Kevin Price, Host of the Price of Business on Business Talk 1110 AM KTEK (on Bloomberg’s home in Houston) recently interviewed Joy Gendusa. Here’s that interview
About the interviewee
With only her innate marketing savvy and a great idea, Joy Gendusa started PostcardMania in 1998. When she started, she had no capital – her only assets being a computer and a phone – yet she created a marketing team that is now an industry juggernaut.
Using postcards as the only marketing medium to grow her company in its formative years (no capital investment!), Joy learned the ins and outs of the postcard marketing industry. Through extensive testing and tracking methods, she was able to isolate the key factors that ensure postcard marketing success. She not only tells her clients to promote consistently to their target market in order to increase their overall income, but she practices what she preaches. She mails out roughly 160,000 postcards every week to her prospects, and, by using the principles that she has mastered, she has grown her company into a $22-million corporation recognized in 2005 by Inc. Magazine as the one of the 500 fastest growing companies in the nation.
As PostcardMania experienced more and more success, growing continuously every year until 2009 (when we experience a short leveling-off), Joy recognized how it important it was to surround herself with the best people possible for key positions within the company. Early on, she decided it would be to her advantage not to hire based on experience — but to hire industrious young adults and give them a chance to prove themselves, even if they had little to no training or education. Almost all of these up-and-comers have now been molded into top-notch executives, with a President and CMO that are both under 35. In fact, all of her senior executives are under 40!
Because of her belief in others and her willingness to help so many, Joy has created a loyal team of employees at PostcardMania. Their ability to carry out PostcardMania’s purpose day in and day out has put her in a position to act solely as CEO and focus on big-picture sustainability and expansion. As a result, PostcardMania has evolved from a direct mail company into a full-service marketing firm and a Google partner, offering website development, pay per click management and their own new, Google-integrated product called Direct Mail 2.0.
With PostcardMania on track to earn $22million in 2013 alone, Joy has been able to invest in both the company and in herself, having recently installed an organic garden at her home stocked with healthy vegetables and fruits.
Health and fitness aren’t just a hobby for Joy. They’re a lifestyle, one that she’s chosen without looking back. She frequently bikes more than 20 miles on the weekends, attends CrossFit several times a week and is now eating clean — no gluten and 100% organic everything!
This is a new mission that Joy hopes to share with all of her family, friends and especially PostcardMania staff. Recent health-conscious corporate investments include:
A new, organic in-house café and barista to serve PCM employees
Office yoga and fitness classes during work hours
Men’s and women’s locker rooms on-site to accommodate midday workouts
“I’m just so happy for my own health,” Joy says. “I want to share it with my staff so that they can be healthier and happy too!”
Tell me about your firm (number of employees, location, type of companies you work with, etc.).
My company, PostcardMania, provides marketing services starting with direct mail postcards but including everything from pay per click to email to web design. We serve more than 63,169 clients from hundreds of different industries, and it takes more than 200 people to get it done. What sets us apart is that we track the results data from our campaigns, record and analyze it to discover successful actions and trends, which we pass on the our clients free of charge!
What type and size of companies do you have as clients?
All types, really – from big corporations to small businesses to one-man (or woman!) startups. Medical and legal professionals make up a sizable portion of our clientele, which is why I have rock-solid data to share with you!
What comes to mind when you see this topic?
The first thing that jumps into my head is Direct Mail 2.0. It’s a new marketing technology that combines direct mail with the power of Google follow-up. To make a long story short, Direct Mail 2.0 is a four-pronged integrated marketing system that:
– Tracks mail arrival dates so that you can prep appropriately
– Generates targeted leads with direct mail postcards
– Automatically follows up online with interested prospects who visit your website via Google’s powerful tracking tool
– Allows you to capture phone leads who called but didn’t leave a message, as well as analyze sales calls at any time for improvement.
We have seen amazing results from our medical and legal clients who have switched. Here’s an example of one dentist’s results (and this is not UNcommon):
What are the best practices when it comes to this issue?
The absolute most important thing (and nobody really likes to hear this) is that you MUST be consistent. When I see a client who is wishy-washy about their mailings, I know exactly how it is going to go: They’ll get a pretty good response to the first few and stop mailing. Maybe they just want to handle the volume before they start again, or maybe they think the results will continue without the mailings. Either way, it sets them on a collision course with uneven, stressful marketing results. If you are disciplined and stick to your mailing plan, you’ll eventually be able to predict how much income you’ll get from a mailing – and THAT’s where you want to be!
Contact information:
www.postcardmania.com
