Don’t flush your CX down the drain.
Few rooms offer more emotional support than the modern bathroom. Bad date? Excuse yourself to the restroom. Need to make friends with other people in your college dorm? Funny enough, bathroom. Went a little too hard at the company offsite? Better hope you’re not running into your VP in the loo.
But the bathroom used to be far less thrilling. Hundreds of years ago, it was a pot in the corner. And before that? Idk…a bush? But one man decided that pots were gross and he was going to add some dignity back into going to the restroom. John Harington took the world of plumbing by storm and invented the flushable toilet. But why haven’t you heard of him? All that and more in today’s episode.
Today, we’re talking with Dave Fink about how he too took on a thousand year old industry. As Co-Founder and CEO of Postie, Dave changed the way modern marketers approach direct mail. In this episode, he shares how mail can take your marketing campaigns to the next level, how to leverage modern technology on ancient mediums, how CX can improve your marketing, and much more.
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“If you take a CX approach to your entire marketing stack, then you end up building a deep understanding with your prospects and customers.” - Dave Fink
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Time Stamps
* (0:00) The troublemaker, the Queen, and their toilet
* (8:03) What is Postie?
* (10:55) Why CX leaders shouldn't underestimate direct mail
* (12:28) Modernizing ancient history
* (14:17) The Postie Customer Experience
* (18:15) Taking a CX approach to marketing
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Sponsor
This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.
Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives
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Links
Narrator: This is the story of the toilet.
But not the one you may be familiar with. No, I’m not talking about Thomas Crapper: the infamous inventor of the 1860s. This is about a man who nearly 300 years prior decided to take the world of sanitation by storm. His name was John Harington, and he would invent what we now call…“the John”.
John was a troublemaker. A rapscallion. The godson of Queen Elizabeth the First, he took his position of privilege and created nothing but chaos.
There were scandals left and right. From being the town gossip to publishing irreverent mistranslations to writing salacious poetry…he always knew how to get society up in arms. His godmother, equal parts amused and shocked by his behavior. Would give into public opinion and banish him to the countryside. And pretty regularly at that. But with his unyielding charm and close relationship with the queen, he’d always make his way back into her good graces.
In the late 1500s, John found himself once again sent away due to bad behavior. He settled in a city called Kelston. Ironically located near Bath.
With a never idle mind, and no one to mess with, he turned his chaos towards creating. First he built himself a beautiful home to spend his isolation in. Then, with all the time in the world, John figured he’d tackle a problem as old as time: going to the bathroom.
We’ve all heard the stories of chamber pots and cringed. Chamber pots would sit in the corner of rooms, be used, and then the contents would be discarded out windows. In a word: nasty. But in practicality: it worked pretty well. This was before the industrial revolution so indoor plumbing wasn’t exactly an option. And a chamber pot didn’t take up that much real estate. It was efficient, smelly, and primitive.
Not to say going to the bathroom is ever a glamorous experience by any means, but John knew there was room for some much needed improvement. He saw a daily activity that had gone unchanged for hundreds of years. With an experience so universal, John figured this is how he could reinvent the wheel…er...the porcelain wheel that is, and maybe win back his godmother.
He quickly got to work. Sketching, building, and rebuilding. Putting his college degrees to work. Since this was a time before S-shaped pipes and indoor plumbing—John got creative. He ended up building quite the contraption. The final product had a cistern that would flush 7.5 gallons of water down through a 2 foot deep waterproofed bowl. Then the water would drain out of the room. To compare, today’s toilets normally use between 1-2 gallons per flush. John addressed the water issue by saying that up to 20 people could use his toilet between flushes to conserve water. Gross, but way to save water John.
With his prototype complete and installed in his home, John couldn’t wait to show Elizabeth. Once his banishment was up in 1592, she visited his home near Bath. How John convinced a queen to try out his toilet is a story lost to history, but what we do know is that she was a fanatic. Or as much as someone can be about a toilet. She ordered John to build her one in her home, and he got to work.
John had done the unthinkable. He had taken something that was broken and reinvigorated it. He had completely reinvented everyday life. And now with the queen on his side, he was ready to leave his mark.
So, go to that one special room in your home, make sure the door’s locked, start doom scrolling, and keep listening. Because if you’re playing this on 2x…you’ll have more than enough time…
Welcome to Often Imitated, a podcast about remarkable experiences from the past, and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences today.
This episode is all about successfully reinventing the wheel. How John Harington reinvented an industry people long disregarded, and how CX leaders can do the same today. On today’s episode you’ll hear from Dave Fink, Co-Founder and CEO of Postie. About how he and his team have revolutionized direct mail and turned it into a thriving marketing channel. But first, a word from our sponsors.
Often Imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
Even with the stamp of approval from Queen Elizabeth, John’s toilet never gained traction. He had put his blood, sweat, and tears into modernizing a forgotten industry. Furious for not getting the attention he desired, John published “A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject”. Did it detail his new invention of the toilet for the public? Yes. Was it also a not-so veiled criticism of the monarchy and called out some of Elizabeth’s closest allies? Also yes. Leaving John, as usual, banished alone with his toilet.
Back then, people were all too comfortable with their chamber pots. It took about 300 years for Europe to rediscover sanitation. 300 years of yelling “look out below!” and throwing the contents of chamber pots out the window. 300 years of people needlessly dying of cholera and typhoid. People called the summer of 1858 in London the “Great Stink” because the build up of sewage was horrific. So the government commissioned the building of sewers under the city. With toilets designed by the one and only Thomas Crapper.
Although the toilet didn’t catch on immediately after John invented it, it did teach us one thing. If we look towards our everyday occurrences. Things we take for granted, and simply accept as they are. There’s often an opportunity for reinvention.
And although this is nothing quite like the chamber pot, there is one thing that marketers have started to avoid.
Direct mail.
And we think this might be a huge mistake.
So we brought on today’s guest, Dave Fink, Co-Founder and CEO of Postie. He figured out a way to reinvigorate direct mail and make it a thriving marketing channel. And today, he’ll tell us how. But first, a little bit about Postie.
Dave: So posty is a full stack marketing automation platform. That's specific to the direct mail channel. And the idea behind posty was really to take advantage of all of the amazing innovations in digital channels, like search and social and email and CRM, and apply those to a channel as big and broad as, as direct mail, as an alternative to solely relying on your digital channels that are becoming more and more competitive and expensive.
Narrator: Direct mail is that bed Bath and beyond coupon. or Costco sends you those sweet sweet deals. It’s the advertising that fills our mailboxes that we often don’t think twice about. And for years it worked well! But with the rise of digital channels, marketers have started to avoid it. Dave, on the other hand, saw an opportunity.
Dave: we built Postie because we were marketers feeling the exact same pain that almost every marketer feels right now, which is they're in love with the capabilities of, of digital platforms, but they know they're walled gardens and they're not completely in control of, of the long term performance and diversification marketing.
Is is really, and always has been the key to kind of security in, in the growth of your business. When one channel is, is, is waning and performance a bit, there's gotta be another channel that can pick up some of the slack. And we now live in an age where, you know, 85 cents in every dollar of digital media, it goes into the pockets of, of two companies, Facebook and Google.
That's a lot of power. That's a really scary place for a marketer to live and to, to have access to the same type of, you know, customer experience and, and, and technology that they have in digital, but to be able to apply it to another, you know, big, scalable, effective performance channel is, is really important in today's, um, marketing landscape
Narrator: With so much money ending up going to Facebook and Google, or other digital channels, we are always looking for new (and cheaper) ways to engage customers and prospects. Dave and his team saw that opportunity and jumped on it.
Realizing that direct mail can be an incredible channel
Dave: I can definitively tell you that it is a massive channel. It's a $50 billion a year channel just here in the US it's highly competitive performance wise with any of your digital channels.
Um, and more and more advertisers than, than ever before are, are starting to flock to the chain.
Dave: it's a really broad channel and what attracted me to the channel. Originally as an advertiser. And now as, um, as someone running a, uh, marketing technology platform and the channel is it's one of those rare channels that can be used across the entire funnel.
Dave: and so when I think about, you know, what is the channel, you know, I think about it as, you know, it's, it's a channel and a marketing tool that allows you to engage using a data-driven approach. Uh, In a very highly personalized way to grow your business through prospecting, reengage customers, or engage customers, existing customers at a much deeper level.
And, and then turn all of your first party data into a powerful marketing tool to, to drive more conversion from, you know, engaged prospects. You know, when you think about the actual media tool itself. Sure it, you know, it's, it's various, you know, size paper and catalogs and, um, letters and envelopes and interesting folded creative pieces.
But at its core, it's really just a tool that allows you to leverage a very data-driven approach to engage, um, the full funnel
Narrator: The ideas of a modern data-driven approach and an industry around since 500 BC may sound contradictory. But like John Harington, Dave found a way to modernize an ancient industry.
Dave: while direct mail is a substantial channel that many advertisers have found, um, tremendous results historically it's behave quite differently from our other biggest channel. Digital channels, search social programmatic, et cetera. In those channels, you know, you're typically working off software and dashboards.
direct mail, because it was invented prior to all this amazing modern technology.
And really for many years, and even decades, you know, was lacking in innovation and an executional perspective. It was, it was clunky. And so, you know, our idea was look. Yeah, social's not getting any easier.
It's, it's a powerful channel. I'm not suggesting that it's not important. Of course it is. But as a marketer, you know, I've woken up many, many days. And it had a knot in my stomach. Wondering if, if my Facebook ads were going to spend, or my programmatic ads, we're going to spend wondering if an algorithm was going to change.
And I was going to have to engage a team to, um, start retesting. And, um, and, and, and if I was going to have to deploy and, and spend tremendous budgets in retesting and, and optimize my campaigns, um, you know, that happens, you know, every six months or so every year or so. And, and so we needed, um, some alternatives to, to those, those, those big kind of walled garden type channels and direct mail had a lot of really interesting components.
It's it's just as data-driven, it's just as measurable. You can test and optimize your creative and your audiences. You can speak uniquely to micro segments within your prospect pool or within your CRM pool, but to actually pull off those campaigns, let alone do it, you know, in a matter of days just wasn't possible.
And, and so our, you know, our, our vision and what we've been commissioned driven of, of bringing to the market over the last several. Has been a true technology solution that looks and behaves just like any digital programmatic platform, but where the media that comes off the back is direct mail.
Narrator: When modern tools are applied to ancient customer experiences, the customer journey tends to get *ahem* unclogged.
Dave: I think what, what is always kind of, um, most exciting to see is when a, an advertiser that, especially that, that might be new to direct mail, even if their company has done direct mail in the past, but they haven't.
Or if it's a brand that has not engaged in direct mail as a channel. Come down to the platform. And, and with a matter of, within a matter of, you know, days is actually deploying and launching their own campaigns and capturing results within a few more days. And seeing that out of the gate by leveraging their own first party audience data, triggering lookalikes, um, Really leveraging all of the capabilities, um, uh, to, to, um, you know, almost be optimized, you know, before they, they get their first campaigns in the world.
You know, that to me is, is kind of. Is is kind of the most exciting, um, I think user experience the simplicity of it and the fact that they can start seeing results very quickly. Um, whereas in the past that, that just wasn't possible. Neither of those things were really possible in DM. You didn't have access to the same data science machine learning tools to actually.
Unlock the power of all of the data that you've captured as a business to, to inform your targeting and your campaign, um, uh, execution and, and to pull that off would have taken months. So now you, you pair together the ability to turn campaigns within a matter of days, and to be able to leverage the same power of data science prediction optimization that your digital channels have.
And all of a sudden you have a channel that's just a scalable, just as performant and almost as dynamic as any digital channel that that becomes kind of eyeopening to, um, to users of the postie platform.
Narrator: When you can get customers excited about your product, there’s nowhere to go but up. And when it’s tied to a channel that was underperforming or underutilized, your product isn’t just exciting—it’s necessary.
Postie’s ability to make a channel as overlooked as direct mail just as dynamic as digital campaigns can sound shocking. But like all major reinventions, there are some potential downsides to consider.
Dave: there's always a risk that if you make something too easy to automated, that the user ends up, maybe taking it for granted turning off their brain, putting themselves or their teams on autopilot. We haven't really seen that. Um, I think maybe the nature of the size of budgets. That brands are committing to the direct mail channel.
Um, the fact that, um, we're kind of reinventing the way that direct mail is, is executed and there's a learning curve in general, um, that I think will, will continue in perpetuity, um, has led kind of a typical, you know, post a user to be very engaged with hands-on. And re and present, but I think we can, all, you know, in, in our daily lives, you know, point to, um, you know, technology that became too easy that actually.
Becoming a bit of a crutch. We don't experience it, um, too much, I think just because of the nature of the, the, the channel that we're playing in. And again, that, um, I think the, the commitment, financial commitments that, that, um, users are making to the platform, but I do think there can be a risk there for sure.
Narrator: Direct mail is something some of us have associated with flushing cash down the drain. But now, paired with Postie, Dave has turned it into a marketing powerhouse that can bring your brand to the next level.
Dave: what brands have realized is that it doesn't matter what the canvases, whether it's it's a small mobile device screen or a, a TV screen or a laptop or desktop, et cetera, and external monitor, or a piece of direct mail or a billboard that the, the, the message needs to be consistent.
It needs to be on brand. Um, you don't necessarily want to tailor your message and the way you present your brand to the media, you want to think about each piece of media as in, as another engagement or touch point, um, within, uh, and an opportunity to kind of reinforce what your, your brand position is.
Narrator: When you focus your marketing on engaging your customers, a strong CX will hopefully follow. Dave does the opposite. He uses CX to inform how he approaches marketing.
Dave: if you take a CX approach to marketing, what you should be thinking about is, Hey, we have this great solution to your product, to a problem, or we've this great product that adds value in someone's life or a business.
Um, Solves a need. And, and I think if you take that approach to, to your entire marketing stack, what you end up building is more lasting. Campaigns, um, a deep understanding and consistency and how to engage your prospects or your customers. And, and there's a lot of authenticity there. Direct mail, um, should be thought of the exact same way.
If you go into the channel, thinking solely about how to get the perfect CPA and, and run through a bag of tactics and, and just, Hey, you know, he posted, just tell us how to, you know, how to hit. You know, our customer acquisition costs here or drive customers that are going to generate a lifetime value. I think you're, you're making your life a lot more difficult versus if you come to the channel and say like, Hey, we have this, you know, really clean message and story and, and brand positioning.
And let's think about the canvas that we have to use in direct mail as another opportunity to reinforce that message, that story, that consistency, that authenticity it's naturally going to deliver. Strong results.
Narrator: When you approach marketing with customer experience at top of mind, Dave’s right, you will build more lasting relationships with your customers. The success he and his customers have found in direct mail is staggering. Especially for a lot of us who take direct mail for granted.
If there’s anything to learn from trends these days, it’s that vintage is in. So look around, dig under the cobwebs and behind the file cabinets. What’s old is new again. Maybe there’s an old school industry or way of thinking that has yet to be reimagined. And you could be the one to do it.
Think of that the next time you are on the John.
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
This is your host, Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. Thank you for listening to another episode of Often Imitated. If you like what you’re hearing, tell one friend. This podcast was narrated by me, Ian Faison, written, produced and edited by Mackey Wilson, Jon Libbey, and Ezra Bakker-Trupiano. You can learn more about our team at CaspianStudios.com.