Paul Tedesco is the President of Track, an industry-leading data technology analytics agency focused on data-driven marketing for clients like McDonald’s, Kraft, Mercedes-Benz, and Samsung. With over 30 years of experience in marketing, Paul has been instrumental in the company’s growth, expanding Track from eight employees to over 90 and securing long-term relationships with high-profile clients. In addition to his work at Track, Paul teaches customer value creation and marketing analytics in the MBA program of the Degroote School of Business at McMaster University.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- [03:21] Paul Tedesco’s evolutionary role in the marketing world
- [08:25] The effectiveness of direct mail and how it can be utilized to reach and engage specific audiences
- [13:25] How targeted marketing campaigns can drive significant conversions and build lasting customer relationships
- [16:28] Paul’s career transition from sales to marketing
- [20:28] The importance of staff retention and how trust and respect can foster a positive company culture
- [22:47] Strategies for minimizing wasted communication and maximizing customer engagement
- [35:54] Leveraging first-party data for more efficient and relevant customer outreach in a cookie-less future
- [41:44] A look into Samsung’s SmartThings app and its relation to ADHD
In this episode…
Ever wondered how a marketing agency can remain relevant and innovative in today’s data-driven world? How do they balance the use of traditional methods like direct mail with cutting-edge digital strategies, and what lessons can be learned from the success stories of industry giants?
Paul Tedesco delves into how the proper use of analytics and personalized messaging can transform a brand’s relationship with its customers. He shares his journey from starting out in the sales world selling toilet paper to running marketing campaigns for giants like McDonald’s and Samsung. Paul reveals the significance of retention, both of customers and employees, and how it has become the cornerstone of success for Track.
In this episode of Inspired Insider Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Paul Tedesco, President of Track, to discuss leveraging data-driven actions for market impact. The discussion delves into the intricacies of customer value creation, the logistical shifts in marketing analytics, and the potential of tailored experiences that cater to personal habits and needs. Paul’s prowess as a seasoned marketer and educator shines through as he offers insightful takeaways that listeners can apply to their own marketing endeavors and personal growth.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Paul Tedesco on LinkedIn
- Track OMC
- Environics
- Rocky Mountaineer
- SmartThings
- Possibilities
- The Service Profit Chain by James L. Heskett
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition (The Covey Habits Series) by Stephen R. Covey
Special Mention(s):
Related episode(s):
- [SaaS Series] The Power of Data in Business Success With Jan Kestle of Environics Analytics on Inspired Insider Podcast
- [Top Agency Series] Hiring an Executive Team: Advice From Devon MacDonald of Cairns Oneil on Inspired Insider Podcast
- How to Author a Book for the Revenue, Respect, and Results You Deserve With Michelle Prince of Performance Publishing Group on Inspired Insider Podcast
- [Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech on Inspired Insider Podcast
Quotable Moments:
- “Retention is the key. If I can keep them and grow, then that’s the output.”
- “The goal, then, should be: ‘how do we take that value we deliver and build and get value back.’”
- “The principles haven’t changed. What’s changed is the technology and capabilities.”
- “Trust inspires trust. Loyalty inspires loyalty. Respect inspires respect.”
- “We give the trust from the beginning, and then we live our values.”
Action Steps:
- Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey to gain actionable techniques for personal and professional efficacy: This book has been fundamental for Paul in his career and daily life.
- Utilize your company’s transactional data to create highly personalized experiences for your customers: This approach is key in delivering value and fostering long-term relationships.
- Implement a loyalty program that rewards active engagement and repeat business while enabling customized offers: The success of such programs displays their power in enhancing customer satisfaction and retention.
- Focus on employee retention by fostering a work environment built on trust and respect: A stable and respected team can translate into more consistent and trusted client relationships.
- Leverage technology to make meaningful contributions to society: Responsible tech use can elevate quality of life and align brand values with social responsibility.
Sponsor for this episode
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy.
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:14
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 Paul Tedesco of Track, you can find him at Track OMC. And Paul, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. People can check out Jan Kestle. And Paul may say a few words about Jan Kestle. That was a great interview about the power of data and business and we’re gonna talk a little bit about that today as well. Also, Devon McDonald, will talk a little about Devon. And also Michelle Prince we were just talking about Paul has a book in him that will eventually come out. And maybe when you’re listening this it’s out. So I was talking about Michelle Prince and Performance Publishing. She makes it easy for people to do that. And it was a really good episode of, you know, some of her best tips and tricks. And you know, there’s another one that Kevin Hourigan was another good one. Paul, I know you’ve been in the agency space for a couple decades. But Kevin also started as an agency in 1995. So it’s interesting to hear his journey of the internet, the agency space and business in general, kind of the ups and downs. So that was a very interesting one, Kevin’s Spinutech. So check those out, and many more.
This episode is brought to you by Rise25, at Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you run your podcast or an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast. We do the strategy, the accountability and the full execution. So Paul, we’re kind of like the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the host and the company so they can run their company and develop amazing relationships and create amazing content at the same time. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking for 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 the thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, you can go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected].
And I’m excited to introduce Paul Tedesco. He’s President of Track and currently heads up the North American operations of Track DDB a leading data technology analytics agency, they focus on data driven marketing for clients, such as McDonald’s, Kraft, Mercedes Benz, Samsung, and many more. Paul’s spent over 30 years in marketing and focuses. This is what he focuses on using data technology and analytics to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time. In addition, Paul teaches customer value creation and marketing analytics at MBA program DeGroote School of Business, and he’s part of the MBA faculty. So Paul, thanks for joining me.
Paul Tedesco 3:13
Thanks, Jeremy. It’s great to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
Jeremy Weisz 3:16
So Jan, and Devon, just to speak for a second.
Paul Tedesco 3:21
Well, I feel I feel a great company being on your podcast when those two have both been on your podcast. So I’ll tell you that Jan Kestle is probably from a Canadian standpoint, she’s our pioneering voice. When it comes to using data, I would say there’s probably not a client we have that we don’t work closely with Environics, in fact, so closely that they’re two floors away from us in our building. And she mentioned Tony Lee when she was on your podcast, the late Tony Lee. And I would say that, for me personally, first of all, he’s probably the smartest man I’ve ever met. And personally a real inspiration to me on how you can use data and marketing and make it understandable and relatable for your average person. Because I think it’s still one of the challenges we have, right? We’re like lawyers, where we’ve created all these incredible sets of terminology.
And we’re gonna normalize it and bifurcate the data so that people you know, so we’ve created this nomenclature. Tony was always just amazing at getting right to the point, making it clear and making it easy, a true inspiration to me and we miss him. And then you mentioned Devon. Devon MacDonald, who has become a great friend, actually worked for me, I think probably 20 years ago. And by the way, at the beginning you said if I’m talking too fast, immediately just put up your hand and tell me to go slow. I have this incredible desire to get as much as in a minute as I possibly can.
Jeremy Weisz 4:48
Talk as fast as you want. I usually listen to things at three times the speed, so maybe I listened to two, so you’re good.
Paul Tedesco 4:55
You mentioned the very beginning you weren’t gonna date me and then you talked about over 30 years in this business, so you have dated me about 20 years ago, Devon, who comes from a consulting background, worked with me at a company called Kenna. And he was one of my kind of group account directors managing some business. And I have to tell you that not only is he just one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, and has become a great friend, but he’s also just, you know, I think I was mentioning, if there was one person and you said to me, one person, Paul, who worked for you, and you helped get a start, that you would feel totally comfortable working for now. It would be Devon MacDonald, one of the most amazing smart, ethical men, he’s got everything that it takes. So both of those sections of your podcast were incredible and I felt great company, just the fact that I’m here with them.
Jeremy Weisz 5:48
No, thanks for sharing that. And they did share some amazing stories and lessons there. Paul talks about Track and what you do, and if someone’s listening and listening there is a video part and we’re going to pull up the website.
Paul Tedesco 6:04
So Track on its OMC is actually not DDB but that’s okay. We’ve messed that up. Before you know Track was birthed by Stan Rap and Tom Collins it used to be part of Rapp. So it was a direct marketing company 13 years ago, when I started. We were a direct mail agency. And we have followed. And by the way, direct mails make and if you want to talk about it later, we can direct mail is making incredible
Jeremy Weisz 6:34
I love direct mail. Yeah, I actually, you know, spent almost a year having some of the top direct response marketers copywriters on the planet on so I geek out on direct mail.
Paul Tedesco 6:47
I mean, think about it. Sorry, I’m digressing. One. Second from Track, I’m going to talk about direct mail. But if you think about as marketers, the way we ruin every single opportunity, we get to have great relationships and mediums to talk to our, our customers on a direct mail is a prime example where we absolutely, you know, spammed people’s mailboxes to the point that it was just impossible to get a message through. And of course, that error is over. And now with incredible targeting and being able to do that we can be specific. Now imagine that we have an entire generation of people who don’t even know what mail is.
And now all of a sudden, we have an opportunity to give them a tangible tactical experience by providing them with something that they can get through through the mail. So I’m really excited about the future of direct mail. We’re never gonna have you know, one year I worked on MBNA at one point in time and in Canada with a population at the time of about 35 million people. I think we sent about 12 million households. I think we sent out 40 million direct mail pieces in Canada one year for MBNA unaddressed drops. And you know now, you can achieve the same results by sending out 20,000 Direct mails because they can be extremely targeted and highly done. Sorry, I digressed.
Jeremy Weisz 8:10
No, I actually have a question on that one from a direct mail. Are there any people that you respect that you consider kind of pioneers in direct mail or a favorite direct mail campaign at the time that we can learn from?
Paul Tedesco 8:25
Yeah, so my favorite direct mail of all time was done by Subaru was actually done by DDB. But it was done by Subaru. And I wish I had it in my office, I could have shown it to you. But what happened was it was one of those old ale airmail envelopes. I don’t know if you remember the blue and used to write inside them and then send them via email, airmail. And inside were a bunch of pictures. And the pictures were of the development of a new Subaru vehicle. And, and literally, it was like somebody was saying, I gotta get this message out there.
And I need to tell you about it. Because it’s so secret and so amazing. And I think it was one of my, my favorite direct mail pieces. I don’t know that most companies have made the leap from what direct mail has been in the past to what direct mail is in the future. But I know that one of my favorite pieces of direct mail that I hold up is actually a piece I got from Google, which really seems strange, because you know, Google being a digital based company is sending direct mail. And I love it.
Because, you know, obviously they’re looking at me as a potential influencer for advertising and search and all of those things. And they sent me this incredible direct mail piece that had a little premium in it. And again, it got my attention. It was very effective. I was already sold on the power of Google, so I probably didn’t necessarily need to get it but I’m talking about it. And, you know, Seth Godin would say, it must be remarkable because Paul’s making a remark about it.
Jeremy Weisz 10:09
Yeah, I mean, it is telling, right, Google pretty much owns a lot of the internet space. And there’s sending direct mail. I mean, same thing with Amazon. I mean, Amazon sends a bunch of direct mail they have on Facebook, too. But their offers are compelling. And, and it helps when you’re giving away free money, at least I’ve gotten those ones like, we’ll give you X amount of dollars to advertise. So their offer is compelling as well.
Paul Tedesco 10:39
We did day. Sorry, I’m going to take you totally off of what you asked me in the first place. But I’m going to keep going. We did a program. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the Rocky Mountains near. So the Rocky Mountain, here’s a train in Canada, and it’s got those cars that have, you know, the glass roofs. And basically, it costs, you know, the price of the most expensive cruise you could ever take. And they take you through the Rockies, basically from Jasper to Vancouver. And it’s about four days.
And they came to us at one point in time, this is probably seven or eight years ago now and said, we want to do a direct mail campaign, or sorry, we didn’t ask for a direct mail campaign, they came to us and said we need to effectively target Los Angeles. And their budget was six figures. So it wasn’t well under a million dollars. And it was kind of like, okay, you know, the largest, potentially one of the largest markets in the world. And you want to target it with what is the budget that potentially Spokane is your target. And they kind of said, What should we do?” Because we use the same data set that Environics uses. It’s called PRISM. And using that data set, we took existing customers of the Rocky Mountains or people who’ve gone on the Rocky Mountains nearby and we basically found neighborhoods, so by zip code, we created a neighborhood. And what we did is we took 80,000 households in Los Angeles, we sent 20,000 20,000 holdout groups, to 20,000. TV only.
So we did one of the very first campaigns where we did TV by zip code. We did direct mail, in 20,000. And we did TV and direct mail and 20,000. And TV and direct mail together resulted in almost 60% of the volume of people booking actual trips. And by the way, 100% of the trips booked from Los Angeles came from those 60,000 that received contact, and the combination of TV and direct mail, it’s tactical, and it stays in your hands and someone goes, I’d like to take this cruise, but maybe I’m not ready yet. Maybe I want to take it in two years, they put it in a file, they post it on the board, they put it in a cupboard, and they can come back to it. And that’s the power of direct mail that you can’t achieve on any digital ad or email.
Jeremy Weisz 13:15
I love how effective it was. Do you remember that direct mail piece? Or components of that in the TV? What was effective inside of like with the messaging and everything?
Paul Tedesco 13:30
Yeah, so we created, I think it was very aspirational. Obviously, you can imagine the target market, we got people who have some money, people who are a little older. And again, we didn’t do that purposely. We let the data drive us there. Because what we did is we looked at neighborhoods that had traveled on the rocky mountain here in Los Angeles. And using the data to actually model out lookalike neighborhoods is kind of how we found those so we found look alike neighborhoods from a demographic standpoint and interest standpoint, an income standpoint.
So all of those things, what was really effective for us, I think, is that we created a story in a 32nd spot, DDB created a story in a 32nd spot, and we as track then created kind of an extension of that story. So someone who had seen it on TV would get the direct mail and go, Oh my God, let me check that out. Oh, geez, look, this is how long it takes. And these are the amazing places it goes. And these are the hotels you’re gonna stay at. And these are all the things that are involved. So I think that the tie in between the two mediums, and even the timing of our delivery of the piece, made it really really effective.
Jeremy Weisz 14:44
Yeah, Paul, it’s interesting. So I had a mentor colleague friend Brian Kurtz on and he I think has sent out like over 2 billion pieces of direct mail in his lifetime and, and I remember him saying one time even Facebook did not invent look-alike audiences, just like you said you did. And look alike audiences based on you know what you were seeing in different zip codes. Right. So everything you’re saying that I love about it is kind of the groundwork and fundamentals for direct response marketing anywhere, whether you’re on Google, Facebook or anywhere online too.
Paul Tedesco 15:20
Yeah, I mean, the principles have changed what changes the technology and capabilities, right. I mean, I used to manage the dove candidate database, and it was 80,000 names. And now I’m really going to date myself because it was in a lotus 123. spreadsheet. And, literally, at that point in time, we would use demographic data similar to and I don’t remember Environics, at that point in time, they might have been there and doing it, or maybe it would have been our previous company who’s helping us. But we would actually take our own database and be able to segment it out using that data to understand kind of what the potential is, is this person potentially in a family can we love launched men to them? If they’re buying a woman’s product, you know, how does that work? And I think the basic principles haven’t changed. It’s just the incredible magnitude and exponential change in our capabilities that have allowed us to become really, really personal.
[Continue to Page 2]