[Top Agency Series] Unlocking the Power of Direct Mail With Justin Miller of Profit 911 Consulting

Justin Miller is the Founder and President of Profit 911 Consulting, an agency specializing in direct response marketing emphasizing modern mail strategies. He is a versatile entrepreneur, transitioning from offering live music and entertainment services to comedy hypnotism to marketing, ultimately settling on direct mail services. Justin has leveraged his experience across numerous industries to hone his marketing skills and drive results for clients. His expertise ranges from intricate client retention methods to scaling campaigns through direct mailing tactics.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [4:39] Justin Miller discusses how Profit 911 Consulting provides direct mail services
• [7:05] Justin shares his journey owning a DJ business and as a comedy hypnotist
• [14:03] The evolution of serving niches — from the DJ business to the digital agency world
• [19:09] Influential mentors and colleagues in Justin’s direct response marketing career
• [24:53] The pivotal moment that led to focusing exclusively on direct mail over digital services
• [27:04] How a campaign for tree services highlighted the effectiveness of direct mail
• [30:26] The multi-tiered direct mail strategy utilizing newsletters, referral campaigns, and direct outreach
• [35:32] The impact of clear call-to-actions and the surprising power of text messaging for home services campaigns
• [46:34] Justin emphasizes the importance of fostering a strong company culture

In this episode…

Have you ever opened your mailbox to find an unexpected item that instantly caught your attention? What if that simple piece could drastically increase a business’s leads and customer engagement? Can a seemingly old-school approach like direct mail outperform digital marketing tactics?

Marketing expert Justin Miller delves into his fascinating transition from operating live entertainment businesses to becoming an expert in direct-response marketing through direct mail. He shares tales from his past careers and the turning points that guided him to where he is today. From discussing newsletters’ effectiveness in patient retention for physical therapists to the unique strategy of selecting tree-rich neighborhoods for a tree service campaign, Justin dives deep into the specifics of what makes a direct mail campaign successful.

In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Justin Miller, Founder and President of Profit 911 Consulting, about leveraging direct mail in modern marketing. Justin discusses how Profit 911 Consulting provides direct mail services that get results for businesses, his journey owning a DJ business and as a comedy hypnotist, and Profit 911’s customer success stories.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Justin Miller on LinkedIn
• Profit 911 Consulting
• Jurassic Marketing: How to create a “big bang” in your business with modern direct mail! by Justin Miller and Brian Kurtz

Special Mention(s):

• Overdeliver: Build a Business for a Lifetime Playing the Long Game in Direct Response Marketing by Brian Kurtz
• Dave Dee on LinkedIn
• Brian Kurtz

Related episode(s):

• “The Intersection of Magic and Direct Response Marketing With Dave Dee” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Giver Series] How to Keep Your Best Customers And Build Lasting Business Relationships” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “What Inspires Brian Kurtz, VP at Boardroom Inc.?” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “Lessons and Reflections from Three Top Direct Response Marketers with Brian Kurtz, Richard Armstrong, and John Carlton” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Giver Series] The Power of Video Storytelling to Transform Your Business with Ian Garlic of StoryCrews” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “How to Set and Achieve Goals With Ian Garlic, Founder of Video Case Story” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Top Agency Series] Maximizing Agency Profitability With Greg Hickman of AltAgency” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “From Maxwell Street to Infomercials with Ron Popeil” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “Direct mail isn’t dead — it’s less saturated and delivers better results for our clients.”
• “It’s not about whether direct mail is extinct, it’s about leveraging it to open new doors for your business.”
• “Our job is to get eyeballs on your message — and in our case, it’s hitting physical mailboxes that makes the difference.”
• “At the end of the day, people actually save those shiny envelopes we send — it’s about making a memorable impression.”
• “A newsletter isn’t just a piece of mail; it’s a strategic tool for business retention and referrals.”

Action Steps:

1. Integrate print client newsletters into your marketing strategy: Regular newsletters cultivate loyalty, increase referrals, and provide cost-effective, repeated exposure to your client base.
2. Identify potential referral sources for your business and tailor campaigns towards them: Referral campaigns multiply the effect of direct mail by targeting individuals or entities capable of sending multiple leads to your business.
3. Embrace experimentation by testing different elements of your direct mail campaigns: Testing reveals insights about your audience’s preferences and behavior, refining your message for better effectiveness.
4. Consider Every Door Direct Mail for broad reach within a localized area: This USPS service offers a cost-effective way to deliver messages to every address in selected postal routes, ideal for geographically specific campaigns.
5. Invest time in selecting the right list for direct mail campaigns: Careful targeting ensures that your marketing efforts and funds are directed toward the most promising prospects, leading to better conversion rates.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:01

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr Jeremy Weisz.

Jeremy Weisz 0:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of inspiredinsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today, is no different. I have Justin Miller of Profit911.biz. And Justin, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes people should check out of the podcast. Since this is part of the top agency series and top direct response series. Some really good ones is Brian Kurtz. I actually had Brian Kurtz on maybe three times. That’s pretty rare, Justin but like, he’s a legend industry, actually, he has a forward to Justin’s book, luckily. So I got Justin’s book here. If you’re watching the video, you can see it, but it’s Jurassic Marketing: How To Create a Big Bang in Your Business with Modern Direct Mail and forward by Brian Kurtz. When I got it Justin, I’m like, oh, Brian Kurtz, the Forward, that’s awesome, but he’s got a couple amazing episodes. He sent billions, billions of direct response in the mail. And so check that out. I also did an episode with Ron Popeil. May he rest in peace? Ron Popeil, people know, is the king of infomercials, and if you’ve heard, but wait, there’s more, that’s Ron Popeil. And he had some amazing stories from his journey in direct response. From an agency standpoint, I had Ian Garlic on who runs Video Case Story, and he talks about how people can capture customer stories to help their business. And it’s interesting, there was some he comes from. His dad was an entrepreneur, Justin like his dad had dolphins in the restaurant, and so he just got the creative juices flowing. And he’s from Orlando, which is, to have any dolphin restaurant is strange, but they were actually in Wisconsin for that restaurant. So that makes it even stranger. I know you and I are in Illinois, so I know going in the winter,

Justin Miller 2:13

I mean, I’d put some dinosaurs in here, if they were alive still. I get it.

Jeremy Weisz 2:16

There you go. Yeah. So check that one out and more on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast. We’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast, and we do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So Justin, we call ourselves kind of the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy so the host can and the company can create amazing relationships and great content and focus on running their business. For me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships, and I found no better way, over the past decade, to profile the people and companies I most admire and share with the world what they’re working on. So if you’ve thought about podcasting, you should, if you have questions, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. I am excited to introduce Justin Miller. And kind of Justin, the question I know you always ask, and people ask is, is direct mail dead, right? And our dinosaurs extinct, I guess you’re bringing them back. But Justin’s the author of Jurassic Marketing, like I just said, it’s right here, and it resurrects dinosaurs of direct mail for business owners every single day. He went from DJ owner to running Profit 911, we’ll talk a little bit about the journey, but they serve businesses. They help businesses get more customers clients through direct response in the mail. That could be postcards, could be physical newsletters, it could be letters, it could be handwritten cards, it could be a number of ways. And Thank you Nick Luisi for introducing us at Sales Performance Team who does fractional sales management and outsource sales leadership. Nick, thanks for I mean, I’ve known Justin just through the ether, but now we formally were introduced from Nick. So Justin, thanks for joining me.

Justin Miller 4:22

Absolutely.

Jeremy Weisz 4:24

So just start off and talk about as many topics we could talk about, like you being a comedy hypnotist. Stand-up, comedy hypnotist. We won’t go there yet, but…

Justin Miller 4:28

Sum those all in as entertainer.

Jeremy Weisz 4:30

I mean, you’re gonna hypnotize if you wait till then, maybe you’ll hypnotize me on this Zoom. But talk about Profit 911 and what you do?

Justin Miller 4:39

Yeah, so Profit 911 is a marketing agency that happens to own a letter shop and direct mail shop. So you’re pulling up the website there. Now it’s all dinosaur-themed. But that doesn’t mean all our marketing is just the stuff for ourselves. Our job is to get eyeballs for your message and to open doors for you, much like you do on the podcasting here, Jeremy. Jeremy, ours is just offline, hitting physical mailboxes, and you kind of mentioned is direct mail extinct. And it’s funny, because when I’m at events and masterminds and networking, that’s the question, and it becomes quite a long discussion. So with the regular outside world, it doesn’t but with business owners, this is an anomaly when they hear that someone is not only succeeding with direct mail, but doing it for a lot of companies, most people just assume it’s dead or super expensive. But it’s funny, Profit 911 actually started as a digital agency, and we are no longer that. We are only direct mail now; couple of reasons. One is we were getting better results for our clients through the media of direct mail. And second, as a business owner, it’s less saturated than anything else. So it doesn’t take too many knocks to where we start realizing the universe is telling us to go that direction. So we are all in on direct mail. And millions of pieces every year go out from our facility right here in Illinois.

Jeremy Weisz 6:14

Justin, I love when people say direct mail is dead, just less competition. They’re not going to use things at work. And people say that. I mean, this is what you do, right? But, like, same thing with podcasts. Like, oh two, everyone has a podcast. My God, just don’t do one, see what happens. But if we look at it, you get a package in the mail, Amazon package. Are you going to open? Are you going to throw it out? Like, of course you’re going to open it like. So I just think it’s funny when people say direct mail is that, like, people are probably getting tons of direct mail that they’re opening every single day themselves. So on a high level, for a second, DJ, digital agency owner, I mean, I guess there was a comedy hypnotist in there somewhere. Was that pre-DJ?

Justin Miller 7:05

There was game show services, photo booths, entrepreneur since junior high, probably, luckily, I started crossing paths with marketers and direct response marketers pretty early, probably about the age of 16, when I’d been running the DJ business, and that happenstance encounter and curiosity served me well in my own businesses. So I learned a lot about marketing, and it allowed that company to grow, and it did pretty damn well for that industry. Ultimately, I sold it, my passion changed completely to just the marketing side and the business side of it anyway. So I had an opportune moment to get out, and I did, and we were already teaching within that industry. I was going to national conferences. We were duplicating what we had done in that business for others within that industry and then outside of that industry. So, there was actually a legitimate evolution there, not just they wake up one day and oh, I think I’m a marketing agency now, and the hypnotist as an aside, really quick, since you brought it up, that was also a curiosity. There’s some salesmanship and marketing lessons, which you could do a whole podcast about. But essentially, I was providing sound at an event we were hired for a hypnotist, and watched the gentleman who flew across the country come in, grab the microphone, talk for an hour, and I caught a glimpse of his check, and he was making five times what we did providing the sound. So again, I can follow the trail of success and find my way over there.

Jeremy Weisz 8:42

What’s a funny story on that when you were doing the hypnotist thing?

Justin Miller 8:47

Oh, so our specialty was high school lock-in events. So here in the Midwest, there’s like, a lot of after-prom events, like all night, they lock the kids in so they don’t go out and get drunk and smash cars and do each other. So that was my specialty. And I would drive 100 miles, do an hour show, tear down, drive another 100 miles, do another show, and be home at like 7 a.m. It was grueling, but it was fun. And one of the secrets of the hypnosis shows is having them look out of control, but not be out of control, is what the audience likes.

Jeremy Weisz 9:27

What was the craziest thing you had someone do?

Justin Miller 9:31

So my show was pretty safe and tame and low-key because I wanted to get hired back. So my job was to not overly embarrass people, but we had a couple of recurring skits. We’d have people pretend they’re driving their dream car and get pulled over by police. And that reaction was always interesting, and an excuse they’d come up with was interesting. We did elbow inspector. When a song played, someone would go out into the audience and start inspecting elbows. You never knew what you were going to get with that.

Jeremy Weisz 10:01

How did you learn the hypnosis part?

Justin Miller 10:03

So believe it or not, there was a direct response marketer selling how to do hypnosis to disc jockeys. Disc jockey. That’s like quite a niche. Well, that was one that he sold to, right? So Jeff Rodding was his name, and he’s also in the marketing circles and own Stealth Seminar. But yeah, he sold to disc jockeys because there was a pool of entertainers that had some of that skill set. And you fill in the blanks, and they could learn it. Flew out to Vegas, learned that bought all his products. A lot of them were business-oriented, not necessarily hypnosis oriented, and that’s how I learned it. I went and watched a lot of shows I took and did it? But was it hard to learn? No, not necessarily, but it was stressful. So from a performance standpoint, that was probably the most stressful hour of anything I’ve done. Why? Yeah, we did disc jockey events, I did game shows, all kinds of stuff. But hypnosis is 100% dependent on audience participation, so you never know what you’re going to walk into.

Jeremy Weisz 11:11

Are you looking for a certain personality type to actually get this question?

Justin Miller 11:15

We need high compliance, obviously. So it’s not about someone that’s going to come up and invent their own show and be funny. It’s about someone that’s going to come up and respond to your influence and exactly do what you say to do. So that’s what you’re looking for.

Jeremy Weisz 11:35

So what do you see like when you are looking at the crowd?

Justin Miller 11:36

Yeah, looking at the crowd, you just bring up more people for the initial part than you need, and you kick out as you go. So you’ll see often a hypnotist start with 15 chairs on stage, and go around and pick the audience. You can’t really make too many judgment calls on that. But when they’re in the chairs, and you’re doing what’s called the induction and all that stuff, that’s when we’re looking and observing and kicking out.

Jeremy Weisz 12:07

It’s really interesting, because I kind of parallel this just into client selection, actually, because, as you know, an agency owner, the better results people get. They listen to your expertise, right? And so it’s kind of similar, as far as…

Justin Miller 12:21

That’s list selection, right? Yeah. So it’s, who’s gonna respond to the message, who’s not. And in this case, it would be money put behind it. So if I’m gonna bother to put a letter in the mail and spend, I don’t know, $1 apiece, all said and done, I need a decent chance that person is going to respond, and how long do I give them to respond before I kick them out of my show? I’ve never thought of it that way. We can make another book now, Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz 12:48

Yeah, because I feel like, at least our clients, probably yours, there’s a high compliance, like they listen to what we say, because we know we’re doing the people who follow what we do and probably what you instruct like, I knew you’re like, don’t send one mailer. Send a series of mailers, right? And if someone’s like, no, Justin, I just want to send one, they’re not going to get the results. You’re going to get blamed.

Justin Miller 12:49

Yeah, we can spot better chance of success before someone ever mails. For sure. My account execs here can see that we can have two companies running a 90% similar campaign in different areas, and one is thrilled, and one says it flops, and we’re like, okay, and a lot of times that comes down to, you know, how committed they were, what they did with the lead afterwards, what they declared a lead. It’s interesting, yeah.

Jeremy Weisz 13:48

Because some stuff is out of your hands at that point. Like you help craft it, you send it out. But if they don’t have the proper systems in place to process that, then you got them 90% of the way, but maybe the client didn’t close.

Justin Miller 14:03

Yeah, our job is to open doors. So we deal primarily with professional service providers, various niches, accountants, doctors, dentists, attorneys, various specialties. So all we can do is open the door. We can’t do a 30-page sales letter that you respond to and buy for whatever dollar amount at the end. That’s not our specialty. Now, that is direct mail, and that is an entire industry, but it’s not where we play. So all we can do is open the door. We can cause the phone call, we can cause the web click, but after that, you’re right. Someone else has to pick it up and follow up and have a system in place. And Profit 911, originally started there and built those systems. We built multi-channel follow-up systems, and people still need those. And it’s never an either-or. It’s not like email versus mail, right? It’s both.

Jeremy Weisz 14:58

I want to talk about the evolution of niches that you served. And because, even back to your DJ days, right, you had this idea, and you eventually had niched to weddings, and because those pay a lot, right? And biggest bang for your buck in time. And so when you started the digital agency, walk me through, and I know now you serve a lot of professional services, PTs, chiropractors, dentists, accountants, whatever, when you first started the digital agency, walk me through some of the niches that you kind of maybe weeded out and how you came to now.

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