Intro: 00:01

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig in to their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19

Hey, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here, I dive deep with marketing experts and innovators to learn how they approach targeted marketing and use data driven strategies to acquire and retain customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in evolving marketing landscape.

Response Drivers is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting, direct mail, creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies to reach your customers and prospects. Our goal is to fully optimize your marketing performance to drive more sales and exceed growth expectations. We deliver smarter, more profitable direct mail solutions so you can turn your direct mail programs into a predictable, efficient sales channel. Check out rpmdm.com to learn more.

My guest today is Matt Witter. Matt is the Vice President of Growth and Partnerships here at RPM, where he helps organizations turn direct mail into a growth engine across acquisition, retention, cross-sell, upsell, and win back programs. He’s also a big agency survivor and brings more than 25 years of experience across B2C and B2B marketing, including agency leadership and six years on the client side, managing strategic partnerships at SAP concur. His experience also includes developing programs for big name brands such as AT&T, Cricket wireless, DirecTV, Hyatt, Netflix, giving him a very broad perspective on connecting marketing strategy to revenue and business growth. At RPM, Matt focuses on identifying new growth opportunities for clients and developing strategic partnerships that make RPM’s direct mail expertise easier to access and to integrate into broader marketing solutions. Matt, thank you so much for joining me today.

Matt Witter: 02:10

Thanks a lot, Rick, I appreciate it. I look forward to the conversation.

Rick Rappe: 02:14

Yeah. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in direct marketing.

Matt Witter: 02:19

Yeah. So I got started in direct marketing somewhat accidentally in college. I worked for a mail order catalog company called TSI. And so this was pre e-commerce. And the only way to get really sophisticated, really nice soccer cleats besides driving down to footlocker was to do mail order.

So at one time, I believe TSI was like the second largest distributor of Adidas. So it was very traditional catalog direct response. We sent out, I think, quarterly catalogs, and I was working on the sales side. So taking phone calls, talking to. Kids essentially, and high school coaches and, and selling them the best of the best soccer cleats.

And then, yeah, and then shortly after that, just, just by coincidence, a couple of years later, I was working for a company that actually did the printing for the catalog. I was in a management training program and I learned all the fundamentals of printing. So it was a rotational experience where you spent a little time doing pre-press, doing work on the press, doing bindery and then working in the warehouses, loading trucks. So the blood, sweat and tears of printing and got to see a lot of direct mail being produced. Got to see catalogs. Got to see magazines and also free standing inserts.

Rick Rappe: 04:02

That’s great. What did you learn from those experiences?

Matt Witter: 04:08

Well, I think one is just the predictability of direct response. So working for the cataloger, you know, 95% of our business came from the catalog. That was essentially our only means of going to market. We would send out the quarterly catalogs and we would sit by the phones and we would wait for the calls to come in. So it was very predictable in that sense, where you mail and then you’re going to get the calls.

I think along the same lines is I learned how to coordinate the marketing with the sales capacity on the back end. So we were a call center. And the worst sin that we would have is if we had people calling in wanting to buy, and they went to the IVR and were on hold. So it’s, it’s working with marketing and kind of aligning with the, with the sales capacity. On the printing side.

Just, just basics. I mean, there’s, there’s so much that can go wrong. In the printing process, it’s a very, very detailed oriented, I definitely have to have to trust the experts when you’re getting into the print realm. And also the company that I worked for was very innovative as it related to, to postage, especially for direct mail, rather than shipping all of the mail out of southeast Wisconsin, this company owned their own fleet of trucks, and they would ship the mail to all of the regional mail facilities. At the time, it was called zone skipping, and you were able to get a significant discounts on postage.

So we could lower the cost of the mail for our clients, and we found that the clients would always reinvest that savings into doing, into doing more, more mail. So there’s a lot of strategy around postal efficiencies. And that was pretty enlightening as well.

Rick Rappe: 06:10

Interesting. And after you spent time working for the printer, you started on the agency side. So tell me a little bit about what that was like.

Matt Witter: 06:18

Yeah. That’s right. So I started at an agency here in Seattle. That’s where I met you, Rick. And it was, it was a great experience.

I mean, working for an agency, you definitely get exposed to a very eclectic group of people. There’s just a ton of buzz, lots of energy, lots of lots of personalities, lots of opinions about things. But I, I really learned to become a problem solver for clients. So understanding the strategy, understanding how to use direct marketing to solve a business problem, as you had mentioned in the intro, had the opportunity to work with a lot of great brands in the early part of the career, got to work with Hyatt, as you had mentioned, and Microsoft doing B2B, and also was really privileged to be able to work with Netflix. So if you think about Netflix, in the early days, they were still doing DVDs by mail.

That was their core business. And this was early on. And Netflix is probably one of the most sophisticated brands of all time. And they were a big believer in direct mail. So we were helping them test, helping them optimize direct mail for them to be able to acquire new members efficiently.

And even as they started pivoting out of DVDs by mail, and they started to get into streaming and on demand and even content. They were still a big believer in direct mail. And then we also were able to help them expand internationally, using mail to get the word out about Netflix and get people to try. So that was, that was just kind of a monumental experience. And then after that experience moved over to work on AT&T managing probably one of the largest direct mail programs in the United States at the time, and maybe ever since.

So this was acquisition for wireless, and the agency worked with AT&T on what I like to call like two waves of penetration. The first wave was getting a cell phone and everybody’s hands. So at the time, wireless penetration was probably around 60 or 70%. So we helped expand and get wireless almost to 100% penetration. And then the second wave was getting smartphones.

Smartphone expansion. So that was exciting. And we were able to use direct mail not just for acquisition, but for CRM retention, value enhancement, and then also expanded to some of the other products with AT&T. So it was a great, great experience.

Rick Rappe: 09:20

Yeah, we could probably spend a whole hour talking about the AT&T programs that we worked on back then. That’s right. I mean, it was such a great learning experience. I always like to talk about having a huge budget and being able to test and, and learn from just about any crazy idea that we could come up with at the time.

Matt Witter: 09:39

That’s right. Yeah. I mean, testing was, was definitely the, the core and having clients that were willing to test that were right there with us kind of fully invested in that. It was amazing.

Rick Rappe: 09:52

Yeah. Well, it was great because back then you could focus on really understanding and learning the different, all the different performance levers. Right? That’s right, that’s right. I mean, you touched you were you were strategic leadership on the accounts.

So you were touching, targeting and segmentation offers creative. You’re overseeing all the other departments in the agency and working on all the aspects of every campaign. Really?

Matt Witter: 10:20

That’s right, that’s right. Yeah. And just really understanding and being able to focus in the levers that are going to drive performance. And we found that that segmentation is really where most of the gold was found, if you will. And so that really became a, a forte of, of identifying the propensity, identifying the people most likely to buy and then understanding the, the channel dynamics, not not just identifying the people, but what are they more likely to buy?

Where are they most likely to purchase? And so that was very, very important for us.

Rick Rappe: 10:59

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And you spent about 16 years at that agency. That’s a very long time. What has changed over the years?

Matt Witter: 11:09

Yeah. So 16 years is a long time to be at any individual agency. So a lot, a lot changed. I think when we started, direct mail was maybe one of a handful of channels that our customers were using. Maybe they were doing some TV, maybe some on page, maybe some radio even.

But during that time, it very much became more omnichannel. So as an agency, we had to understand not just how was direct mail doing, but how was direct mail doing relative to the other channels that our client was using. And so it helped us kind of formulate this vision of, okay, well paid search may be getting you your lowest cost per sale, but it’s not scalable. So really understanding the broader marketing mix and how direct mail fit within that. I think one was just the omnichannel growth.

I think the other thing was, was growing our capabilities. And I think understanding anybody who understands direct marketing and understands the targeting and the segmentation that we just talked about, that is so applicable to other addressable type of media, whether that is SMS, MMS, whether that’s email, whether that’s targeted mobile. So it was an opportunity to really leverage that database experience and our data focus into other areas. I think when you think about agencies and in general. So much happened in the agency world over that time.

When I started, I think there were four. There were 45 people in the agency. We were part of an agency. We were part of a holding company based in New York, but we seldom heard from them. And by the time that I left, I think we had like over 500 employees.

We were global. And I think what happens is and the pursuit of growth, a lot of times agencies kind of lose their focus, they lose their reason for being. And I don’t think that agency was immune to that. So we a little bit lost our way. I think we were trying to be everything to everybody and, and lost our way.

There was more decision making happening, you know, outside of our agency from our holding company. And I think any time an agency is focused more on the travel plans for Cannes versus focusing on, you know, retaining your clients, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s not very good. So that was definitely a warning sign.

Rick Rappe: 13:53

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, and then you left that job and you went over to the client side. How was that experience? Talk about your time at SAP.

Matt Witter: 14:05

Yeah, it was a great experience. I learned so much. First of all, it’s a large global company, international company to working with teams globally. Was, was, was, was, was great. I learned a little, a lot more about just the different marketing disciplines.

So kind of expanding my horizons around outside of just targeted demand gen. So understanding event marketing, which is very, very profitable and very effective, especially when we think of B2B SaaS and ways to stand out. So learned a lot more about event marketing, learned about partner marketing, which is what I was involved in. So the ability to go to market through partners was very helpful. And then I think also just understanding that, you know, modern B2B marketing especially is very technology based.

You’re working with a tech stack. So when you talk about B2B marketing, you automatically think, okay, well, what are the technology solutions that you’re working on? So it’s a lot about, okay, I’m using Salesforce, I’m using Adobe or Braze or Iterable or what have you. And so it’s very much thinking about marketing through a lens of, of technology. It’s like very much the technology stack, which is, which is slightly different, I think from maybe some of the B2C marketing that I was exposed to.

Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 15:48

Would you say that working on the client side made you more empathetic with our clients?

Matt Witter: 15:53

Absolutely, absolutely. I definitely learned well working for an B2B SaaS especially. It’s very much technology driven and very much sales driven. So marketing, as much as I hate to say it is a little bit of a back office function, it’s not that they’re not strategic, but there’s tremendous amount of pressure that marketers have to deliver pipeline. They’re accountable to a number and they’re just maniacally focused on on pipeline.

And they have to show up quarter after quarter after quarter building that pipeline. And so it’s helped me better understand the world that our clients are in and the tremendous amount of pressure that they have to deliver results day in and day out. Also just understanding the pressure. So having a successful campaign is not enough. You still have to quarterly annually. You have to get the budget.

And so you have to make the business case all the time. So the more that we as an agency can help our, our clients continue to tell that story internally and make it easy for them to be able to enable other people in the organization about our campaigns. They’re constantly having to market the marketing performance is not enough. You’re, you’re, you’re constantly trying to fight for budget. And then also just, you know, similar to that, just the decision making process.

A lot of times our clients are working in very bureaucratic organizations. And the more that we can make their jobs easier and help them sell our programs and sell the good work that they’re doing internally, the better.

Rick Rappe: 17:45

That’s great advice. How are B2B SaaS companies utilizing direct mail these days?

Matt Witter: 17:52

Yeah. You know, I think two things I think that come to mind. One is I would just call it executive level conversations, breaking through and landing on the desk of either a if you think of a CTO or a CFO of a company, let’s say a hundred million plus, they will probably ignore the calls from the SDR. They’ll probably ignore the emails coming from the SDR, but they’re very likely going to respond to a letter that arrives in a Fedex package. And if that letter is crafted in such a way that says CFO or CTO, you know, 65% of your peers of your portfolio company peers that your private equity company owns are using our solution and you’re not.

We should probably have a conversation. They’re very likely to respond. So I’d say like this executive level communication using mail arriving in a way that’s they just can’t ignore it. And I think the other way is with events. So SAP especially would invest in these big annual customer events.

And it’s a really nice way to show your appreciation for some of your top tier clients and, and give them a nice gift or an incentive to come to your events. So these would be nice dimensional, very creative pieces to encourage event attendance. So those are two of the, I guess the most innovative ways that I saw and that B2B companies are using direct mail.

Rick Rappe: 19:44

And now you’re back on the agency side and you’re working again in direct mail. That’s right. What has surprised you as you came back to direct mail?

Matt Witter: 19:56

Yeah. Well, I’d like to say that I just have impeccable timing. I’m coming back at the right moment, I think. I think what surprised me is that response rates are still high. I mean, direct mail is still effective.

It is a different landscape, but there is still a place for direct mail. And in today’s environment. And I think whether that is technology saturation or technology degradation of, of, of digital performance. So that’s been very refreshing. And, and perhaps maybe a little bit surprising.

Rick Rappe: 20:42

How do companies get direct mail wrong these days?

Matt Witter: 20:48

I mean, from my experience, I think that there are perhaps is maybe a little bit of an unfair comparison of direct mail to digital in terms of, of timelines. So I think clients start perhaps maybe a little too late. They get impatient and they don’t really do a full effort. And so they get impatient. They maybe rush the project and they get something into the market and it didn’t work.

And so I think the symptoms of being impatient means they shortchange testing. So they’re impatient. They don’t test. And then I think also marketers may be we kind of alluded to this earlier that their focus on the wrong things. And so what I mean by that is that they’re not prioritizing the segmentation and the data work, and they’re probably a little bit more focused on the creative.

And they’re thinking of it as, as a brand builder and as an extension of their brand, but maybe shortchanging the segmentation work. And I think, I think that’s what is so helpful with RPM is having a framework and having a system for really identifying what’s going to work. So and impatient and just kind of focusing on the wrong things. And then they say, oh, it didn’t work. And you know, it’s not worth the effort to try to analyze on the back end and even look for the pockets that might have performed well.

Rick Rappe: 22:25

Matt’s alluding to our RPM performance framework, which is just a good guideline for looking at all the different variables that affect performance And what we’re always trying to do is work on bringing all those things together and finding the area where all the things are finely tuned. And then the performance is kind of compounding. The effect is, is you get to the best possible performance from your campaigns by utilizing this approach. So if you’re listening and you’re interested in that framework, reach out to Matt or myself, and we’ll send you that framework and share with you exactly what that includes and contains. Matt, how is AI influencing your work today at RPM?

Matt Witter: 23:19

Yeah. Well, I think, you know, I had mentioned the, the, the timelines and, you know, not not being impatient, I think, I think one of the places where AI has been tremendously helpful is shortening cycle times, especially for some of the tasks that may either be invisible to clients or maybe not well understood. But there’s a tremendous amount of QA and QC and proofing where AI has been tremendously helpful to take out cycle times as well as as data processing when we’re crunching, you know, hundreds of thousands of records to get down to a a mail file, AI can really help us with repetitive tasks, data standardization, suppressions, merge, merge purges. And I think that that is the biggest area right now where AI is, is taking days, if not weeks out of cycle times. So I’m excited about that and how AI has been able to help.

And then also, I think moving forward, just the, it’s kind of democratizing the ability to create models, models used to take, you know, weeks, if not months, But now models can be created a lot more efficiently and effectively. And I don’t know that I’d trust myself to create a model, but I know it can be done a lot, a lot easier than you know, and perhaps, you know, with very little cost. So it’s very, very helpful.

Rick Rappe: 24:55

Yeah. Well, this has been a great conversation, Matt. And I think you and I could keep talking and talking about all the things that we learned working on the AT&T account. And that’s right, working for the big in the big agency world. Do you have any other last thoughts or ideas that you want to share with our listeners?

Matt Witter: 25:16

Yeah, I think it’s just reiterating what I had said before about direct mail still works. There is a place for direct mail in, in the media mix. And testing is the way that you’re going to find out. And I’m very, very bullish on direct mail and how it can continue to help our clients.

Rick Rappe: 25:42

Awesome, awesome. And if people want to get Ahold of you, how should they reach out and get Ahold of you?

Matt Witter: 25:48

Yeah, probably the best way is to look for me on LinkedIn. Or you can reach me at matt@rpmdm.com.

Rick Rappe: 25:58

Perfect. Thanks so much for your time today, Matt. I’m sure we’ll be talking again real soon.

Matt Witter: 26:04

Sounds good. Rick, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Outro: 26:06

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers. Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover?

Just drop us a message at responsedrivers@rpmdm.com. Until next time, keep driving response and making your marketing work smarter.