The Home Service Expert Podcast
Why Direct Mail Still Dominates Home Service Marketing (Dan Harlacher)
23 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of direct mail in home service marketing?
All of the operational side of the business equation needs to align effectively with the marketing side of the equation. When we put it together, that's where we start to see the magic happen.
Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello.
Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299.
And you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com forward slash podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview.
All right, guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I got Dan Harlacher with ValPak. You know, a lot of clients been asking me, who do you use? How are you getting leads and what works? And I'll tell you, I've been with ValPak since the first day I got into business. My dad used it at his transmission shop in the 90s. I'm a big believer in mail. I just believe it still works.
He's an expert in marketing, branding, digital advertising. He's based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Dan is the owner of a Valpak franchise helping businesses grow through targeted advertising and marketing solutions.
With decades of expertise in direct marketing, Dan specializes in connecting brands with the right audiences through products like the iconic blue Valpak envelope, the Valpak digital network, digital push email, and customized residential services. in B2B solo mail campaigns.
Previously, Dan served as the vice president of network sales at Cox Target Media and held senior leadership roles at Advo, where he led regional sales strategy and operations throughout his career. Dan has focused on driving measurable growth, strengthening brand awareness, and delivering high-impact marketing solutions for local and national businesses alike.
Today's episodes, how Valpak evolved from an iconic blue envelope into a data-driven, omnichannel marketing engine, and why combining targeted direct mail with digital precision may be the most underutilized growth strategy for local businesses today. And Dan, let's kick some ass, man.
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Chapter 2: How has Valpak evolved its marketing strategies over the years?
So again, what we do is we look at the customer segmentation and the attribution of what the consumer and the customer looks like based on sold customer records. And when we look at that, we not only think about the where geography wise, but we also say, let's tap our creative services expertise and say, what is a 65 year old or a 52 year old or a 67 year old?
How are they going to engage in a print message? Versus maybe somebody that's in their mid 30s or 40s. It could be very different. So less is more headline message offer. I want one or two compelling offers that gets my attention. Don't have to be the cheapest. And we don't advocate that. But it needs to be a clean message with fonts the size that allow you to see without squinting.
And I'm going to grab my attention for longer than one or two seconds. Headline message offer. I'm in need. Now I'm engaging and I'm off to the next touch. Do you feel like, so the way it works is per zone is 10,000 homes. Do you think being hyper-localized, the cool thing about ValPak is you could, you know, this is not easy to do.
And I don't advise if you're not set up to do this, but you could change everything. each 10,000 to be a little bit more hyper localized. Like for example, if I was going to Sun City, there's special things for Sun City, like Sun City's best garage door repair or HVAC. How important is it to look like a local business? Yeah, I think it's very important. You want to have that hometown feel.
So at the very first point of that, it starts with a local call tracking number. We encourage the use of call tracking number because it holds us accountable and it definitely shows evidence that the program and the campaign is in full mode. When we show local area codes, as an example, the message is it looks and feels like it's a local business.
If I have certain parts of the region where, to your point, if I'm in Florida down here, I may want to show images of a Florida type home or house or window or roof or garage versus something that looks like it's in Alaska or up in New York. Right. So those are things we can all take into consideration here. when we finish out our data work.
And to the final point, we have the ability to version that out then. So included in our programs, included in our analysis, we're going to say, hey, listen, this creative look may work better in California than it does in Texas or Tennessee. Let's take advantage of the versioning capabilities that we have to localize that message more effectively.
You don't need to go neighborhood to neighborhood on versions, but in areas where you have a serviceable market or a branch and that branch is unique and it requires something that's specific to make it look local, absolutely look at localizing the version. And then part of the work that we do, we do A-B testing. We do that with your group. We've done that with many other customers.
So we'll try different offers. We will try different creative looks. And we can do the A-B testing to a point where we're able to measure that and say, did we or did we not see lift or difference, good or bad, in those different creative messages? What are businesses getting wrong about the way customer acquisition today? You know, I think I'll go back to the CRM and the use of data.
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Chapter 3: What are the biggest marketing mistakes local businesses make?
So here we've got an outstanding creative services team of about 10 people that work on best practice creative spec ads and designs for print and digital banners, right? So what we do is a combination of a couple of things. We constantly poll the audience. We're always asking consumers, What ads turn you off and what ads turn you on? And we look at that.
You mentioned earlier where you scan your eyes. We do eye retina scans. We look at all of that and we say when a consumer sees a print ad, which way did their eyeballs drift? What turned them on? Where did they stop? What are they reacting to in offers? We look at dollars off versus percent off versus free offers.
you'd be amazed at what we see and what insight we have within certain verticals under home services and certain verticals within home improvement.
We put all of that good thinking to work and create some spec ad templates for you to then say, here's what we think works based on our vertical experience of hundreds and hundreds of clients up against what thousands and thousands of consumers are telling us. I love that. And I think It doesn't cost anything, there's no obligations.
If to just sit down, hear what you guys have to say, see if it's a fit or not. Is that right? Correct. That's correct. Yeah. It usually starts that way. And one way or the other, you will walk away with some positive insights.
You know, the other thing we do with the market analysis and even with creative services, many of our clients will take those insights and learnings and revisit their digital strategy.
And so again, if you're not happy with your click campaign, if you're not happy with what your lead conversion is or the volume of leads, we find out sometimes you're running campaigns in areas that make no sense for you.
So the data and the work that we do could help you draw in and validate or confirm, am I running not just a print campaign, but all media campaigns in the right areas that align with my business and my audience? I want to just go through a speed round of about six or seven questions. How do you track ROI across both offline and online channels?
So what we'll do there is, again, most of our clients that share their CRM data with us, we take that information on whatever agreed upon terms are. If it's every 90 days, twice a year, at the end of the year, we look at that data. We look at the sales information. We validate that those dollars are matching back to homes that we either mail the print piece to or and or did a digital image to.
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Chapter 4: How can businesses effectively target homeowners for services?
I mean, I'm not sitting there. You just enter it in and you got these algorithms and this advanced AI systems that just spit out what to do next. So if you're confused, I think you guys should just call these guys. My job, I just, Dan, I get so many people that are like, my marketing is not working. And I think you guys could help them.
And I think you could give them the answers they need, but you gotta pay attention. The biggest advice I'd give before I give you the last note here is it's easy to blame advertising. It's harder to blame the cancellations and the non-bookings and the non-follow-ups and the no rehash team. And you're not doing anything to train your people.
And you don't have a brand that really stands out against the noise out there. And marketing gets blamed for a lot of stuff. And I think it's BS. And I don't think it's fair for a lot of companies out there. And by the way, not all marketing companies are created equal. In fact, probably 3% of them actually do a great job.
The PPC company, if you're paying 1500 bucks for SEO, you might as well kiss that money goodbye. Somebody in the Philippines at $2 an hour to do 10 things a month for you, you're never going to rank. A lot of companies, they put all this stuff into a package, and they're not really giving much of anything. But you guys do a fantastic job. I get... Fantastic results.
And the truth is, when I started meeting with you guys regularly and listening to what you recommended and pulling away zones and adding zones and adding the plus ones and doing everything, it got better and better and better. And I think we can continue to get better. So I appreciate the partnership. I'll give you the last thoughts. Yeah, appreciate the time.
I would say, you know, to your point on marketing, whether my marketing is working or not working, what we want to do is be more holistic about the conversation. And what I mean by that is, again, I said this before, all too often we find out that businesses are spending money on marketing in areas they don't service effectively. Yep.
And so if you don't know where I'm servicing and not servicing, where's my online and offline reputation the strongest? And does it align with where I can fulfill and run a lead in the ample amount of time? And then I've got people trained up then to take that lead, convert it, upsell it.
All of the operational side of the business equation needs to align effectively with the marketing side of the equation. And all too often, we don't put the two together and consider that. When we put it together, that's where we start to see the magic happen. Yep. Well, listen, you're crazy if you don't reach out. I think the most important thing is understand who your avatars are.
Understand where you're getting. I have zip codes where I'm getting five times the clientele and the ticket averages. And you guys have been very easy to point that out once I decided to share the data with you probably six years ago. So it's been a fun journey, my friend, and hopefully some people take action. So I appreciate you doing this today. We appreciate it. Thank you.
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