Data-Mail

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00:02

Andy Mandell, Chairman of the Board:

My first job was at a company called

00:04

Dressograph Multigraph which was a

00:05

national company that sold addressing

00:07

systems back in the early '60s.

00:10

People used to maintain names on metal plates.

00:13

They would embosse a metal plate.

00:15

They would take these plates and put them into a machine,

00:17

there'd be a ribbon on it and paper and they would stamp it,

00:19

and they would actually address a catalog,

00:21

or an envelope, or whatever and that's how it all basically started.

00:25

Joyce Mandell, Executive Vice President:

So, in 1971 Andy and I founded Data-Mail

00:30

which at that time really was a letter shop.

00:32

And the story behind that was that Andy really was always entrepreneurial.

00:37

Andy:

I thought that maybe we would go into a service business

00:40

rather than selling someone equipment and machines,

00:42

and they to hire people, we could do it as a services

00:46

instead of spending $10,000 to $20,000 on equipment and having staffing.

00:49

Joyce:

Why would an insurance company want

00:51

to be in the mailing business?

00:52

Why wouldn't they sell more insurance

00:54

and have somebody do their mailing?

00:56

He always was thinking about, what do people need?

00:59

What's the niche?

01:00

And he felt that this would be a good one for us.

01:04

So we started off with some used equipment.

01:07

He had 1,000 square feet in Bristol, Connecticut

01:10

and we had a small desk and office in Hartford.

01:14

And we had one full-time employee and one part-time employee.

01:19

The full-time employee retired maybe three years ago.

01:23

His wife worked for us.

01:25

His son work for us.

01:26

And we have a lot of actually, interestingly enough,

01:29

family presence in our business.

01:32

Today we have both of our sons and our son-in-law

01:35

in business with us.

01:37

So it's truly a family business.

01:40

Andy:

I would never talk business at home,

01:42

we never discuss it.

01:43

The boys all did other things prior

01:45

to coming into the business for a number of years.

01:48

Mark Mandell, SVP for Finance and Technology:

My background was in strategic planning

01:50

and Data-Mail was starting to think about

01:52

what the next fifty years will look like.

01:54

I thought it would be really great time for me

01:55

to apply some of the skills I had picked up and

01:58

help the family company think about what

02:00

the next few years will look like.

02:01

Scott Braunstein, Senior Vice President:

Every one of us has a particular area that

02:04

we really focus most,

02:05

if not all of our energy on.

02:08

And there's a trust between each one of us.

02:11

Andy:

There aren't many companies like ourselves

02:12

in the business anymore.

02:14

I would say, years ago that 90% were family-owned.

02:17

Its kind of special that we can make quick decisions,

02:20

we all get along.

02:22

The hands-on approach is really the advantage

02:24

to the family-owned business.

02:26

Bruce Mandell, President:

We never have made a decision that

02:28

everyone was on board with, not one.

02:30

It happens because we did have great mentors

02:32

who set the right values,

02:34

gave us the right goals,

02:36

and allowed us to go out and do it.

02:38

And that's made us want to do the same

02:40

with people who work for us,

02:41

and maybe one day, with the next generation.

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00:04

Mark Mandell, SVP for Finance and Technology:

There's a lot of parts of the mailing industry

00:06

that don't seem all that interesting or futuristic

00:10

especially in the Internet age.

00:13

But it turns out that there's a lot of complexity in mail.

00:16

Scott Braunstein, Senior Vice President:

So many different facets that there's a very creative side

00:21

that goes to help in the execution of the art that we produce.

00:25

There's a lot of data driven technology

00:28

that we use, programming careers you can go into.

00:31

And of course the machinery in and of itself

00:34

is never going to go away.

00:35

Andy Mandell, Chairman of the Board:

That's been the growth,

00:36

it's been the computer,

00:37

it's been the equipment to process the mail

00:39

and it's been the printing of the data

00:41

and it's been in the personalization which is the largest areas that we deal with,

00:46

where we send an offer to someone

00:47

that really relates to their needs

00:48

rather than just a generic letter.

00:50

Bruce Mandell, President:

We were fortunate to get on that curve early,

00:53

in investing, data processing, and personalization equipment.

00:57

That was very important because it totally changed

00:59

the game terms of quantity of mail that you could get out timing.

01:03

Andy:

We process somewhere between five and six million pieces of mail a day,

01:07

those are envelopes,

01:08

stuffed envelopes with self mailers.

01:10

Now within that, we could have multiple pieces

01:12

so we could be processing twenty twenty-five million

01:15

pieces of printed matter a day through our facility,

01:18

and when you think about that,

01:19

it becomes complex.

01:21

Mark:

Taking a page out of the Data-Mail playbook which is,

01:24

if you can be innovative, and you can be creative,

01:27

and you can be an entrepreneur, go ahead and do that.

01:29

We develop some new products and services for our customers

01:32

and they caught on,

01:33

created a lot of value in a whole new industry

01:35

out there in mail tracking and address correction and postage optimization.

01:39

And so in the end we decided to spin off that

01:41

as a separate business so that we could focus our attention

01:43

on doing that for customers.

01:45

Early on we started working with the postal service

01:47

to help them think about how to enhance the value of the mail.

01:50

And one of the ways to do that

01:51

is through the barcode on the mail.

01:54

Barcodes can contain a tremendous amount of information.

01:56

And if you can use that information you can create

01:59

new kinds of products and services that never existed before.

02:03

Scott:

When I first got here there was no such thing

02:06

as being able to track the mail,

02:07

meaning do you know where the mail is

02:09

once we give it to a our logistics partner and off to the USPS.

02:14

That used to be a blind spot for clients and ourselves

02:17

as to where is the mail after you give it to them.

02:19

Mark:

And so by partnering with the postal service

02:21

we are able to create this new visibility into the mail,

02:25

not only where it is in the production cycle,

02:27

but once handed off to the postal service,

02:30

where is it in the postal service?

02:31

Has it been delivered?

02:33

Is it out for delivery?

02:34

Did it get returned?

02:35

And in that environment you can start to really create new value.

02:39

You can do things like trigger.

02:40

So if we see that that piece of mail

02:41

is out for delivery today we can take some kind of action.

02:44

We can trigger an outbound email that says,

02:46

hey we understand you got that offer today,

02:48

here's an additional 5 percent of if you go online.

02:51

Last year alone we tracked over four billion pieces of mail

02:53

through the postal service on behalf of our customers.

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00:01

Mark Mandell, SVP for Finance and Technology:

There's a lot to producing direct mail.

00:04

It can be extremely complex.

00:06

And being good at it and figuring out how

00:10

to support your customers in the best way

00:12

takes a lot of practice and a lot of

00:13

skill and a lot of effort.

00:15

And Data-Mail has built that business over the last 40 years.

00:18

Andy Mandell, Chairman of the Board:

I think it's honesty, its integrity,

00:20

being very supportive to the client,

00:21

giving them service,

00:23

I think is the thing that we sell.

00:25

It makes us successful.

00:28

Bruce Mandell, President:

For 45 years we've been able to continue

00:31

to grow this business and satisfy our clients.

00:33

And everyone here understands that we're

00:37

in business to satisfy our clients' needs.

00:40

Everyone gets that.

00:41

And when we do a great job of it,

00:43

we're able to continue to grow.

00:45

Joyce Mandell, Executive Vice President:

There's one most important thing of value

00:49

in our company and that is the employees.

00:51

You're going to buy new equipment,

00:55

update technology, but loyalty, commitment,

01:00

dedication, we really celebrate it.

01:03

Mark:

There's a lot of belief that the mail has no future.

01:07

We have the exact opposite view.

01:09

Andy:

There's always going to be mail.

01:11

There's always people who buy through the mail.

01:13

They're never gonna switch over 100% to some other kind of media.

01:16

So there's going to be a need for it

01:18

on a much more selective basis.

01:21

Scott Braunstein, Senior Vice President:

We'll be using different things to execute

01:24

our clients campaigns in a much quicker manner,

01:27

in a more data driven manner,

01:29

and a more one-on-one personalized manner.

01:32

Mark:

I'm really proud of the fact that

01:34

I grew up in the mailing industry.

01:36

I'm proud of what my parents did

01:37

to build Data-Mail.

01:38

I'm proud of what my family has done

01:40

to continue operations of Data-Mail

01:43

and create new businesses like Intelisent.

01:45

And I'm really excited about the future.

01:47

There's something very special about mail.

01:49

It's not going away, it's just changing.

01:52

Joyce:

We don't see an end to it.

01:53

We may change, we may grow,

01:54

technology will change, the efficiency will change,

01:57

but we think that there's going to be advertising,

02:00

print, television, radio,

02:03

and who knows what else is going to come along.

02:05

We'll be a part of it.

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