But what we are seeing is 38% is planning to expand their ad spend in the next 12 months and 43% will maintain current spend.
• 4:24
  Jay Loeffler: So that's fantastic that over 80% will either maintain or spend more in 2025.
• 4:31
  Jay Loeffler: And then, correspondingly, 83% will advertise on a monthly basis or more frequently.
• 4:38
  Jay Loeffler: Percent will advertise on a monthly basis or more frequently.
• 4:41
  Jay Loeffler: So from a Valpak perspective, we feel we're very uniquely positioned to outpace some of these trends for very specific reasons.
• 4:45
  Jay Loeffler: So first, relevant, the mailbox moment has been reinvigorated since COVID and consumers have become more conditioned to look at their mailbox almost every day in my household maybe even two or three times a day for packages and direct-to-consumer purchases.
• 5:05
  Jay Loeffler: We've seen a resurgence in usage and performance in the past couple of years and, combined with our trust and savings relevance, we've earned the right to take a larger share of wallet.
• 5:12
  Jay Loeffler: So how do we know we're working Well?
• 5:14
  Jay Loeffler: That brings me to my second point, which is data.
• 5:17
  Jay Loeffler: We feel that data is the neutralizer, and targeting, communicating the right offer and measuring performance is a topic of conversations for advertisers at all levels.
• 5:28
  Jay Loeffler: We have our finger on the pulse and being able to offer tools that track, measure attribution and show the success is allowing us to win across a large array of verticals, with KPI models, lift analysis, test-first control and having that all part of our turnkey services.
• 5:45
  Jay Loeffler: Finally, combining digital and direct mail, using data as that neutralizer.
• 5:51
  Jay Loeffler: We have over a billion different data points on every US mailbox, including mobile numbers, consumer emails, a myriad of demographics, life stage, household and behavioral data points.
• 6:03
  Jay Loeffler: We can use this data to target across a variety of platforms, both print in Valpak and our Clip product, and then also in CTV, in display and our own properties like Clip.
• 6:17
  Jay Loeffler: com and valpak.
• 6:18
  Jay Loeffler: com, to build comprehensive cohort models and make sure that we're targeting lookalikes, lapsed users or high-value customers.
• 6:26
  Jay Loeffler: One big misperception is that we're a direct mail company.
• 6:30
  Jay Loeffler: I like to change that by saying we're actually a data company that is recognized by our trusted brands like Valpak and Clip, but data is fundamentally who we are.
• 6:41
  Nicole Ovadia: So interesting, wow, Jay.
• 6:42
  Nicole Ovadia: I mean there are so many things I want to ask more about and dig into One of the teasers that you just mentioned.
• 6:49
  Nicole Ovadia: I mean you talked about CTV and OTT and we will get to that, but before we get to that, I do want to stick to, as you just said, what you're known for, because I have some questions about that.
• 7:00
  Nicole Ovadia: So, in terms of media trends you talked about, I love that.
• 7:04
  Nicole Ovadia: Your surveys are showing that your clients are expecting to expand their budgets next year and to grow them, and so can we talk about the media trends a little bit more, especially the mailers.
• 7:16
  Nicole Ovadia: Tell us a little bit more about what trends you're seeing with solo mail versus Valpak that kind of mail, you know looking forward into 2025.
• 7:26
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, it's a great question, and $35 billion will be spent in direct mail, per your earlier comment, and solo or direct mail is still the largest share.
• 7:34
  Jay Loeffler: But it is starting to transition due to cost as postage continues to rise.
• 7:39
  Jay Loeffler: So we're starting to see a lot of traditional solo mailers and catalogers start to expand into a shared mail environment like Valpak.
• 7:48
  Jay Loeffler: So one of the things when we saw an opportunity was to invest in solo capabilities so one-to-one targeting but bring that into a shared mail environment.
• 7:59
  Jay Loeffler: It's industry-leading we're the only ones that do it.
• 8:03
  Jay Loeffler: So what it does is reduce postage by one-twelfth of solo mail, but putting it in the Valpak envelope still allows us to target one-to-one and generate that optimal response and version offers for different customer segments that optimal response and version offers for different customer segments.
• 8:18
  Jay Loeffler: We've also invented what we call our plus one product, which, because of the scale of Valpak, we've been able to get a postcard that is at a reduced postage rate because it goes out with our Valpak envelope and that allows us to give an efficient solo mailer with informed delivery for the USPS, for our advertising partners, to help them mitigate costs where they can.
• 8:45
  Jay Loeffler: And then Valpak has just become increasingly relevant.
• 8:47
  Jay Loeffler: I'll never say we're recession-proof, but we are recession-resistant and consumers are looking for value, especially as the economy continues to be a little bit soft for the everyday consumer.
• 8:58
  Jay Loeffler: So the value that we bring really helps build the proposition for why using shared mail and Valpak is so valuable.
• 9:07
  Jay Loeffler: But to answer your question on solo versus Valpak, we don't want it to be an either or.
• 9:12
  Jay Loeffler: We invested in a state-of-the-art digital printer and with our data stack, which I'll talk more about, our Valpak and Clip combined products reach 60 million curated homes every month, but the homes that we don't reach, we, with our MyBlue Insights and data stack platform, could do a solo mailer using our data to help you optimize postage in real time and generate great response, both with shared mail and solo mail.
• 9:40
  Jay Loeffler: So we really have become a one-stop shop.
• 9:42
  Nicole Ovadia: These innovations are just truly fascinating, to be honest.
• 9:46
  Nicole Ovadia: I mean, it's just thinking about, as you said, you don't want to be known as a direct mail company, and you're truly showing that you are well beyond that.
• 9:53
  Nicole Ovadia: But even within the direct mail space, these innovations of the way in which consumers want to receive and advertisers minimizing costs related to postage it's truly fascinating, and earlier you had mentioned a lot of the ways in which digital can be used to enhance direct mail Valpak, solo, all the things that you offer, and so that leads me to ask you, though.
• 10:19
  Nicole Ovadia: I mean, everybody sells digital.
• 10:22
  Nicole Ovadia: I can buy programmatic from anybody, and so my question to you is why am I buying it through you when I can get it cheaper through whatever, buy it at a lower CPM somewhere else?
• 10:33
  Nicole Ovadia: What's the benefit of buying my digital, which I wouldn't even think of you guys for originally?
• 10:35
  Nicole Ovadia: What's the value add buying my digital, which I wouldn't even think of you guys for originally?
• 10:39
  Nicole Ovadia: What's the value add in buying it through you?
• 10:42
  Jay Loeffler: Well, we are definitely trying to change hearts and minds and kind of build up that reputation in the digital environment.
• 10:49
  Jay Loeffler: We've built trust in our direct mail platforms and we're hoping that that trust can transcend into the digital world.
• 10:55
  Jay Loeffler: But more than just trust, you know, it's not about buying media, it's about optimizing campaigns.
• 11:01
  Jay Loeffler: I remember when I started the pendulum was most of our dollars are in traditional and we're starting to dabble in digital, and now it's.
• 11:08
  Jay Loeffler: You know.
• 11:09
  Jay Loeffler: Then there was the shift to everything is digital and we're still doing some traditional.
• 11:13
  Jay Loeffler: But even as reflected in your forecast numbers, the equilibrium is starting to take hold of about a 50-50 budget allocation between traditional and digital.
• 11:24
  Jay Loeffler: So we believe that we have major differentiators in the space beyond just trust, and that's the data again becoming the neutralizer, where the data that we use to target in our direct mail we can also use to upload straight into DSPs so we can target your current direct mail users, so we know if someone's receiving a direct mail piece.
• 11:46
  Jay Loeffler: We can also overlay display or mobile, we can suppress and target new users or we could do a mix to see what works best.
• 11:54
  Jay Loeffler: How does one plus one equal three and uniquely?
• 11:58
  Jay Loeffler: We also can target device IDs and not just IP addresses.
• 12:02
  Jay Loeffler: So that becomes very important as we try and future proof our business against some of the privacy regulation that's coming.
• 12:08
  Jay Loeffler: But more importantly for our partners, we've seen a 4x increase in performance when we target device IDs versus just IPs, target device IDs versus just IPs.
• 12:21
  Jay Loeffler: So one of the really cool things that we've started to do is leveraging our data when we build the lookalike models.
• 12:23
  Jay Loeffler: Historically for print, we're now overlaying these digital behaviors so we not only know the most favorable targets to go and the cohorts to build, but we're also overlaying behaviors to know is that target cohort a digital technophile?
• 12:40
  Jay Loeffler: How many phones are in the home?
• 12:42
  Jay Loeffler: Are they more likely or less likely to interact digitally?
• 12:45
  Jay Loeffler: So our data can help buy the right household not necessarily print or digital, but the right household and the right user.
• 12:53
  Jay Loeffler: So we put them together to optimize campaigns.
• 12:56
  Jay Loeffler: Leveraging a single source of data to guide multiple ad buys creates continuity to optimize campaigns and, most importantly, we look at it as a holistic relationship for our partners.
• 13:09
  Jay Loeffler: The more value that we can bring for them, the more we can optimize costs across the entire platform.
• 13:15
  Jay Loeffler: So we create continuity and a great experience for our customers.
• 13:21
  Nicole Ovadia: It's amazing.
• 13:21
  Nicole Ovadia: I mean, the ultimate goal of advertising is to connect the advertiser with their potential consumers and clients as efficiently and effectively as possible.
• 13:32
  Nicole Ovadia: And all of these new technological ways in which you're doing that and you're decreasing the inefficiency, to be honest, of the past, or potential inefficiencies within a campaign a traditional campaign, if you will I think it's just absolutely fascinating.
• 13:49
  Nicole Ovadia: And it also brings me back to the first question I asked.
• 13:53
  Nicole Ovadia: I thought it was really interesting that you brought up CTV and OTT.
• 13:57
  Nicole Ovadia: Here at BIA, we're forecasting that CTV connected television, ott over the top will grow by a whopping 9% in 2025.
• 14:07
  Nicole Ovadia: And not quite as fast as it once was, but still one of the highest, if not the highest, growing digital or any size media that we are looking at.
• 14:19
  Nicole Ovadia: And so tell me more about CTV and OTT.
• 14:22
  Nicole Ovadia: Is that on your radar, and how is Valpak helping clients with their video needs?
• 14:28
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah.
• 14:29
  Jay Loeffler: So right now it's not only on our radar.
• 14:30
  Jay Loeffler: We have a large variety of active campaigns that are live.
• 14:34
  Jay Loeffler: So you know we try and skate to where the puck is moving.
• 14:39
  Jay Loeffler: And we know that CTV leveraged with our data, you know you're reaching a captive customer.
• 14:45
  Jay Loeffler: So most people stream at least one or two hours per day.
• 14:49
  Jay Loeffler: So being able to target homeowners, household income, home values, to get your message to the right customer is super important.
• 14:58
  Jay Loeffler: But we really know that repetition and building trust with consumers is one of the best things that we can do, because that zero moment of truth doesn't just happen.
• 15:09
  Jay Loeffler: It happens through repetition, through building trust, through seeing the advertiser in areas that they, the consumer, feel like they trust.
• 15:19
  Jay Loeffler: So what we do is we will build our ads in CTV to look a lot like our ads in direct mail, build our ads in CTV to look a lot like our ads in direct mail.
• 15:29
  Jay Loeffler: So when a customer gets it from Valpak and it's trusted, we might have the same border that's on their ad in CTV, on their print piece.
• 15:33
  Jay Loeffler: So they start to recognize and see I'm seeing this ad in multiple different places where I trust.
• 15:39
  Jay Loeffler: So when the decision time comes for me to make a decision on which advertiser to leverage, I go with the one that I trust and we help them build trust by leveraging our data the print, the digital and the CTV.
• 15:53
  Jay Loeffler: So being able to measure all of this and use our post-sale analysis to meet every 30 or 45 days to review how is your print campaign doing, how is your digital campaign doing and how is your CTV campaign doing, allows us to be a full-service turnkey partner to our advertisers and then really optimize campaigns and have it be a continuous virtuous circle so that we are evolving as the data and the performance tells us to.
• 16:22
  Nicole Ovadia: I think the continuity there is super important and very effective in terms of you know the advertising and, subconsciously and consciously, for the consumer and the advertiser, that makes a lot of sense.
• 16:33
  Nicole Ovadia: So let's get a little more specific.
• 16:36
  Nicole Ovadia: Actually, let's shift our focus and talk about verticals, categories, whatever term you like to use for that.
• 16:43
  Nicole Ovadia: At BIA for 2025, we're really touting the three R's restaurants, real estate and retail.
• 16:51
  Nicole Ovadia: We believe these three areas are poised to grow significantly in the coming year.
• 16:55
  Nicole Ovadia: And why don't we start with real estate?
• 16:59
  Nicole Ovadia: Interest rates came down in September by a half a point and the Fed is likely to do another adjustment down between now and the end of the year.
• 17:07
  Nicole Ovadia: Real estate is going to take off in 2025, with lots of pent-up demand for both buying and selling houses.
• 17:15
  Nicole Ovadia: These interest rates have been very high for a significant amount of time and there is a lot of buying and selling that needs to happen just to get this market moving again.
• 17:26
  Nicole Ovadia: You talked about digital offerings and it would seem that real estate that market itself it's about to enter a new phase by embracing more digital and video-friendly advertising.
• 17:38
  Nicole Ovadia: What are you seeing in terms of real estate in the year ahead?
• 17:42
  Nicole Ovadia: What kind of trends can you tell us about?
• 17:50
  Jay Loeffler: Because we know that you see trends.
• 17:51
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, no, it's a great question.
• 17:52
  Jay Loeffler: We're actually starting to see an influx of advertisers start to leverage our blue envelope and solo mail programs.
• 17:56
  Jay Loeffler: Again, we kind of get a head start because we have 140 markets, 50,000 advertisers.
• 18:02
  Jay Loeffler: So when we start seeing spending it's usually done in advance of some of these major moves like the Fed lower interest rates.
• 18:08
  Jay Loeffler: So we see it as a huge growth area Our insights and data.
• 18:12
  Jay Loeffler: We can target new movers, pre-new movers, out-of-state new movers and have hundreds of data points on the home itself, including credit score models and other things that could be hyper-relevant to this space.
• 18:23
  Jay Loeffler: The other thing is we also mail 60 million plus homes with a predefined focus on single family dwelling units, higher socioeconomic profiles, and we're largely in counties that have high mobility in terms of real estate movement the Tampa's, the Florida's, the New York's, the Texas's.
• 18:41
  Jay Loeffler: So with over 140 markets across the country, we have 50 years experience in what offer, message, value, prop, drives the most impact for these verticals.
• 18:51
  Jay Loeffler: So, luckily or unluckily, over the past 50 years there's been a lot of fluctuations in business cycles, so we know what works in upturns and downturns and low interest rates and high interest rates.
• 19:03
  Jay Loeffler: We partner that with our eye tracking studies and we can guide how best to feature your ad in Valpak Clip and then leverage that same data to target in a digital environment like CTV and Display.
• 19:14
  Jay Loeffler: So we feel that we are poised and ready to help real estate agents across the country really capitalize on what will probably be a great movement towards new purchases and refinances.
• 19:28
  Nicole Ovadia: Absolutely, and the other.
• 19:30
  Nicole Ovadia: Another category that's been troubled, post-pandemic or has looked a little different than it has in a post-pandemic world, is restaurants.
• 19:40
  Nicole Ovadia: And even more recently, though, with consumers becoming very price sensitive, they're looking for ways to save money and they're willing to change their QSR brands, which is not something that happens very often.
• 19:53
  Nicole Ovadia: So, at BIA, we're forecasting in 2025, qsr will be spending more money at top of the funnel than they have in the recent past.
• 20:04
  Nicole Ovadia: I mean, they're constantly spending a little further down the funnel making sure that their loyal customers are staying loyal, but what we're expecting in 2025 is more top of the funnel, kind of like Wendy's consumers, like looking to get Wendy's loyal consumers to try that $5 deal at McDonald's, which isn't necessarily something that those guys spend a lot of money on, but we do think that that's going to change a little bit in 2025.
• 20:30
  Nicole Ovadia: So my question to you, jay, is have you seen any change in terms of restaurants, especially QSRs?
• 20:35
  Nicole Ovadia: What are you seeing in 2025 on the way in which they use your products and offerings?
• 20:41
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, I think your data and your insights are spot on, because 2024 was our biggest year of dining in QSR in Valpak's history and we've become really kind of a perfect vessel for top of funnel for brands that are looking for large, low cost reach that is still targeted to a highly desirable consumer.
• 21:02
  Jay Loeffler: Valpak does not have any editorials, neither does Clip.
• 21:06
  Jay Loeffler: We are merely savings vehicles at a time when consumers are looking for savings, so it is a great chance to use our equity of.
• 21:15
  Jay Loeffler: We've already built the savings profile equity so when brands partner with us they get to draft off that and it really helps them.
• 21:24
  Jay Loeffler: So it is our number one most demanded consumer content.
• 21:28
  Jay Loeffler: It always is QSR and dining, so it stimulates open rate, which other advertisers then see the halo effect of having a Wendy's or a McDonald's or a Dunkin' featured on the outside of our envelope.
• 21:41
  Jay Loeffler: So what it's helped us do is give them a platform to have large-scale reach to cover their entire footprint across the country.
• 21:50
  Jay Loeffler: Wendy's took advantage and twice this past year purchased our entire envelope every single household to feature new product launches or feature a new menu item to get out there and really partner with Valpak's equity and drive great response for them across the board.
• 22:08
  Jay Loeffler: So it's a great advertiser experience.
• 22:10
  Jay Loeffler: It's a great consumer experience and I will tell you, while I can't share data due to NDAs, consumers said they wanted dining in Valpak.
• 22:20
  Jay Loeffler: We gave it to them and consumers don't always do what they say they're going to do, but in this case they did and we have seen across the board in dining and QSR, some of the best response rates we've ever seen inside Valpak.
• 22:33
  Jay Loeffler: So we're really excited to see this trend continue into 2025.
• 22:38
  Nicole Ovadia: Yeah, you're speaking that as you're speaking, I'm being reminded of, very recently, a salad works opened up not far from me and I learned about it via a mailer and when that came in my mailbox and I was like, salad works, yes, I absolutely went over there when they opened up and it was the mailer that told me about it.
• 22:58
  Nicole Ovadia: And even having that positive, happy moment, like everything about it is, I'm recalling it and I'm like, oh, yeah, there was a moment and it absolutely only happened because you know that was the right message in the right moment to the right person at the right time.
• 23:13
  Nicole Ovadia: So that was, and it was, you know, QSR or that SolidWorks kind of thing, so very interesting.
• 23:18
  Nicole Ovadia: I want to keep an eye on restaurants and how they're using your services, moving into 2025 and beyond.
• 23:25
  Jay Loeffler: And the last category oh no, go ahead, yeah, but before we move on, you know one thing that is interesting is you know, now that Clip and Valpak have come together as a single company, we do have a digital platform.
• 23:40
  Jay Loeffler: Clip.
• 23:40
  Jay Loeffler: com is a consumer site with great offers for local restaurants with 50 percent off vouchers.
• 23:48
  Jay Loeffler: Where it's not across the entire country yet, we're rolling it out pretty methodically, but in areas where, if you go on and type in your zip code, you can get great local offers available all of the time in those market areas and essentially you could buy a voucher for 50% off a basket and then use that to bring into the restaurant and it's really family fun, entertainment and dining, with a big emphasis on dining.
• 24:14
  Jay Loeffler: So that's an area that we are going to continue to expound on, on top of the inserts that we put inside of our direct mailers.
• 24:22
  Nicole Ovadia: Okay, that was clip.
• 24:23
  Nicole Ovadia: com, which sounds amazing and you're also reminding me so.
• 24:26
  Nicole Ovadia: When I was younger and maybe this will show my age a little bit but we used to buy the books and it had all of the coupons that had for every restaurant.
• 24:34
  Nicole Ovadia: That was like 50% off or something like that.
• 24:36
  Nicole Ovadia: And when you just said, go to clip.
• 24:37
  Nicole Ovadia: com and look at all of your local restaurants and all the deals you can get, I got as excited as I used to get about flipping through the book, and so I'm guessing I'm not the only one that is hearing you speak and is ready and excited to dive into their local restaurants and get connected, which is fantastic and even further.
• 24:58
  Nicole Ovadia: Okay, now I am going to turn the page and let's go to retail, because it's another one that we're excited for in 2025.
• 25:03
  Nicole Ovadia: And it's another category that's significantly changing the way it exists and operates.
• 25:10
  Nicole Ovadia: For this category, we've noticed that consumers, they're not really doing their holiday shopping at the end of the year anymore.
• 25:16
  Nicole Ovadia: It's much more of a 12-month kind of thing.
• 25:19
  Nicole Ovadia: Much more of a 12-month kind of thing.
• 25:24
  Nicole Ovadia: Amazon Prime Days have kind of trained us all to find the good deals throughout the year and give the gifts when you are ready to give the gifts.
• 25:27
  Nicole Ovadia: So we are also seeing that advertising spending is changing and retail is not as concentrated towards Q3, q4 anymore.
• 25:38
  Nicole Ovadia: It's much more spread out.
• 25:39
  Nicole Ovadia: Are you seeing the same thing?
• 25:41
  Nicole Ovadia: How is retail trending in terms of the products in your offerings?
• 25:47
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, we're seeing almost exactly the same trends that you're mentioning.
• 25:50
  Jay Loeffler: I think one of the things that became more prevalent over the past couple of years, especially after post-COVID, is retailers direct-to-consumer brands really wanted to own their data, so they started building platforms to reach consumers directly.
• 26:05
  Jay Loeffler: So with that, you know, leveraging data to be able to target became more important.
• 26:10
  Jay Loeffler: We saw an opportunity.
• 26:12
  Jay Loeffler: So that's why the technology I mentioned earlier our household select technology has really helped us grow this area.
• 26:20
  Jay Loeffler: Whether a retailer is wanting to nurture loyal customers all year prospect, look at reactivating lapsed users or do all three in a simultaneous campaign, we can help them do that all year long.
• 26:35
  Jay Loeffler: And we really do it by taking their data and synthesizing it with our data, building the right models or just talking to those customers that are in their CRM file.
• 26:46
  Jay Loeffler: So we could do it in solo mail, we could do it in direct mail and then we could take that same data, put it in the shared mail environment like Valpak and then overlay it with digital.
• 26:56
  Jay Loeffler: So we're really building all the tools for retailers.
• 27:00
  Jay Loeffler: Dtc and retail have become one of our fastest growing verticals ever since we instituted this technology back in 2020.
• 27:08
  Jay Loeffler: So a lot of digitally native brands.
• 27:11
  Jay Loeffler: So digital e-tailers really felt that the digital marketing environment was quite saturated, so they started looking offline to vehicles like Valpak and others.
• 27:21
  Jay Loeffler: But they needed that technology which we were able to bring.
• 27:24
  Jay Loeffler: So not only the targeting and the data, but being able to leverage things like QR codes and make sure that we can prove to them through post analytics, that test first controls and the tie of offline to online attribution is really driving growth and the tie of offline to online attribution is really driving growth.
• 27:41
  Jay Loeffler: We've continued to do that and it's all part of our turnkey services.
• 27:45
  Jay Loeffler: So we see retailers with a more always-on type campaign.
• 27:50
  Jay Loeffler: They might not be reaching the same consumers every month all year, but they do vary it based on what they're trying to do with different cohorts.
• 28:00
  Jay Loeffler: But we do see more 12-month always-on campaigns than we've ever seen and I think COVID was a big spark for that.
• 28:05
  Nicole Ovadia: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 28:06
  Nicole Ovadia: As a bonus, I am going to throw in one more category.
• 28:10
  Nicole Ovadia: So actually it's kind of a weird category to talk about, because we're going to get a little meta and talk about ourselves a little bit.
• 28:18
  Nicole Ovadia: So I want to take a step back and talk about media, and I want to talk about it on two different levels.
• 28:23
  Nicole Ovadia: So first, I want to talk about media companies buying advertising from you and ways in which media companies can use your products to enhance their offerings.
• 28:34
  Nicole Ovadia: So right now, we're forecasting that media is going to spend more money in 2025 on advertising than they did in 2024.
• 28:45
  Nicole Ovadia: Essentially, what we're seeing here is that everyone has a streaming service that they need to push and bundling is happening left and right, and all the Hulus and everybody I mean think of all the media companies and what they're working on right now in terms of consolidating and new products and offerings.
• 29:01
  Nicole Ovadia: And so we are also seeing that there is a high demand for your products, whether it's direct mail and all the other offerings that you have.
• 29:12
  Nicole Ovadia: So are you seeing an increased demand from media companies to your blue envelopes or what are you seeing trend wise?
• 29:16
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, it's actually a very fast growing area due to our low cost targeted scale.
• 29:20
  Jay Loeffler: It's actually a very fast growing area due to our low cost targeted scale.
• 29:21
  Jay Loeffler: So you know it's unique in the sense that when we're working with radio partners we can identify listening habits and listening patterns and target specific areas and version creative based on different music genres we can look at does a cohort within our audience or our footprint over index for a streaming service?
• 29:45
  Jay Loeffler: Are they more likely to respond to a contest?
• 29:46
  Jay Loeffler: Will they be likely to sign up for a subscription service?
• 29:48
  Jay Loeffler: So we offer a lot of these insights to our partners and because of that it's really helped us build a pretty stable base and become a great vessel of promotion for these types of media partners.
• 30:00
  Jay Loeffler: Currently we're working with Discovery+, iheart, hallmark Channel and most recently last month we had Laney Wilson on the cover of our envelope to 41 million homes promoting streams.
• 30:13
  Jay Loeffler: So everything from music to radio to streaming services, we're building up a really stable base and consumers in the Valpak audience are responding very well.
• 30:24
  Nicole Ovadia: Wow and Jay.
• 30:25
  Nicole Ovadia: As you probably know, many of the listeners for this podcast work at traditional TV and radio companies, and so now they've been hearing us talking about ways in which Valpak can enhance marketing campaigns campaigns.
• 30:43
  Nicole Ovadia: So if I'm a seller at one of these stations and I want to offer my clients direct mail services, you know, to help enhance what I'm already selling them TV, radio, newspaper, whatever it is are you working with media companies?
• 30:51
  Nicole Ovadia: You already mentioned some iHearts and Disney or, excuse me, Discovery and whatnot, so can you talk about the ways in which like people could approach you, how you could work together, going forward, and how they can use your products to help enhance what they're offering their clients already?
• 31:10
  Jay Loeffler: Yeah, so we do work with several agencies across the country that we help guide media buying with our products as well as other traditional media.
• 31:20
  Jay Loeffler: So these are more traditional media agencies that we help guide with some of our data to help optimize campaigns, not only for us, but for other media partners as well.
• 31:29
  Jay Loeffler: We're always open for partnerships that are mutually beneficial for each of the respective companies but, more importantly, for the advertisers that we're working with, and I think one of the critical things is because we own the MyBlue Insights data platform.
• 31:45
  Jay Loeffler: We actually license our data to many partners within the advertising ecosystem.
• 31:50
  Jay Loeffler: So the data that I've talked about here on this podcast is available, whether it's single use subscription, but we do license our data to many different partners.
• 31:59
  Jay Loeffler: So that could be an opportunity for us to look at how do we work together to optimize media mix for all of our mutual partners across the advertising landscape.
• 32:09
  Nicole Ovadia: Amazing.
• 32:09
  Nicole Ovadia: Lastly, Jay, we talked about the future of media and the future of various categories.
• 32:14
  Nicole Ovadia: Is there anything I didn't ask you, that you were excited about going into 2025?
• 32:19
  Nicole Ovadia: What's one trend that you think we aren't giving enough attention to?
• 32:24
  Jay Loeffler: I wouldn't necessarily say that we're not giving enough attention to it, but I do think it's something that needs to continually be reinforced that when building forecasts, you know whether it's intra-company or whether it's macro.
• 32:37
  Jay Loeffler: We like to delineate print digital mobile for the purposes of building total addressable markets and looking at growth rates, but the truth is consumers are becoming more empowered with their data and there's a tradeoff between customization and invasion of privacy, and we see things like the CCPA and GDPR legislation coming over from Europe.
• 32:57
  Jay Loeffler: We have a phase out of cookies that is starting to happen up.
• 33:02
  Jay Loeffler: We have a phase out of cookies that is starting to happen.
• 33:03
  Jay Loeffler: So it's critical that businesses partner with a fully compliant data provider that understands how to synthesize the information to drive an optimal media mix for performance.
• 33:10
  Jay Loeffler: So one of the things that I think is critical is we share sometimes with our partners what they shouldn't be advertising as much as we do what they should.
• 33:19
  Jay Loeffler: So the days of spray and pray are sunsetting and the providers that can help prove efficacy and eliminate waste will win the day.
• 33:27
  Jay Loeffler: So I don't really see the future of being print digital mobile.
• 33:31
  Jay Loeffler: It's really the confluence of all three, with performance management and insights, and we're proud to be building towards that future with our 50,000 plus advertisers and all of the partners we have yet to support.
• 33:42
  Jay Loeffler: So I really appreciate the opportunity to share some of this data and insights on the podcast today and hopefully you and the audience found it useful.
• 33:52
  Nicole Ovadia: Jay, thank you so much.
• 33:53
  Nicole Ovadia: This has been absolutely fascinating, very informative, and I can't thank you enough for being here today and sharing your thoughts and insights.
• 34:01
  Nicole Ovadia: I've learned a ton.
• 34:02
  Nicole Ovadia: It's been very educational and I have been blown away by everything that Valpak can do for both consumers and advertisers, and I'm really looking forward to following your company's progress this year and into the future.
• 34:16
  Nicole Ovadia: Just the innovation it's just so fascinating to keep up with this data company and the ways in which you're innovating so many things that I think of as being so traditional, and it's just opening my eyes to what the future can be.
• 34:30
  Nicole Ovadia: I sincerely hope that you will come back and speak with us again very soon about all of these exciting tools that you're building and all of the synergies between direct mail and all of the other media.
• 34:42
  Jay Loeffler: I'd love to and I really appreciate the opportunity and thank you so much that you're building and all of the synergies between direct mail and all of the other media.
• 34:47
  Nicole Ovadia: I'd love to and I really appreciate the opportunity and thank you so much, and for everyone out there listening, thank you for joining us as well.
• 34:53
  Nicole Ovadia: If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us at podcast at bia.
• 34:57
  Nicole Ovadia: com.
• 34:57
  Nicole Ovadia: We look forward to bringing you more insightful conversations on local media throughout the year ahead.
• 35:03
  Nicole Ovadia: Have a great day.