Molly Ruland:

Alright, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Camp Content. Today’s guest is Chris Foster, the VP of new business development at Modern Postcard. They are leading efforts in revolutionizing content marketing strategies for 2024 with a focus on modern IO, direct mail, retargeting, and modern Max omnichannel marketing services. That’s a mouthful right there. Chris is your go to guy for supercharging revenue streams and boosting sales. Beyond his role at Modern Postcard, Chris is a branding guru, a teaching powerhouse at US UCSD Extension San Diego, and a prolific contributor to various publications. And if that’s not enough, he’s chairing councils, hosting webcasts, and basically running the show in the world of performance driven marketing.

Molly Ruland:

I can’t talk about this after. I need more coffee. When asked about his greatest achievements, Chris humbly mentions mastering the art of balancing work with family, 2 businesses, a home, a happy spouse, and watching his daughters bloom into young adults. Yes. There was one quote in particular on Chris’ LinkedIn that really stood out to me. And so I’m gonna read that, and then we’ll get into it. He said, ” I believe the most effective leaders articulate a vision of why the business exists, show what the culture embodies, and empower the team to help figure out how to implement clear plans for success. Leaders should also be comfortable looking strategically at the business health while wading into the thick of the work with the team.

Molly Ruland:

I know that’s a lot, but, like, that quote really hit me, and I think it says a lot about who you are and how you run your business. So on that note, thank you for coming on the show, Chris. We appreciate your time.

Chris Foster:

Molly, thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be a part of it and so excited for this conversation.

Molly Ruland:

I am too. You know, one of the best parts about doing this podcast is, like, getting to research people and, you know, check out their LinkedIns and, you know, you know? Because I’m genuinely curious. I wanna have a good conversation. I wanna make sure because you’re an expert in the stuff you do. Right? In this podcast, the goal is to help people with content marketing ideas for 2024. You know, business is different. You know, it’s a different time, and different things work while at the same time the good old faithfuls are still cranking along. So, when I was researching you and looking at modern postcard, you know, and looking at direct mail, I was like, oh, this this is I I don’t I haven’t heard of anybody else talking about direct mail on marketing podcasts, so I think this is gonna be a really fun conversation.

Chris Foster:

Come on. Bring it. Bring direct mail.

Molly Ruland:

Let’s do it. Alright. So number I have some questions for you. How are you? Let’s talk about modern postcards. Like, let’s talk about what is a modern postcard, and what is the main service that you guys offer, and who are you offering it to? Like, who is your ideal client in this space?

Chris Foster:

Great question. So we’ll start with who we serve. So modern postcards serve SMBs, bid markets, and large businesses in any vertical market or any type of industry. So we work with real estate agents and gallery owners and artists. We also work with a ton of ecommerce brands and business services brands and consumer services brands, roofers, HVAC. They’re selling shoes online. They’re selling clothing online. They’re selling apparel online.

Chris Foster:

And we also work with very large, huge national brands that you know of that I’m not gonna mention, that serve the entire country, with consumer products and services. And so what’s unique about Modern is that we’re flexible in our DNA so that we can work with very small companies and do a mailing of 500 cards, print 250 cards. We can also work with customers that are doing 500,000 cards a month, 1000000 cards a month. And our main so that’s kinda who we work with in terms of those businesses. What we serve them with is a variety of products and services, mostly centered on direct mail, and I’ll just break them out simply. One, our traditional direct mail and print. This is where customers can give us a list of 5,000, 10000, or more importantly, we develop a list for them. In our traditional direct mail service, we do the list development, we do the creative development, we do the strategy, we do the printing, we do the mailing, we do the tracking, we do the performance work, We do the entire campaign for a customer.

Chris Foster:

After we interview them about what they need, who their audience is, we can come up with a direct mail plan to help them get more customers through direct mail. And that’s usually a drop of 3 1,000, 5,000, 10000 cards, etcetera. And that’s kind of on the traditional print and direct mail. We also offer integrated direct mail, and you mentioned Modern Max. That’s really where we’re able to integrate Facebook, Google Ads, and Informed Delivery email along with a direct mail campaign. So if a brand wants to actually reach someone digitally and with direct mail, essentially, we say, you reach those customers in their homes and on their phones, with the same campaign. So that’s kind of that digital integration. The third service we offer is what we call automated direct mail.

Chris Foster:

This is unbelievably powerful. This is hyper targeting direct mail programs that reach the right person at the right time in any stage of the customer funnel, and I’ll break it down a little bit. So if they’re doing an acquisition or an awareness campaign, we can take a very highly targeted list from a data feed, such as life stage events, such as weddings, prenatal, postnatal, new mover, new homeowner, new home buyer. Pull that into a daily feed so a brand can market every single day in an always on evergreen direct mail program. You know, with PPC links costing 4 bucks, 3 bucks a pop, we can do a direct mailer for about a buck and target a customer who already shows life stage purchase behavior in geographic areas that are either local, regional, or national. So, for example, I could be a jeweler, and I wanna market to folks who might have been who might be celebrating their 5th wedding anniversary. Or I could be an ecommerce company in children’s clothing and focus on postnatal lists. That is a weekly or daily feed list that we can get.

Chris Foster:

If I’m an HVAC company or if I’m a mattress company and I wanna market to new homeowners, I can do that too on a daily basis. So we serve a lot of folks that way. And to your earlier note about modern IO, that is our direct mail retargeting. It’s an automated direct mail program. But Molly, what it does is we’re able to market to people who visit a website and don’t fill out a form and don’t buy. It’s unbelievably powerful retargeting. Right? It’s crazy. So instead of just traditional Facebook or digital retargeting, you can retarget with direct mail.

Chris Foster:

The response rates are through the roof. And so our ecommerce customers, our consumer service customers usually get on a program and they don’t stop because it ends up being a cash machine for them.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Well, sign put me in, coach. I’m very active in my website analytics, and I’m like, I could use that. I could use that for sure. People are staying on my site for a long time and looking, but, you know.

Chris Foster:

And we and it’s both for b to b and b to c. So the beautiful thing about the b to b programs, Molly, is that we actually mail to home addresses. So it’s you’re actually reaching people who’ve already expressed an interest, and they are showing through their behavior that they’re interested in your site. So, you know, it’s funny because you said direct mail? Isn’t that old school? I said like I say, in the forest of marketing services, it’s easy to get lost. Easy to get lost in the weeds, in the forest, in the shrubs, but direct mail is the analogy I use. Direct mail is like the oak in the forest. It’s there. It’s persistent.

Chris Foster:

And the beautiful thing about it is that its response rates haven’t changed. In fact, the response rates are actually increasing. With new generations that are digitally native, if you receive a direct mail piece, it actually is a higher engagement rate and higher brand recall, and this has been proven in neuro studies more than digital marketing. I mean, if you think about it, if you just think about it simply, it makes sense. And the story that I say is we’re all getting about, you know, thousands of digital ads a day. Right? They say, you know, the average person is getting 10,000 marketing touches a day. Well, I don’t know about that, but you know that you receive thousands of digital ads a day. Wherever you go, you see those digital ads.

Chris Foster:

You receive hundreds of emails a day. 100. Right? Consumer emails. And what we know about email is if you go to your Gmail and you get all these emails from various brands, if it’s below the fold or yesterday, you’re not gonna see it. Right? It’s femoral or it’s evergreen, but you’re not gonna see it. But you only get about a dozen pieces of direct mail a day. Right? You don’t get that many. And so the competition for attention for brands is so much less, and the exposure for brands is so much higher when you use direct mail.

Chris Foster:

It’s astonishing. So when we talk to ecommerce brands and home services brands in particular, they’re like, yeah. I I I can’t compete with Lululemon or Athleta on their digital retargeting budget. I’ll never be able to do that, but I can send a direct mailer to someone who visited my website, and I have no competition. So it’s actually been extremely effective, especially in today’s marketing world.

Molly Ruland:

It’s brilliant, honestly. I have all the you know, my marketing brain is going crazy about, like, what I could send these people, like, a microphone shaped mailer to be like, hey. I know you wanna start a podcast. Come back. What are you doing? That is brilliant. I wanna talk a little bit about, like, what happens inside your brain. Right? What is the psychology behind, like, getting direct mail, like, having something that you can physically touch, print marketing versus digital? Like, what are you seeing there?

Chris Foster:

Well, the interesting thing that you mentioned is that they’ve done some neuro studies because, usually the academics are a laggard indicator analyzers of marketing and behavior trends. Right? So digital marketing has come on strong, and it’s x number of years afterwards where the scientists are like, I wonder what digital marketing does. So let’s check out what it does with brains. And so a little bit ago, they did brain scan studies of consumers looking at digital imprint, just to see how the brain operates and what, we actually do a web I I made a webinar on on how the brain responds to print and direct mail. And not only how the brain responds, but why the brain responds so well. And what they find is that the physical tactile engagement of actually holding a piece of material or marketing triggers certain things in the brain that are kinda deep within the brain. Right? So I’m not a brain scientist. I’m not, but bear with me when I simplify it.

Chris Foster:

You’ve got the cerebral cortex, which is the outside of the brain. It evolves last. That’s why teenagers, like my daughter, leave their shoes in the park when they come home because their cerebral cortex hasn’t developed. And I said, where’s your shoe? I don’t know. What do you mean you don’t know? It’s a shoe. Yeah. It’s a shoe. Right? So clearly, your cerebral cortex wasn’t quite developed, and we know a lot of knuckleheads that, you know, they haven’t developed their cerebral cortex.

Chris Foster:

And then, and then, you know, underneath that, at the core of the brain is what is the amygdala and the hippocampus. And what’s interesting about that part of the brain is that, they call you the limbic system, etcetera, but biologically and physiologically, the amygdala and the hippocampus are right next to one another, like touching each other. And so, that’s where our memory and our emotion centers live. That’s why everybody can remember their first meaningful kiss. Right? Because there’s that memory and that emotion that’s packed into that moment. Right? But you’re not gonna remember an email from 4 days ago. It sits right in your cerebral cortex if you kinda remember that at all. And so the strange thing about print and direct mail is that because we’re holding it, because we’re reading it, it ties into emotion and memory, that deep part of the brain.

Chris Foster:

Right? So we’ve been reading for about 5000 years. Right? So our brains are pretty well wired to read. Well, Molly, we’ve been on the Internet for maybe 2 generations instead of a 1000 generations where we’ve been reading. So our brains are still catching up to understanding and processing digital languages and digital behaviors. Right? The generation alpha is doing this natively. Generation z is probably doing this natively, but there’s still a lot of distraction. There’s still a lot of, you know, endless searching online. Right? You can scroll forever on a Facebook feed.

Chris Foster:

You can get distracted by dings and dongs when you’re looking at a website. But when you’re holding a piece of mail in front of you or a piece of marketing in your hands, you know exactly how long it is. Right? The cognitive notion of, is this a textbook or is this a postcard? And understand exactly what I’m getting into, and my brain is ready to receive that information in a way that’s different from receiving digital information. And so just from a cognitive standpoint, they’re finding that print and direct mail is higher response engagement. I hope that answers your question.

Molly Ruland:

No. It does. It’s fascinating. Right? But you know? I mean, a perfect example is, like, you know, Apple. Right? It’s a very random example, but, like, you know, half the reason why we buy all this expensive crap from them is because of the way the box feels and the packaging and, like, the It feels great. Right. Experience of it. Like, I have these business cards that I ordered from Canva.

Molly Ruland:

Right? Who knew? They’re super thick. I could, like if I could, like, master throwing stars, I just could be a weapon. But they’re that that that real soft, you know, stock paper that’s just, like, velvety smooth, but also, like, it’s thick. And whenever I hand these to people, they’re like, you know? And it’s that moment, and it does it. You know? And I’ve always had a holographic business card before. Like, I take my business cards very seriously because it is that moment where you stand out from the rest with something you can actually physically hold and touch. And so that makes

Chris Foster:

That’s right.

Molly Ruland:

So much sense to me because, yeah, I mean, how many times we’ve all done it. You go to pick up your phone to send a message to somebody on Facebook, but then you open up Facebook, and next thing you know, you’re arguing with somebody. Or, you know, you’re completely dis and then you’re like, what you know, or, like, the equivalent of walking into a room. And for

Chris Foster:

It’s totally what happened. Right? So if you go to YouTube because you wanna research something for business, and then I’m like, oh, SNL highlights, Gong, and off you go.

Molly Ruland:

Husky videos singing. I love that. Let’s go. It’s true. It’s such a district, but, like, you’re standing there with this thing in your hand, and if you’ve already been to the website

Chris Foster:

connects in. So what we do is we call it the kitchen table moment. Right? Because if you go to a website and you don’t buy, usually get a retargeting ad minutes or hours later. Well, you know what? I wasn’t ready to buy a minute ago, and then, you know, I wasn’t ready to buy an hour ago. Why am I ready to buy now? Right? So the mail arrives 2 or 3 days later, or a week later, so whatever that time is based on where you are. And then you’re like, okay. It’s relevant. I’m still interested.

Chris Foster:

I’m not ready to buy now, but instead of, like, an email that floats away, poof, gone.

Molly Ruland:

This is going on in the fridge. It’s

Chris Foster:

exactly. It’s a kitchen table moment. You put it down and it hangs around. Right? So your marketing hangs around. It’s called shelf life. I like the kitchen table moment because you put it on the kitchen table, you put it on the island or the fridge or whatever, and everyone sees it. And then the user says, okay, either I’m gonna act on it or I’m gonna deliberately throw it away. But they’re making that conscious intentional choice.

Chris Foster:

Right? And that way the brand just sticks in the mind of that consumer, and it’s why response rates are so high.

Molly Ruland:

I make so much I mean, I’m gonna be chatting with you after this, Chris, because I’ve been really looking at my website analytics, and I’m like, people are staying on the site. I get really good organic traffic, but I’m losing them somewhere. And I’ve tried different things to figure out how to keep that communication going.

Chris Foster:

No. Well, we’ll definitely talk about your campaign because the one last thing I’ll talk about with print and direct mail is as human beings, we all respond to stories. I know everyone knows that storytelling is, you know, used to be kind of the big new thing years ago, and Donald Miller wrote a great book about story brand. So everyone’s everyone’s really into the story. Right? We know that. But what a lot of people don’t know is that the physical media is one of the best places to tell a story. Right? Because it’s words on paper. You can tell a story succinctly.

Chris Foster:

You can tell a story in the way you wanna tell it. There’s no scrolling. There’s no interactivity in terms of getting distracted. It’s right in your hands. And to tell your story on that piece of direct mail, is fantastic. You know, adding signatures, adding personal touches, all of these things are ways in which you can make it more engaging, and to drive response.

Molly Ruland:

That makes a lot of sense. So how do you, I wanna get into some of these speed couple speed round questions You got it. Just because they’re fun, but I think that these are all relevant. So how do where the first one is, how does data analytics come into all of this? How are you, you know, because to me, you know, I worked at the Washington Business Journal, like, a million and a half years ago. Right? Awesome. I’m still scared from that experience, but I learned how to sell to the c suite. It was probably the best job. I was in the circulation sales department, and that was a hard sales job.

Molly Ruland:

You know, those guys were brutal. But we did a lot of direct mail. So, you know, I’m very familiar, and I feel like over time, people have said, well, it’s just so hard to track. Right? It’s just so hard to track. So how are you managing that with, like, analytics? Because you have a lot more with this digital spin on it, but, yeah, how does that all come into the equation?

Chris Foster:

Great question. So for the digital programs, we’re able to match the digital integrated programs, meaning the Facebook and the Google Ads and the Informed Delivery email packaged in with the direct mail. We actually have a dashboard to show you how many clicks, how many opens, and all the digital connectors that are there. With our Modern. Io Direct Mail retargeting program, because we know who we’re mailing to and it’s a first party cookie based technology, We can measure the people who actually return to the site. So one of the metrics that we offer in our programs is called a return to site percentage. Typically, for an ecommerce brand, that ranges between 10 to even 25%. For business services, it’s about 5 to 12%.

Chris Foster:

And that means that, let’s call it 10% to make the math easy, it means 10% of the people receiving the cards actually come back to the site after getting the card. It’s astonishing. And when you think of digital retargeting, click through rates are 0.007%. So on ours are, you know, could be as, you know, as high as, you know, 20%. So if a 1000 people come to the site with digital retargeting, only 7 people are coming back. With direct mail retargeting is 200. Right? It’s just a massive change in terms of how many people return to the site. So that’s the return to site percentage.

Chris Foster:

And the other thing we measure is conversion rates. So we’re able to track those users who go to the conversion URL / thank you slash order confirmation, whatever that is. So we can measure those folks actually, the people who receive the card and convert it, so we give you a conversion percentage rate. And from there, we’re able to determine your return on ad spend. So it’s really tight in terms of the analytics. For our traditional direct mail and for also all of our direct mail retargeting as well and the automated direct mail, the final kind of coup de grace of tracking is what we call a matchback analysis, where we’re able to get the customer file, and we’re able to match that back to the mail files and see who actually from that group purchased. And from there, when you get order value, etcetera, then we can determine your return on ad spend. And I will share one story.

Chris Foster:

It’s not a I won’t mention their client’s name, but they’ve been doing direct mail retargeting for 5 years now. They started it and then never stopped. Every single day, they’re mailing 125 to 150 cards around every single day. But for this client, when you take out the cost of the card, she makes a dollar 82 $1.82 for every card mailed. Every single card mailed, she’s making a dollar 82¢. That’s after the cost of the card. It’s a cash machine. So her website suddenly becomes this active cash machine for her instead of, you know, bemoaning the fact that only 2% of people actually buy.

Chris Foster:

She’s actually saying no. Anybody coming to my site, and we’re able to track and meet send this card out. It’s a cash machine, because that’s what we’re able to get when it comes to the metrics and measurement.

Molly Ruland:

Well, that was gonna be my number 2 question. Give me a good example of a successful story, but you nailed that one. Awesome. Alright. Number 3. What are the top three essentials for a successful direct mail content marketing campaign?

Chris Foster:

The first is what you alluded to earlier is the data. Data is the critical piece. So, all the studies have indicated that in traditional direct mail, about 40% of the success of the program is in the data source. That’s why with direct mail retargeting, the data source is awesome because it’s your website visitors. Right? For an acquisition direct mail program, we have over 60,000 consumer lists available, 100 of specialty lists available, b to b lists available. And what we do is we work with the customers to understand their own customer base. And so we do a variety of customer analysis. We have, what we call a clarity dashboard, meaning that you can submit your customer file.

Chris Foster:

And for some cases, it’s free. Otherwise, it’s, you know, under $100 or if you do direct mail, it’s free. Where we analyze your customers, right, the demographics, the audience segmentation, to figure out what kind of grouping they should be in and who your best customers actually are. We can also do data modeling. And what that means is that we’re able to take your data and score it based on deciles of response and interest and intent. Essentially, what that gets to you, Molly, is the first step is getting the right data to be as precise as possible, so that when you do market with the direct mail as your content, you’re marketing to the right people. And so the data comes first. The second piece is gonna be on the creative itself where that includes the offer and the messaging and making sure that it’s resonating and it’s purposeful and it’s connected right to your audience.

Chris Foster:

You know, that’s marketing 101. And then the 3rd piece

Molly Ruland:

Not always.

Chris Foster:

I would

Molly Ruland:

It should be. It should be.

Chris Foster:

It should be. Right? Yeah. And the third piece I would say would be the measurement analysis and the and the testing. What we always recommend with everybody is if you say, gosh, I’m gonna say I’m gonna mail 5,000 cards, cross my fingers, and hope it works, and 3 months later, figure out what happened. That’s okay. I get that. What’s even better is if there’s an a b split test. Right? If you say, well, I’m gonna market 3,000 people creative a, 2,000 people creative b, and I’m gonna see which one performs better.

Chris Foster:

Because typically for most businesses, they aren’t limited by the market they’re going to or their audits are going to. They’re usually limited by budget.

Molly Ruland:

Budget. Right.

Chris Foster:

And what we wanna do is determine what creative message and which list source works best. And once we’re able to dial that in and nail that down in terms of, if I nail x amount of cards here, I’ll get this kind of response and this kind of cost per acquisition, which is great within my target, then we can start scaling that out. So that’s a really critical piece of it. A lot of, you know, new digital native marketers are used to the Facebook dashboards and having these instant responses of a creative. It’s not true with direct mail. You need to be a little bit more patient with time, but, the ones who do it well and are patient with that understand that they’re gonna get a lower cost per acquisition and a higher return on ad spend typically with direct mail versus other channels.

Molly Ruland:

That makes a lot of my head just spinning right now thinking of all the different people. Like, so people doing big events or webinars or retreats or I mean, right, it just you know, that was one thing I was thinking about when I was looking at your LinkedIn and the company’s LinkedIn because, you know, one was like, are you trying to get more people to your church? And the other one is like, are you trying to get more people in your consulting business? And I thought, you know, wow. You know, that’s gotta be difficult from your perspective on, like, how to market the business because it’s like your avatar is literally everyone.

Chris Foster:

Correct. No. So we actually have to hone down and be more specific. You mentioned events, which are interesting. We are actually also unique in the space that we really promote our educational services. And they’re, you know, they’re free. Right? Where our webinars are free. We want people to be better marketers.

Chris Foster:

We want businesses to thrive. Right? We want them to do well. So one of the things we do is a lot of webinars, but we also do live seminars. So my colleague, Keith Goodman, does what we call the direct mail crash course seminars. It’s freaking live. We go into towns, cities across the country and put on a 4 plus hour seminar on all the things about direct mail and the best practices. We’re gonna be in Chicago at the end of May. But we actually use, believe it or not, Molly, we use direct mail to promote the event.

Chris Foster:

Right? Who knew? Right? So we actually take, we know we’re gonna be in Chicago, So we market the event to Chicago. Right? But direct mail for events is fantastic because again, it’s that kitchen table moment. If the card lands, and if they sign up for the event, great. And then after they sign up, they can toss it, but it reminds them to do the action that they want.

Molly Ruland:

This is so good. This has been such a great conversation. I did not know what to expect with direct mail, but it’s really interesting to know, coming from such an old school, you know, Washington Business Journal, They weren’t even online yet when I quit. You know, it was a long time ago. You know what I mean? It’s a very long time ago, but

Chris Foster:

Mhmm.

Molly Ruland:

You know, I worked in real estate finance for some years. So, you know, direct mail was big in both of those industries. You know? So it’s fascinating to see how far that’s come and the retargeting of people who’ve been on your I mean, just all of this makes so much sense to me. So I hope that other people have found this as informative as I have, especially knowing that you work with small businesses and large businesses. I think that’s, you know I also love the fact that the business has, like, a 14 year profile on LinkedIn, and I’m like, that might have been the first profile ever made on LinkedIn.

Chris Foster:

Well, modern postcards have been around. Our CEO founded the business back in 1976, and then we created Modern Postcard in 1992. So Modern Postcard as an entity has been around, I don’t know, since the dawn of time. And, and I’ve been blessed to have been there for many, many years, pretty much my entire adulthood. That’s cool. Where the culture is one where we support each other, support our professional growth. And, you know, it’s all in California. It’s in Carlsbad, California.

Chris Foster:

It’s a little bit north of San Diego. 75,000 square foot facility. We do all the manufacturing, so everything’s made in the USA. So it’s a really phenomenal place to be.

Molly Ruland:

Man, well, if I’m ever in SoCal, I’m gonna hit you up. I’ll come visit.

Chris Foster:

Please. We’ll take you out to lunch and give you a tour.

Molly Ruland:

Hey, man. I, you know, I love nostalgia, and I love consistency. And I think as a small business, there’s so much value in working with a company that also works with big companies and that’s been around for a long time because you know what you’re talking about. You’ve seen it. You’ve seen it play out. You know, I saw Alex Ramosi put a clip on LinkedIn, and he was like, people think it’s confidence. But if you’ve done something 100 times, then you know what the result is gonna be. And it’s not confidence.

Molly Ruland:

It’s just it’s an expectation because you’ve done this. So you know, and that’s you guys. You know, you’ve been doing this for so long, and then now you’re innovating in more of a digital space, which makes sense. But, you know, I just really love that, and I think there’s a lot of value in that. And I know we live in a SaaS company, innovative, disruptive. I mean, okay. Cool. But, you know, maybe we wanna go with, like, old faithful sometimes, you know, something that’s not so disruptive because we’re all tired.

Molly Ruland:

You know, we’re exhausted. I live in Costa Rica, so I see significantly less marketing because, like, we still have a few road signs and stuff here and there, but it’s illegal to put signs up on the site.

Chris Foster:

That’s awesome.

Molly Ruland:

Oh, it’s so I go back and I’m like, even, you know, even your GPS is like, hey. Are you hungry? There’s a McDonald’s nearby. Hey. You want some coffee? I’m like, I didn’t until now. Like, it’s wild how much it’s crammed down your face, but, like, the

Chris Foster:

Yeah.

Molly Ruland:

Tried and true you know, there’s all there there’s always something to be said for having something tangible in

Chris Foster:

your hands. You know, at the end of the day, Molly, like I say to businesses, we don’t market devices. We market to people. And, you know, we’re not fire hydrants, we’re not pickles, we’re people. And guess what? We’ve been homo sapien for about 1000000 years. We’ve been kind of our evolutionary, brains have been about the same for maybe 1000, 100000 years. Right? That’s when the brain size started to get large and, gosh, we’re humans, so we’re gonna respond to touch and feel.

Molly Ruland:

And I like that. I like getting

Chris Foster:

Thank goodness.

Molly Ruland:

Back to that. You know, I threw a New Year’s Eve party one time. It was a time traveler’s ball, and you could be anything or anyone you wanted to be. Right?

Chris Foster:

Who were you?

Molly Ruland:

It was fun. I was stressed out. That’s who I was because it was my party. I can’t remember what I just I

Chris Foster:

didn’t know that was yeah.

Molly Ruland:

That’s not a real thing. I was really just really blown on that one, but what I did, it was in DC, and it was at this recording studio mansion from, like, a local recording. I mean, it was, like, a super cool venue, and it was, like, edibles. It was, like, the whole the whole bit. You know? Awesome. And, as soon as you ordered a ticket, when you paid for a ticket online, within a few hours, a bike courier would show up at your house with a little golden box with red velvet inside.

Chris Foster:

Come on.

Molly Ruland:

And a skeleton key on a red velvet rope, you know, and 2 tickets to Now you’re talking.

Chris Foster:

That’s how you do it.

Molly Ruland:

Let me tell you. And I mean, this is all shit I ordered on Amazon. It’s not like, you know, I had them welded with my company. You know, it was just like I ordered it on Amazon. I put it together, and I had one of my bike courier homies, you know, just go deliver. But everybody showed up with that necklace on, dressed to

Chris Foster:

the tee.

Molly Ruland:

Did. Like, so excited to be at that party. It was the best party I think I’ve ever thrown, and it was because people were like, wait, what? This is the coolest thing ever. You know, this cheesy little, you know, 50 pack of skeleton keys on Amazon. The most impactful marketing I’ve ever done because they could hold it and touch it, and they had to wear it to the, you know. Brilliant. There’s something to really be said for that. So I definitely appreciate the work that you guys are doing.

Molly Ruland:

So, before we go, we have to do our real or fake rounds because this is always a show stopper right here. So I’m gonna name some podcast names, and you can tell me if you think they’re real or fake. Alright. Number 1, Mail Matters, uncovering the secrets of post box power.

Chris Foster:

Postbox power? I don’t think that’s real.

Molly Ruland:

You’re right. It’s not.

Chris Foster:

That sub headline just didn’t make sense.

Molly Ruland:

No. It was an AI written headline. You can tell. I should’ve shortened it. I know next time. I’ll get you on the next. Alright. Next one is the postal hub podcast.

Chris Foster:

The Postal Hub podcast. I’m actually gonna say that’s fake because Postal Hub to me doesn’t make any sense if those are the posts so what am I right?

Molly Ruland:

Nope. It’s real.

Chris Foster:

Shai.

Molly Ruland:

Yes. I gotcha. Gotcha. But this is just an exercise in showing how ridiculous podcast names are is really what this

Chris Foster:

all about. Postal hub. See, that’s what’s so kooky for me because if it was like the postal carrier, the postal route, the postal delivery, but a postal hub means that mail goes into a hub and it doesn’t leave. What good is

Molly Ruland:

that? That’s probably what happened.

Chris Foster:

Sorry for the people at the postal hub. I apologize. This is the first time I’ve heard of it. No offense.

Molly Ruland:

You know, I don’t know if it’s still active, but it was a real podcast. Mhmm. Okay. Number 3, the postcardist podcast.

Chris Foster:

The postcardist?

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Like, postcardist. Postcardist.

Chris Foster:

I don’t think that’s real. It sounds too much like a magician. I’m a postcardist.

Molly Ruland:

It’s real. It’s real. Farf. Farf. I know. I know. Okay. Next one, sit stamp savvy or the stamp savvy podcast.

Chris Foster:

See, now you’ve lulled me into this sense of insecurity, Molly, and I don’t know if you’re tricking me. I’m gonna say again, that is not real.

Molly Ruland:

That is fake. You are correct. I have to work on myself, I have no poker face. I’m like, if you just look at me, you’ll know if I’m lying or not. It’s really if I’m turning redder than I normally am, I’m like, well, wasn’t it the same as this lie? Good. I’m not a liar. That’s just that’s the message.

Molly Ruland:

Okay. One more. The daily delivery, a direct mail podcast.

Chris Foster:

Yes. That’s real.

Molly Ruland:

It is real. You probably have heard of that one, have you?

Chris Foster:

I haven’t heard of it, but the reason that I think it’s real is that it’s, and again, no no offense to the postal hub. That’s actually very clear. It’s very simple. It is clear versus clever. Right? And, that was well done.

Molly Ruland:

Yeah. Much better than uncovering the secrets of post box power. That’s for sure. That was terrible. Since I read it, I was like Come

Chris Foster:

on, chat gpt. Come on.

Molly Ruland:

Take that back. Take that back. Listen to all my street cred on that one. Okay. And then I have one last wild card question, and this one’s just a little bit more fun. If you can have a 1 hour mentorship meeting with anybody, pastor, or present, leader, whatever, who would who would it be?

Chris Foster:

Great question. A 1 hour mentor meeting with anyone for real? Oh, it’s gotta be his holiness, the Dalai Lama, without a doubt. Oh. Tens of Gayatso, without a doubt. An hour with him? Come on.

Molly Ruland:

Be a new enlightened being after that.

Chris Foster:

I got to see him, years ago years years years ago. We did a talk in UCLA, and we drove up and saw him and the dude’s aura. Yeah. And I’m not, I’m not that evolved to see Aura, but I’m a human being. That guy freaking glowed. I can get an hour with him. I would absolutely take an hour with him.

Molly Ruland:

I love that. That’s a great answer. You never know what people will answer that one with. You know? You get all kinds of answers. But well, Chris, this has been a really great conversation. I’ve really enjoyed hanging out with you. You’re a lovely human. I look forward to staying connected with you, and, you know, I think, anybody who’s listening to this, I hope you found some value.

Molly Ruland:

I know I did. I’m definitely gonna be scheduling a meeting with Chris because, if you’re not watching your website analytics, you should be. If you’re not, ask your web developer to install Google Tag Manager and Google Site Kit on your website so you can see your analytics. They’re wildly important, and I’m willing to bet if you look at them you will see an opportunity where modern postcards could really increase your odds of closing some deals by retargeting those people. I think that’s probably the smartest thing I have heard in a really long time. So, but well, thank Chris.

Chris Foster:

Thank you, Molly, and I really appreciate spending this time with you. I love what you’re doing, and I love the fact that you are in a help first mentality, with businesses to help them get better. I think it’s fantastic. And for folks, one last pitch, modern postcard.com. Find me on LinkedIn, as well. Chris Foster San Diego, and we would love to help your business. And, Molly, once again, you’re an absolute star, and I love this conversation.

Molly Ruland:

Thank you. I did too. This is the best part about doing this podcast is I get to meet all these really cool people. We’re really smart and good at marketing. So I’m like, well, this is a great way to spend an hour. That’s for sure. So

Chris Foster:

Absolutely.

Molly Ruland:

Thank you so much, and, yes, thank you for tuning in to Cam Content. All of Chris’s links and everything are in the show notes below. And so if you like the content, like, share it, like it, comment, you know, do all the things. More importantly, share it with a friend if you found it valuable, and schedule a discovery call with Chris. Let’s get some direct mail going, and then and then let me know how it went later so we can both cheer you on. Until then, thank you all for tuning in. Be excellent to each other, and I will see you on the Internet. Thank you.

Molly Ruland:

Alright. Alright. Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Camp Content. This is Molly.

Chris Foster:

And this is Matt.

Molly Ruland:

And we are Heartcast Media, AKA Camp Content, and we appreciate all of your support. If you found this content valuable, please comment on social media, LinkedIn, wherever you find us and we’ll make sure to comment back.

Chris Foster:

And be sure to go on and subscribe and like on your favorite platforms, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, you name it. Leave us that subscription. Leave us that good review.

Molly Ruland:

We’ll love you forever. So until next time. Be excellent to each other, and we’ll see you next week. Produced by Heart Cast Media.