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Podcast #96

“Direct Mail: Stop Posting and Praying”

Featuring Allison Bruce

Intro: Welcome to Profiles In Prosperity, the leading podcast for residential service contractors, sponsored by Service Roundtable and hosted by David Heimer.

David Heimer: Hi everyone, I’m David Heimer. Welcome to Profiles In Prosperity. I have had the pleasure of listening to Allison Bruce speak several times, and every time I hear her talk, I end up being really impressed. She is the Vice President of Customer Success and Business Development for PulseM and Customer Lobby. She’s based in Oakland, California. She and her team pride themselves on helping service companies win more business by making it effortless for them to engage with their customers. She has over 15 years of experience helping businesses of all sizes. As the head of customer success and business development, her passion is providing clients with access to tools and business insights normally only available to big guys. When not relentlessly driving success for her clients, you’ll find her camping in the Santa Cruz Mountains with her family or two stepping around the dance floor. So Allison Bruce, welcome to Profiles In Prosperity.

Allison Bruce: Thank you so much for having me.

David Heimer: I am delighted to get to talk with you again. I don’t think I’ve seen you since Service World Expo, so this is great. So tell me a little bit about your career and how you got into our industry.

Allison Bruce: Yeah, would love to. You know, I started my career, actually, in education way back in the day. I was a teacher, if you’ll believe it, right out of college. And, you know, and then I moved into a variety of industries, but always in the sales and kind of customer service, customer success space and found that anyone can sell, but when you sell in a way that you’re really listening to your customers and understanding their needs and not just out for the buck, but genuinely taking an interest, it made a big difference. And so, four years ago, I founded this little company called Customer Lobby that was looking to hire someone, specifically, to help them make sure they were giving the best possible service to their customers. And started, had a two person team, grew that team over time, you know, the company grew, was acquired and I was just seeing tremendous growth and it’s been such a wonderful learning experience for me, was able to get to a point where our entire organization was solely focused on how do we make sure our customers have a phenomenal experience. And so getting to do that from the ground up has been really exciting. And my absolute favorite thing is getting to go to trade shows or go to clients and meet with them on site in person. I love this industry, I love the people, and just those genuine connections that I look for, I’m able to find them again and again in the work.

David Heimer: Very nice. So how would you describe your current responsibilities?

Allison Bruce: So I’m our Vice President of customer success, and that really means exactly what it says. My job is to make sure our customers are successful, and whatever that looks like for them. So I have responsibility for our customer success managers. Those are the people talking every day to our clients and understanding their needs and how to help them make recommendations and be successful, I’m listening to their calls, I’m coaching them. And then I’m also working on, you know, making sure that we have partnerships and integrations and all of the other things that surround making sure our customers are successful and are getting the best possible results using our products.

David Heimer: Your product is focused on direct mail, if I understand that correctly. Is that right?

Allison Bruce: It is. Yep.

David Heimer: I’m constantly bombarded with people talking about seo, social media, paper click advertising, all this other stuff. And I think it’s all good, but I’m still always intrigued with direct mail. Is there still a place for direct mail in a contractor’s marketing arsenal?

Allison Bruce: It’s so interesting. There absolutely is, is the short answer. And part of the reason for that is because we’re just so bombarded with everything in the digital space. Yeah. SEO and Google Ads and there’s so, so much, we’re kind of bombarded with advertising. And yet if you think about it, real snail mail is still one of the only ways that we can interact with our customers in that physical way. The other thing to think about is in the home services, the one piece of information you have about all your customers that you know is accurate is their home address. You may not have their email or they may have given you that email that they ignore and don’t even check because it’s junk mail. But you’ve got that address and you know how to get a postcard to them. So there’s definitely a place for direct mail. It’s something that people need to absolutely be considering as a part of a larger marketing strategy.

David Heimer: Yeah, it’s interesting. You know, I’ve always heard email described as invasive. That’s what people like about it, is that it’s invasive. It comes to their inbox. Used to be that people had to deal with it, it was in their inbox. Direct mail’s actually even more invasive, isn’t it? It comes to your house and you really do have to deal with it.

Allison Bruce: You’ve got to pick it up out of that mailbox.

David Heimer: Right. So what kind of direct mail works best?

Allison Bruce: There’s a great question. There’s a couple of things you want to think about in terms of direct mail. Number one is it’s got to be really targeted and personalized. So the best kind of direct mail is going to have a message that speaks to that individual. So just sending everyone in your town a coupon is never going to be as effective as a personalized message. Hey, we were out at your house, you know, we gave you an estimate, we noticed it’s been six months, are you still interested? Is there something more we can do? Or hey, it’s been a year since we last serviced your system, we’d love to to come back. So making sure you are personalizing the messaging as much as possible and really being smart and targeted is always going to be a better approach than just kind of spraying everyone with a generic message.

David Heimer: That makes a lot of sense. Hard to do though, probably, in some situations for sure. You guys have a lot of experience with direct mail. What are some guidelines for people in our industry, guidelines for direct mail?

Allison Bruce: Yeah, I could list off my top 10 or 12, but I’ll keep it to three that I think are the most important things to remember when you’re thinking about direct mail. Number one is your goal with any direct mail piece is to get someone to pause long enough to actually read it, right? You think about the walk from the mailbox to the home, and maybe there’s a trash can on the way. So you’ve got a short amount of time and your goal is to capture their attention. And the best way to capture their attention is to sort of create emotional response. And I know that sounds silly, because how do you have an emotional response to your plumber or your electrician? But just having an image that evokes a little bit of nostalgia, right? Or putting some messaging on there that is, hey, you know, you’re part of our family and we appreciate your business. Those are the kinds of things that make someone pause, more so than just all the other pieces of junk mail that are in their mailbox. So creating an emotional response that gets someone to pause is absolutely critical. So that’s number one.

David Heimer: Let me ask you a quick question about that. Is humor effective as an emotional response to get them to pause?

Allison Bruce: You know, it is. It’s got to be done in the right way, obviously, because one person’s humor, someone else may not find funny. But I’ve seen it done really, really well and it’s going to depend on how your business operates. And I’ve seen some, especially during Covid, we saw some great ones about we’re short on toilet paper, {Inaudible 7:36}, really just funny. And again, if you can make someone laugh, they’re going to remember you, they’re going to remember your message. So if done in a professional way, it’s a great tool.

David Heimer: Okay. Alright. So number one, create an emotional response that causes them to pause.

Allison Bruce: Yep. Exactly. So then I would say number two, and I mentioned this already, but is as much as possible you want to be smart and targeted about who you’re reaching out to. So rather than the post and pray approach of just blasting everyone, how can you get targeted? And that might mean targeting a specific neighborhood. That might mean targeting a specific group of customers you already have in your database, but you really, as much as possible, you don’t want to be – you could mail to 10,000 customers and maybe you get a 2% response rate, but ideally you want to whittle that down to a smaller subset of customers who are the right customers or the right prospects to be reaching out to, and you’re going to see a much higher response rate. And then number three, what I would say is think about how you’re going to measure results. This is one of the hardest things with marketing. People hate marketing because it’s just so hard to know if it’s really working, is it really getting me results? And when we think about direct mail, you know, there’s no clicks to measure, you can’t say did someone click. But there are very effective ways that you can measure your results. So you want to make sure you have a plan in place to measure the response of any kind of marketing that you’re doing to know if it’s really working for you.

David Heimer: What are some good examples of that? I mean, direct mail’s a little bit tricky. You know, if you’re doing a QR code, it’s pretty easy to put in a counter or something that lets you know, what are good methodologies for direct mail? I guess you could still use a QR code.

Allison Bruce: Yeah. So two things. So QR codes, interestingly, if you’d asked me three years ago, I would’ve said, oh, QR codes are out of date. Well, Covid has changed all of that. Everyone’s used to menus that are on QR codes, right? So we’ve seen a huge uptick and it’s been really successful. What people are doing on the cards that we send, they’re putting a QR code right on the front that links directly to their scheduler. So that someone can literally scan that QR code and then it lets them pick a date and time for their appointment. And that’s just a fantastic way, because that’s direct, you know, you know exactly who came through and that they booked an appointment. So yeah, QR codes are one way. You know, people will use tracking numbers as well. But the third way to think about results, and this is going to be easier to do if you’re using some sort of technology or tool for your mailing as opposed to doing it yourself, but really is you know who you mailed to.

Allison Bruce: And so if you can say, alright, we sent a piece of mail to these 50 addresses, how many of them in the next 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, how many of them spend money with you and how much do they spend? And again, ideally, you’ve got some sort of tool in place that does that for you so you’re not having to track it manually. But it’s important to get down to, yeah, not just did they call you, but did they actually spend money with you and what was the return on your investment?

David Heimer: Good point. So are there any key performance indicators that you look at that you would say you’re getting good responses off this? If you did a direct mailer, is there something – like, 2% is really good, 1% is great, 5%, nobody ever happens. Do you have any rules of thumb about this?

Allison Bruce: So it’s definitely going to vary by industry and also by the type of campaign. You know, when we send mailers, we always benchmark it for you. We say, hey, here’s the standard in your industry and here’s where you are. But in general, if I’m looking at HVAC, and especially if you’re doing some sort of marketing to your database of existing customers, trying to get them back, make sure they’re coming back and doing that second, third, fourth job with you, you know, generally 2 to 3% is kind of standard. A really strong performing good response rate would be 5 to 7%, that’s what we shoot for and what we typically see. But more common, if you’re not being targeted, is going to be sort of that 2 to 3% response range.

David Heimer: Allison, sometimes I see postcards that come in that have my name on it. You know, Hey David, da da da da da, does that work? Is that more effective?

Allison Bruce: You know, it’s so interesting. There’s all sorts of studies that show that just adding any kind of personalization to a postcard or a piece of direct mail, like the name, does increase response rates. Even though you know that someone didn’t write it to you personally, it increases response rate. And it can be up to 150% increase. What’s really interesting is if you can add any additional personalization, so their name and for example, how long it’s been since they last saw you or anything else that you can personalize, it increases your response rates 500%. So again, think about, name is good at a minimum, I mean you’ve got to get their name in there and anything else you can do to personalize it is going to get you the best result.

David Heimer: Well, I hadn’t thought about that. So for example, on maintenance agreements, hey Allison, it’s been six months since we were out to your house. Or better yet, it’s been 75 days since we were out to your house, we need to come back out. Or maybe a very specific number, 70, 78 days since we were at your house, we need to come out and do maintenance.

Allison Bruce: Exactly. And again, that emotional response. That, to me, when I read that, oh shoot, you’re right. Gosh, I really need to do that, that’s been on my mind. And then hopefully you’ve made it really easy and you’ve said, hey, here’s a QR code you can scan or go to this link to book your appointment right now. Boom, I go, I book it and I’m happy now because this was something that was on my mind. You reminded me, you told me exactly when I last had service done, because I don’t remember, and now I’m ready to go and I feel like I just checked something off my to-do list.

David Heimer: I know you do postcards, do you guys do letters also?

Allison Bruce: We don’t do letters. Yeah, if that’s something you need to do, we’ve had folks that, for various reasons, need to send out an actual letter. We have some recommendations and we can help you with that. But we specifically focus on postcards. We believe in doing one thing and doing it really, really well. So we focus on postcards, and specifically, we really try to focus in on your customer base. You’ve already got a huge base of customers, and how do you make sure they keep coming back again and again.

David Heimer: This has been fascinating stuff. So if somebody wanted to learn more about what you guys do and how you guys do it and is interested in hearing more about that, what would be a great way for them to get hold of you?

Allison Bruce: I just told you not to email, but I will say in this case, email’s going to be your best bet. I love a good postcard, I’ll take a postcard. But, feel free to reach out to me directly. Maybe it’s a little bit nerdy, but I love talking about this stuff and I’m always happy to provide insights on what we’ve seen, we have a lot of data that tells us what works and what doesn’t. So you can email me at abruce, so that’s a-b-r-u-c-e@customerlobby.com

David Heimer: Okay. abruce@customerlobby.com. Okay, Allison, this is fantastic. Like I said, every time I talk to you, every time I hear you talk, it’s such interesting stuff and you’ve got such a wealth of knowledge. I really appreciate you spending this time with us.

Allison Bruce: Well, thank you so much. I always enjoy the time and I look forward to seeing you in a little bit at Service World Expo.

David Heimer: Alright, thank you very much.

Outro: We’re always looking for good ideas and interviews for our podcast. If you have an idea or maybe you think you should be interviewed, just shoot an email to profilesinprosperity@serviceroundtable.com, that’s profilesinprosperity@serviceroundtable.com. If you think what we’re doing has any value, it would be very helpful if you would give us a great rating on iTunes. Thanks for your support. Hope to see you again soon. Bye.