Episode Transcript
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Linda Fanaras (00:00):
Welcome to the
B2B Brand 180 podcast where we
will share new marketingstrategies and techniques to
grow your brand.
Today, I'm excited to introduceChris Rudegrop, and he is the co
founder and CEO of Sendoso, andit's a leading direct mail and
gifting platform.
Chris has more than 10, twodecades, sorry, I almost told
(00:23):
you said 10 decades of go to.
Market experience as a seller, asales leader and CEO.
So I'm super happy to have youhere today.
Chris, I'd love for you to sharea little bit more about you and
your company and we can take itfrom there.
Kris Rudeegraap (00:37):
Perfect.
Thanks for having me on Linda.
Absolutely.
I started to know.
So about eight years ago, priorto that, spent about a over a
decade in software sales myself.
And while I was in sales, Ireally saw that email was
becoming a bit more of a spammychannel and felt less personal.
So as a seller, I started towrite in handwritten notes and
sending them out.
I'd go grab swag from ourmarketing closet and pack up
(00:57):
boxes or I'd be on a call andhear a dog bark and send over a
dog toy to a prospect and it allworked really, really well.
It was just a nightmare totrack, to manually go to the
post office, to expense reporteverything.
And so I dreamed up of an all inone solution.
IE Sendozo that allowed salesteams, marketing teams, et
cetera, to all in one be able toexecute on direct mail and
(01:21):
gifting integrated into yourtech stack and software systems,
global fulfillment and justmaking it that much easier.
Linda Fanaras (01:28):
That sounds
awesome.
That sounds great.
So I'm sure I mean, I know somecompanies don't even use, you
know, direct mail platforms orgifting platforms at all, and
they may not even technicallyknow what they are exactly and
how it can help their business.
So can you share with theaudience?
Like maybe an example of how afirm may use your platform, how
it could really help themelevate their sales opportunity.
(01:49):
Yeah.
I'd love to chat a little bitabout that.
Kris Rudeegraap (01:51):
Yeah.
Some different use cases.
So, marketing might have a listof target accounts that are
trying to run demand genprograms on, and they might send
out a mailer in the mail,inviting them to connect.
Sales teams might be preppingfor a field event and wanting to
send something out, invitingsomeone to a conference.
Or field marketer might have awebinar coming up and they want
(02:11):
to try to convert people thatattended the webinar into
followup pipeline.
And so they might send a thankyou gift after that webinar or
an SDR might be booking a demoor a meeting with the prospect
and want to make sure thatperson shows up on the demo.
And so they send them a, a giftcard the morning of that demo.
So we like to think aboutourselves as like a.
(02:32):
Swiss army knife that you canuse for a lot of different
scenarios.
And so marketing and salesteams, customer success teams
will think about leaky bucketsor KPIs they're trying to
influence and then insert ingifting and direct mail instead
of maybe just an email thatwould have been used in the
past.
Linda Fanaras (02:51):
Yeah.
So can you talk a little bit onROI?
Do you have any case studiesthat you may be able to share on
maybe how a company has used thegifting platform, how it has
really helped them?
Because I think as asalesperson, as an example, they
get very busy doing their day today job, nevermind being able to
try to think about sending out agift card or even a thank you
(03:11):
note.
So having this automated orhaving this set up, Can you
share some insight on casestudies that could help our
audience really understand howvaluable it can be?
Kris Rudeegraap (03:22):
I'll talk to
this in kind of two ways.
One is there's the ROI of justbeing able to do more direct
mail and gifting at scale anddoing it through an outsourced
service like ourselves.
A lot of companies that might bealready listening, already doing
some mailers in house are like,Oh, I wish I could use this.
I pack boxes in my spare time orI know our sales team's expense
reporting thing.
So there's the ROI of us doingit more cost effective than you
(03:44):
could ever do it yourself.
Or we have the Costco economiesof scale.
So we can buy these gifts andthese mailers and postage way
cheaper than you can and passalong those costs.
But so those are, those are thebucket of people who are already
doing this manually.
If you're not doing it at alland you need to be convinced on
why to do it, We've got a lot ofgreat case studies on our
website.
A few that come to mind, youknow, gone they were sending out
(04:06):
these pinatas and they were ableto source over 33 million in a
pipeline from this campaign.
A gain site was sending out thisbook that the CEO wrote generate
about 6 million in pipeline.
And saw a 30 percent increase inclose one rates for deals in
pipe that they send this book toguru was sending out cupcakes
(04:27):
and that response rates by fiveX.
And then Burkata was sending outYeti mugs and they did the math
and solve for every dollar theyspent on Yeti mugs.
They generated 4 in ROI.
So a huge successful campaignthat's been running for years.
Linda Fanaras (04:42):
Awesome.
Awesome.
So how would a small companythat maybe doesn't have a large
budget engage in a platform likeyours or use the gifting
platform to help them?
Kris Rudeegraap (04:51):
it could be a
small company and just need to.
Execute as if you are a bigcompany and you still want to
use direct mail and gifting, butyou don't have to worry about
having the extra people in houseand staff to to pack the boxes,
do the supply chain.
So it's actually works evenbetter for small companies.
And we have starter plans thatmake sense for smaller companies
(05:11):
to get going.
And, you know, I don'tnecessarily advocate that you
need to go send someone an iPadto grab their attention as a
gift.
It could be as easy as a 5Starbucks gift card to say thank
you or to grab their attentionor Could be something a minimal
gift.
That's the creativity or thepersonalization.
You know, if you know, the dogbark example is a good example.
Or you can send a to dog toyfrom our platform for, you know,
(05:33):
sub$10 and with a personalhandwritten note that says, Hey,
you know, great chatting withyou, or here's for your dog that
barked during our call.
And you just yeah.
Build that personal rapport.
And I, you know, I, I, I tendto.
Believe in that people buy frompeople.
And so if you can build thatrapport, you're more likely to
close that deal.
Linda Fanaras (05:53):
So how do you
recommend B2B companies actually
integrated into their accountbased marketing strategy because
there are so many pieces to thatfor some of these larger
companies where you're targetingthese high value clients, what
would you recommend on astrategy
Kris Rudeegraap (06:08):
And just to,
for the listeners in the
audience that are like, Ooh,account based marketing.
What's that?
You know, I'll, I'll take aquick stab at that and then I'll
go into a little bit more intothe, the, the actual answer.
The way that I like to thinkabout a company's marketing or
ABM is it's spear phishingversus net phishing.
(06:29):
Marketing and sales are tryingto go after together.
They're aligning around andthey're running campaigns as
well as outreach to bookmeetings and close those deals.
Typically you also have a bitlarger of a buying committee in
these target accounts and you'refocused more on an account model
than just a lead model.
Right.
And so once you're running thatfor all those purposes, it's
(06:49):
useful to be more personalbecause you have a targeted list
and so you could run smallevents.
And target those accounts andsend a gift or a mailer inviting
someone to one of those smallerevents.
Or you could build customlanding pages on your site
targeting these ABM accounts.
And on that landing page couldbe a call to action to download
some content and also get a giftcard as part of that experience.
(07:13):
Furthermore, you might have asales rep and a sales
development rep or a businessdevelopment rep in a pod model
trying to outbound to one ofthese targeted accounts.
And both of those folks can usethe gifting and mailers to grab
the attention of these hightarget, high value potential
customers.
Linda Fanaras (07:29):
Right.
So you, you're obviously you'redoing a lot of personalization
with And you're really tying in,you know, maybe a want with the
potential customer that you'rereally targeting here.
So how does that compare withmaybe.
Just an overall direct marketingstrategy.
do they integrate it in theircurrent strategy?
(07:52):
Does it, does it replace theirexisting strategy?
Have you had any, do you haveany insight around that?
Kris Rudeegraap (07:58):
Yeah, I think
this is a complimentary to
existing marketing programs.
I think in today's world.
There's so much noise andthere's so much competition that
you have to use everyopportunity you can and every
touch point to get in front ofthat buyer and break through
that noise.
And so if you are just usingemail, but your competitors
using email and direct mail,then your competitor has a
(08:19):
higher likelihood of grabbingthat attention of that prospect.
So I'm a firm believer inleveraging as many channels as
you can.
Using email, using direct mail,using phone calls, using social,
using digital advertising, usingfield events.
Really, all the differentopportunities you can to try to
grab the attention becausethat's really today what you're
(08:42):
trying to do in sales andmarketing is grab the attention
of buyers, educate them on theproblem that you're solving and
then converting them intopipeline and customers.
Linda Fanaras (08:49):
Yeah.
So it's a multi touch point.
What would you recommend?
Have you ever had anybody cometo you?
That's maybe a super smallbusiness.
They'd like to give this a shot.
Have you had any success with,you know, sometimes we have
real.
You know, like starter companiesconsultants, so on, that may be
looking for strategies to helpthem actually grow.
And because you're personalized,it seems like there might have,
(09:10):
you know, may have some legs.
So I'd love you to talk a littlebit about that.
Kris Rudeegraap (09:14):
Yeah.
For, for small small businessesor small companies, you know, we
you know, we give you the toolsthat you can act as if you were
a super large company that has asourcing team that has a team
that's going to be packingboxes, a team that's going to
be.
Okay.
tracking things and procuringthings.
And you can get the same bulkdiscounts as you would as if
you're a large company becauseof our economies of scale.
(09:35):
And so I think it's it's greatfor small companies that want to
use our platform to, to gift outor to either prospects or even
engage their existing customersand reward them for being
clients.
Linda Fanaras (09:47):
Yeah.
So if I hear you correctly,basically, I think it's an
opportunity they could use thisas a one off or they can use it
as part of a larger integratedcampaign to, to drive
appointments or whatever thecase may be, connections, sales
speak about the emotionalconnection with, you know, gift
giving versus maybe a cold callor a, you know, email cadence or
(10:09):
something along that line.
So I'd love to get your insight.
Kris Rudeegraap (10:12):
I think there's
a bit of, there's a couple of
things that come into play here.
One is there's, there's apsychology of reciprocity.
I mean, getting something andyou feel more compelled to
respond.
And I think that in today'sworld, if you get a personalized
gift, you're thankful that theyspent the time sending you
something personalized.
And so you're more likely torespond to that.
(10:32):
So I think there's a, the kindof the law or psychology of
reciprocity.
The second thing is just thetangible nature of opening up a
box and the connection you haveto that physical.
Tangible asset.
And I think that's somethingthat is just also kind of a bit
of psychology too, of thatpeople are more compelled to
reply or engage with somethingthat is sitting on their desk or
(10:55):
sitting in their doorstep orsitting in a room.
Right.
The third thing I think is justthe fact that there's scarcity
and mm-hmm and you get, youknow, thousands of emails and
ads thrown at you every day, butyou only get a few of these
gifts or mailers.
And so because they're morescarce, you have more of a
reason to pay attention to'emmore often.
(11:15):
And so there's a bit ofemotional.
Connection to that as well.
Linda Fanaras (11:19):
So I guess my
final question to you is what
would you say the mostsurprising lesson is that you've
learned about customer behaviorthrough this?
You're, you know, your company'sjourney and how can these
businesses that are out thereactually leverage that expertise
and knowledge that you have.
Kris Rudeegraap (11:34):
I think one of
the most surprising things is
it's, it's the amount of ravingfans and raving customers you
can get from just sendingsomething simple.
It doesn't have to be expensive.
And people just.
Feel more feel more gratitudetowards you when you're sending
them something during the salescycle or as when they join you
as a customer and seeing all thesocial media posts from our
(11:56):
customers or the followup emailswhere someone said something
simple, it could be a box ofcookies but that timed right,
just really make someone's day.
I think you know, the surpriseand delight that gifting and
direct mail has can really makeor break a customer
relationship.
Linda Fanaras (12:11):
That's great.
Thanks, Chris.
I appreciate all your insight.
Well, I'd love for you to sharewith the audience how they can
get in touch with you, how theycan learn about your product and
any other information that you'dlike to share.
Kris Rudeegraap (12:21):
Yeah.
If you want to follow me orconnect with me on LinkedIn
search for me, add me.
We'd love to chat there.
If you have any personalquestions for me, you can email
me, it's Chris, K R I S atSendozo.
com.
Or if you're curious aboutSendozo, check out our website.
Linda Fanaras (12:35):
Awesome.
Thank you so much.