210 | Elevating Customer Experience to Extend Lifetime Value with Mark Stern

Could your digital business benefit from more physical marketing? Mark Stern is reimagining direct mail with experiential boxes designed to set your customers up for success and extend lifetime value. 

Mark is a serial entrepreneur and founder of the Custom Box Agency, a design agency that specializes in optimizing the customer journey through direct mail. His innovative work caught the attention of Forbes, which featured him as one of the Next 1,000 Entrepreneurs redefining the American Dream. He was also highlighted in Joey Coleman's Wall Street Journal Bestseller, Never Lose an Employee Again.

Before embarking on his entrepreneurial path, Stern was a top-ranked strategy consultant at Deloitte Consulting, the world’s largest consulting firm. He is an MBA graduate from Duke University. Stern is also a six-time Spartan Trifecta holder and serves as a mentor at South by Southwest (SXSW), guiding up-and-coming startups. 

Connecting the Digital to the Physical

The idea for the Custom Box Agency was born out of Mark’s experience buying online courses. After spending $2,000+ on a course, he was left to print out the workbook or go to the store to track down what he needed to get started. Oftentimes, he didn’t end up starting at all. He began to wonder how course creators could better set their students up for success–beyond simply sending swag with the company logo.

When Mark started shipping out his boxes, the idea immediately caught on. People shared unboxing videos and became unofficial ambassadors and salespeople for the business. In the first year, Custom Box Agency grew from zero to a million dollars in revenue, all through organic word-of-mouth.

The 3 Customer Journeys

One key aspect of Mark’s custom box business is tailoring the boxes to the customer journey. There are three different types of journeys throughout the customer lifecycle: acquisition, delivery, and retention. And within those journeys, there are multiple steps.

On the acquisition journey, prospects might discover you through social media, SEO, or in-person events. After someone finds you, you don’t necessarily want to pitch them right away–those are cold leads. So you might nurture them through case studies, demos, or free content to build more of a relationship with them. From there, you have to close them as a customer. What does the point of sale look like? 

After someone buys your product, you need to take them from onboarding to delivering the value you promised. Retention involves recognizing your clients. How do you celebrate them when they hit a milestone or introduce the next way that you can serve them? If someone goes through one journey, the question is, what's next? 

Enjoy this episode with Mark Stern…

Soundbytes

5:57-6:22
“If you have something digital, you need something physical to complement it. And now, in this day and age, where it's becoming even more relevant, is the rise of AI. We have so much digital content being pumped into the system. When we think about experience, design experiences seen through the senses, everything digital is only what you see and hear. A podcast is what you hear, YouTube is what you see and hear, and Facebook scrolling is what you see. I can activate the kinesthetic, touch, taste, and smell.”

13:28-13:42
“Recognition is huge. How do I celebrate you and see you when you hit a milestone or introduce the next way that I can serve you? So when we think about journey stacking, if people get through one journey, the question is, what's next? And that becomes the retention play. How do I extend the relationship and extend lifetime value?” 

25:32-25:57
“How are we thinking about the programs we're creating, and are we engineering a replayable story? And we should be. The example I tell course creators and coaches all the time is, have you ever played a song and then six months later, listened to the song again and it had a new meaning? Or have you ever watched a movie and then years later, watched it again and it was a completely different experience? That's because we evolve.” 

Quotes

“It started this idea of, if you have something digital, you need something physical to compliment it.”

“We went from zero to a million in the first year via word of mouth, just because we had a unique perspective on how can we truly set people up for success.”

“Swag means stuff without a goal. Stop sending people stuff. Truly engineer the things that they need to be set up for success.”

“People love getting surprises in the mail.” 

“As an entrepreneur, it's important that we hold a bigger vision for our people than they hold for themselves.” 

Links mentioned in this episode:

From Our Guest

Website: https://customboxagency.com/

Connect with Mark Stern on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marustern/

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