Digital Overload (And How to Break Through!)

Intro: 00:02

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig into 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 we dive deep with marketing executives, experts, and innovators to uncover 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 an evolving marketing landscape. This episode is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps companies develop hard hitting, direct mail creative and utilize advanced testing and targeting methodologies so you can fully optimize your marketing performance to drive more sales and exceed growth expectations.

With a proven track record, RPM delivers smarter, more profitable direct mail solutions so you can turn your direct mail programs into a predictable, efficient channel. Visit rpmdm.com to learn more. My guest or co-host today is Josh Gold. Josh is a 30-year veteran, direct marketing expert and the Vice President of Client Services here at RPM. Hey, Josh.

Josh Gold: 01:21

Hey, Rick. Thanks for having me today. I can’t believe it’s 30 years, but that’s what it is.

Rick Rappe: 01:28

You don’t look that old. Don’t worry. You don’t look that old.

Josh Gold: 01:30

Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. So I just came across an interesting article, and it included some stats about how much time people are spending online on their online devices. And, Rick, I wanted to get your take on this.

So according to Statista, in the US, adults spend an average of 485 minutes. That’s over eight hours with digital media every single day. And they actually broke it down into more detail. So I’m going to read this: e-communication with friends and family is about 50% of online activities. Entertainment like digital content, digital video, video TV. 

42% of online activities. And then of course, social media. It’s also significant. There’s an average of 143 minutes per day spent in 2024 on social media. That’s 67 minutes on TikTok. 

55 minutes on YouTube and 39 minutes on Facebook.

Rick Rappe: 02:38

Wow, that’s super interesting. So screen usage has remained at really high levels, but it’s really interesting and helpful to be able to break it down like that, because it really tells you how people’s time spent online is very fragmented. And sometimes they’re doing work, sometimes they’re doing, you know, entertainment. They’re spending time in a bunch of different places. So I’m actually surprised that the amount of time spent on social media was not actually higher than that.

Josh Gold: 03:07

That’s true, you know, and digital marketing can be a really confusing topic. So here’s another wild stat. The average person get this is exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads per day. 4,000 to 10,000 ads per day. So this includes traditional media like TV, radio, billboards, you know, outdoor billboards.

And then of course, the digital platforms like social media, search engine marketing websites, email.

Rick Rappe: 03:42

Yeah. Well, that’s not that. That’s not that surprising to me because based on my own personal experience, I definitely feel like I’m constantly being bombarded with marketing. And I know if they counted all the spam emails I get every day, that number would have to be way higher.

Josh Gold: 03:58

Yeah, that’s very, very true. I’m sure. So the rapid growth of digital platforms and digital advertising, it’s causing some major challenges for digital marketers. Did you know, Rick, that almost 40% of consumers are actually unlikely to trust a brand that only engages with them digitally?

Rick Rappe: 04:19

Oh, wow. Well, when you look at email, I feel like the problem is that there’s no cost to send a message. So there’s so many fraudulent messages out there, and there’s so much clutter in the email ecosystem that, you know, most email systems have to have multiple filters to try and block out some of the unsolicited messages and all the unsolicited noise.

Josh Gold: 04:42

Yeah. And you have to be really, really careful about what you open and what you trust in email. Have you heard the term it’s called banner blindness. So it’s kind of a great way to describe how good consumers have gotten a tuning out all those online ads. So let’s talk a little bit about I know it’s crazy.

Let’s talk about social media marketing. Sure.

Rick Rappe: 05:08

Yeah. Well, social media has some significant challenges as well. One of the major ones is that there’s so many different platforms. You’ve got TikTok, you’ve got X, you’ve got Facebook, you’ve got Snapchat, LinkedIn, Truth Social and probably a bunch more that I can’t even think of. So the audience on digital, on social media is very fragmented.

And all of these social media platforms, well, most of them start out as entertainment and social connection for the consumer. But then they have to be monetized. So they turn into a big ad development and delivery platform that ends up being a lot less fun.

Josh Gold: 05:50

Yeah. So there’s also a declining trust and a lot of the advertising on social media. There’s so much fake content, fake news, deceitful influencers, kind of general deception. So I think lots of people are just tuning out a lot of the social media marketing.

Rick Rappe: 06:07

Yeah, they’re starting to have ad fatigue, and the way that ads can be targeted online is causing people to have a lot of concerns about privacy and security. So people are starting to figure out that their attention is the product that’s being sold online. And some of the platforms now are losing their users as more and more people are just completely opting out.

Josh Gold: 06:30

Thanks, Rick. Now I’m depressed. So hey, let’s talk about the alternative.

Rick Rappe: 06:36

Yeah, well, we live in the physical world, so. And we live there 24 over seven. So I think marketers who want to break through all the digital clutter into a more trusted space have to be looking at traditional media. In our practice, we’re seeing that these issues with digital marketing, trust and performance are driving many companies back towards direct mail.

Josh Gold: 06:57

Well, perfect because good news, we’re a direct mail agency.

Rick Rappe: 07:03

Absolutely. Well, we’ve stayed focused on direct mail because we know it has some real advantages, and it can be a powerful and productive sales channel for a lot of brands when they adopt the right approach. Initially, the rise of digital direct mail and but most serious growth companies quickly realized that they still needed traditional media to drive traffic and sales on all of their platforms, whether that would be online or offline.

Josh Gold: 07:32

Yeah, that’s a great point. So let’s go a bit deeper and let’s dig into some of the reasons why we love direct mail and why we think it’s such a powerful and productive tool.

Rick Rappe: 07:42

Yeah, sure. Well, I’d like to break down the advantages into two big categories to start with. First, let’s start thinking about the advantages from the consumer side. And then we can talk about some of the company benefits and advantages as well. So from the consumer’s perspective, what do you think they like about direct mail.

Josh Gold: 08:01

Well direct mail is definitely more trusted now by many consumers. Zoomers. You know, there’s a lot less traditional mail arriving in people’s mailboxes, so I think it just comes across as more valuable.

Rick Rappe: 08:15

Oh, yeah. For sure. It’s seen as more legitimate and trustworthy because it’s tangible and it’s a lot more difficult to produce and send out than digital marketing. So it’s just more difficult to fake or manipulate. So it has a much higher perceived value in, in the eyes of the consumer.

And that’s why companies that are using direct mail effectively are getting as much as a nine times higher response rate as a result.

Josh Gold: 08:41

Yeah. And another point is that people interact with direct mail very, very differently. When your mail arrives, you kind of have to interact with it. We take it from our mailboxes, we bring it into our homes or bring it into our offices, and then we give it attention on a daily basis. You know, we go through our, our all the incoming mail and then we look for value kind of before we throw anything away.

Rick Rappe: 09:05

Oh yeah. I remember a few years ago there was that neuroscience study where they looked at brainwaves, and they found that when people were interacting with physical direct mail, they were lighting up a whole different area of their brain. And they were creating a much, much longer lasting impact. Another aspect of direct mail that I want to talk about is how flexible the formats can be, and how much creativity can be used when we craft new packages.

Josh Gold: 09:36

Yeah, like the differences between a postcard, a self mailer, like a letter package, or even those big catalogs.

Rick Rappe: 09:43

Oh yeah, for sure. There’s there’s so many different options. So in some cases we might select a postcard for like a simple quick offer. But we also can create a much more engaging letter package format with like multiple elements included in the envelope. So when we need to educate someone and build awareness about a more complicated product, we can do that.

And with the longer form messaging, we can convey much more details and create interest. And then we can also use the 1 to 1 messaging of a letter. So to touch on emotions and then also support that with rational justification. So we’re able to move people all the way from interest all the way to taking action. And that’s the very artistic part of direct mail that I absolutely love.

Josh Gold: 10:28

Okay. So let’s shift now to more of the company benefits of direct mail. I think there’s actually a lot of really, really important things to talk about from that advertisers. You know, the company’s perspective.

Rick Rappe: 10:41

Well, one clear benefit of direct mail is how well it can be targeted. And it has to be targeted because it’s expensive. And part of the power of it is that we don’t have to send it out to everybody. So first of all, nearly everyone has a mailbox and can receive mail. So we start with the potential to reach a much larger group of people than digital platforms, and then we can access and use an enormous amount of additional data about each person and their specific Behaviors, and we can select and target from that data almost any conceivable target audience we can target using demographics, geographic location.

We can target audiences that look like your best customer. We can target using predictive models that rank order the target audience from the most likely to respond to the least likely to respond. We can segment the audience and craft different messages for different types of buyers. We can even trigger programs that fire off automatic mailings based on visits to a website or some other activity.

Josh Gold: 11:45

So it sounds like you’re saying targeting is maybe one of the most important factors, maybe the most important factor in the success of a campaign. All right, I’ll say it. Targeting is one of the most, if not the most important factors of success in a direct mail campaign.

Rick Rappe: 12:03

So I would agree with you for sure.

Josh Gold: 12:05

Thank you, thank you.

Rick Rappe: 12:06

It’s a very critical area for the success of any program. So we obviously play a big role in doing that for our clients. And our experience and data partnerships are what allows us to really help clients crack the code in that particular area.

Josh Gold: 12:24

And another major benefit we started to touch on this, but a huge benefit of direct mail is that it’s testable. So it’s a 1 to 1 medium. We can send out lots of test versions all at the same time. For head to head testing, we can test all the key drivers we can test offer messaging, like I said, targeting format design so you can learn what works best and roll out with the best combination to drive the most success.

Rick Rappe: 12:53

Absolutely. And that leads me to another benefit, which is very important, and that is that each piece of mail that we send out, we can track and measure so we can see the specific results. And that can be done by looking at 800 number calls, web traffic, mailed back responses. or we can also even match back to sales results and get to the results that way. So by doing that, capture data capture and analysis on the back end, we can look at each group, each test version and decide, you know, did it work or did it not, and then produce a wealth of critical information and learning on how we want to move forward.

Josh Gold: 13:38

Yeah, that’s also so important, capturing the results and reporting on those test findings. That’s how mailers can start becoming data driven and stop relying on guesswork, you know, which can only lead to super sporadic results. So this is where we’ve seen the right process really create a competitive advantage.

Rick Rappe: 13:58

Absolutely. And once you have that confidence in the results and you have that proven performance, then the most compelling advantage of direct mail is that you can scale it up and roll it out with the predictable ongoing performance. So it becomes a self-funding sales channel for growth and gives companies who know how to use it a competitive marketing advantage over their competition.

Josh Gold: 14:21

Sounds so easy, right? Yeah. Well.

Rick Rappe: 14:25

It’s not hard. I guess we just know how to do it. That’s what makes us different.

Josh Gold: 14:29

That’s the difference. So maybe that sums it up for today. This was fun, Rick. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to the next one.

Meaning I want you to invite me back and we’ll do future episodes like this.

Rick Rappe: 14:43

Absolutely. Well, it sounds great. We’ll see you next time. Have a good one.

Outro: 14:47

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.