Direct Mail Campaigns

We analyzed 4 million recruiting emails sent through Gem. Most get opened. But only 22.6% get replies. Half those replies are "thanks, but no thanks." We dug into what actually works. Here are 8 factors that drive REAL responses: 1. Strategic timing beats everything else - 8am gets 68% open rates. 4pm hits 67.3%. 10am lands at 67% - Most recruiters blast at 9am when inboxes are flooded - Avoiding peak times alone can boost your opens by 7-10% 2. Weekend outreach is criminally underused - Saturday/Sunday emails get ≥66% open rates consistently - Why? Empty inboxes. Zero competition. Candidates actually have time - Yet few recruiters send on weekends. Their loss is your gain 3. Keep messages between 101-150 words - Shorter feels spammy. Longer gets skimmed - You need exactly 10 sentences to nail the essentials - Every word beyond 150 drops performance 4. Generic templates kill response rates - Generic templates: 22% reply rate - Personalized outreach: 47% increased response rate - Even adding name + company to subject lines boosts opens by 5% 5. Subject lines need 3-9 words - Include company name + job title for highest opens - "Senior Engineer Role at [Company]" beats clever wordplay - 11+ words can work if genuinely intriguing, but why risk it? 6. The 4-stage sequence is optimal - One-off emails are dead. Send exactly 4 follow-up messages - You'll see 68% higher "interested" rates with proper sequencing - After stage 4, engagement completely flatlines. Stop there 7. Get the hiring manager involved - Having the hiring manager send ONE follow-up boosts reply rates by 50%+ - Yet most recruiters don't use this tactic - Weekend advantage: Minimal competition for attention 8. Leadership involvement is a cheat code - Role-specific timing (tech vs non-tech) matters - Technical roles: 3 of 4 best send times are weekends - Engineers check email differently than salespeople. Adjust accordingly TAKEAWAY: These aren't opinions. This is what 4 million emails tell us. Most recruiting teams are stuck in 2019 playbooks wondering why their reply rates won't budge. Meanwhile, recruiters who implement these 8 factors see dramatically better results. The data is right there. The patterns are clear. The only question is: will you actually change how you operate? Or will you keep sending the same tired emails at 9am on Tuesday? Your call.

I sent the same appeal to 10,000 donors. One version raised $67,000. The other raised $142,000. The only difference? Where I put the word "you." Donor-centered writing isn't just nice—it's profitable: • "You" in the first sentence increases response by 23% • Stories about donors (not beneficiaries) raise more money • Questions outperform statements in both open and response rates One organization rewrote their case statement from "we need" to "you can" language and saw major gift closes increase by 41%. The most powerful word in fundraising isn't "give"—it's "you." What small language shift has made the biggest difference in your fundraising?

"All the lonely people Where do they all belong?" 🎤 "Eleanor Rigby" by The Beatles Speaking of lonely... let's talk about your contact database - and how AI can help clean it! 📱 If I had a dollar for every time a #CustomerSuccess leader told me "I'd love to do digital engagement, but my contact data is a mess," I'd have enough money to hire a full-time data entry team. (Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration, but you get the point! 😅) Here's a familiar story I heard just last week: 😫 "We have 5 different systems with contact info" 😫 "Half our email addresses bounce" 😫 "Our CSMs spend hours updating contact records" 😫 "We don't know who's actually still at the company" 😫 "Our org charts are from 2022" Sound familiar? 🤔 The reality is, in 2024, maintaining accurate contact data manually is like trying to fill a leaky bucket. People change roles every few months, companies reorganize constantly, and keeping up feels impossible. I learned this lesson the hard way at Gainsight. We used to have our CS team spending countless hours updating contact records. Despite their heroic efforts, our data was always outdated. We'd send carefully crafted emails only to get the dreaded bounce notification. Or worse - we'd discover our "champion" had left the company... 6 months ago! 😱 The good news? AI has transformed how we think about this challenge. Instead of manually updating records, imagine a system that: ✅ Actively listens to all communications and builds a real-time relationship graph 🕸️ ✅ Automatically flags contacts who haven't engaged in 90 days as potentially inactive ✅ Catches those "Thanks for everything, I'm moving on!" emails and updates contact status ✅ Identifies key stakeholders who are active in communications but missing from your CRM Using our recent acquisition, Staircase AI, we found dozens of active stakeholders who were completely missing from our CRM - people who were regularly engaging with our team but had fallen through the cracks in our manual processes. What's your experience? How are you keeping your contact data fresh? Would love to hear your stories in the comments! 👇

Over the past 9 years, I’ve acquired 1,000+ clients for my agencies. If I were starting over today, here’s exactly how I’d land my first 10 clients: Step 1: Start with the right data The biggest challenge when starting out? Finding highly targeted prospects who are ready to buy. Here’s how I’d solve that: Google Maps. Yes, I said Google Maps. Why? Because it’s an untapped goldmine for qualified leads. With over 4,000 B2B categories, it’s packed with local businesses and SMBs often overlooked - or missing - from LinkedIn. These are hidden gems waiting to be discovered. Scrap (https://scrap.io/s/9MYK) transforms this goldmine into actionable leads by extracting from Google Maps listings: - Emails, phone numbers, & websites - Social media profiles - Website technologies - Even Google Maps ratings & reviews Filter and focus on your ideal targets in just 2 clicks. For example: - Restaurants with 4+ ratings but no Instagram. - Local businesses with websites but no ad pixels. - SMBs in specific niches or locations. Scrap’s real-time data extraction ensures you always have the most accurate info - and it’s available as a Chrome Extension for instant insights. Step 2: Personalize your outreach Generic outreach doesn’t work - relevance is everything. Try this playbook: - Subject Line: Use something attention-grabbing like “Quick question about [business name]” or “Idea for [service].” - Personalize: Reference their Google Maps reviews, website, or niche. For example: “Congrats on your 4.9-star rating - I can see why people love your café.” - Partner Up: “I help cafes like yours boost foot traffic through email marketing. I noticed a few opportunities I’d love to share.” - CTA: End with a low-pressure ask: “Does this sound worth exploring?” Pro Tip: Pair the emails from Scrap (https://scrap.io/s/9MYK) with LinkedIn outreach - connect or engage with their posts to build trust. Step 3: Stay consistent and scale your efforts Build momentum through persistence: - Follow Up: Most responses come after the 2nd or 3rd touch. Example sequence: Email → LinkedIn connect → Follow-up email → Call. - Track Metrics: Monitor open rates, replies, and booked calls. Aim for a 20%+ email response rate and 10%+ meetings booked. - Leverage Referrals: Once you’ve landed a few clients, ask, “Know anyone else who might benefit?” and share testimonials like, “We helped a local coffee shop grow foot traffic by 20% in 30 days.” - Automate: Use Scrap for fast lead gen and a CRM to manage outreach. Recap: - Use Scrap (https://scrap.io/s/9MYK) to turn Google Maps into a lead-gen machine for local businesses, SMBs, and niche prospects. - Personalize your emails with insights and a clear CTA. - Stay consistent by following up, tracking results, and leveraging referrals. - And remember: Your first 10 clients lay the foundation for scaling. #ScrapPartner

🔥 I burned ₹10 lakhs testing campaign structures on Meta Ads—here’s what I learned (and what actually works). Over the past 3 months, I’ve tested multiple campaign structures on Meta Ads. Call it “testing” or “wasting” – but it taught me one game-changing lesson. Here’s What I Tested: 1️⃣ Broad Campaign with Advantage+ Audience Enabled ▪️ Ad sets by creative theme. ▪️Concerned that spend might favor engaged audiences (e.g., website visitors), I moved to the test#2. 2️⃣ Broad Campaign with Original Audience (No Advantage+) ▪️ Ad sets by creative theme. ▪️ Outcome: Spend distribution across engaged audiences was the same as in Point 1. ▪️Hence, no delta benefit. 3️⃣ Advantage+ Shopping Campaign (ASC) + Broad Campaign ▪️ Idea: Identify winners in the broad campaign and scale them in ASC. ▪️ Reality: Marginally better performance with ASC but lower scalability due to a lack of creative freshness in ASC at scale. 4️⃣ Broad Campaign (Interests + Lookalikes) ▪️Hypothesis: Interests and LAL might perform better. ▪️Outcome: No significant performance improvement, even at scale. 5️⃣ Broad Campaign (Excluding Website Visitors) + Dedicated Website Visitors Campaign ▪️Hypothesis: This structure would improve efficiency. ▪️Outcome: Performance tanked. Meta’s machine learning thrives on frequency for conversions. The result? Nothing. No significant difference. Here’s what actually matters: ✅ Your creatives. Instead of overcomplicating campaign structures: ✅ Keep it simple. ✅ Focus 80% of your energy on testing creatives (hooks, angles, messaging). ✅ Use ASC only for catalogs or specific setups. ✅ Launch creatives by theme in a single broad campaign with ad sets aligned. ✅ Avoid remarketing campaigns unless you have a specific offer/messaging to hammer home. Summary: Stop chasing the perfect campaign structure. Start obsessing over creative quality. Note: - This learning applies to direct purchase campaigns on the web. - I’ll share separate insights for app campaigns in another post. What’s your take on this? 👇 #performancemarketing #metaads #fbads #campaignstructure

Cold email is dead. Just kidding, but I’ve been thinking a lot about where this space is going. With the right offer in the right industry, email is still a potent way to book qualified meetings. But from overseeing millions of emails sent over the last year. Most won’t admit how much harder it has gotten. Spam filters, cutting through the noise, establishing trust. But there is one strategy that still works insanely well. That's using both cold and warm email outreach systems in a complete GTM flywheel. For our ColdIQ campaigns, the goal is to simply generate qualified traffic. We don’t really ask for meetings in our CTAs. We just offer content that we presume matters to the prospect. High-quality videos, guides, and resources. And this is where the GTM flywheel starts to shape up. The same effort we put into generating worthwhile organic LI content. We weave into our cold emails, paid marketing, SEO articles, newsletter, and other media channels. Interested prospects then react in one of four meaningful ways: 1️⃣ Visiting our LI company page. 2️⃣ Visiting one of our LI profiles. 3️⃣ Visiting our website. 4️⃣ Or filling in a form to receive a resource or book a meeting. We’re then leveraging modern sales tech to extract and enrich this data. To funnel leads in the appropriate downstream flow. Whether that be manual SDR activities, automated outreach sequences, or marketing flows. So again utilizing email outreach, but this time for warmer leads. Want this set up for your business? DM me and let's talk. Tools mentioned for: Company page followers: Sales Nav, PhantomBuster, Captain Data LI Connections: LinkedIn Platform, PhantomBuster, Bardeen (CRM integration) Profile viewers: Teamfluence™, PhantomBuster, Sales Nav Post engagers: Common Room, Trigify.io, Teamfluence™ Managing DMs: Hublead, Breakcold, folk US website visitors (person-level): RB2B, Common Room, Instantly.ai EU website visitors (account-level): Common Room, Albacross, Snitcher Newsletter subs: beehiiv, Zapier, Make Demo bookings: Default, HubSpot, Clay Resource signup: Distribute, Tally, Default Data routing/management: Clay & HubSpot Automated outreach: Instantly.ai, lemlist, HeyReach, Smartlead Marketing: LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, HubSpot, Customer.io

Tired of generic LinkedIn messages filling your inbox? Brex just set the bar higher with their Champagne Campaign 🥂— and it’s not about cold outreach, it’s about thoughtfulness and results. Most days, my inbox 📩 is flooded with cold, non-personalised LinkedIn messages. Sure, some of these may convert, but they lack connection. Compare this with what Brex did—an ABM campaign that targeted the right audience, at the right time, and made a real impact. In 2018, Brex was a small team with 30 employees and no customers. Instead of blasting out messages, they targeted 300 startups that had recently raised funding. They didn’t stop there—each of these startups received a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne 🍾 with a handwritten note 🗒 from Brex’s CEO and a personalised followup email a week later to ask for a demo. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭? A 75% demo booking rate. Of those demos, 75% converted to customers. Net result - 169 new clients from just 300 prospects. All of this with a campaign spend of only $19,000. This approach worked because it’s intentional and personal — Brex took the time to target companies who were at the perfect moment to need their product and followed up with a thoughtful touch. It’s a far cry from the mass outbound methods so many agencies push, which often fail to create meaningful connections. 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲: Outbound works—but it works better when it’s personal. Stop sending generic messages and start crafting thoughtful, targeted campaigns that create real results. Have you tried personalised outreach in your campaigns? Let’s connect and talk about how ABM can transform your sales approach. #OutboundSales #ABM #PersonalisedMarketing #LeadGeneration #MarketingStrategy #BusinessGrowth #SalesTactics #MarketingROI

An (exclusive) invitation ... to spend more money Just received an elegant grey box from American Express with a striking hourglass - beautifully crafted direct mail making its case for their Platinum Card. In today's digital tsunami of credit card offers this dimensional mailer stood out. It made me reflect on the psychology of exclusivity marketing: Physical > Digital Studies show direct mail response rates (5-9%) dramatically outperform email (1%). In a screen-fatigued world, tangible experiences create deeper emotional connections. The Exclusivity Paradox While everyone chases "premium" positioning (most credit cards now offer airport lounge access), true differentiation comes from masterful execution. This wasn't just another package - it was an experience. The Clutter Conundrum Credit card benefits have become commoditized: Points/miles ✈️ Lounge access 🛋️ Insurance coverage 🛡️ Concierge services 📱 Yet AMEX maintains its premium positioning through consistent brand storytelling and selective targeting. Key Marketing Insight: In a noisy world, sometimes whispering (through carefully crafted physical experiences) speaks louder than shouting digital offers. What's your take on exclusive marketing in the digital age? Has a piece of direct mail ever caught your attention? #Marketing #BrandStrategy #CustomerExperience #DigitalMarketing #DirectMail #FinancialServices #MarketingPsychology #CustomerAcquisition P.S. And yes, I appreciate the irony of posting about a physical mailer on LinkedIn!

Incrementality testing is crucial for evaluating the effectiveness of marketing campaigns because it helps marketers determine the true impact of their efforts. Without this testing, it's difficult to know whether observed changes in user behavior or sales were actually caused by the marketing campaign or if they would have occurred naturally. By measuring incrementality, marketers can attribute changes in key metrics directly to their campaign actions and optimize future strategies based on concrete data. In this blog written by the data scientist team from Expedia Group, a detailed guide is shared on how to measure marketing campaign incrementality through geo-testing. Geo-testing allows marketers to split regions into control and treatment groups to observe the true impact of a campaign. The guide breaks the process down into three main stages: - The first stage is pre-testing, where the team determines the appropriate geographical granularity—whether to use states, Designated Market Areas (DMAs), or zip codes. They then strategically select a subset of available regions and assign them to control and treatment groups. It's crucial to validate these selections using statistical tests to ensure that the regions are comparable and the split is sound. - The second stage is the test itself, where the marketing intervention is applied to the treatment group. During this phase, the team must closely monitor business performance, collect data, and address any issues that may arise.  - The third stage is post-test analysis. Rather than immediately measuring the campaign's lift, the team recommends waiting for a "cooldown" period to capture any delayed effects. This waiting period also allows for control and treatment groups to converge again, confirming that the campaign's impact has ended and ensuring the model hasn’t decayed. This structure helps calculate Incremental Return on Advertising spending, answering questions like “How do we measure the sales directly driven by our marketing efforts?” and “Where should we allocate future marketing spend?” The blog serves as a valuable reference for those looking for more technical insights, including software tools used in this process. #datascience #marketing #measurement #incrementality #analysis #experimentation – – –  Check out the "Snacks Weekly on Data Science" podcast and subscribe, where I explain in more detail the concepts discussed in this and future posts:    -- Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gKgaMvbh   -- Apple Podcast: https://lnkd.in/gj6aPBBY    -- Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gcwPeBmR https://lnkd.in/gWKzX8X2 

If you're not thinking about direct mail in 2025, you're losing out on perhaps the biggest opportunity in marketing. The mailbox is becoming the new inbox. It sounds old school, I know. But brands are seeing real results from direct mail. While a great email might get a 20% open rate, a well-timed postcard or offer in the mail lands directly in the hands of your customer. No spam folders. No competition with 100 other brands. Here’s how smart Amazon brands are winning with direct mail: 1️⃣ Inserts with irresistible offers For example, a Nespresso pod company includes a QR code in their packaging offering a free espresso cup. Customers scan, claim their gift, and BOOM, the brand now has their name, email, and address for future marketing. 2️⃣ Warranties Electronic brands on Amazon have a unique opportunity for customer data. Many use inserts to push warranties for their products. Same premise as above: scan, register, and give the company your info. 3️⃣ Once you have their data, keep reaching out. A clothing brand I bought from sent me a postcard with a personal note from the CEO and a 30% discount for my next order. It stood out, and I actually paid attention. How many marketing offers do you still get in your mailbox? Not as many as you did 5 or 10 years ago? Exactly. That’s why this approach works. It’s unexpected, tangible, and trusted. Direct mail is low competition, high impact