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By The Printing for Less Team
Jennifer Bellin, chief marketing officer at Printing for Less, recently hosted a roundtable discussion: Connect and Delight Across the Customer Lifecycle: Reinforce Your Campaigns with Direct Mail. Bellin explained how she has observed an evolution in marketing, from focusing mostly on new customer acquisition, to a split, pretty evenly, between new customer efforts and existing customer programs.
What’s more, according to some studies, the conversion rates for existing customers are significantly higher than those for new customers. Existing customer conversion rates are often 60 or 70 percent, while conversion rates for new customers can be as low as 5 percent, and up to just 20 percent for the best of companies. This means that sales and marketing investments go much further when you are focused on upselling, or cross-selling, to loyal customers.
Bellin was joined by Janel Maysonet, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Avidia Bank, and Christina McLeod, senior marketing campaign manager at KnowBe4. During the discussion, they discussed how direct mail can be implemented within various stages of the customer lifecycle, including both acquisition and existing customer stages, while also providing examples.
In the first part, Bellin and Maysonet talked about how direct mail was being used at Avidia. Here, in Part 2, we learn about McLeod’s experiences with direct mail campaigns at KnowBe4.
Jennifer Bellin: Today, I have the privilege of hosting Christina McLeod, who has spent more than 10 years in marketing for a variety of B2B tech companies. She has created a number of fantastic campaigns, including one featuring a beloved video game from the past, that she’ll share about in a little bit. So, Christina, could you share how you got started with direct mail?
Christina McLeod: Thanks, Jennifer. Happy to be here. So direct mail was really always on my radar as something that we wanted to do when I started at KnowBe4 because so many people opt out of email. We wanted to find another way to get in front of them. That’s how direct mail became an important tactic in all of our campaigns. When we’re thinking about putting together a campaign, we always are sure to ask, “Where can we add direct mail,” whether it’s a postcard or a kit or just something unique that stands out. If they receive it in the mail, they’ll definitely open it because it looks really creative and cool.
JB: Very interesting. Can you tell us a little bit about some of your business goals and priorities for this year, and how these direct mail programs and campaigns will help with those goals?
CM: We’ve been thinking about more of an awareness approach to prospects and customers, explaining that we’re more than just one product: security awareness training. That we are actually the KnowBe4 platform of products. We’re really trying to lead with that messaging, and, obviously, direct mail can help with that. Another big focus for us is doing more account-based marketing with a one-to-one, one-to-few approach. We are thinking more about personalization and getting in front of a targeted account list.
JB: Direct mail is actually great for one-to-one and one-to-few account-based marketing programs, because you’re able to send to just a few highly valuable and highly engaged prospects. This allows you to afford to send a little higher end mailer or do something extra special. So how are you incorporating direct mail into your omnichannel mix?
CM: Direct mail is really a tactic across all of our campaigns. It’s something we always are looking to do. And we supplement it with email, of course, which we will send either before the direct mail or after, depending on the campaign. Then we usually loop in sales, as well, to help with additional outreach, because they can do more of the one-to-one, personal emails and calls, following up to say, “Hey, did you get the kit, or the postcard? We sent it to you in the mail.” That way, if something happens, we can always send them another one or get in front of them one-to-one.
JB: Let’s transition to some real-life campaign examples that are being executed across the customer lifecycle. Christina, do you want to talk a little bit about this fun campaign?
CM: Yeah, definitely. The purpose of this campaign is to announce new product features. We were trying to think of a cool way to announce features of one of our newer products, Security Coach. Printing for Less presented us with this tri-fold brochure idea. It’s a little bit more appealing when you get it in the mail—something beyond just a postcard. And to really make it stand out, we went with this comic book superhero theme. We wanted to call out the new features of this product, so it was something of an awareness play. Some people might not have even known about the product.
But the engagement piece was really the goal here—to get the customers to request a demo with our team to learn more about these new features, and actually talk directly with the sales rep. The promotion was that if they filled out the form requesting a meeting, they’d get a $25 gift card for lunch on us. That’s where this whole theme of “even heroes need a lunch break,” came from. And with this one we did one more thing: a supplemental email that pointed to a landing page with the same graphics to reach a broader audience.
JB: That is so creative. I love it. What else have you been doing, Christina?
CM: This one is a webinar driver. We were talking about one of our newer products and thinking of hosting a webinar that would be pretty product specific. But needed a way to really drive that attendance. Working with Printing for Less, we found out that you had a retro video game—a little Space Invaders video game.
We figured our IT audience would enjoy it, so we promoted the kit via email. On the landing page we said: “Register for this webinar to learn about alien invaders and phishing attacks and you’ll receive this kit,” all relating to the “invaders” theme. The kit contained the video game and a handwritten note from the rep that Printing for Less helped created saying, “Thank you for your interest in this product. We would love to talk to you more about it.”
We also paired this with an email cadence that made it into a game theme, so the rep could reach out and say, “First, did you get the game? What do you think? I’d love to challenge you during lunch one day.” So, it was just a fun incentive to get people excited about the product.
JB: Good one. Another interesting use for direct mail for webinars is sending some to registrants in advance as a reminder and to increase live attendance. We actually did that for this webinar. We sent out chocolate bars, so, hopefully, some of the folks attending the event today— if they registered early enough—received a chocolate bar.
So, what about at the customer retention stage—anything to share about that, Christina?
CM: Customer retention is a big focus for us—particularly through cross-sell/upsell. Here is a two-punch campaign that we launched at about the same time, but to two different audiences. These are just flat postcards. The trick here was that we put the postcard in an envelope with the KnowBe4 logo on it—hoping to stand out a little bit more than just a postcard. They’re a customer, so obviously they should be aware of KnowBe4, so they would most likely open it and look at it. That’s one little tip from me.
The other one was for our existing Security Awareness Training—or SAT—customers. Here we’re talking about one of our other products, PhishER, and promoting a product-specific asset again: “Five Ways PhishER Saves You Time and Money.” The CTA here is to download a whitepaper. If they do, they’ll be entered to win a $500 Amazon gift card. I think that incentive definitely helped drive some of this. We had a great response, really, from both of these postcards.
The other campaign was more of an upsell approach. We’ve upgraded this product to PhishER Plus, so this went out to our existing PhishER customers, letting them know, “Hey, we have an upgrade for this product.” One theme we used was “supercharge,” so we thought why not do a charger for the gift to go along with it? We sent a fancy charger clock. If they requested more information about this product from their CSM, they would receive this special kit with the charger.
JB: Very clever. And I really like the idea of putting the postcard in the envelope to gain some intrigue. Good tip.
JB: Now, let’s transition to how to build a scalable direct mail program. What did it take for you to evolve your direct mail programs to where they are today?
CM: In the beginning, our pilot began with a postcard, something small and inexpensive that we could send out to a large audience. We really didn’t even have a QR code, so we created a short URL that recipients could easily type in. And our CTA was to download a white paper. We didn’t offer an incentive because, obviously, that’s an extra cost. I wanted to start small and simple. It turned out that, with that larger audience, it performed better than expected—more than 100 downloads of the asset. That gave us confidence.
With most of our campaigns, we create a landing page using a form-fill option. That way we can track the information and see who took an action after receiving the direct mail piece. That’s the easiest way to track. Another way, of course, is to have sales follow-up one-to-one to see if they book a meeting. Again, we track this all back to our campaigns.
But ROI is, of course, the main thing we care about. You have to prove the value of direct mail, since, obviously, it can be expensive depending on what you’re doing. And we look at the overall campaign engagement. Having a large number of form fills is important. It shows that people actually received the postcard and took an action. Feedback from customers is also nice knowing that they are fans already.
JB: Completely agree. What advice do you have for someone who’s starting to build their direct mail program?
CM: Be creative. The Printing for Less reps are all great. I always go to them to brainstorm. Sometimes we have an idea in mind, but we love hearing about the trends in the industry or what’s worked well in the past. Like the video games and the tri-fold brochure—that was a unique thing that I hadn’t seen before. They have a lot of great ideas that you probably wouldn’t even think of.
My second piece of advice would be to pilot. Start small and get some wins under your belt before expanding. Don’t go too crazy in the beginning. And you’ll want to get the buy-in from everybody and prove that direct mail works before moving on to more campaigns.
JB: How do you get buy-in from sales on a new campaign?
CM: This is super important. Usually, before we even think about fully launching a campaign, we talk with sales leadership to get their buy-in. We give them an idea of what we want to do, make sure they’re on board, and then walk through the program with the sales team. We actually get on a call with all of the reps who could be affected by the campaign and show them what the campaign is and what the direct mail piece looks like.
I usually send one to myself to check it out. We also try to send the direct mail piece to the office, so the sales reps can see it in person, see how cool it is. This is important so they have some knowledge of what the prospects, or customers, are receiving. It gets them really excited about it and on board. They are provided with all the info and pieces that are part of the kit so they know how best to follow up.
