On this week’s episode of The Engaging Marketeer, I’m going to talk about something I’ve not covered before, and it is not really something you would expect somebody in digital marketing to talk about because it has nothing to do with digital marketing whatsoever. In fact, it could not be further apart from digital marketing if you tried. It is about physical media and it is about sending things through the post.
When I first got a job back in the early 2000s at GAME, digital marketing was a relatively new thing. People were not buying from the internet as their first port of call. They would go to a physical shop, or they would phone up and order from a catalogue. They would have a physical catalogue, they would phone up, and they would place an order through the catalogue. When we first started, that catalogue was pretty much fifty fifty with the website. Phone orders were on a par with the website because that is the way people used to do business twenty five years ago. That is how they used to shop.
Then came digital television, and we thought people were going to buy stuff through their TV. That never really took off, because the internet completely skyrocketed and took everything out of the equation.
If you go back to the idea of physical media, the catalogue book, some of you listening to this may remember things like the Argos catalogue if you are from the UK. A big physical book full of loads of stuff that you would circle what you wanted. It was good to have something in your hand. Now we are in this digital world of websites and social media and apps and all that stuff, and quite frankly I am responsible for some of it. I will hold my hands up there. There has been a big loss in physical media and getting something physical in your hands.
People turn to email marketing as a source of getting in touch with people, and I do not know about you, but my email inbox, if I go away for two days and come back, there are usually about one hundred and fifty to two hundred emails in there. By and large, I ignore most of them. So if you are emailing me, please understand, I am not ignoring you. I am just ignoring all of it. Email marketing has lost a little bit of its sparkle, a little bit of its approach, because it is just oversaturated.
What I find is really effective right now is going back to what people were doing back in the early 2000s, or in the 90s and the 80s and the 70s, and that is physical media through the post. It is not something that many people do, which is why it works so well.
I sparked the idea for this particular podcast because I had a physical sit down one to one with somebody last week. I sat down with this chap, and I spoke to him for about an hour and a half, maybe two hours. We talked a lot and we had a great conversation about what he has done within his business, and I am going to get him as a future guest on this podcast. His name is Matt Bennett. Great guy, really interesting guy, and his story is phenomenal about how he had this business that lost millions and millions of pounds. I will not give you the story now. I will let him tell you that when he comes on as a guest on the podcast.
Just today, I received through the physical post, and if you are listening to this on iTunes, you are going to experience none of this marvel, I received this little parcel through the post. It said, especially for you, including a wink from the postman. I did not know what that was, and I thought, is that something a bit dodgy that I have ordered from one of those websites. Luckily, there is no one in the office right now, so I was able to open it without any fear of something popping out that I really did not want other people to see.
I need not have worried, because it was not something that I had ordered. It was, in fact, this parcel that I received. For those people listening, it is a lovely red box. Inside the red box, there is a blue chocolate bar with “Great to meet you”, and it has the logo for Nordstrom Advisory right in the middle, which is Matt’s business. He helps people with their business. He advises people on how to not make the same mistakes that he made. It is a lovely big, thick, chunky chocolate bar that I got through the post that I was not expecting that Matt sent.
I thought that is brilliant. That is lovely to get.
If more people did that, it would help you get remembered.
It would help build relationships. Because I am the kind of guy that I am, the first thing I did when I got this through the post and opened it was I took a photo of it, shared it on social media, and tagged him in, so other people see, this is Matt Bennett from Nordstrom, this is what he does. He has one to ones with people. He sends them chocolate bars. Fantastic. More people are going to want to have one to ones with Matt Bennett, I am sure, not just to get a chocolate bar, but to find out about him and his business.
Again, he is going to come on as a guest on the podcast later on, early in 2026. We will get him on and he will tell you all about that. But he has got that extra coverage from having a one to one that you would not normally get.
This is something that we do at Engage Web as well. We send physical stuff through the post. Whenever somebody becomes a client of Engage Web and they take on a website with Engage Web, one of our Fresh Start websites, which is £99 a month or £165 a month if you have unlimited updates, we do all of it for you. We do the design, we do the build, we write the content, we manage it, we update it. The whole thing is done for you and it is just a subscription model. You do not pay huge sums up front like you would with a normal web designer. Any time you want something changed, we handle it for you. That is what it is all about.
When we get a new client for that, we send them one of these. Again, if you are on iTunes and Spotify, you have no idea what I am doing right now. I am holding up one of our books that we wrote here at Engage Web called Engage and Grow: 97 Ways to Power Up Your Business. These are available on Amazon. They are very, very reasonable on Amazon right now. I do not know why Amazon has got them so cheap, but grab yourself a copy. It is a massive book. It is not one of these thin little pamphlet books. It is a huge thick book with ninety seven different tricks and tips for you to grow your business via digital marketing. It is also available on Kindle, by the way. You can get one of those if you buy on Amazon, or you can become a client of Engage Web and we send you one for free.
We do not tell you that we are going to send it to you. We just post it out. It is in our processes. When we have a new client, we take them on for a website, they have their meeting with the designer, with the editor, we do the design, we do the content for the website, they approve it, that then gets built, it goes live, and once the website is live for a couple of weeks, we send them a book. We send them a free book for them to learn about how they can grow their business without paying Engage Web any more money if they want to do it that way. Or of course, they can look in the book and go, wow, that is brilliant, can you help with that. Yes, we can. Because it is a business card for your business, and that is something that we do.
So what I am suggesting here with this excited podcast about getting free chocolate through the post, and thank you Matt for sending that through, what I am suggesting here for business owners listening to this is…
Have a think about your own business. What can you do?
What can you send to somebody that is a client of yours, or somebody that you have had a one to one with, or somebody that is a referral partner. What can you send through the post that makes them think of you, that thanks them for spending their time with you, or spending their money with you.
It is ideal if it is not alcohol, because remember not everybody drinks. Some people are actively against drinking for one reason or another. So it is advisable you do not do that. But pretty much everybody likes chocolate, and pretty much everybody likes a book, or an audiobook, or something of use for the office.
What could you send somebody without them paying for it, without them having a transaction for it. What could you send somebody as just a thank you. Something that is going to make them think about your business, make them think, oh, that is really nice, that was a really lovely thought, I am so glad that they thought of me and sent that through.
Even better, something that might be branded that they might want to post on social media. The other angle is, maybe if you really want to go for it, do not send them something branded with your business. Send them something branded with theirs, because that is going that extra mile. If you get something made up branded with their business and send it to them, that is incredible.
We had that a few years ago. Somebody sent us a Christmas decoration that was made up with all of the names of the people from Engage Web on it, and we have still got that now. It is in the office. It is hung up on the tree. I would pull it down and show it to you, but I get told off for dismantling the Christmas tree if I do that, so I will not do that. But it is a Christmas decoration made up with all of our names. What a fabulous gift that was. That was from one of our clients. We should be sending her gifts, not her sending us.
But that is the kind of clients we have got. Lovely, lovely people.
And if you are a client of ours and you have not sent us a gift yet, please, you know where we are. We do welcome everything.
So that is it for today. It was very quick. It was very ranty. It was very scattered, and I apologise for that. But have a think about what you can do to send your potential clients, your referral partners, people you have had a one to one with, something through the post. That is physical, lumpy mail, they call it, through the post, because that really grabs people’s attention, because so few businesses are doing it right now.
So many people are relying on email, or websites, or WhatsApp. Few people are actually sending physical, lumpy stuff through the post.
What can you send your potential clients, or your referral partners, or people you have had one to ones with, to thank them and make them think about you.
This has been The Engaging Marketeer. Thank you very much for listening, and I will grab you on the next podcast.
About your host:
Darren has worked within digital marketing since the last century, and was the first in-house web designer for video games retailer GAME in the UK, known as Electronics Boutique in the States. After co-founding his own agency, Engage Web, in 2009, Darren has worked with clients around the world, including Australia, Canada and the USA.
iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/engaging-marketeer/id1612454837
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrenjamieson/
Engaging Marketeer: https://engagingmarketeer.com
Engage Web: https://www.engageweb.co.uk
