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Can Old-School Direct Mail Beat Email Marketing in Ecommerce? · eCommerce Podcast

0:04
Well, hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast. My name is Matt Edmundson and
0:08
a very, very warm welcome to you today. Great to have you with us on the show.
0:12
If you're new here, a very warm welcome to you. We talk about all things
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ecommerce. The clue is in the title, as they say. And so yeah, whether you're
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just starting out, whether you've been up and running a little while, or whether
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you're a big $100 million pharmaceutical company, a very warm welcome to you.
0:29
And yes, all of those types of people listen to this show. It's great to have
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you on board with us wherever you are in the world. If you haven't done so
0:38
already, well, if you're new, you won't have done. But let me tell you this, if
0:42
you are new, you can check out the website ecommercepodcast.net. There you'll
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find the whole archive of our entire back catalogue. And our conversation from
0:51
today, the show notes, the links, everything will be on that website at
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eCommerce Podcast. Ecommercepodcast.net. You can find out all kinds of cool
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those kinds of things. Just head over to ecommercepodcast.net. There's a whole
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host of amazing things waiting for you if you run your own ecommerce company.
1:25
Now, and if you don't know me, by the way, I've been doing ecommerce since 2002,
1:29
which is a long old time, as they say, and it's getting longer every day. But I
1:34
still enjoy it. And it's still great to do this show because every week we get
1:38
to chat with experts and founders and all kinds of crazily cool people. And
1:42
today is no exception. Dan, welcome to the show. You've got some very cool hat
1:47
thing going on there. How are we doing?
1:52
I'm all right, thank you, Matt. Thank you for having me.
1:56
It's great to have you, man. It's great. For those that don't know you, just
2:00
give us a quick elevator pitch about who Dan is and what Dan does.
2:05
Well, first of all, I'm not cool. So that's, that's, you shouldn't be, you
2:09
shouldn't be misleading your audience straight away.
2:14
I'm terribly sorry. I just assume everybody's cool.
2:17
Yeah, no, I know. So I am Dan Dunn, Daniel Dunn. I am the CEO and co-founder of
2:23
Paper Planes. I am based here in East London, originally from Birmingham though.
2:29
And Paper Planes is all about bringing direct mail, good old-fashioned postal
2:35
marketing to the forefront of a DTC ecommerce marketer's mind, like getting it
2:40
plugged into their marketing plans, ensuring that they're using it to hit up
2:46
first-party data in a way that gets noticed and allowing them to track the
2:52
results through our dashboard and the analytics that we provide clients.
3:00
Very cool. And I have to be honest with you, Dan, I've been looking forward to
3:05
this conversation because I like the conversations which go back to what I call
3:09
old-school marketing. Right, where you forget about what the latest silver
3:14
bullet is, you know, the latest shiny object and all that sort of stuff. And we
3:19
just get down to good old-fashioned marketing 101, right? And you, you talk
3:24
about these kind of things. And I, I, the, the— I enjoyed our pre-call, you
3:28
know, where we sort of chat about the show, because direct marketing is where I
3:33
started my marketing career. Right, figuring out how to write letters to cold
3:38
audiences in a way that generated some kind of action. And so it's a bit of an
3:43
art form, it's a bit of a skill, uh, and so yeah, I was excited to talk to you
3:47
about this. So let's jump straight into it, Dan. Uh, you obviously work with a
3:52
lot of clients around the world, uh, with relation to this. What's the key—
3:57
what's the key mistake we're all making that you'd love to solve if you had that
4:02
magic wand?
4:08
Well, I think that, you know, for anyone who has the benefit of not seeing Matt
4:12
on the podcast, he's got this amazing DeLorean Back to the Future t-shirt.
4:17
Oh, yeah.
4:18
Which is very nice. I mean, you mentioned my cap, the branded cap, but that
4:22
DeLorean t-shirt is very good. And it's funny because a lot of people talk about
4:27
what we do is kind of going back to the future with direct mail. You know, I
4:31
don't know if that means I'm Michael J. Fox or—
4:35
I would take it. I don't know who's Doc Brown, but I would take Yeah, Doc Brown.
4:40
Yeah, maybe, maybe Steve, my co-founder, is Doc Brown. I'll go for Michael J.
4:44
Fox. Yeah, we've been, we've been described as going back to the future in
4:49
direct mail, and I think the one thing that we are doing wrong as ecommerce
4:53
marketers, if you're utilising mail, is using it for prospecting and
4:58
acquisition, like using it for a way in which we are trying to build, uh, sales,
5:02
uh, which isn't utilising first-party data. But more importantly than that,
5:07
because a lot of the, a lot of the DTC ecommerce marketers will not be using
5:12
direct mail at the minute, but they will have first-party data and they will
5:16
have a significant proportion of that database who are not responding, clicking
5:21
through, or opening emails. Now they are prime for something tangible and
5:25
physical in the post. So I think what a lot of us are doing wrong today from a
5:30
marketing perspective is not fully utilising the value that can come from our
5:35
first-party datasets by having the right marketing channels plugged into your
5:39
portfolio, your options of how you reach customers. Very good.
5:44
Okay, so I'm furiously scribbling notes here, Dan. And so let's define a few
5:48
terms before we carry on. Define for those that might not know what first-party
5:51
data is.
5:56
Yeah, so we— I might have a lot of these. I bloody love an abbreviation or a
6:00
crossover into some sort of terminology that just doesn't make any sense outside
6:05
of my own mind. So first-party data. So a brand starts to build— a brand opens
6:09
up a Shopify store, opens up an online store. The minute a customer comes to
6:14
your store and starts buying from you, they are first-party data. So they are
6:19
effectively someone who is— you own the customer, you know who the customer is.
6:23
They haven't come via Amazon Marketplace, they haven't come via Etsy or anything
6:28
else. They are on your, your platform. They are first-party data. Um, and
6:32
obviously the more successful you are at getting people to come to your store
6:37
and buy, the more first-party data you're going to have. And I think a lot of
6:42
brands on their growth trajectory get to the point whereby, oh, now we've got
6:46
quite a few people who are buying from us and we've got a couple of— quite a few
6:51
people who have purchased. Now we need to contact, we need to continue a
6:55
conversation with them. We need to speak to them in channels and in ways that is
7:00
going to enable us to continue to drive value from them. And that's where, you
7:05
know, direct mail can really play a role because traditionally, if you're
7:09
looking to get value out of first-party data, if you're looking to continue a
7:14
conversation with them, you're probably investing in email to do that. Email is
7:18
probably your go-to channel in order to try and get someone to buy again or to
7:23
follow up on an abandoned basket flow, abandoned basket occasion, or You know,
7:28
maybe if you're not using email or maybe you are using email and then also maybe
7:32
you're using SMS, try and get people back via SMS as well. Maybe that's the kind
7:37
of like the way in which you are looking to get them back. So it's very rare
7:41
that within that channel mix someone will also be utilising direct mail, postal
7:46
marketing. And that's a shame because in the, in the duration that we are going
7:51
to have, the time it takes for us to do this podcast complement each other's
7:55
attire, talk about the benefits of the channel, do all of those great things. We
8:00
are going to probably have received 20, 30 emails.
8:05
Yeah.
8:05
In that 45-minute period, 1-hour period today, the postman came and delivered 3
8:10
letters to me and I won't see that man again for another couple of days.
8:16
Mm.
8:17
You know, so if we're talking about the value of a channel that isn't saturated
8:20
and why that could be so powerful to get people back, I think that's a great way
8:23
of, of, of demonstrating that.
8:26
Yeah, no, that's fair play. So just to reiterate, first-party data is the data
8:32
that we own that's come from customers or leads on our website. And the default
8:38
thinking we have to take advantage of first-party data is first email, quite
8:44
rightly so, possibly SMS. Possibly social media, I suppose, if you have the
8:50
social media outreach. Rarely do people think about direct mail. Why do we
8:57
rarely think about it? I mean, I suppose if for me, I suppose there's two things
9:03
that come to mind. Daniel, maybe you can talk to them. Number one is it feels
9:09
old school, right? And so I'm wondering actually how many people even know about
9:15
direct mail. Um, and secondly, having come from the field of direct mail, the
9:21
reason we all got so excited about email in the first place, you know, 25 years
9:27
ago, was because it was very cheap compared to direct mail.
9:33
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's a fair point. And I think that, you know, email
9:38
is something which is— should be at the forefront of your strategy. You should
9:42
be planning everything around email because it's a high ROAS generator. And you
9:46
can plug data into it, you can personalise, you can create relevance. And email
9:51
will work for certain segments of your customer base, there's no doubt about
9:55
that, you know. But it's the cadence of email, and it's like any good thing.
10:00
It's like, prior to this, prior to Paper Planes, I spent years working on Tesco
10:04
Clubcard data strategy.
10:08
Yeah.
10:09
And you know, that data was so valuable that it's not just Tesco who use it to
10:13
plan direct mail campaigns. Procter Gamble pay good money for it. Unilever pay
10:18
good money to, to get it. Reckitt Benckiser pay good money to get access to that
10:22
data. Coca-Cola pay good money to get access to that data because they're able
10:27
to track the sales impact of landing a coupon in someone's home and what that
10:31
then does for the bottom line in terms of the sales it generates in store.
10:36
Yeah.
10:37
Now that is an approach whereby direct mail has been plugged into a journey
10:41
which may include some email follow-up may include some physical in-home
10:46
follow-up, and it's absolutely categorically a fact that if you follow up with
10:51
customers on a multichannel journey, you are going to create more value from
10:56
them. So email will always play a role in that. But I think what we are getting
11:00
wrong, I guess, the misperception of direct mail is that you need scale in order
11:05
to plan it. You don't need scale in order to plan it. I think the common
11:10
challenge with direct mail or the perception around direct mail is that you
11:14
can't make it personalised. You absolutely can make it personalised, that you
11:19
can't control it within a budget, that it's very hard to control dedupes and get
11:24
ready address ready to mail addresses and all of those things that you're able
11:29
to do easily on email. These were the barriers that over 10 years me and my
11:33
co-founder have been looking to really break down with Paper Planes. And now in
11:38
general, brands can, you know, globally across many different areas, they can
11:43
plan campaigns in the same way that they will plan their email campaigns. And
11:48
what direct mail was— acquisition-led pizza leaflets, estate agent postcards,
11:52
things that would come into your home. You know, I walked by so many post boxes
11:57
and it feels like a bit of a relic now of an older age. But you know when you're
12:02
going down your street and you walk past the postbox that has no spam, no spam,
12:06
no junk mail, no junk mail. You'll see them every now and then. It's like the
12:11
modern day, it's the real life equivalent of a spam filter on an email. It's
12:16
effectively, it's right in front of your face outside. But it feels like that
12:21
kind of, you don't see that much nowadays, but you'll see it every now and then.
12:25
And that's because the perception of direct mail was pizza leaflets, junk mail,
12:30
credit card prospecting. Have you been missold insurance? You know, we're in a
12:35
new age now. Direct mail is something completely different. It's something new.
12:40
It's something personalised. It's something relevant. It's something that plugs
12:44
into your customer comms in the same way that email does. But people, people
12:49
hang on to what they know. And there's a couple of stereotypes and perception
12:54
misconceptions of what direct mail is. It's clunky, it doesn't personalise, and
12:58
it's for an older audience, 60+. Which is complete nonsense, by the way.
13:04
Yeah, no, I imagine it is. I mean, I— like you say, I, I don't remember, um,
13:09
getting a letter that wasn't, uh, like the council tax bill, do you know what I
13:14
mean, through, through the, through the door. And I, I, I'm curious actually
13:19
the, the impact then that something like direct mail can have, just from a
13:24
running my own ecommerce businesses, I'm kind of curious, sort of revisiting
13:29
this slightly. I suppose one of the big shifts that I'm hearing you talk about
13:35
is when I was doing direct mail, I would do things to stand out because
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everybody was doing direct mail back then, right? That was your acquisition
13:45
channel in many ways. And I remember we put together some letters, you know, and
13:50
we had the mail merged, with a, with Microsoft Word, and we printed them off.
13:55
And basically the letter, uh, what said, listen, this is what we do. We offered
14:00
bookkeeping and web design services at the time. Uh, this was sort of in the
14:05
late '90s. Um, love to chat to you about that if that makes sense. Um, you pick
14:10
the restaurant, I'll pick up the tab. And I, I would sell a tape of Fork to the
14:15
letter to make it stand out because no one was sending a fork in that. And we
14:20
bought hundreds of forks and we taped them to a piece of paper, um, and we just,
14:25
we sent these things out. And it's interesting the business that that brought
14:30
in, right? Because people call you and go, okay, well, let's go to this
14:35
restaurant, let's talk about it. And it was, it was a sort of the doorway into
14:40
having an interesting conversation with somebody. Um, but I mean, the reason I
14:45
tell the story was the same letter sent to 100 people right now is different
14:50
because of the fork. And we try now to be different with email marketing by
14:55
using different designs, or we try, you know, using clever AI merge sort of
15:00
technologies now, don't we, where AI researches you. And Matt, I've heard you on
15:05
the eCommerce Podcast, and it was amazing. And you're like, no, you haven't. But
15:10
the— we're using these sort of things. But what I'm hearing you say, Dan,
15:15
actually, is acquisition is perhaps not the best thing for direct mail for
15:20
ecommerce businesses. Am I getting that right?
15:25
Okay, so it's a great question. So should direct mail be used for, uh,
15:30
prospecting and acquisition? Look, absolutely. Like, direct mail is, uh, really
15:34
effective at driving people back to your brand, and it always has been. And as
15:39
I'm vice chairman of the DMA Print Council, Some of the best campaigns I've ever
15:43
seen have been door drop campaigns, partially addressed campaigns. Um, they can
15:47
really, you know, create that awareness. It's effectively delivering the brand
15:52
in home.
15:57
Yeah.
15:57
And it's having it sit there in home, so they can be really incredible. But I
16:01
think where the game has changed is that there is value in not just sending
16:06
something out, you know, the Falk-led prospect stuff like, you know, surprise
16:11
and delights to get people back to your brand. Sorry, the surprise and delight
16:15
is to get people to use, use your brand for the first time or be familiar with
16:20
who you are as the first, for the first time. First-party data reactivation,
16:24
talking to people who have purchased from you previously or are currently on the
16:29
journey of purchasing you for the first time. There is absolute value in also
16:34
following up with those people, those warm customers. And when you compare the
16:38
type of direct mail that does go to warm customers, like postal card follow-ups
16:43
for abandoned basket flows, or, you know, A4 mailers for reactivating win-back
16:47
customers, when you compare the results, you know, the results for sending
16:52
something in the post are 4 to 5 times higher at least than sending email. So
16:57
yeah, the ROAS generation from email can be good, but when you're complementing
17:01
it with something physical, that's where things get really powerful.
17:07
That's really interesting, isn't it? I know. So how do we, how do we think about
17:12
this as ecommerce operators? Because you said like a, uh, postcard for an
17:18
abandoned cart. Talk, talk me through how that works.
17:24
So, uh, postcard for an abandoned cart, uh, you're going to have customers who
17:29
are coming to your website. They are going to be right at the end of the funnel.
17:33
They're going to be showing intent to buy and something's happened. The
17:38
doorbell's rung, the kids have started playing up, the dog has ate your beef
17:42
chili, something's going on. Those are all real life examples from my household,
17:47
by the way. Something has gone on and you've just got distracted and you've
17:51
looked at, let's say you've been on Gymshark's website and you've looked at the
17:55
tank top, that you want to use for running. You look at the trainers, you've
18:00
looked at kind of like the leggings, you've put £200 in the basket, you've,
18:04
you've come up off the site and life has got in the way. Yeah, typically you
18:09
should be getting an email after 2 hours, you know, hey, here are some items you
18:13
might be interested in. You then might get another email after 24 hours, you
18:18
might get an email after 72 hours. Generally speaking, at some point in that
18:22
week, in those first couple of days, if you have not come back and purchased
18:26
again then you're not engaging on the email. That is the perfect time to then
18:31
trigger a postcard that nudges the customer to come back. Now, that postcard
18:35
will probably land in home around about day 7. You know, trigger it on day 3, it
18:40
lands on day 7. The approach with that postcard, you can make it very
18:44
personalised around the products that the customer has purchased. That relevancy
18:49
creates extra sales. Yeah, you can maybe give them a little incentive to get
18:53
them over the line. It's not always necessary because we've got better ways of
18:57
tracking directly from the checkout on Shopify, or you might just get that brand
19:02
prompt in front of them. The key is when you land that postcard, it's just like
19:06
what we used to do back in the Tesco Clubcard days. You can be extremely
19:11
personalised to the customer, but you just deliver a subtle message in the
19:15
creative. You know, we thought you might like this. These are the type of things
19:19
that people are showing really real interest in. That postcard which has landed
19:24
through the postbox and has gotten the customer's attention most likely is going
19:28
to be picked up, is going to be put on the kitchen table, and they're going to
19:33
come back to it in a couple of days, and they're going to do something with it.
19:37
Now, that's the beauty of being able to track in this modern day and age off of
19:42
things like Shopify and Magento, which have made things very easy to track. You
19:46
can— you don't have to be reliant on them scanning a QR code. You don't have to
19:50
be reliant on them entering a discount code. You don't have to be reliant on
19:55
coming back to a certain microsite. The moment that customer— because, because
19:59
you can track who you've triggered in the first place, yeah, you know exactly
20:04
how long it's going to take for them to come back. The minute they engage in a
20:08
checkout You can see that customer, you can track them, and that's effectively
20:13
how the postcard then works alongside everything else in your marketing
20:17
channels. If they haven't come back, if they came back on your email, you would
20:21
have stripped them out of the targeting. Yeah, you know, so that's how it really
20:26
adds value all together, is a lovely built-out, built-out multi-channel
20:30
approach.
20:36
So what you're doing then, you're answering perhaps the biggest— well, it seems
20:40
to me Dan, you're answering two of the biggest objections I would imagine people
20:45
have to direct mail. One is the cost, and you're being really specific in who
20:49
you target with the postcards. So it's not like you're postcarding everybody,
20:54
you know, your whole 20,000 customer list. You're, you're sending postcards out
20:58
to half a dozen people who 3 days ago didn't complete the checkout or whatever
21:02
it is.
21:07
Yeah.
21:09
And the other thing it seems that you're doing, and again, correct me if I'm
21:13
wrong, is you have the ability with digital printing to hyper-personalise the
21:17
postcard that's going out. So it's not like you're sending a, I don't know, a
21:21
sort of a landscape picture of the Lake District or something like that, right?
21:25
You're, you're being much more intentional in the design that you're sending to
21:29
the customer.
21:34
100%. Yeah. And that personalisation and relevance is so key, you know. Um,
21:39
being able to get the right product combinations in front of people can be so
21:43
powerful, especially for increased basket spend. A lot of digital marketing, we
21:47
talk a lot about CPA. We never talk about how we can actually get people to
21:51
spend more, you know. Getting the right products in front of someone,
21:56
complementary products, things that they actually looked at in their basket
22:00
things that our algorithms suggest are really powerful to put in front of
22:04
people. That does wonders to grow basket spend. On average, we see 25-30% basket
22:08
spend increases on campaigns just by being able to get the right product
22:13
combinations in front of people. Um, and then it's imagery as well. So, you
22:17
know, maybe Matt, you're on a certain website, you engage with trainers, I'm
22:21
engaging with t-shirts. You know, it's just being able to get that category
22:25
feel. Pulling in. You know, I love— one of my favourite ones is working with pet
22:30
suppliers and the pet category, being able to pull in surprise and delight
22:34
postcards with your actual pet on it. You know, Stanley, it's your birthday, or
22:38
it's, uh, you know, happy, uh, happy petaversary or anniversary of getting your
22:42
pet for, you know, Arnie the cat, or whatever it is. And then having an image
22:47
that you've already uploaded of your pet that comes in the actual card That's
22:51
just so powerful and that's so personalised to you and it's so easy to do
22:55
nowadays. Like, it's so easy to do. Like, there's no limit to the amount of
22:59
personalisation you can have pull in.
23:05
That's really cool. That is really cool. It's, um, yeah, it's very different to
23:10
how it was when I would sellotape forks to a piece of paper.
23:16
It's a bit of a different approach, isn't it? By the way, if you ever want to
23:20
send something for, hey, let's grab a cup of tea, here's a snack or whatever
23:25
like that. If you ever go down that route, never send anything that's chocolate
23:29
based because chances are it will melt. Like, rich tea biscuits are normally
23:33
quite durable. Okay. That's a little bit of advice. Chocolate can be, especially
23:37
in the heat that we're getting in the UK in June and July, you don't want to be
23:42
sending anything chocolate based. Stick to the forks or the rich tea biscuits.
23:50
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, totally. Does the, um, so the, the process is very much
23:54
I'm going to send you one or two emails, I'm going to realise actually you're
23:59
not responding to those emails, so then I'm going to throw you a postcard. Or
24:03
the other one you mentioned was an A4 mailer, uh, for our American cousins, A4
24:08
is slightly bigger than letter, um, Again, are you using different tactics? I
24:12
mean, it's the same principle you send in direct mail, but you know, an A4
24:17
mailer feels different to a postcard. Are you using different tactics there?
24:22
Yeah, um, we— I mean, they are actually quite similar, you know, those, those
24:26
tactics. Uh, in both the US and the UK, you can find distributors who will work
24:31
on A4 mailers and postcards. They're really simple formats, Matt, even though,
24:35
you know, an A4 mailer, you can personalise the front of the envelope, which
24:39
which is so important. Get your branded message on the envelope. It's so, so
24:43
good to do that, especially on warm data. You know, the front of the letters you
24:47
can personalise, the back of the letters you can personalise. It can all be
24:51
personalised. The postcards, the front of the postcard can be personalised, the
24:55
back of it can be personalised. But they easily feed into always-on flows
24:59
because a lot of people like to send postcards, a lot of people like to send A4
25:03
mailers for transactions, bills, reminders. Whatever it is. So you can easily
25:07
run them on a daily basis. But we don't limit ourselves to those two things.
25:12
Like, we send out campaigns with samples attached to them. Uh, we send out
25:16
campaigns with, um, you know, in birthday card format. We send like
25:20
wedding-style invitations out to people for certain events, openings and stuff
25:24
like that. The thing is that there is always going to be a cost associated if
25:28
you want to send something physical. My advice to brands starting off is always
25:32
start with the most cost-effective options. Yeah, um, because if you want to
25:36
send a wedding style invitation or a birthday card with, uh, your dog on it
25:40
personalised, they will cost more money, and you'll probably need a bigger
25:44
cohort of people to do it to get a good cost efficiency. So you really want to
25:48
know that the channel can work for you before you start doing those type of
25:53
things. Um, and that's what we always kind of like preach to, to our clients,
25:57
you Yeah, yeah.
26:01
So what have you seen work well, and what's working well in the
26:05
direct-to-consumer sector for ecommerce guys at the moment?
26:11
Second purchase occasions. Um, it's really interesting. It's like we always
26:16
started off abandoned flow, you know, we should do something on abandoned flow,
26:21
it's a massive problem. And of course it is, but the audience is, is very small
26:26
on abandoned flow typically. Um, the biggest challenge that I've seen, the shift
26:30
change for ecommerce since COVID has been what do we do about people who have
26:35
only purchased us once? How do we get them out the nursery program onto the
26:40
second purchase as quickly as possible? And how do we encourage people to buy
26:45
from us multiple times? Yeah, and that's purchase journeys. You, you'd be amazed
26:50
at how valuable triggering postal marketing and direct mail is at bringing
26:55
people back for that all-important second purchase. You know, it is so, so
27:00
important. It is so valuable. There's so much time spent thinking about, oh, how
27:04
can we get it to reactivate someone? But actually you can get mail to recover
27:09
customers at a rate which, you know, you can't really get across some of the
27:14
other ways of doing it via Meta or TikTok or email. So the second purchase
27:19
occasion and the increase in loyalty. I love loyalty plays because of my days
27:24
back in Tesco Clubcard. So I love the ecommerce brands are now thinking about
27:29
loyalty and trading people up into tiers of loyalty. Imagine getting something
27:33
that comes through the post which tells you how much spend you have put in a
27:38
brand and gives you some sort of value proposition back off the back of the
27:43
spend, you know, that alludes to the fact that you're a high-value customer. We
27:48
work with brands now when they're coming up to their big product launches, they
27:53
are picking their best value, their VIP cohorts, to tell them about the product
27:58
launches first. And it's incredible what that does for creating buzz on social,
28:03
and it's amazing what it does to make those people feel special. You know,
28:07
surprise and delight loyalty aspects and second purchase triggers is such an
28:12
amazing opportunity with postal marketing and direct mail.
28:19
Great, and I can see that. So if I was— well, let's deal with the first one, the
28:23
second purchase. Um, what sort of strategy tactics would I be thinking about
28:27
there? What's working well there?
28:33
Um, personalisation around usage. So, um, you know, not just name and address,
28:37
but tier-based systems, you know, loyalty triggers. Any points that we have that
28:42
shows that we know the customer, again, without being too, you know, in their
28:47
face in terms of how we utilise their data, really does tend to work well.
28:52
Giving people occasion reminders and triggers if they've got a big anniversary
28:57
coming up or if they typically buy within a certain time frame. Now,
29:01
interestingly enough, it's not always about the incentive. So one of the
29:06
questions we get in this space is, do I always have to give someone something
29:11
extra? Can I protect margin? And I think you can protect margin. I think
29:16
reminders and prompts, and this is how many points you have, and thank you for
29:21
being a valuable customer, that can work as well as then giving them 10% off.
29:25
The key there is test and learn. You've got to A/B test, you've got to optimise.
29:30
So you've got to look at the results and see what you can do better or how you
29:35
can do things differently in order to drive the result that you want.
29:41
Okay, and I'm curious how I could use direct mail for loyalty plays as well.
29:50
Yeah, so, um, loyalty is really around the, um— did I— did you say loyalty to
29:55
begin with, or what did you say to begin with there, Matt?
30:00
Yeah, loyalty plays. That's what you— that's the, the second area you talked
30:02
about.
30:04
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so loyalty is really around when you
30:08
decide to trigger it. So effectively, um, you can— and one of the things that I
30:13
suggest people do at an early stage is work out where it's going to be most
30:17
effective, especially if you're on a subscription-based journey or you need
30:22
people to be buying from you more than 4 or 5 times a year. You know, is it more
30:26
effective to trigger something, uh, after the third purchase or after the third
30:31
box has been purchased uh, versus, you know, the first one, you know, test out
30:35
for you where the value proposition is in your overall multi-channel customer
30:40
journey at plugging direct mail and postal marketing into that. Um, once you
30:44
know that, you can then begin to run creative tests. So things around, is a
30:49
handwritten message better than a branded form of message? That's always
30:53
different depending on where the brands are, who the brand is. Um, when it comes
30:58
to product personalisation, is it better to talk about products that people have
31:02
purchased previously, or is it better to actually look at bestsellers on the
31:07
website, or what our algorithms are— machine learning is suggesting people are
31:11
buying at that time? Um, so it's an answer, I guess, without giving you the
31:16
answer, because a lot of this is so specific to the brands that the only way
31:20
they're going to find it out is through test and learn and through optimisation.
31:25
And again, those weren't easy words on direct mail like 5 or 6 years ago. Like,
31:29
it wasn't easy to split audiences into groups and cohorts and look at the
31:33
differences. You know, what happens when you give half your audience a fork
31:38
versus when you give half of them a knife? You know, that type of thing wasn't
31:42
easy to get to. Yeah.
31:47
Sorry, Daniel. Let me just— there's a phone. You can't see it. As bizarre as it
31:51
sounds, there's a phone hidden on my— not hidden on my wall. It's sort of on the
31:54
wall. It's like an emergency sort of, uh, internet connection in case it all
31:58
goes a bit wrong. And occasionally somebody gets the number right and tries to
32:02
call me on it.
32:06
You know who that was?
32:09
No, no, no idea. It'd just be some random—
32:11
that was the post office who just worked out.
32:17
Yeah, they're like, Matt, you owe us some money, dude.
32:19
Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Get him now while he's on the podcast.
32:25
Brilliant. I'm sorry about that. I genuinely thought— true professional that I
32:30
am, I always put my phone in do not disturb when I'm recording. I'm like, what?
32:35
Is that your phone? No, it sounds like it's here. Oh, it's the one on the wall.
32:40
Sorry. The bat phone. Yeah, yeah. Let me just make sure that doesn't happen
32:45
again. True professional. So let me sort of follow this up. I'm trying to sort
32:50
of I'm trying to think if I like the idea of having a, having a bit of a go, do
32:55
I need to have a certain size of customer list or a certain size of company for
33:00
this to make sense? Or is it literally, nah, Matt, you should integrate this
33:05
from day one of your operation?
33:10
Uh, well, you know, if I'd— if you'd have asked me that question last year, I
33:15
would have been like, well, you know, to work with us, then you'd have to have
33:20
maybe 100,000 people in your database, and maybe you're turning over a couple of
33:24
mil, and, you know, um, but the great answer to that question now— and again,
33:29
there'll be other providers out there— but you should be looking to— into— from
33:33
my perspective, you should be looking to integrate direct mail into your mix and
33:38
your customer strategy straight away. Yeah. Uh, do I wish it was with us? Of
33:42
course I do. But if it's not with us, you should be looking to do it anyway.
33:47
Now, what we— funnily enough, we have just released, or we will be releasing
33:51
this summer on Shopify, an app that will allow brands to put in, to download our
33:56
software, to look at setting up campaigns on templates, and they will get £100—
34:00
they'll get 100 cents for £100 a month, and they'll be able to dip their toe in
34:05
the water and see the journeys that work for them. And then of course you can
34:09
scale it up as you go. Uh, we have, you know, a design editing template they can
34:14
lean into. We've got a creative resource they can use, and then they'll have
34:18
access to the analytics. So that could be anyone just starting off. Um, I think
34:23
the reason why it's important now to not just be a Huel or not just be a Gousto
34:27
or not just be a Gymshark and be using direct mail as part of your multi-million
34:32
pound budgets— the reason why it's important for or, you know, the skateboard
34:36
shop down the road who wants to start selling their stuff online to do it now is
34:41
because you need to understand the relationship with email and how it can all
34:45
come together with— for you as early as possible. So there's no point waiting
34:50
for that. In the same way that you would plan your SMS now, plan for your direct
34:54
mail now. Plan for it all at the same time because you can. It's, it's easy to
34:59
kind of like put it all together, and so you should.
35:05
Well, it feels like it's easy to start playing, like you're saying, start
35:09
testing, right? Uh, when the lists are smaller, um, and you're a bit more agile
35:14
and nimble, um, I think that's pretty straightforward. Uh, well, Daniel, this is
35:18
great. I'm aware of time, um, and so before we get too far into the
35:22
conversation, let me do a few housekeeping things. Um, I love to ask my guests
35:27
for a question for me that I can go away and answer on social media. So Daniel,
35:31
what is your question for me?
35:38
Okay, so this is kind of stemming from what you shared with me of your past life
35:44
in forking. But I am curious, I'd be curious to know if the people who listen to
35:49
this podcast or listen to you, Matt, if they had to send anything in the post to
35:55
attract their customers' attention, not just mail but anything, what would that
36:01
thing be and why?
36:11
Okay, that's a really great question. I've written that down. I will answer that
36:15
on social media if you want to know what I would send in the post. Uh, it would
36:19
not be a fork. I'm not going to lie, I've done that one. I need to be a bit more
36:22
creative. But, um, if you want to know how I would answer that question, do come
36:26
follow me on social media @MattEdmundson, and I will do my level best to answer
36:30
that question. Uh, Daniel, listen, how do people reach you? How do they get hold
36:33
of you in case they want to do that? What's the best way to do that?
36:37
Uh, yeah, so you can reach me on daniel.dunn@paperplanes.co.uk. You can reach me
36:43
via our website at paperplanes.co.uk. You can follow me on LinkedIn, uh, or
36:49
reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm Daniel Dunn, uh, I think there's a lot of
36:54
Daniel Dunns, so you'll find me on there. Paper Change UK. I also have a
37:00
newsletter I do every month on mail, direct mail trends that might be of use if
37:05
you are in ecommerce. And outside of all of that, you just come find me in East
37:11
London. Just ask around, they'll show you where I am.
37:22
Anyone in East London will know who Daniel is. Do that.
37:25
Yeah, just ask, go to Stratford tube station, ask for Dan, they'll put you in
37:27
the right direction.
37:32
You know what, I would love it if that genuinely happened. That would be
37:37
amazing. Um, Daniel, listen, man, I've really enjoyed this conversation. It's
37:42
really good to sort of think back to how effective direct mail was, and actually
37:47
with the technology changes that we have now, how effective direct mail can be
37:51
again, uh, in our businesses. It, it strikes me something that we should
37:56
definitely be doing. Um, I like to do this thing at the end of the show where we
38:01
call it saving the best till last. So for those listeners who have made it this
38:05
far, um, Dan, I'm going to turn the microphone over to you for the next 2
38:10
minutes to deliver your best, highest value to the guests that have stayed.
38:15
What's one thing that maybe they should know, or one thing that they could try
38:19
today that will really start getting them in the right direction?
38:26
I think that understanding your customer really comes from trying a lot of
38:31
different things to work out the best combinations. You should be looking to
38:36
explore AI as much as possible to guide you on that journey. I think we are only
38:41
touching and scratching the surface of what AI can allow for targeting builds
38:46
for DTC ecommerce journeys and for what it can mean for analytics. It is
38:52
relatively cheap to utilise AI as things stand. It's not going to be this cheap
38:57
always. So I would be leaning into it as much as you can to work out the models
39:02
that are going to work for you. Most channels nowadays are cost effective. You
39:07
don't need to spend an arm and a leg. You don't need to be giving an arm and a
39:12
leg to time trial into multiple different channels. And for God's sake, if
39:17
you're going to spend time following up with customers on first-party data, use
39:22
personalisation. Personalisation is power, it is money, it is where you're going
39:27
to get increased sales, you know. So whatever you are doing, look for the
39:32
opportunities to bring in the products that are relevant to customers what
39:37
people are looking at, what they're buying, browsing behavior, because that will
39:42
make difference to you. And don't let your growth manager tell you that all of
39:47
the value comes from CPA and growth and new customer acquisition, because before
39:52
I started Paper Planes, it was a well-known fact with Tesco Clubcard data, and
39:57
it's still a well-known fact today, that one non-committed customer— sorry, one
40:03
loyal customer in your database, one committed loyal customer is worth 13
40:08
non-committed customers who are coming in just trialing your brand
40:13
promiscuously. So do not turn your back on the value of first-party data and
40:18
what it can mean for your brand.
40:24
Fantastic, love that. That was brilliant, Daniel. Thank you so much for coming
40:27
on the show, man. Really appreciate it. Uh, thanks for getting us to think a
40:31
little bit differently, uh, about how we do it.
40:35
Thanks for having me, mate. I really appreciate it. It's great.
40:38
That was wonderful. Great. Loved it. So there you go. Another episode of the
40:42
eCommerce Podcast, all nicely wrapped up. Go, go connect with Daniel. I
40:47
genuinely think you should go and look at this direct mail aspect of it because
40:51
I guarantee you not a lot of people are, and it would be a really interesting
40:55
experiment to try on your ecom business. Go hit them up, see if they can help,
41:00
or even just go and ask them your questions. I'm sure you'd love to answer them.
41:04
But if you want to reach out to him, all of the links for Daniel will be in the
41:09
show notes. So you can get those on the website, which I mentioned earlier,
41:13
ecommercepodcast.net. Of course, if you're listening to this on a podcast
41:18
player, just scroll down because it will be in the show notes on your podcast
41:22
player. And all of Daniel's links will also be in the YouTube description. So
41:27
whichever way you want to get them, you can click through to them. If you're
41:31
part of our AI community, then just go and ask Sam to get you in touch with Dan,
41:35
and Sam will do all of that. And even ask Sam to help you maybe think about some
41:40
of the direct mail things that you can do for your business and what it thinks
41:44
would make sense for you. But go have a go, have a play, and see what comes out
41:49
of that. And let us know, genuinely interested. Of course, if you want to know
41:53
about Sam, if you want to know about the AI stuff, it's all on
41:58
ecommercepodcast.net. But that's it from me. That's That's it from Daniel. Thank
42:02
you so much for joining us. Have a phenomenal week wherever you are in the
42:07
world. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.