138 - What Winning Shops Know: Direct Mail Works Best with the Right Guidance
August 13, 2025 - 00:59:56

Show Summary:

Jimmy Lea hosts a conversation with Cameron Ritter from Upswell Marketing and shop owner Tom Grover of All Right Automotive & Diesel, focusing on the power of postcards as a marketing tool for auto repair shops. They explore how tangible, personalized mailers create strong connections, and how targeting the right customers, like diesel owners, can dramatically improve results. Tom shares his journey from running a busy shop with no formal marketing to achieving a 47-to-1 ROI through strategic campaigns. Cameron explains the difference between saturation and database mailings, the importance of penetration reports, and tracking returns through address matching and call tracking. Both emphasize the value of consistency, combining “push” (postcards) with “pull” (digital ads), and avoiding the stop-start trap with marketing. The discussion closes with Tom’s lessons learned on refining processes first, then using postcards to grow the right customer base.

 

Host(s):

Jimmy Lea, VP of Business Development

 

Guest(s):

Thomas Grover, Owner of All Right Auto Repair

Cameron Ritter, UpSwell Marketing

 

Episode Highlights:

[00:00:55 ] - Postcards remain effective because they’re tangible, personal, and can be highly targeted.

[00:05:12 ] - Tom shares his history in automotive and why he initially avoided marketing.

[00:10:40 ] - Targeting diesel owners boosted ARO and attracted the right type of customers.

[00:15:33 ] - Cameron explains saturation vs. database mailings and when to use each.

[00:20:48 ] - Penetration reports reveal where high-value customers are coming from.

[00:28:50 ] - Response to postcards can be immediate, but they often generate business months later.

[00:36:22 ] - Lost customer campaigns can re-engage clients after 6–12 months of inactivity.

[00:44:08 ] - Keeping postcard messaging simple avoids customer confusion and increases results.

[00:53:35 ] - Combining postcards with digital ads creates a more complete marketing strategy.

[00:59:20 ] - Consistency in marketing prevents the “cruise ship” slowdown effect.

 

In every business journey, there are defining moments or challenges that build resilience and milestones that fuel growth. We’d love to hear about yours! What lessons, breakthroughs, or pivotal experiences have shaped your path in the automotive industry?
Share your story with us at info@wearetheinstitute.com, and you might be featured in an upcoming episode.

 

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Episode Transcript Disclaimer

This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors. If you notice any inaccuracies, please contact us at marketing@wearetheinstitute.com.

 

Episode Transcript:

Jimmy Lea: Thank you everybody for joining. Glad you are here, my friends, as we have this conversation. Joining us today is Cameron from Upswell, formerly known as Lik Mail. You may know them from their postcard days, way back in the day. And Cameron is here with us representing the, uh, ever-present world, world of marketing and postcards.

Jimmy Lea: Cameron, thank you for joining us. How you doing, brother? Hey, I appreciate you guys having me. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, you know, the, the postcard industry is an industry that's never seen a downturn. Why is that? 

Cameron Ritter: I think in the consumer, when you're, when you're marketing to your consumers, right, you're always looking to give them good incentives to come into your shop, and so that's exactly what that does in a proactive way, and it's something that they can touch and feel.

Cameron Ritter: Right. Digital is something that they can just see, but really when you're sending a personalized direct mail piece, it's got their name on it, they it, it feels like them, right? We can really personalize those messages and tailor that to who we're marketing towards. So I think that's why it's never gonna go away 'cause it's so

Jimmy Lea: personal.

Jimmy Lea: Oh, it's so true, and postcards are awesome. I love postcards. I, I love postcards because they always get to the address that you have put on the postcard, whether or not that person lives there anymore, and I just moved recently. Right? You know that it gets there, it gets to that person, or it gets to that residence.

Jimmy Lea: Question for our audience. Have you ever had a client come into your shop with somebody else's postcard? Drop that in into the comments. Let me know if you have ever redeemed a coupon for a, a client or a client at your shop and the coupon was not addressed to 'em because the person had moved or maybe you had an old list.

Jimmy Lea: That, that's interesting. Cameron, thank you for being here, brother. I appreciate it. Absolutely. I appreciate the time. Uh, and joining us as well is Tom Grover. Tom from All right Auto Tom. How the heck are you, brother?

Tom Grover: Doing great. Great to be able to be with you today.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah. How's the weather up there in Boise?

Jimmy Lea: Well, you're in Emett outside of Boise.

Tom Grover: I think yesterday it was 102. Today's only supposed to be about a hundred, so not too bad.

Cameron Ritter: When you say only a hundred, it's hot.

Tom Grover: That is hot. That is

Jimmy Lea: hot. That is hot. I, I, I just moved from St. George, Utah to Northern Utah, and I'm, I'm delighted with these mornings where I wake up and it's 65 degrees outside, and the high today is 94.

Jimmy Lea: I don't know what it is today, but the other day it was a high of 94, and I thought, wow, that's great. I'm, I just, I think I'm gonna go outside and work all day. 94 degrees is, is not that hot when you grow up in Vegas. And 115 is your August. That's true in August. Uh, there's many nights. It does not get below a hundred degrees.

Jimmy Lea: I think there's a good three week stretch in August that that happens. Well, gentlemen. What's that, Tom?

Tom Grover: It's all stay in the air conditioning.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We do that too. We do that too. It's climate controlled. 72 degrees and gorgeous. So, Tom, uh, thanks for joining. I wanna get a little bit of a history before we start about, all right, automotive, how'd you get started?

Jimmy Lea: What, what brought you into the industry? Uh, and then let's jump into some marketing questions.

Tom Grover: You know, I actually started into the industry back when I was. A teenager, I had an uncle that had an auto repair shop. Uh, he always said that he wasn't a mechanic because a mechanic made a living fixing cars and he could never make a living.

Tom Grover: So I was introduced into a shop like that, um, back in teenage years. And uh, and I went from there into a dealership setting and some other things. Tried to get out of the automotive world. I actually turned down a full ride scholarship, uh, to Weaver State in the, uh, management program because I did not want to, uh, be in the automotive program.

Tom Grover: And, uh, I actually found myself going back to it because it was something that I knew and I knew I could make money. So I opened my own shop in, uh, 1997. Just a small one person shop. Well, I had, I had another employee for a little while. Um, and I had some injuries to my body that, uh, the doctors just said, you just can't keep doing this.

Tom Grover: You either gotta grow bigger or get out.

Jimmy Lea: And,

Tom Grover: and at the time, I, I got out and I went back and I finished my, uh, education, got my bachelor's degrees in business and, uh, HR management. Uh. I went into the financial world in, uh, 2007. Um, wrong time to jump into the financial world as the markets were crashing.

Tom Grover: And, and I, yeah, oh man, a couple of years and, uh, said, I'm going back to something I know I can make money in. And, uh, had great opportunity to, um. To open up this shop, uh, in Emmett in 2012. Um, and it's, it's big enough that I can grow and not be doing it myself. I mean, the first little bit, it was me doing everything myself, but I quickly grew it and, uh, have come a long way since that day.

Tom Grover: So I've been in the industry quite a while.

Jimmy Lea: Yeah, you have, and, and it sounds like a Phoenix story where you started with one that kind of died. You regrew, you rebirthed, and. Uh, after education, you had