Mastering Modern Marketing: Unveiling Direct Mail Strategies with Industry Experts

Unlock the secrets to mastering modern marketing with direct mail, as we promise you'll learn how to boost your engagement rates and streamline marketing efforts seamlessly. Join us for an insightful discussion with Amy Was from BatchService and marketing experts Stephanie Haarhaus and Julia Lovett from Lobb. They reveal why direct mail is making a comeback as a robust strategy in real estate and beyond, offering a scalable, cost-effective, and less regulated alternative to cold calling and SMS marketing. With insights from Lobb's 2024 state of direct mail report, you'll discover how this traditional medium is revolutionizing today's marketing landscape.

Visit BatchData.io to learn more about our enterprise-grade APIs and startup friendly pricing

Use code "PODCAST50" for 50% off your first month with BatchLeads

Company Links:

BatchService.com - Learn about all products

BatchLeads.io - AI-powered property search and lead generation

BatchData.io - Enterprise-grade property data APIs

BatchDialer.com - Multi-line power dialer for real estate

Chapters

• 0:00 Mastering Direct Mail Expert Strategies
• 12:55 Winning Strategies for Direct Mail
• 25:54 Elevating Direct Mail With QR Codes
• 38:56 Direct Mail Campaign Creation and Strategy
• 45:00 Direct Mail Strategies and Tips

Transcript

00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
Is direct mail the secret weapon? Your marketing strategy is missing. In this episode, the host, Amy Was from BatchService, is joined by Stephanie Haarhaus and Julia Lovett from Lobb to discuss why direct mail is making a major comeback. They break down the latest trends, high ROI strategies and how to integrate direct mail with digital marketing for maximum impact. From hidden gems to billion-dollar, this is the property perspective, where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value, others miss and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate. Now here are your hosts. 

00:36 - Amy Was (Host)
Thank you all so much for joining us today for Mastering Direct Mail Expert Strategies for Marketing Success. I am Amy Was, with BatchLeads and BatchService as a whole, and we're so excited to talk to you all today. Before we get into it, we did a recent survey of Batch Leads customers to see if they were using direct mail as part of their marketing strategy and about 40% said yes. So that's very similar to what we're seeing in our poll right here. About half of our users are using direct mail. Here's why it's become so popular lately. 

01:11
Number one scalability Right now you've got a lot of people using cold calling, but cold calling takes a lot of effort. You have to be able to train people, you have to be able to get agents. You have to have the time and the money to be able to scale that business. Same goes if you're, if you are able to use SMS. That's been a little bit difficult to use lately. Cost effectiveness, too it's one of the most cost effective ways of marketing to property owners and it has a really huge return, which we're going to get into a little bit later. The ease of use you can really just work on it at your own pace. There's not, you know, a sense of urgency, especially like with cold calling, where you have to, you know, get to that person immediately. 

01:52
Um, and then the increased regulations around SMS outreach. They are really cracking down. The feds are really cracking down on SMS outreach and it is becoming more and more difficult to use it as a form of marketing, especially in the real estate space. So direct mail is a really, really great alternative or addition to your marketing strategy. So, kicking things off, I want to introduce Stephanie Haarhaus, who is the Director of Strategic Alliances at Lobb, and Julia Lovett, who is the Senior Strategic Account Manager at Lobb, and these ladies are the absolute direct mail experts and I'm so excited for them to share with us today some new strategies they found and they have a new survey that went out. So I'm really excited to have you here, ladies. Thank you so much for joining us today. 

02:45 - Stephanie Haarhaus (Guest)
Thanks, Amy, and thanks everyone for joining today. As Amy shared, Julia and myself are both with Lobb, and so we are excited today to be sharing a little bit more insight into mastering direct mail expert strategies for your direct mail success within your real estate needs. So, kicking us off, as Amy shared, we are here to provide a little bit of insights into what are some of the trends, what are some of the insights that we're seeing within the direct mail space. So I'm going to go ahead and kick it off by sharing a little bit about our state of direct mail. So, annually, Lobb does work with several different industry experts and insights to be able to get additional insights into what we're seeing within the direct mail trends, and so I'm excited to share that our 2024 state of direct mail is live and we have a lot of hot off the press data insights to share with you today. So I'll be covering some of that and then also some campaign planning before I turn it over to Julia to dig into some of the specific details in execution and having successful direct mail campaigns. So, firstly, the very first thing I want to cover is why direct mail still matters, you know, I think, in 2024, a lot of the times we'll talk to people and they'll say isn't direct mail out of date? It's really cumbersome. You have to plan a lot to be able to send out one postcard. One of the things we love to say at Lobb and it's probably one of our favorite phrases is skip the scroll, seize the mailbox. We really want people to be able to take advantage of personalized direct mail that is intended for the recipient, and I wanted to put some of these points up here just to flag why direct mail still matters. 

04:41
So the very first thing is on average, direct mail has a much longer consideration window than other digital channels. So typically we'll see that the direct mail curve is actually 13 weeks. If you think about, you know, picking up a piece of when a postcard, or when you pick up your mail, sometimes you'll see something that catches your eye. You'll put it on your desk, you'll hold onto that piece and on average it's about 13 weeks that it tends to have that influence. We tend to see the highest engagement actually between five to seven weeks within that curve, but again, really long consideration window. The other part is it gets noticed right. So 90% of advertising mail is opened and when you're talking about kind of you know the impact that you're going to have with the recipient and the engagement, you have a much higher likelihood that that postcard that they receive, that letter that they receive, is going to be noticed. And then, lastly, direct mail really boosts an omni-channel performance. So when you tie it into your digital trends if you're sending out SMS or if you're sending out cold calling and you combine it with those strategies, there's actually an increase of about 63% that we have noted goes into that. So really, really high influence of combining everything. It's much more powerful when everything is included versus just as it's done, all right and kind of digging into that a little bit more. 

06:18
So in our state of direct mail there's kind of six key things that our executive summary put aside and found through our insights and I'll dig into these a little bit more slide by slide, but I wanted to put this as a placeholder to just share some high level notes on the high response and engagement that we're seeing, specifically with marketers. So you know we are seeing that direct mail proves to be the highest ROI of any channel that is being used and it's only increasing. I'll share some data points in just a minute about how we're seeing it compared to last year, to this year and other trends that we have within the data that's being leveraged and how it's personalized and intended for each recipient. So, digging into the very first one, ROI right, everyone wants to know what is your return on investment on the piece of mail that you're sending, and so 84% of marketers that were surveyed agreed that direct mail does provide the highest ROI of any channel that they use. So when you're thinking about your cost to acquire a customer time and again, 84% are saying that direct mail sees that highest conversion rate. And what's really great about that is, if you compare it to automation, software uses versus not, we're seeing that within that automation piece you are able to see even more. So I think in part this is tied to the fact that you're able to send out trigger direct mail. So through batch leads, you can design your pieces, you can trigger them out and you can kind of see through the workflow of where they are in production with USPS. One other point I want to add, actually before I dive into that. So we do see it on here, but 94% are increasing their direct mail budget spend because they are seeing that it is having such great returns, all right. 

08:15
So conversions the second piece is that personalized URLs are actually the most popular way to be able to measure conversion. So over here on the right-hand side, we'll notice that there's a couple different ways to measure conversion. There's no wrong way, as long as you're kind of seeing okay, where is that conversion coming from. But personalized URLs seem to be just slightly above individual customer activity. As to that tracking, we'll also see that close behind is QR codes and I know Julia will be digging into this a little bit more later on and we to that tracking. We'll also see that close behind is QR codes and I know Julia will be digging into this a little bit more later on and we've got some really great insights also from batch leads on the value of QR codes Attribution. So another piece that's really important here is that 64% report that they use multi-touch attribution. So we'll notice that we have 22% for first touch and 14% for last touch. So we do want to note that the 14% that we're seeing for last touch is actually a great number, because these are maybe the recipients that we reached out to a couple of times to try to get some engagement and they were able to convert. So really great insights. And what this shows us is sending those multi-touch you know direct mail pieces in a timely manner to try to get that conversion All right and so kind of digging further into it. 

09:44
So, as we shared a little bit, we are seeing trends that show that direct mail is actually increasing year over year. That sweet spot tends to be about the 1 million to 5 million mark that we're seeing. Of course, financial services and banking and telecom are sort of some of the bigger ones that we tend to see, but real estate is really increasing a lot and I'm happy to dig into more of these stats and details. But one of the things that we're seeing consistently across the board is that there is growth and interest in direct mail, and not so much of the direct mail that is a piece that's just going to be sent out and is generalized, but really direct mail that is personalized and relevant to the mail, that is personalized and relevant to the recipient that is receiving it. So when you are sending that piece of direct mail, are you including their name, are you including the image of the home? Are you including all the pieces that make the recipient feel as though that piece is something that was intended just for them, and a lot of the work that we've seen done around personalization and the key focus on sending automated direct mail has seen an increase in these trends. All right, and then, digging into this a little bit more, so we do see that 85% of respondents have increased their overall marketing budget for 2024. And so they've increased over three quarters. What we're seeing is again tying it back to ROI. When there is great ROI and this is the highest performing channel there's going to be more direct mail that gets sent, and so we're just seeing that upward trend carry on. All right, so I feel like I've shared quite a bit of details and stats as to the state of direct mail in 2024. Now I'd love to pivot into some direct mail best practices and specifically successful campaign planning. 

11:37
So you're planning your first send, you're preparing to do batch of postcards that you're going to send. What are some of the key things that you want to keep in mind as you're preparing to send out your campaigns, before you kick off your program? So on this side, there's about six key points that we want to highlight. So the very first one is that the objective is clear and that the targeting aligns. Who are you sending these pieces to and is your call to action clear? That is the most important thing. When the recipient is going to receive that piece, do they know the action that they need to take and is the objective clear on that front? 

12:17
From there, you want to think about the printing and timeline and whether they are set. And so, as you're thinking about whether it be are set, and so, as you're thinking about whether it be, you know you want to get it in before a big holiday because people might not be in home, and so you want to make sure that the piece that they receive is timely. They receive it before Labor Day. What is the timeline that you want to set to make sure, do you want to send it first class? Do you want to send it standard, really accounting for that process and that print and production and the mail stream for the pieces to arrive in home Also want to take into account that the creative is cohesive and on brand right. So Julie will dig into this a little bit more with some specifics of great direct mail trends that we've seen and great creative pieces. 

13:02
But when delivering that piece, you want to think about. How are you going to capture that recipient's eye and audience when they first receive that piece? Right, if we think about it, you walk to the mailbox, you pick up your mail, you have, you know, a few seconds. What is that glance, what is that color that's going to pop out? How are they going to be able to notice that piece in the midst of all that mail and be able to respond to it? You know, we've kind of transitioning to the fourth point. We've talked a little bit about this, but personalization is absolutely key in this. So, when we're thinking about the call to action, which is the CTA on this slide, it's what is the personalization elements that are included? Are you including the home? Are you including images of you know that are included. Are you including the home? Are you including images of the recipient? Are you including an image of yourself? What are the pieces that are going to be specific to the recipient that you are sending so that they feel that that piece was tailored? 

14:01
for them

14:01 - Amy Was (Host)
. And if I could just jump in real quick, batch Leads has a really, really interesting take on how this might work. So, in addition to things like being able to insert the first name of every single property owner so, Amy, I'm ready to buy your home in cash, Julia, I'm ready to buy your home in cash those types of things you can also really get niched down and find a very specific target audience of who you are looking for and cater that message directly to them. So let's say it's lender specific you're looking for reverse mortgage. You can cater it to people who are, you know, in that age group. You can cater it to people who are ready to downsize. So just something to think about there, as you're building your lists, as you're finding these leads, personalization doesn't just have to be adding that token in with their first name. Although super helpful, it can also be in the form of finding that target audience for those mail pieces. 

14:58 - Stephanie Haarhaus (Guest)
I love it. Great, call out Amy. Yes, it goes so much farther, beyond just the first name. There's so many data and points that you can dig into to really make that piece resonate with your audience. And then you know, kind of to wrap that up, a clear path for attribution and measurement. Are you including a personalized URL so that you know that the piece that you are sending is tied back to that direct mail? Are you including a unique telephone number that they can call that isn't associated with any of your other digital channels so when they call that number you know that it's attributed to that direct mail piece that you sent? How are you ensuring that you're keeping that clean so that you can track that and see the success of how your direct mail is performing? 

15:44
And then from there, really the next steps are how the outcomes are strategized. So, if we go back to the multi-touch and the attribution, are you going to send up a follow-up piece? Are you going to be, you know, kind of sending another trigger? Are you going to do a digital outreach? How does that tie into your overall direct mail strategy so that you can continue to see ROI and success on the mail that you're sending? All right, and now I'm going to turn it over to Julia to share a little bit about how to win in the mailbox. 

16:19 - Julia Lovett (Guest)
Thanks, Stephanie, and thank you all for joining today. Direct mail is probably my favorite media channel to talk about, so I'm thrilled to kind of take you through the themes, some of the best practices for direct mail, and really like how to win the mailbox right, like how do we interrupt the clutter. So let's dive in. The first area that I want to talk about is maximizing your direct mail potential. There are three themes that we're going to go through today I want to talk to you about at very high level and then we're going to show you what it looks like in action. It's really important that you earn the time that you take. Going back to something that Steph said on the last page is hey, the moment that person receives that piece of mail, they're going to walk to their trash can and they're going to look at that piece of mail over the trash can. You've got about three seconds to catch their attention by really targeting them with a visually compelling image that represents who they are, where they are in their life right now. Making sure that you're breaking away from conventional expectations, making sure that you're unique, you stand out. You're earning the time that you take. How do you do that? We're going to show you on the next page, streamlining the value add. It's really important that you make sure that the moment that somebody begins to read your direct mail format that they've received whether it be a letter, a postcard or a self-mailer, whatever it is that you're targeting their pain point. Why is it important that Amy engage with your brand or your product or your offering right now? What pain point are you going to solve for them? And then driving intentional interaction. Direct mail is typically considered or focused on at the bottom of the funnel engagement and response. However, how does a brand extend that interaction beyond just that direct mail piece? What does that look like? And how do we keep that engagement going, even after they've already engaged with you, your product, your offering, your brand? And so we're going to dive into those three things right now and give you some examples. All right, so, earning the time you take, breaking free from channel norms, these three brands did a really good job at showing something that may be a bit of an emotional relief. Showing something that may be a bit of an emotional relief. 

18:46
The telecommunication space is an excellent example of direct mail success. I'm sure all of you have received mailers from your fiber or telecommunications provider in your area and it probably does stand out to you. In this instance, cox Mobile used a cute little lamb on the front. You know, say hello to a different kind of mobile company. What does this mean? Now I'm interested. Travelers does a really good job at visually showing you how you can combine your auto and home insurance without saying, hey, come buy auto and home insurance through us. And then happy campers at the casino Windstar was like, hey, I know that this is an event that you're probably going to really enjoy. You're my target audience and here's a cute little visual on. You know how to get you excited to engage. 

19:36
So you got to think about whenever you're putting your direct mail piece together and I think, Michelle from Irvine, you've talked about overthinking a bit. I think this is where we can really get in the weeds. That you know, don't overthink it. But also, how do you get creative? And going back to that personalization piece that Amy and Stephanie talked about earlier, how are you being creative in a way that relates to the recipient? Because, again, we want to focus on them. A lot of times we focus on our brand, our product, our offering, but the most important thing about your direct mail or any campaign, is that you focus on the person that's receiving it, because they're the ones that are important to your business. 

20:20
Going on to the second theme, streamlining your value add. This is really important on how to engage your recipient or your reader visually. By helping them, you're streamlining the process of showing tangible benefits. You take them through a journey. You've acknowledged who they are, Hi Amy, thank you so much for reaching out journey. You've acknowledged who they are. Hi Amy, thank you so much for reaching out. 

20:53
We'd love to learn more about your home at XYZ Residence. We know that your neighborhood experiences XYZ percentage in sales. And really diving into you, you, you and then making sure that they understand. Well, what does that mean for me? Okay, you're going to solve my pain point. You're going to help me. I, now I'm very interested in continuing a conversation. 

21:06
Well, what does that mean for me? Okay, you're going to solve my pain point. You're going to help me. I, now I'm very interested in continuing a conversation. Well, what should I do next? Should I call you? Should I use a personalized URL or should I use a QR code, which we're going to dive into in a little bit as well about? You know the importance of those and why to continue using those on your pieces, but making sure that it's very clear, your call to action is very clear on what you want that person to do next. People are busy. They don't have time to guess. Just make it super easy for them. I used to always tell my clients that the more steps that an individual has to take to reach that end result, the more likely they are to fall off before they actually get to the end, and so we wanna do everything we can in this mailer to make sure that they get to the end as fast as possible. 

21:53 - Amy Was (Host)
And Julia. What this might look like for the people watching today is delivering the value of close within one week, making that really big up the top. No realtor commissions. We cover closing costs fast close with cash. Something that I think would be really interesting for somebody to do is even stepping it out. Step one contact me. Step two get cash offer. So there's a bunch of different ways that you can slice and dice that. Something that we recently offered in the past few months it's a brand new feature to Bachelet's direct mail is um, doing the off, uh, like an offer. So what is the value of the property that you're looking at? You could say your home is worth up to x amount of dollars, and that token is dynamic for every single piece of mail that you send out. So it's a very personalized, very specific message for each and every individual person that you send mail to. Something new. That's that really, really interesting that we have released recently. 

22:52 - Julia Lovett (Guest)
That's really exciting and you are 100% right. You know those key points are definitely going to get somebody interested. It's targeting their pain points, their fear, and it's probably going to help them pick up the phone, scan that QR code or type that URL into their browser and learn more. Going on to the next one, which is again streamlining the value out, I think this is probably one of the most important things that you can add to any of your advertising campaigns. It doesn't matter what media channel you're doing, but word of mouth People are going to trust other people that are similar to them then more so than they're going to trust a company or a brand. They're always going to look for their peers. So peer reviews, right. If you currently have the opportunity to, you've already obtained testimonials or reviews, maybe through Yelp or Google or some other form. Trustpilot definitely recommend making sure that you can use those in your ads. If you don't already have those, I recommend reaching out to people that you know that have had a really good experience with your company, so that way then they can maybe give you a good review and maybe you offer them a gift card or something. To take five minutes of their time, but it's something that resonates with your audience and it resonates with your audience across media channels. And then that driving intentional interaction. 

24:18
How do we make our direct mail piece have staying power? And at the very beginning, Stephanie mentioned that the week the curve on a direct mail piece is quite long. It's about 13 weeks. Typically, whenever we're pulling responses for clients, we use the same call to action for that exact campaign for 13 weeks before we cut it off because we see leads continue to trickle in for that long and it's been that way for about 16 years. But how do you keep it around even after that? Let's say that I'm not ready to sell my house right now, but something might happen in about six months. That makes me ready, but maybe I'm not on your target list to talk to me in 16 months. So leaving a calendar on the back of your direct mail piece where they can keep it around, to be like within the calendar, maybe there are tips and tricks. Hey, are you going to consider getting your? Or you should consider getting your AC service as we're approaching the summer months? Hey, we're approaching the summer months. What about pest control? Tips and tricks that stand outside of you know what you're expressly offering, but it still gives a positive impact and it's something that's helpful to your recipient, so they're going to keep it around for longer. 

25:33
All right, now we're going to dive into a little bit more direct mail best practices. These are some of direct response techniques that we've seen used a decade over a decade, and I am very excited to take you to the next page, which is, yeah, perfect the five elements that every direct mail piece should have, and these look different in different formats, so don't feel like the way that it's shown to you right now, and the two formats that we're going to show you are the only way to incorporate it. So we want to start with the visual first, the visual aid that, basically, should resonate with the recipient, and the cool thing is that you can make these to where they can change out based on who you're targeting. Get that personalization a little bit deeper. Obviously, you know you don't want to get too you know big brother-ish, but you definitely want to be able to recognize that you know who you're talking to. You can resonate with that person, the caption, making it snappy and making sure that it represents your brand product but, most importantly, your audience, because, again, your audience is who you're targeting and this message is about them. Headlines this is a really important piece because people read headlines five times more than they do the body copy. So, again, you've got about three seconds to five seconds to capture somebody's attention. And so, making sure that you've got that visual, that caption and that headline real strong, snappy and it resonates with the recipient based on what you know about them. 

27:13
Copy making sure that you're using bold face type. It's designed to catch the eye. It's designed to ensure that when I'm reading a piece of mail, that I know how to read the piece of mail. You're guiding me through my journey from beginning to end. Why is it important that I contact you? How do I contact you? What comes next? And then a signature. I think that real estate agents do a really good job at adding a signature. It's very personalized. It makes people feel like they have somebody on the other side that knows who they are. So that's a best practice that can be used across multiple formats. 

27:54
And now we're going to dive in really quickly to see how it shows in a letter package. These are some letter packages that we've been seeing on Mintel or Compromedia and who's mailing what, as these are the best in market right now. They do a really great job at highlighting the offer or the value add. They do a great job at streamlining the value add by showing testimonials or awards that they've received. Why are they a trusted brand? Why should you trust them? Why are they a trusted brand? Why should you trust them? Simplisafe has a compare chart here. That is a direct response best practice that I highly recommend. If you have data available to you about the competition, that you can add into your direct mail piece, your email, your display ad across the board. That works to be able to show how do you compare to the competition. Why should I choose you over someone else? They also do. 

28:53
American Express does a really great job at showing like a visual of the lifestyle right Like, hey, I can sell your house. Once I sell your house or once I buy your house from you, you have this money. You know this is what your life can look like. Setting a stage. Obviously, we know that you know the savings account right here isn't going to put me right there on that boat, but I still feel pretty good about it and I want to engage with the brand because it makes me happy and seeing this in action on a postcard. 

29:24
If you're using postcards, highly recommend using larger formats, so that way you're able to interrupt the clutter in the mailbox a little bit more. Again, we have a letter. We have visualizations of houses that the recipient may or may not have driven by or may or may not see on a regular basis in their neighborhood. So maybe you're able to create a more emotional connection because, well, I've seen that house that resonates with me, and now your brand and your offering resonate with me, and now I'm interested. They do a really nice job. Sotheby's does a great job with your trusted real estate agent, and I've got a picture of a nice looking woman here that will probably be somebody that you could trust. You know she knows your area, she knows the neighborhood, she knows how your homes are valued. Therefore, she is probably the professional that you want to reach out to to help you with your home. All right, and then what's trending now? 

30:36 - Amy Was (Host)
So we're going to dive into QR codes a little bit. I know that batch services is going to be allowing you to include QR codes, I think coming Q4. Is that right, Amy, that you can add QR codes into any piece of direct mail? Currently, in BatchLeads, you would need to get your QR code outside and add it as a separate image. We can get into that a little bit later. It is possible, but we will have it built in to make it a lot easier for y'all. 

30:57 - Stephanie Haarhaus (Guest)
One thing to add as well, when that does come in Q4,. So one of the great things about those QR codes is you'll actually be able to get a notification when someone has scanned it so you can take an action on that. You can send them a follow-up via SMS, you can do that cold calling to get ahold of them. It'll give you those insights. So really exciting value add on that piece as well. 

31:19 - Julia Lovett (Guest)
Yeah, and that insight is at the individual level, which is something that has not been done before. Whenever you're sitting with traditional vendors and you're adding your QR codes, it is an aggregated view into how people have engaged. This is an actual individual level visualization and therefore allows you to really build out that multi-touch strategy in real time with real data. So, as we know, back in the day, QR codes would be on direct mail pieces and nobody either knew how to engage with them or wanted to engage with them, and, quite frankly, the content that was included on the QR codes really wasn't anything worth engaging with. I think that people marketers have gotten significantly more intelligent with how they engage with their recipients, and they know that the content that is shared with the recipient needs to be something that has earned the time that they're taking, and so we've seen a huge increase. Obviously, covid was a culprit of this, but we're not mad about it at all, because 34 looks pretty good in 2023 and we're only seeing it continue to soar, and so, when you're thinking about using the QR codes and you're going to add them to your mailers again, how are you going to do that? How are you going to have an elevated look and feel. Will you have a QR code that represents your brand? Maybe it's your logo, maybe it's something a little bit more fun that relates more to the person, like a Valentine's Day heart, as we see here in this piece, and just taking an effort to show that you want to engage with the recipient on a branded moment or a deeper moment, and then just thinking beyond traditional use cases for just pushing recipients to learn more, you can actually have them engage on a different level. So Humana does a great job with allowing people to scan a chat live hey, you've received this piece. Rather than sending you to a form for you to fill out or complete information that maybe you haven't completed already, go straight to a live agent that can start answering your questions now. Again, it goes back to that. We need to remove the amount of steps it takes to get to the end, and Humana did a great job here, and obviously there's some other pieces here that are pretty cool too Looking for the perfect bra, being able to actually engage with different styles. Then, beyond the limits, vacationing here is another way to just get straight into learning about what this company has to offer and then leveraging those interactive moments. 

34:11
So, um, we were talking earlier about how do we continue to interact with um our recipients beyond, uh, just that moment we send them the direct mail piece, or even beyond um, when they have responded or actually, you know, purchased or move forward with our brand offering. You know how do we um continue to find beneficial uh reasons for them to continue the conversation. So credit cards do a really great job of this scanning to download the app. There's going to be a lot of things on the app that a Discover credit card holder can engage with. Maybe it's different features and benefits that you have with the app. Maybe they're going to send notifications about some really cool things that are going on with your Discover account, and so those are just some ways to think about how do I continue the conversation, even if they're not ready to purchase right now. And just thinking about that, Amy, obviously the space that you're in real estate space you have a lot of customers that are in that space. Have you noticed any themes, any common themes within the QR code space? 

35:28 - Amy Was (Host)
I'm so glad that you brought that up. So this is kind of a funny little thing that we did recently for batch leads. Y'all have maybe gotten these or at the very least you've seen billboards, bandit signs, whatever you want to call it we want to buy your house, we buy ugly houses, all those things. So recently batch leads and batch service as a whole did a direct mail campaign to our customers to introduce our six by nine postcards. Previously we only had four by six. Now we are doing six by nine postcards and this is kind of a fun little take on it. The really cool thing here is that this photo right here is a photo of the property. So when a property owner is receiving your postcard, they can have the option you can have the option to add the photo of their property to the postcard. Additionally, we included a picture. This isn't directly integrated into Bachelet's just yet Again, that is coming in Q4, but we did include a QR code on the back so that we are able to track that stuff and actually this webinar will be available on that QR code as soon as the webinar is over. So kind of a fun little fact. But yeah, that's something fun that we've done recently, so really quickly. 

36:42
For those of you who don't know what Batch Leads is, it is an all-in-one lead generation, evaluation and marketing tool for real estate professionals. This kind of takes you from soup to nuts. You're able to narrow down exactly who you're looking for, the type of property owners that you want to reach. You're able to look at them, evaluate them, find the ones that are going to be most likely to either work with your services or sell their property or cash buyers, essentially. And we've got marketing tools as well. We've got click to dial, we've got direct mail. It's all for real estate professionals. So again, identifying motivated sellers We've got more than 150 data filters. Absentee owners, tired landlords, high equity For sale by owner is something that we just introduced. So if you haven't checked that out, definitely check it out. Uncovering property owner contact info is also really huge. So we have some of the highest skip tracing, not even just hit rates and match rates, but accuracy, the right party contact information in the market, and then again we can reach out to leads with direct mail and in-app click to dial Real quick. I'm so excited to show this to y'all. I'm going to give you a little tour of what the Batch Leads platform looks like with our brand new, overhauled direct mail interface. So, really quickly, when you create a direct mail piece, you're initially going to start it out by going into your direct mail setup. So we'll pop over here to direct mail setup and immediately you'll see a lot of these items on here. 

38:14
We do have pre-created templates. You can see here that this one is six by nine, this one's for more home services, and then we have the exact same ones copied for four by six. And then, if you want to upload your own, you can create a brand new template a four by six, a six by nine or a letter Super great options there. And then you can take your picture. Let's say you create something in Canva. Let's say you have a larger business and you have a creative team that's able to do those things, or maybe you hired a graphic designer to create your material. You can just upload them directly in there. What does that look like? I'm going to we're just going to take a quick look here. So here's what one of the templates looks like. Here's what one of the templates looks like. 

39:02
You can take these pieces, move them around really anything that you would expect from sort of a graphic designer space. It's sort of a little bit like almost Google Slides in a way. You can move them around, you can change the font, you can change the color, all of those neat little things. And then one of the things that we had been talking about previously was those dynamic fields. So we could essentially just change all this right here type in, your home is worth having a little trouble there and then include it in a dynamic field. 

39:32
So I would go down to offer value minimum and then to offer value maximum. So your home is worth between this price and this price. And where do we get that from? We actually get it from. Actually, maybe I need to go back and do the offer value max. So I'll do your home is worth up to offer value maximum. We're going to add that one right there. So where do we get that? Oops, I can't even see it down here. Hmm, normally there's a little section down here that has a um, an offer value minimum and maximum. So it will tell you um, your home is worth this percentage of the, the valuation, and it's entirely possible that that could be whoops, real quick. Let me see if it's. If it does it when I click that here. Okay, did not totally fine, that's something that I can check into for sure but it helps you be able to customize right, the um, the experience, and if somebody sees, oh my gosh, I could get between this amount and this amount for my property, total game changer, absolute game changer. So I'm going to cancel out of here real quick. Again, we've got templates for every different type of industry. If you're an agent, if you are a wholesaler, real estate investor, lender, whatever, whatever it might be, we've got some really, really great options for templates. 

41:00
Now, when we move over into the campaign space, this is pretty cool. We are going to go ahead and create a new campaign so I can show you guys what it looks like when we walk through it. So I'm going to do my campaign name, campaign one, and I'm going to add my contacts. So I think I did a driving for dollars one. Yeah, that's far too many people, but you get the drift. 

41:25
Remove duplicates. You can remove them right away in case you don't want to send it to the same house twice. And then this part's really neat because I can create a series. So if I want to send this postcard on day one, then I can go ahead and add a new one. So on day 30, I'm going to make sure another one goes out. On day 60, I'm going to make sure that another one goes out. So you're hitting them over and over again, just like Stephanie and Julia were talking about making sure that they see you frequently enough where they're like okay, maybe I do want to interact with this brand from here. 

42:01
Um, you can actually schedule this ahead of time. So if you want to delay the delivery a little bit like, let's say, you're going on vacation, but you want to get this done ahead of time you can absolutely do that. You just schedule it for a different start date and then you create your campaign. The really cool thing is that you're able to track a lot of that here too. So, of the one that we just sent, I'm able to see how many I sent to, how many are in production, how many are in transit, delivered, zero return to sender. You can follow it all the way through. All of the different tracking events. You can see where, across the United States, you've sent your mail to. So it's a really, really, really cool tool and I know I know that we are having a ton of users of the BatchLeads platform that are having a tremendous amount of success with it. 

42:47
So, that said, I'm going to pop back in and we'll do a little bit of Q and A. So, ooh, sorry, my thing got weird. All right, let's check out the Q and A's. Q and A's. So Bernard asks are there best practices for frequency of mailings? In other words, how do we develop a contact strategy? Great question how do we develop a contact strategy? Great question. 

43:17 - Julia Lovett (Guest)
I can take that. So the first thing that I'm going to tell you is probably not the thing you want to hear, but it's through testing. However, what we've learned historically works best is making sure that you're touching somebody at least four times, ideally about three weeks apart. If you're going to do a multi-channel strategy, so you're going to include SMS and email, you want to make sure that your direct mail piece hits, typically two to three weeks after that hits each of those hit. Or maybe you send an SMS out that says check your mailbox for a special event that's going on or a special update about your home, so that way you're able to target them multiple times. But the reality is that the best way to learn what works for you and your company is to test it. 

44:13 - Amy Was (Host)
I just saw a quick question come through from Marco. What is the cost for print and postage? Everything is included in one, the cost for everything together, I believe. Actually, let me pull it up to make sure it's accurate. I think I apologize. I have the comparison to DealMachine, because somebody was asking about DealMachine, I'll answer that one real quick. 

44:35
Dealmachine, uh, direct mail while great, it does a lot of the same things that batch leads does. You do have to upgrade your subscription in order to be able to get a lot of that layering, be able to move things around, and it is almost 10 cents more expensive per postcard. Same exact size, arguably same, if not better quality, and you are paying 10 cents more per postcard, which is quite a bit of money. 60 and 64 cents for a six by nine is what we offer, and it really depends on the plan too. So if you're on personal basic, you might get a little bit of a higher price and then all the way down to uh team plus um. So it just depends on kind of what level you have. 

45:20
But the same, the same direct mail, um setup, the same direct mail. Everything is available in every single batch leads um subscription. So you're not. You know, being guarded you're, there's no lock on anything. Essentially, let's see other questions that we have. Is direct mail effective with commercial properties? I don't know if y'all have the answer to that one. That's a little bit of a tough one. 

45:54 - Julia Lovett (Guest)
Well, I can't say that I've had any clients that were commercial properties and how you would target them. I will tell you that the b2b space is quite different than the b2c space and has to be talked about as such. So I will give you a overview really quickly of um, not to take any more time, Amy or Stephanie, but like that, there are seven things that businesses will respond to. There's a gentleman named Bob Hacker. He's a direct mail guru. He's written a lot, a lot of books, super savvy with the B2B space, and so you want to make sure that you focus on the triggers that business owners, or the people that are making decisions for business owners, will respond to. So, um, greed, fear, um, fear, uh, you know losing out um, wanting the, the salvation portion of it, um, and there are a few others that I'm forgetting about right now, but um, all of those can be researched um online by looking up for Bob Hacker's direct mail. Best practices for B2B space. 

47:02 - Amy Was (Host)
And one thing to note is that when you do send direct mail from batch leads, we are so focused on the property owner, so the postcard may not go to the commercial property itself. It can go to the person or the entity that owns that commercial property. So that is kind of an interesting way to do it, but it does depend on who you're trying to reach out to. It is possible to still send direct mail to that commercial property itself. You would just have to self-manage the list when you import it into batch leads. So just depends on who you're talking to. 

47:38
Oscar asks if there's a way to automate the postcards to a specific list. So if you want to target foreclosures in an area and something new comes out, then you automate the postcard. That is something we are definitely looking into because that is a really cool feature that I think would be great for our customers. So not currently, but stay tuned, it's something that we're definitely looking into for the future. Question for you ladies Is it better to send letters like the ones Julia showed or to do postcards for real estate work? 

48:11 - Julia Lovett (Guest)
Both work would recommend testing. I can be completely transparent to tell you that letters typically have a longer staying power. They usually will remain a control for a business for significantly longer than a postcard. That doesn't mean that a postcard can't, so I would just recommend testing to see what works best for your company. 

48:35 - Stephanie Haarhaus (Guest)
I think I'll also add with the new six by nine offering, because it is a little bit larger. If you're thinking about when you're picking up that mail, you're going to have the letter sizes. The six by nine is going to stand out a little bit more so it might also capture the attention To Julia's point right, there's really no one way or another. It really just depends on the testing and capturing that recipient's attention. 

49:00 - Amy Was (Host)
It definitely depends on your strategy. I think we've seen a lot more in the real estate investing and wholesaling space. I feel like we've seen a lot more success with postcards, but letters are definitely an interesting way to kind of sneak in a different way we see it a lot with like lenders who use our platform. But honestly, give it a little test, see what you get. You know more traction on. Rick asks if someone can help me do my first one. Rick, I don't know if there's anybody on the call today that can help you, but one place that I would recommend starting is you can get a free account on Canva and play around with it a little bit. They have a lot of templates that are that are already created, or you can play around with the ones that we have in batch leads. You know we've already got them already set up for you. It just it's a matter of just tweaking a little bit here and there for depending on what your messaging is. But again, you can go into Canva. They have lots of options and then you can take that and put it directly into batch leads to put on your postcard. So lots of options for you. 

50:07
Can you take lists out of other systems and bring them into batch. Absolutely, you can. It is super easy to import your list. You can have us manage it for you. You can manage it yourself, which is another great option. So it's really a matter of what you're looking for. 

50:24
One of the things that BatchLeads does, if you're not familiar, is it enriches your data. So if you upload a list and say, hey, I've got all these properties that I'm interested in contacting or interested in putting into BatchLeads as kind of a CRM, it will tell you who the current property owner is. It will tell you the mailing address of that property owner, because some of them might be absentee owners, and the last thing you want to do is send a hey, I want to buy your house postcard to somebody who's renting the property. So it's really, really helpful in that regard to be able to take all of those from elsewhere, put them into batch leads and then send them to the property owners versus the renters. 

51:05
How would I go about sending a letter or postcard that looks handwritten? Should I create or customize one on Canva? So we have some fonts that are a little bit more script style and of course, I can't remember what they are. That's probably a little bit too much, but we do have some that are more script based. If you are looking to add additional fonts outside of the ones that we have here, I would recommend going and doing it in Canva and then bringing it into Batch Leads and doing it in Canva and then bringing it into Batch Leads. 

51:43 - Stephanie Haarhaus (Guest)
And our recommendation on that would be making sure you embed the fonts into the image itself so that it retains that high quality precision of the handwriting and it doesn't get changed at the print production level, because one of the things we see a lot is something that you have a digital proof of looks a little bit different in the print version, and so if you embed the fonts into the piece when you're designing them on Canva or any other design tool, that'll ensure that it retains the image that you're seeing on that piece when it gets produced. 

52:14 - Amy Was (Host)
Julia, you mentioned a book earlier and I think somebody is asking about what the name of the book was. If you could please repeat that. 

52:22 - Julia Lovett (Guest)
Oh, the author is going to be called Bob Hacker and he has a ton of books that you can you can go purchase, but the one that I would recommend that you you seek out, if you're looking to target commercial, is a B2B strategy one, and I don't have that name in front of me right now. 

52:42 - Amy Was (Host)
Okay, Everyone, thank you so much for joining us today. This was such a great webinar, so much engagement. Thank you all for attending. Stephanie Julia, thank you so much for your expertise Super valuable, and it sounds like everybody got a lot out of this today, so I appreciate you being here. Thanks everyone. Thanks for the time. Thank you so much for being here and we'll see you soon. 

53:08 - Hope (Announcement)
Thanks for listening to today's podcast. Please make sure to subscribe on your favorite service to get notified every time a new episode is released.