For years, direct mail has been treated as yesterday's marketing channel.
Digital advertising is faster. Email is cheaper. Social media reaches millions of people. Search engines can put a business in front of customers at exactly the right moment.
So why would anyone still invest in physical mail?
According to Brad Kugler, the CEO behind Direct Mail 2.0, Who's Mailing What, and DM20.ai, the better question isn't whether direct mail is dead.
It's whether businesses are using direct mail the way it was used decades ago.
Kugler's approach combines direct mail with data, artificial intelligence, digital retargeting, real-time tracking, competitive intelligence, and analytics to create what he describes as a performance stack for direct mail advertising.
In Episode 36 of the Glovisor Podcast, Joe Abreu sits down with Kugler to explore why direct mail may have a renewed role in modern marketing—and why combining physical and digital marketing can create a stronger customer journey than relying on either channel alone.
Direct Mail Isn't Dead. It's Being Reinvented.
Kugler doesn't print or mail the campaigns himself.
Instead, his companies provide technology designed to make direct mail more measurable, trackable, and connected to digital marketing.
He explains that his platforms add numerous technologies to direct mail campaigns, including real-time campaign reporting, digital targeting, website attribution, modeling, and competitive intelligence.
According to Kugler, the technology has been used across more than 2 billion pieces of mail and more than 80,000 campaigns for approximately 8,000 clients.
The concept is relatively simple: don't treat direct mail as an isolated piece of paper.
Treat it as one part of a larger marketing system.
Why One Direct Mail Piece Usually Isn't Enough
One of the biggest misconceptions about direct mail is that a company can send one postcard or letter and immediately know whether the strategy works.
Kugler strongly disagrees.
He explains that effective direct mail requires repetition. Sending a single mailing may create price shock because physical mail can cost significantly more than sending large volumes of email or running digital advertising.
But comparing the channels strictly on cost per impression can miss the larger issue: engagement.
Digital audiences are exposed to enormous volumes of advertising every day. Social feeds are filled with sponsored posts, display advertising, video advertisements, and promotional messages.
A physical piece of mail can provide a different type of interaction.
Kugler's recommendation is not to choose physical marketing instead of digital marketing.
It is to combine them.
The same message can appear in the mailbox and then continue onto the customer's digital devices, creating multiple opportunities for the prospect to recognize and engage with the brand.
The Power of Combining Direct Mail With Digital Marketing
This is where Kugler's approach becomes particularly interesting.
Instead of sending a piece of mail and hoping someone responds, his technology can extend the campaign digitally.
A recipient may receive the physical mail, then see the same marketing message through digital advertising on connected devices.
Kugler describes targeting the household and its devices with additional impressions, potentially including television, retargeting, and social media.
The objective is repetition.
A customer sees the message in the mailbox and then encounters the brand again digitally.
That creates a connected marketing experience rather than two unrelated campaigns.
Real-Time Tracking Changes Direct Mail
Traditional direct mail has often been difficult to measure.
A business sends thousands of pieces into the postal system and waits to see what happens.
Modern technology can change that.
Kugler's platform tracks when mail is delivered and can connect activity across channels.
That gives marketers information they can use while the campaign is happening rather than simply analyzing the results afterward.
For example, knowing when a campaign reaches customers can help a sales team prepare for incoming inquiries. A retailer can anticipate increased traffic. A service company can prepare its staff for new leads.
The physical campaign becomes something the business can actively manage rather than simply wait on.
Direct Mail Can Become a Measurable Customer Acquisition System
One of the biggest developments in modern direct mail is attribution.
If someone receives a mail piece and later visits a website, calls a business, sends a text, or responds through another channel, marketers want to understand whether the mail campaign contributed to that action.
Kugler describes technology that can resolve website traffic to an address and match it back to the mailing list.
The goal is to demonstrate attribution between the mailpiece and the resulting customer activity.
That matters because marketers need to understand not only how much they spent but what happened after they spent it.
The Three Platforms Behind the Strategy
Kugler describes three interconnected platforms, each addressing a different part of the direct mail marketing process.
Direct Mail 2.0
The original platform focuses on improving the execution and measurement of direct mail campaigns.
It incorporates technologies such as QR codes, text response, mail tracking, digital targeting, informed delivery, website attribution, and campaign analytics.
The goal is to extend the life of the physical mailpiece and connect it with digital engagement.
Who's Mailing What
The second platform focuses on competitive intelligence.
Instead of asking only, "What should I mail?" marketers can ask, "What are my competitors mailing?"
Who's Mailing What contains a long-running database of direct mail campaigns.
Marketers can examine trends, offers, industries, geographic activity, and the types of campaigns competitors are using.
The platform also incorporates a conversational interface that allows users to search the database using natural language.
That creates a potentially powerful research tool.
Instead of guessing what competitors are doing, marketers can study actual examples.
AI Can Help Predict Direct Mail Performance
The third platform takes the strategy another step.
Kugler describes an AI modeling engine built from campaign data gathered through his other platforms and databases.
Campaigns are categorized according to factors such as industry, geographic area, campaign size, creative characteristics, timing, and targeting.
The system analyzes elements of the creative—including headlines, calls to action, logos, images, and the balance between text and imagery—and compares a proposed campaign against historical benchmarks.
A marketer can upload a proposed campaign along with information about the audience, geography, timing, and mailing volume.
The system then estimates the campaign's potential engagement based on historical data and provides recommendations for improvement.
Kugler also describes feeding the data through multiple AI models, including ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, to generate additional recommendations.
Importantly, the model focuses on engagement rather than claiming to predict a universal return on investment.
That distinction matters because a campaign selling a $25 product and one selling a $100,000 product cannot be evaluated using the same revenue-based measurement.
AI Doesn't Replace Marketing Strategy
The interesting lesson isn't simply that AI can analyze direct mail.
It's that AI becomes more useful when it is connected to meaningful historical data.
A generic AI tool may be able to write a headline.
A specialized marketing model can potentially compare that headline and the rest of the campaign against historical campaign performance within a specific industry, market, and campaign size.
That creates a different type of intelligence.
The technology isn't simply generating content.
It is helping entrepreneurs make decisions.
Who Can Benefit From Modern Direct Mail?
Kugler's answer is broad: businesses that already use direct mail can potentially benefit from technology that improves the channel.
That includes local businesses, national companies, nonprofits, financial companies, real estate businesses, automotive companies, home-service companies, educational institutions, and many other industries.
The common factor isn't necessarily the industry.
It's whether direct mail is already part of the customer acquisition strategy.
If a business is already spending money to put its message into physical mailboxes, the question becomes whether technology can make that investment more measurable and effective.
Why Direct Mail May Be Making a Comeback
Kugler believes there is evidence that direct mail is increasing, although he describes the growth as being in the single digits.
He also points to what he sees as growing digital fatigue among younger consumers.
People have become accustomed to scrolling past advertisements.
Email inboxes are crowded.
Digital advertising is everywhere.
A physical piece of communication can therefore provide a different experience.
But Kugler doesn't advocate going backward.
His strategy is to combine physical and digital.
That may be the more important trend: not the replacement of digital marketing with direct mail, but the integration of the two.
The $25 Million Business That Collapsed
Perhaps the most powerful part of Kugler's story isn't about direct mail at all.
It's about disruption.
Before entering the direct mail technology business, Kugler operated a wholesale distribution company selling DVDs, CDs, and other physical media.
The business grew to approximately $25 million, with dozens of employees and a large warehouse operation.
Then technology changed the market.
The internet, e-commerce, streaming, and companies such as Netflix, Apple, and Amazon began transforming how consumers accessed media.
Kugler recognized that his business was being disrupted.
Revenue eventually fell from approximately $25 million to $3 million over three years. Margins were shrinking, employees were being laid off, real estate values were falling, and lenders were demanding repayment.
It was a dramatic lesson in what happens when an established business model becomes obsolete.
But Kugler didn't walk away from entrepreneurship.
He decided to become the disruptor instead of the disrupted.
From Disrupted Entrepreneur to Technology Entrepreneur
Kugler responded to the collapse of his previous business by studying.
He began reading MBA-level business material, joining technology groups, and learning about the technologies transforming business.
He realized that whatever he built next couldn't depend on a market that was vulnerable to the same kind of disruption.
When the opportunity to apply technology to direct mail emerged, he saw something different.
Instead of treating direct mail as an outdated industry, he saw an established marketing channel that could be improved with technology.
The original platform started with only a few technologies.
Over time, it evolved into a much broader technology stack.
Kugler also recognized that the data being generated by those campaigns had value.
That led to the acquisition of a major direct mail database and eventually to the development of AI-based products using historical campaign data.
The entrepreneur who had once been disrupted by technology was now using technology as the foundation of his next business.
The Lesson: Don't Be the Disrupted
Every industry eventually changes.
Technology changes customer expectations.
Consumer behavior changes.
Competitors introduce new business models.
Regulations change.
New platforms emerge.
The danger isn't simply that disruption happens.
The danger is refusing to acknowledge that it is happening.
Kugler's story demonstrates another possibility.
Instead of asking, "How do I protect my old business forever?" entrepreneurs can ask:
"What is changing?"
"What will customers want next?"
"What technology is creating new opportunities?"
"And how can I become part of the change?"
That mindset can apply to almost any industry.
Commercial Printers Have a New Opportunity
The episode also reveals an interesting opportunity for commercial printers.
Printers already have relationships with businesses that use direct mail.
But printing alone may not capture the full value of the marketing campaign.
Kugler's white-label model allows printers to license the technology and resell it to their customers under their own brand.
That gives the printer another product to sell without having to build the technology internally.
Instead of simply printing a customer's postcard, the printer can potentially provide tracking, digital marketing, analytics, and other technology-enabled services.
That changes the relationship from a transactional printing vendor into a broader marketing partner.
White Labeling Can Create Recurring Revenue
The white-label model also creates another important opportunity: recurring revenue.
Kugler gave an example of a printing company licensing the platform, adding its own markup, and reselling the technology as part of its customers' campaigns.
If those customers mail repeatedly, the printer can generate recurring revenue from the technology component of the relationship.
This is a powerful business-model lesson beyond printing.
A company that already has customers may not need to invent an entirely new business.
It may be able to add a technology-enabled service to an existing customer relationship.
The existing distribution channel becomes the advantage.
Technology Can Help Traditional Businesses Compete
One of the challenges facing traditional businesses is that customers increasingly expect digital capabilities.
A commercial printer may have years of experience with physical marketing but not necessarily have an internal digital marketing team.
Building that capability from scratch could require hiring employees, training staff, purchasing technology, and developing new processes.
A white-label technology partnership can provide another route.
The company can offer digital capabilities while relying on a technology partner for the underlying infrastructure.
Kugler explained that his company can even provide sales support to help the printer present the technology to customers.
The Entrepreneurial Lesson Is Bigger Than Direct Mail
The most valuable part of this conversation may not be about postcards, mail tracking, or AI.
It's about adaptation.
Kugler built one successful business in an industry that later changed dramatically.
He experienced a massive decline in revenue.
He faced financial pressure.
He had to rethink his career and business model.
And instead of treating the collapse as the end of his entrepreneurial career, he used the experience to create something new.
That is a very different definition of entrepreneurial resilience.
Keep Moving the Ball Down the Field
When Joe asks Kugler what single lesson he wants listeners to remember, his answer is personal.
Entrepreneurs will experience ups and downs.
They will face barriers.
Sometimes the situation will look bleak.
The temptation can be to pull back or stop.
Kugler's advice is to keep moving forward—even if progress is only one small step at a time.
He compares entrepreneurship to moving a football down the field.
You don't need to score a touchdown every time.
You don't need a home run every day.
You need to keep moving the ball.
Small increments can create major changes over a longer period of time.
That may be the most transferable lesson from the entire episode.
The Future May Belong to Businesses That Combine Old and New
The direct mail story offers a broader marketing lesson.
Businesses don't always have to choose between traditional marketing and digital marketing.
Sometimes the opportunity lies in combining them.
A physical mailpiece can create attention.
Digital retargeting can reinforce the message.
Real-time tracking can measure activity.
Competitive intelligence can improve strategy.
AI can analyze historical performance and suggest changes.
Together, those technologies can turn an old marketing channel into something much more sophisticated.
That is the real disruption.
Not replacing direct mail.
Reinventing it.
The Glovisor Takeaway
The biggest lesson from Brad Kugler's story is that disruption doesn't have to be the end of a business career.
It can be the beginning of the next one.
Kugler watched a $25 million business decline as technology transformed his industry. Instead of trying to preserve a business model that was disappearing, he studied the technology, learned from the experience, and eventually built a technology company designed to modernize another established industry.
For business owners, the takeaway is simple:
Don't wait until disruption forces you to change.
Watch your industry.
Study your customers.
Pay attention to emerging technology.
Look for outdated processes.
And ask how you can use technology to make something that already works work better.
Sometimes the biggest opportunity isn't creating an entirely new market.
It's taking something everyone thinks is outdated and reinventing it.
About Brad Kugler
Brad Kugler is an entrepreneur, technology innovator, and CEO associated with Direct Mail 2.0, Who's Mailing What, and DM20.ai.
His work focuses on combining direct mail with data, technology, digital targeting, competitive intelligence, analytics, and artificial intelligence to improve marketing performance.
His entrepreneurial journey also includes building a $25 million media distribution business before experiencing the disruption that transformed the industry. That experience ultimately influenced his decision to become a technology-driven disruptor rather than remain vulnerable to disruption.
Listen to Episode 36 of the Glovisor Podcast
Watch the full conversation with Brad Kugler to hear the story behind the reinvention of direct mail, the technology transforming physical marketing, and the entrepreneurial mindset that helped him rebuild after a massive business disruption.
The Glovisor Podcast features conversations with entrepreneurs, founders, leaders, and experts exploring business growth, communication, personal development, technology, marketing, and the strategies behind building better businesses.