Episode #67 – Craig Simpson on The Crazy Scaling Power behind Direct Mail Campaigns (and yes, YOU should have one)

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John McIntyre:Hey, it’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy and it’s time for episode 67 of the McMethod Email Marketing Podcast where you’ll discover one fairly simple thing: How to make more money with every email you send whether it’s with autoresponder or sales funnels, blah, blah blah, all that stuff. Today I’ll be talking to Craig Simpson. Craig is a well-known direct marketing consultant and coach. As he had for you aid us at direct mail service and I wanted to get him on the show to talk about some of his direct mail stuff and how it relates to email marketing. 

Now specifically we’re going to talk about the direct mail mindset and how that applies to email. Some really interesting insights here, the testing mindset. Now I mentioned this before it’s absolutely imperative, it’s essential that you learn this, this whole idea of the split testing mindset, the testing mindset, that when you start a campaign whether it’s paid traffic, whether it’s offline, whatever, that initially if it doesn’t work that doesn’t matter because you’re in the buying data stage, you’re in the figure-out-what-works stage. You’re not in the be-profitable-from-day-one stage. This stage doesn’t even exist. 

I’m also going to talk about the good and bad about direct mail, with direct marketing and how good of a copywriter do you really need to be because one thing  I’ve been interested in is, online I think you can get away with, you don’t need to be the best copywriter. You need to have [inaudible 00:01:08] if you want to do it, but you don’t have to be the best because let’s say I’m going to go in to paid traffic campaign on Facebook, I can get on and spend $50 and find out if my copy works. If I want to write a sales letter and send it out to or mail out to list and do a direct mail test, I’m going to spend thousands of dollars printing it, putting it in an envelope and sending it out. To do a simple test online is easy and cheap, to do it offline; it’s not. There’s good and bad things about that and we’re going to talk about that in today’s episode. 

To get the show notes for this episode of the email marketing podcast, go to themcmethod.com/67. I’ve got this week’s McMasters Insight of the week, Michael said, “Today, I discovered Solo Ads,” which are basically direct email where someone else just tell you a list and you could pay per click sent to your site just like PPC, “… the advantages seems to be faster set up and less restrictions in Google Adwords.” That is correct. Michael mentioned this in McMasters and I haven’t used Solo Ads myself. I’ve heard different opinions on whether they’re good or bad. They seem to work better for some niches, things like that, better for the marketing, make money online biz type of stuff, but there may be other stuff out there. 

Just something to get you thinking, this week’s insight, you might want to look into it if you’re looking for more traffic and it can be a cheap way to get started with paid traffic and start testing some stuff. Michael put that in McMasters. McMasters is my private training community where you can learn more about how to write a 10-email autoresponder, so even how to build out your email marketing, how to build your sales funnel. All that sort of stuff. It’s the best way to get direct access to me because there’s a forum. You can jump in there, ask questions and I will get back to you. I’m in there every day. That’s the best way to get some coaching at far less than the one-on-one coaching process.

Now, if you want to leave a review, go to iTunes, go to the store and leave me a review. Search the McMethod Email Marketing Podcast. I should say it this way, if you like the email marketing podcast and you’re getting a lot of value from it, go to the store, leave me a review and I’ll give you a high five and I’ll read it out on the show. Yeah, go on list a question and then we’ll get into it. Today’s listed question is, how long did it take you to get good? I’m assuming this person means get good at copywriting. The answer is, it really depends. Good enough to what? Good enough to make a lot of money? Good enough to make, you know, get clients? Good enough to … It’s really hard to define it. Basically, what I do is good enough to … 

I’m wondering, this probably from someone who just maybe had a job, maybe wants to quit. They’re trying to learn to copy and they’re wanting to learn how long it’s going to take them before they’re good enough. A lot of that’s going to depend on their personal thing, how hard they’re willing work. Are they willing to sit down every day and write out sales that are by hand with a pen and paper? It’s really going to … It’s a balance of lot of that stuff and also, just their natural aptitude for being a persuader. If he’s done sales before, it’s going to be easier than if you’ve never done sales before, generally speaking. 

Whereas if you’ve been like an English major in school, you’ve probably got these bad habits about what writing’s mean to look like, hence it might be harder to write copy because you’re stuck in this that writing has to be all professional and be all grammatically correct. That’s a load of crap, at least when it comes to copywriting. If you’ve got a natural aptitude for it, you might be able to walk out tomorrow and get a client, right? It’s a very hard question to answer, but put it this way; the harder you work and the more you immerse yourself in sales and marketing and advertising, the faster you will get there. Put it that way. That’s it for now. Let’s get in to this interview with Craig Simpson. 

It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. I’m here with Craig Simpson. Craig is a direct mail guy, another direct mail guy. We just did Brian Kurtz last night and that podcast probably went live last week. Now, Craig’s another direct mail guy. He’s just had a book that he’s done with Dan Kennedy. This guy’s up there, he’s sending lots of mail and I wanted to get him on because I’ve done a lot of email guys and copywriters and internet guys coming on this show, but I think that the roots of what we do really goes back to direct mail and old school advertising, which isn’t really that old, too. I mean, it’s still all around. 

I was just talking to Craig just then and I was thinking that what would be really interesting, at least as a starting point for this conversation will be to look at the direct mail mindset because with direct mail, there’s a lot more at stake. With email marketing or with online marketing or a product launch, you can do it and if it doesn’t work, it’s not that big of a deal. You got a domain, maybe you bought a domain, you paid for some hosting. You don’t have to spend much money doing a lot of test, you can split test with a bit of software and it doesn’t cost you anything. 

Whereas when you’re doing direct mail, me and Bryan, we talked about this last night, you go spend like $500 per 1000 names that you might send out and that makes any sort of test extremely expensive so you’re going to be on your game. I think there’s a lot to learn. Being an online marketer and coming from this world, there’s a lot to learn from me and from everyone else in this situation from the people doing direct mails. We’re going to see what sort of good news we can get into today. Craig, how are you doing mate?

Craig Simpson:Excellent. I’m doing very good. Thanks for the introduction. I’m excited to be on this podcast today.

John McIntyre:Yeah, it’s good to have you on this show. Before we get into some of the direct mail mindset and some of the other stuff, can you give the listener a bit of a background on what you do and what you get up to most days?

Craig Simpson:Sure. I’m a direct mail consultant and I have a company, Simpson Direct, and we send out almost 300 mail campaigns a year for a variety of clients. I mean, we work with everything from pet food store selling dog food to big information marketers to companies, like Beachbody that does P90X and Insanity, and we sell off face clean called Derm Exclusive. We sell different products and services for dentists, attorneys, I mean, you name it. There’s just about someone we’re working within a niche using direct mail to help different companies acquire new customers, new patients, generate leads, build their herd. I’m an old school guy, I’ve been doing it for almost 20 years now so I’ve been doing it for a long time. 

John McIntyre:Okay. I think an interesting question right now would be … Like you said, you’ve just been doing this for 20 years, what are your thoughts on the whole internet marketing game and the product launches and all the guru hurrah that happens online which I’m sure you’re aware of?

Craig Simpson:Totally. You know I think a lot of it is great and I think the one area that they’re missing is they should all tie it in with direct mail. I think they’d all see their product launches and a lot of their big promotions being much more successful if they tie some direct mail into it. I mean, when you’re out there in the media and you’re testing all these different media options whether it’s radio or TV or internet, you compare the results and you look at them. I mean, everyone’s got a little bit, you know, they all have some strengths, but for me, you know I’m saturated in direct mail so I’m constantly seeing positive results from the direct mail marketing. I’m seeing internet and online guys using direct mail. 

In fact, Google, they’re the 8th largest technology mailer in the country. You think all the hype and hoopla goes along with Google and their online pay-per-click advertising. Well, behind the scenes, it’s not really being reported is that they’re heavily using direct mail, so much mail that they’re up there with DirecTV and AT&T and Verizon and Dell Computers. They’d become the 8th largest direct mail company in the United States for the technology niche. I love direct mail and even though it’s not the shiny object right now, it’s still getting a lot of attention behind the scenes.

John McIntyre:Okay. Interesting. I’m curious, how hard is it? This might have been a question for more towards the end, but how hard is it for someone like me who’s got a website and maybe a marketing consultancy or a business selling anything from, like you mentioned, pet food, someone who could be listening to this, maybe they want to give direct mail a try. How hard is it for them to go and get a campaign up and running without hiring someone like you? Is that possible or do they need someone like you who’s kind of in the trenches?

Craig Simpson:No. I think it’s totally possible. You know, I did my first direct mail campaign selling fake rock climbing holds through the mail. I don’t know if you know what fake rock climbing holds does but the thing is you bolt it on the rock walls. I started it out with 250 pieces mailing and to be honest, my first mailing was a complete bum, but I kept testing and testing and trying different things and eventually on my own without anyone else’s help, I ended up selling over 4,000 rocks through the mail.

I think with anybody, whether you’re a small business owner or just getting started, found a new product or service, if you read some of these books and look at the testing methods that you learn and start out small and spin it, send a few hundred pieces at a time, you can find something that’s working for your niche and then just roll it out. You don’t have to start out with a 50,000 piece mailing. You can start out with small sample size and work your way up as you get a great return on investment and you test things and you figure out what works and what doesn’t.

John McIntyre:I like that you mentioned this, basically the testing mindset which is something that’s taking a long time to click. For me to understand this, I’ve done campaigns just online, paid traffic campaign before, this was a couple of years ago when I was just getting started and it didn’t work. The first few times, it didn’t work and me not really knowing what I was doing or understanding how this stuff really worked. I was like, “All right, well …” I don’t know if I consciously decided to give up. I just gave up. I just didn’t follow through and I stopped doing it and that was that.

Now, as I’ve been reading, doing some Perry Marshall stuff and I’m setting up paid traffic campaign for my own business, now it’s starting to click that if all I’ve done is just kept that campaign running, spending $10 or $20 a day, whatever it happened to be, 2 years later which is now or 3 years later now, I would be miles ahead, just by that simple fact of just sitting down and testing consistently. This is something that a lot of people online might take them a while to get it. If they’ve been in the game and get the right mentor and they will get up quick. Everyone says split test, split test, but this is … Maybe online like I was saying before, the stakes aren’t as high as direct mail. If you fail, you’re not going to lose that much money whereas with direct mail, you have to get this stuff ironed out. Testing is really like, it’s mandatory if you’re doing direct mail, isn’t it?

Craig Simpson:It is. You know what, that’s a great point. You started the conversation talking about how the stakes are different with direct mail. The stakes are high because of your investing so much. I mean, if you don’t really think through the testing process and what it is you want to achieve out of your test, you can end up wasting a lot of money. You’re forced with direct mail to really not just run out there and throw something together and hope that it works, you really have to put the time and energy to think through the process and think, “Okay, what testing variables are going to give me the best chance for success? What are the things that I need to see first? Do I need to test my price points to see if one price point has a significant boost, gives me a significant boost in response compared to another? Do I need to test format? Do I need to test sales copy or headlines?”

I mean, you have to think through what is the thing that I can test with a limited amount of capital that I can use and see what’s going to help me out the most. I think it’s the preparation side of direct mail that makes you so much different than the online marketing. The testing idea’s maybe a lot of the same, but you have so much more at stake so you really have to put more time upfront thinking through the process because there’s so much at risk. Does that makes sense? Does that help explain that?

John McIntyre:Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, when I was talking to Bryan last night about this, it was the thing that I have planned of doing, which we discussed, is the whole, there’s a good and a bad thing about it. You’re online, the stakes are low so therefore, you’re going to have to try that hard which is, in a sense, is a good thing. The stakes are low and you’re not going to … If you mess up, you’re not going to lose your house or whatever, but with direct mail, the stakes are higher. On the one end that’s bad, there’s more risk, there’s more at stake, but that also means that you have to be on your game which means you’ll end up with better copy, better campaign, you test more stuff and you end up with probably a more solid business.

Craig Simpson:Right.

John McIntyre:I mean, Bryan mentioned there’s a lot more one-hit wonders online than there is offline.

Craig Simpson:Totally. Totally. I did a study on the customer values between someone who’s generated online versus someone who’s generated on TV and someone who’s generated through a direct mail, and I took 50,000 buyers from TV, 50,000 buyers from direct mail and 50,000 buyers from the internet all who had paid the exact same price for a product within the same time period. We looked at the long term customer values of them, the customers that were brought in through direct mail ended up spending 3 times as much as those who have brought in through the internet and they spend twice as much as those who are brought in through the TV. It was harder to acquire those customers, but they ended up spending a lot more money than those that were generated through other sources. There’s a lot to be said about direct mail. When you can get a customer, you can find a system that works, it’s something that you can use to really bring in your best customers. 

John McIntyre:Okay. I’m curious because I’ve never actually done a direct mail campaign. Maybe I’m feeling almost a big guilt.

Craig Simpson:Shame on you, you should. 

John McIntyre:I totally should. I’ve got a basic idea what I think a direct mail campaign looks like, but give me a rundown. Suppose I was to do a direct mail campaign, what would it involve and what would it look like? What sort of things would I have to do to make it happen?

Craig Simpson:I think the first thing is you start off with what is your offer? What is your sign? You really want to take a close look at it and figure out, you know, you’re going to be talking face to face essentially through a sales letter with someone. You got to think about what a reasonable offer would be that would be good enough to get them to respond and take action. Let’s say you’re going to a list of called prospects, you’re probably not going to have much luck selling them a $7,000 coaching package right out of the gate with direct mail. You’re going to have to get them to warm up to you a bit before you can do that. 

What I find for the first offer, it’s best to either do a price point that’s below $200 or some kind of a free offer to get them into a sales funnel where you can send them free reports and other information, kind of bring them up the essential matter. First, you want to look at your offer and identify what it is, make sure it’ll fit for direct mail. Then, you’re going to write your sales copy and the length of the copy will depend on how long it takes to tell your story and to list all the benefits, and get them to respond and get the information across to the prospect that will motivate them to respond.

Once you have the copy, then you get the design done. With direct mail, it’s not the Madison 5th Avenue, really flashy, big photos and images of design. It’s really focused on the copy in it and we want any design work done to enhance the copy and not distract from it. Once we have those things, we work on finding the right mailing list which is making sure that we have the best prospects to go after to present your offer. Then once we have those things, we get the piece printed and mailed, and track the response and find out what worked and what didn’t. That’s a basic rundown of the direct mail schedule.

John McIntyre:Okay. How good of a copywriter do you need to be to really pull something like this off with the sales letter.

Craig Simpson:Boy, it really depends on who you’re marketing to and what you’re selling. If you’re a regional business and you’re selling pizzas, you can probably be not a very good copywriter and do okay because you really have a targeted market in a targeted area. If you’re trying to sell a joint pain supplement on a national campaign, you’re going to have to be an A-list copywriter in order to get the response needed. Really, the offer and the market that you’re in really determines how good of a writer you have to be.

John McIntyre:Okay. That’s interesting. It’s like, you can’t by with not bad copies, you don’t need a good copy, but it’s almost like the copy really depends on, you know, I understand that’s context and that you can lower the requirement for good copy, but improving your target and your matching.

Craig Simpson:Yeah. To piggyback on maybe your conversation you have with Bryan, I believe you said either last week or last night, he always brags about, not brags, but he talks often about how, you know, Boardroom, often their highest paid employees or people that work for them were the copywriters because they knew that that copywriters were the ones that were going to bring in the success, the ones that talk directly to a customer through a piece of mail and get them to respond. The big companies that are really successful in direct mail, they spend a lot of money with copywriters knowing that that’s a key, key part of the success of the campaign.

John McIntyre:Yeah. Okay. This is really why copy kind of grew its legs. Once upon a time, copy didn’t really exist. I think it was back in … Claude Hopkins talked about in his My Life in Advertising where no one was really doing it but eventually people started selling the same thing and all of a sudden you needed a way to differentiate yourself from everyone else. That began, you know, sending a letter and then obviously with everyone sending letters, you have to send the best letter and that’s where copy …

Craig Simpson:That’s right.

John McIntyre:That’s where copy grew out of.

Craig Simpson:Exactly. I mean, it really is an art. I mean, as you know it’s not an easy task just to sit down and put a pen and paper, and create a message that is going to motivate somebody to respond. Especially with all the clutter and things that are out there today, you got to really stand out and make yourself look different so that you can motivate then the prospects to respond.

John McIntyre:I find that absolutely fascinating. It’s almost like … I look at copywriting not so much as copywriting or persuasion, so much it is just clear communication where you have to figure out how can you use just the utmost clarity in describing whatever you’re trying to describe, whatever you’re trying to sell in a way that like if you’re going to put aside every single prejudice you have and believe all your ideas you have about whatever it is you’re trying to sell and started thinking highly within the mindset of the person you’re writing to, so then the copy that you write, the sole purpose of that is to get this prospect to understand it in a way that it’s going to fit with his mindset and his beliefs and everything like that. It’s a communication game, that’s how I look at it.

Craig Simpson:You’re exactly right. You’re exactly right. I think it was Gary Albert that said, there’s not a problem that a great sales letter can’t solve. It really does. I mean, that great sales letter can do so many things as far as getting the emotion of the prospect and getting them excited about something to the point where they may not even know you but yet they’re willing to pull up their credit card and spend money with you. It’s not easy to do, but when it’s done right, it’s very effective.

John McIntyre:Tell me about some of the, maybe the mistakes. Maybe you see some sort of mistakes that happen with people who go online and … Like based on your experience from doing direct mail for 20 years, that’s … I’m sure there’s got to be something that you’ve seen some of these online guys doing and then go, “Why are they doing that? They just don’t get it.” Is there anything like that?

Craig Simpson:Well, possibly. You may know better than I do on this, but [inaudible 00:20:03] I’ve consulted with over a hundred companies and I’ll tell you, the number 1 mistake that I’ve seen made across the board has to do with the long term customer value. I don’t know if this is an online mistake or not, but for most of the companies that I’ve consulted, I’ve seen this problem over and over again and when it comes down to when you’re evaluating your marketing campaigns, people often look at that initial fail, what was made off of that initial campaign and think, “Wow, that wasn’t very much money,” or “I lost a few dollars here on every customer that came in the door,” that wasn’t worth it so therefore, the campaign bummed. It wasn’t a success.

If you look at the long-term value of the customer and see what they’re going to spend over the course of a lifetime, then that campaign whether you may have lost a few dollars in every customer coming in the door, all of a sudden looks totally different when you consider the customer’s long term value. Let’s say for example it cost you $200 to acquire a customer and the customer only spend $150 with you so you end up losing $50 for every customer you brought in the door, but what happens if that customer’s long-term value over the next 9 months to a year that they end up spending 350 – 400 dollars with you? 

If you look at it in those terms, it becomes a super profitable campaign because you’re calculating it in what this customer’s going to bring you down the road. I’m not sure if it’s a problem with online or not, but just in general with what I’ve seen with a lot of companies I consulted with is that they don’t consider the long-term value when they look at the results of their campaigns. 

John McIntyre:This is something that’s sort of is ringing true or rang true a lot lately is because I had another guy in this podcast that talked about it. He’s an internet guy and he’s all about recurring revenue, which is great. I’ve never really done it before, so I’m like, “All right. I’ll give this a shot.” He had a forum and a community over [inaudible 00:21:54] pay per month, so you get that recurring revenue come in. Him and there’s a bunch of guys who are talking about this right now, so I went and set the forum up, it’s going great and it’s still out there. It’s still running. 

I’m still pushing people to go, but what I realized after a month or 2 I had it open was that the point isn’t to have recurring revenue, the point is to have a higher lifetime customer value. When you make a product and you sell for say a hundred dollars, you make a hundred dollars, but if I can put something in the community where they pay a hundred dollars a month, I’m going to make $300 or whatever it happens to be. The catch though is that you might have a community where people can pay per month, that doesn’t mean they’re going to stay forever. 

There’s always going to be an average amount of time. Maybe it’s 3 months. If it’s 3 months at a hundred dollars a month, your lifetime customer value is $300. That’s the real figure. That’s the important part and that’s where you might think, “We could sell a hundred dollar product on the front-end and a month later then sell them a $500 product and then we’d have a $600 lifetime value,” therefore, we’ve eliminate the need for this forum. It’s like, once you realize what metrics you need to focus on, it actually becomes a lot easier to manage and build the business. It’s like what Peter Drucker said, what gets measured gets managed.

Craig Simpson:Exactly right. It’s amazing how many businesses actually miss that. They’re so near-sighted in their thinking that they really just need to take a look at the long-term value and think about that in goal. I mean, you know most people buy because they’re a creature of habit. They’ve got a hobby and interest or desire, and you are offering them something that makes them … You’re offering something that they want whether it’s a hobby, an interest or a desire. Why not keep offering them other products and services and try and keep them part of your family, and keep them buying from you because if they’re not going to buy from you, they’re going to buy from someone else. 

Being nearsighted and only focusing on that first transaction is going to cause you to miss out on low hanging fruit and easy to acquire or easy to sell customers on the back-end. Whereas if you really think long term relationship, long term customer value, offer other products and services, you’re going to fulfill the needs of that customer’s desires and their hobbies and their interest and at the same time, it’s going to bring you more revenue and allow you to be able to grow your business quicker because you can build it based on the back-end sales. 

John McIntyre:Yeah. Absolutely. It seems to me that as a business center, the point isn’t to do any … Like, the primary job of really the guys managing the business, the entrepreneur is to get more leads in, and this what marketers do basically, but get more leads in, convert more of those leads to customers and then make those customers spend as much money as possible over the course of their lifetime.

Craig Simpson:That’s exactly right. Let me ask you. Do you find the internet world that that focus, do you feel like that most of the internet marketers have that long term value thought in mind or do you think they’re more short term and just trying to grab that initial fail and move on to the next customer?

John McIntyre:Yeah. I think a lot of people online, they … I mean, I was one of them, I’m still one of them, I guess in many ways, that people getting into the online game because they want to … I live in Thailand, so [inaudible 00:25:07] and they’re like, “I want to move to Thailand and work online and travel around, and do all that.” The emphasis is less on building, less on doing things the way business should be done and more on, “I want to have a great lifestyle.” That’ll often mean that someone will make, yeah, I guess short-sided decisions. 

They’re not in the game to build a big business that maybe one day they can sell or that they … basically like a recurring net income asset. I think that’ll come down a lot. I’ve doing this a couple years now and it’s starting to click and I’m starting to get it, but at least initially no one really thinks like this because most people come straight from jobs, straight from the working class. No one in their family has done business, so no one really explained this stuff to them and it’s very hard to get these sort of realizations from a book. You’ve got to be in the trenches working and doing it for a while until you start to get the hang on, “If all I do is sell an e-book here, that’s not a very good business.” You can’t do much of that. 

Craig Simpson:Right.

John McIntyre:It’s not worth much to anyone. You start to get those light bulb moments and that’s, I guess, what’s been happening for me this year is starting to go; “I can’t just sell an e-book. I can’t just sell one product. This has to be a big business with various different products at various price points with a marketing system in place and all that stuff.”

Craig Simpson:Exactly. Yeah. Good. 

John McIntyre:I’ve notice, too, these guys like Perry Marshall which are out there talking about this stuff and if you go to any kind of like advanced marketing lesson or course or something like that or listen to podcast like this, you’ll hear about it but even then like, you know I’ve read Dan Kennedy stuff before and a lot of these guys, and they talk about this lifetime customer value and I was always annoyed, in a sense that to me, it feels like a very hard number to track and it’s annoying and cumbersome and all of that. It’s just so much easier to focus on just the sale.

I think what’s really making it click for me right now is that I’m in the process of setting up a sales funnel for a paid traffic campaign and I just sat down with, I guess, a mentor last … that was 2 weeks ago or a week ago and his advice is basically, instead of just selling that one product on the front which I’ve got up for I think about $7 right now, he said, “Go and set up 3 upsells, so instead of $7, you make $300.” At first I was like, “Okay, that’s not that big of a deal, but I’ll go ahead and do it because he told me to,” but then I started thinking, I was thinking, “Why do that?” That means that if all I did … If I get one person to buy the product and buy every upsell, so one person through the funnel in say 2,000 people and it only cost me … that could cost me $300 and I’m breaking even. 

Then there’s an email sequence, it’s like a back-end sequence which is always going to pick up a few more sales, so it’s going to put the campaign into just straight profit. Whereas if I only had that one product and the potential would only really make $7 from one person on that first day, it would be a very different game. I think this is happening all the time online and probably maybe direct mail, too, is that because I dramatically changed the potential money that I can make on that front, I’m going to be able to look at a campaign with a lot more positive outlook because if it’s not working straight away, I’m going, “Hang on. I can probably spend up to $300 on this campaign before I really can start to think that maybe it’s not working.” Which is [crosstalk 00:27:58] …

Craig Simpson:Right.

John McIntyre:… is $7, that’s a very different. You’re going to start, “This campaign is not working. There’s no way I’m ever going to make my money back.” Then you give up too early. To me, it’s like, this is almost like the fundamental foundation. If you can get this part lined out, the amount of money that you make from someone, everything else gets easier. 

Craig Simpson:That’s right. Everything else does get easier when you do that. Exactly. It guides you and tells you what marketing campaigns are worth pursuing and which ones you should stay away from because you know the value of the customer and how much they’re going to bring in. It really becomes basically a road map for you to follow and it’s a lot of work to track it, but it’s well worth it and will save you money or make you more money in the long run.

John McIntyre:Yeah. Absolutely. I think it’s probably not … Someone might be listening to this and they’re thinking, “This is too hard to track. This isn’t fair.” That’s how I used to think and now it’s like it’s somewhat … It is hard to track in a way. You may need months and months of data to figure that out, but when you think about it like with this traffic campaign that I’m about to run, I know I’ve got roughly the potential to make $300 on the front end if someone buys and then depending on how many sales come on back, there might be 500 or a thousand dollars or whatever on top of that. 

There’s potential for profit on the back-end. It’s very helpful to know that and with the forum which is actually called McMasters, which people have probably heard of, I know that while … It’s actually a quarterly thing right now. While people are only going to stay for 1 quarter or 2 quarters, don’t get me wrong, however long it happens, there’ll be an average time, it helps for me to keep that in mind so I know that it’s not going to be infinite amount of money. I know that there’s only going to be $250 or $500 that this person’s going to give me. When you know that, it gives you a lot more … It’s kind of like decision-making power.

Craig Simpson:Right. Totally. Exactly right.

John McIntyre:Killed it. All right, man. We’re coming up right on time. 

Craig Simpson:I wasn’t sure if you want me to call. I’m sorry go ahead. 

John McIntyre:We came up right on time here, but before we wrap up, can you … A listener might be wondering where they can learn more about you and maybe they even want to hire you or maybe they just want to talk to you about the direct mail stuff and how they can set it up in their business. Where’s the best place to get on and learn more about Craig Simpson? 

Craig Simpson:The best place to go and get my book which is called The Direct Mail Solution, you can get it at thedirectmailbook.com, simple, just thedirectmailbook.com and it’s called The Direct Mail Solution. It’s written by Dan Kennedy and myself. It basically gives you all the details on how to put together a direct mail campaign from start to finish, the things to watch out for, the things that will save you money, the things that will help make you more money, it gives tips on copywriting, lists, production, tracking, the whole nine yards. Even lifetime value and even tracking lifetime value. You can get the book on Amazon as well. It’s called The Direct Mail Solution. That’s really the best way to find out more about me and more about direct mail is to get that book.

John McIntyre:Perfect. Follow the links through the book on the show notes at themcmethod.com, so if you want get ahead over there and get that link and head over and buy that book. All right Craig, it’s been good man. Thanks for coming on the show.

Craig Simpson:Great. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.