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Why Direct Mail Still Works (And How To Do It Right) With Rick Rappe

Olga SvitelskaRick Rappe is the President and Owner of RPM Direct Marketing, a Seattle-based agency specializing in direct mail marketing services, including lead generation, acquisition, loyalty, and win-back programs. With over 30 years of experience in the industry, Rick has developed and managed some of the largest and most successful direct-marketing-driven sales channels in the country. Under his leadership, RPM delivers performance-driven direct mail programs tailored to clients’ unique goals.

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

  • [5:20] Rick Rappe explains RPM’s focus on scaling profitable direct mail campaigns
  • [8:14] Why cost per sale is the key metric in direct mail success
  • [9:47] The Rapid Performance Method to testing and optimization
  • [11:51] Common mistakes companies make when trying direct mail for the first time
  • [14:27] The critical role of offers and copy in driving campaign results
  • [16:42] How a mini catalog format dramatically outperformed traditional postcards
  • [21:13] Adding interactive design elements to boost engagement and response rates
  • [26:18] Stealth envelopes and the psychology of getting mail opened
  • [31:43] Comparing AI-driven predictive modeling versus human-built models

In this episode…

Direct mail often gets overlooked in today’s digital world, but it’s quietly powering some of the biggest marketing wins behind the scenes. While everyone’s chasing online clicks and social media impressions, there’s a different channel consistently driving actual sales. So, why does direct mail still work, and what’s the right way to use it?

According to Rick Rappe, a direct response marketing expert, direct mail works because it’s tangible, measurable, and scalable when done correctly. He highlights that success hinges on understanding key variables like cost per sale, audience segmentation, and offer structure. The impact? High-performing campaigns that often outperform digital in both engagement and ROI. Rick also stresses the value of rigorous testing, using his Rapid Performance Method to optimize everything from list targeting to format design. This strategic, data-driven approach transforms mailers from static promotions into dynamic sales engines.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Rick Rappe, President and Owner of RPM Direct Marketing, to discuss how to build direct mail campaigns that actually convert. They explore why the proper format matters more than flash, how to avoid the most common mistakes marketers make, and why testing beats guessing every time. Rick also gives advice on integrating AI into direct mail strategy.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

  • “We really believe in the power of direct mail. And we’ve stayed very focused on direct mail.”
  • “We can mail A, B, C, D, E, F, G versions all at the same time.”
  • “The offer is key. And then if you can have good creative on top of that.”
  • “There’s a lot of little things that can trip you up. I mean, there’s a lot.”
  • “When you’ve got the winning copy platform, the winning design, the winning format, the winning offer.”

Action Steps

  1. Test multiple direct mail formats simultaneously: Running A/B/C tests reveals which creative, offers, and formats generate the highest response and ROI.
  2. Focus on cost per sale as the primary metric: Measuring success this way combines performance with efficiency, helping guide budget allocation and campaign decisions.
  3. Avoid over-relying on postcard campaigns: Postcards may seem easy and cheap but often lack the impact needed for meaningful conversions.
  4. Prioritize compelling offers over flashy design: Even basic mailers can perform well if the offer is strong and aligned with the target audience.
  5. Use a scientific, data-driven approach: Relying on testing, tracking, and analytics ensures repeatable success and guards against costly marketing assumptions.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:03

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of inspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Rick Rappe. You can check him out at rpmdm.com that’s RPM and then the DM is direct marketing.com.

I’ll pull his website up in a second. But Rick, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. I geek out anyone who listens to me on direct response, marketing and agencies. This is a perfect combination. Agencies that will do direct response marketing for you. 

 So some of my favorites. Direct response marketing episodes I Jason Fladlien. Rapid Crush. She talked about mastering the art of webinars, which was was powerful. I had a panel, Rick of Brian Kurtz, Richard Armstrong, and John Carlton. 

 Brian really was second in command at boardroom, I think at its height was doing $150 million, sending lots of books and other things to people. I think he sent billions. I’m sure you have to billions and billions of things in the mail for people from a response. That was a really good episode. Also 2nd May they rest in peace episodes. 

 Joe Sugarman, who started Blue Blockers, do you know, have you have you you know, Joe know of Joe?

Rick Rappe: 01:42

I don’t know him, but I’ve definitely heard the name. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:45

He’s has one of my favorite books on copywriting of all time. I’m trying to get my daughter to read it, because I think direct marketing is like the foundation for almost everything. And so Joe Sugarman’s book, but he started Blue Blockers. Ron Popeil, you know who? If you listen to infomercials, kind of the king of infomercials.

But wait, there’s more. I believe he came up with that. So check all those out and many more in 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. We do that in two ways. One, we help companies launch and run a podcast or an easy button. So we do the strategy, accountability and full execution. So Rick, you knows we kind of are the magic elves that run in the background and make it look easy for the hosts. 

 They can create amazing relationships and amazing content. We also are an easy button for our company’s corporate gifting. So we make gifting and staying top of mind for clients and partners and prospects easy. And you know, if it’s staff members, we don’t do this at scale. Like Rick, this is like, okay, people have like a set group of partners if they have a set group of clients or a set group of staff that they really want to just show some love to, we will set up, you know, gifts that go out on a certain cadence so that people get some nice things in the mail. 

 We like to send food, actually, because I like to get food. So for me, you know, the number one thing in my life is relationships. I’m always looking at ways on how I can give to my best relationships. And I found no better way over the past decade to feature people in my podcast and send them delicious treats in the mail. Okay, so if you are thought about any of these things, go to rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com. 

Rick Rappe: 03:40

 I am. Super treats. I will definitely be your friend.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:42

You are going to get treats so just wait.

Rick Rappe: 03:45

Absolutely.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:47

I’m excited to introduce Rick Rappe. He’s a director, you know, direct response and direct marketing expert with over 30 years experience creating and managing some of the most successful direct mail campaigns. Sales channels in the country for companies like AT&T, DirecTV, LifeLock. And actually, we’ll talk a little bit about in 2007, he he said this, not me. He escaped the corporate world.

Okay. And we’ll talk about what that means. But Rick and the RPM team really believe it’s not even believe it’s true. Direct mail should work harder and cost less. And they deliver smarter, more profitable campaigns for their clients. 

 You know, I say this, Rick, even if you look at the top companies in the world, digital companies. Google. Right. Guess what they do. They customers, they send direct mail. 

 They send direct mail. I’ve gotten it like, hey, here’s 100. Now they own the channel. They could send free ads as much as they want, right? But they send direct mail. 

 I’ve gotten gift certificates. Hey, get $100 free if you start this ad campaign, right? Because it works. So, Rick, thanks for joining me.

Rick Rappe: 05:03

Well, thanks for having me. This is going to be fun.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:05

So let’s start off with I want to get inside your head on all things direct mail. What works, what doesn’t work. But just start off talking about RPM and what you do. And I’m going to just share your website as you’re talking.

Rick Rappe: 05:20

Oh, thanks. Yeah. We’re a small direct marketing agency. We’re highly focused on direct mail for companies that want to build profitable direct mail programs and scale them up into direct sales channels. You know, we come alongside their marketing team and provide expertise and resources and, you know, all the services that they need to build winning direct mail programs very quickly and efficiently.

So we really believe in the power of direct mail. And we’ve stayed very focused on direct mail. And that allows us to really be higher performing, I think, than a lot of other places where they can, you know, get direct mail done. One of the things that we’ve noticed is that there’s a lot of people out there in the world that will help you with your direct mail from, you know, the corner printer to ad agencies to, you know, everybody, everybody says, sure, we do direct mail. We just only do direct mail. 

 And that makes us more efficient and more successful at it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:26

We’ll get into the details because I love this conversation. It just for me gets the juices flowing on what can be done. Because I feel like at least the companies I talk to most are not utilizing anything in direct mail. I know you do this at scale with these large companies. You know, from home warranty to internet and cable to square to we mentioned a couple of the others.

What are some of the coolest things you’ve sent or seen sent. Throughout your 30 years, through some of the campaigns that you’ve run.

Rick Rappe: 06:59

Oh, boy. Some of the coolest things that have been sent. Well, it depends on how you define cool.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:06

I’ll let you define it.

Rick Rappe: 07:10

Well, I get excited by the results. And so usually we we define great results as, you know, a high response rate. But then it also has to have a good conversion rate. And we’re looking at ultimately the number of sales that we drive. But the the key metric that we often measure in direct mail is cost per sale.

So what that, you know, we’re obviously taking the cost of the mailing and dividing it by the results that we get. That’s the most important metric that we often look at. And the numbers that we we ask our clients, you know, what is a good cost per sale for you? Is it $100 per sale? And that becomes the target. 

 And then we try to beat that through testing. So okay, back to your question. What’s the coolest thing I’ve seen? So let’s go with that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:58

Let’s go with the coolest. The coolest. Let’s let’s define as like I was thinking different, but like the coolest for you is just a high response rate. So talk about some of the things that you have sent that have helped with the high response rate. And we’ll break it down.

Rick Rappe: 08:14

Yeah. Why that’s cool for me is I mean, we often are being challenged to prove that direct mail can be effective first of all. So that’s the first step where we have to crack the code. So we build, you know, big test structures. And we have a process we call the rapid performance method, which allows us to test lots of different things all at the same time.

And that becomes really powerful because obviously, you know, we have to make some assumptions and some best guesses, but we don’t want to put we don’t want to be guessing very long. We want to be data driven in our approach. So we put a bunch of ideas out. And the beautiful thing about direct mail is we can mail A, B, C, D, E, F, G versions all at the same time and read the results. And then we know, okay, we’ve got these winners and we can take the winners then and begin to scale the program up. 

 So we get really excited. I get super excited when the CEO of the company that we’re working for stops asking me, is direct mail going to work? And starts asking me how much direct mail can we do? That’s the shift that I like to see, and I get super jazzed. And I think that that’s super cool when they go, oh, this is actually working. 

 And we can we, we can repeat this and scale this. And it becomes very exciting because then we’re not talking about projects, we’re talking about a sales channel. And that’s a whole different story.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:43

Talk about the rapid performance method.

Rick Rappe: 09:47

Sure. Yeah. The rapid performance method was kind of developed over many years. And it’s it’s it’s an approach of testing offers creative ideas, formats as well as list segments and list targeting. Sometimes we different segmentation approaches.

So we put all of that together into a matrix and we send it out in tests. And then we’re using some you know obviously tracking and analytics on the back end to get a read on the performance of that program as quickly as possible so that we can leverage the learning and move forward into something that is very that is going to be predictable, going to be more proven, and then, you know, and then moving in that right direction. So it’s just a way to accelerate learning really. You know, too many people approach direct mail the wrong way. And that is like, hey, let’s try a postcard. 

 Card and they throw one postcard out in the mail and it doesn’t work. And then all of a sudden they’re like, well, direct mail doesn’t work. Well, that’s not right. You just didn’t do it correctly. So our approach is much more the proper way, the scientific way to find the needle in a haystack. 

 And it can be done very consistently if you do it the right way. And that’s why the rapid performance method was created.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:15

Let’s talk about mistakes. Right. You brought up one. Hey I’m just going to send like ten in the mail and it’s gonna I get the same thing with podcasts. Like I tried doing two podcasts.

It doesn’t work. I’m like, well, that’s not. Yeah, I agree. Right. And then we’re like, what’s the what’s your sales cycle? 

 Well it’s six months. Like okay, so you did you know. So the mistakes you’ve seen people just try it right. Then a very low amount in a postcard and they say it say doesn’t work. What other mistakes do you see people make?

Rick Rappe: 11:51

Yeah, the postcard approach is a mistake because there’s a time and a place for postcards, and they’re not the best solution for everything. So we see a lot of people do postcards because they’re super easy to execute and quick. So they’re and they’re they’re low cost. And you can do them kind of yourself at low volume. So we see a lot of people make that mistake.

And it’s like, well, postcards didn’t work. Well, that that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a solution that’s going to work for you and for your product. Sometimes we need a letter package and more real estate to tell a story and have multiple pieces that people can engage with rather than a postcard. So that’s one thing. You know, we just see a lot of people make the mistake of really not testing nearly enough. 

 They go with a list source. That sounds good. The problem with the list world is it’s kind of a black box, right? Like where? Okay, I’ve purchased a list. 

 The list? The description of the list sounds amazing. It’s got to be the best list. Well, that doesn’t necessarily hold true when the performance comes through. So you have to test and learn and measure up and be skeptical sometimes. 

 So that’s that’s another thing. I think there’s a lot of people out there who just think direct mail should be pretty easy. So they discount sort of the experience of working with somebody like myself who’s been testing and measuring things for 30 years, and they sort of think, how hard could it be? It’s just sending a piece of direct mail out like that. What’s difficult about that? 

 There’s a lot of little things that can trip you up. I mean, there’s a lot of problems that can. Really impact performance. We had a client that a long time ago that did a minor tweak to one of their winning direct mail programs, and like their call to action was like, just call now. and they changed like one letter to like you must call now and instead of just call now. 

 And that one letter like caused a major decline in performance. So there’s, there’s some little things that can trip people up. So I don’t know I’d like to encourage people to work with an expert since I am one.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 14:06

Yeah. Let me just recap that for a second. Here’s what I got out of it. Yeah, some things that trip people up are mistakes. They make one not having good copy.

And that includes like a bad offer, even like a good offer can be turned bad very easily. Sure. You know.

Rick Rappe: 14:27

Yes. I should have mentioned offer. You’re you’re absolutely right. Because offer is a huge driver of direct mail performance. And I like to say a great offer.

You can mail it with black ink on white paper and creative doesn’t really matter. It’ll it’ll perform. You know what I mean? The offer is is key. And then if you can have good creative on top of that, that will also help. 

 But it’s not the only thing. And a lot of times people make the mistake of getting really focused on creative or design, I should say maybe. And they discount offer and they discount copy and that’s that’s a mistake for sure.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:05

Yeah. And if the offer is terrible, it doesn’t matter in the end. Yeah.

Rick Rappe: 15:09

If the offer is terrible, you can mail something that looks amazing and is written by the best copywriter in the world, and it won’t perform. Exactly.

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