Kenneth Shark Kinney on Home Services Marketing: Beyond the Sea of Sameness

In the latest episode of Print to Pixel, Postalytics CEO Dennis Kelly sits down with marketing strategist and disruptive customer experience expert Kenneth “Shark” Kinney to explore how home services marketers can break out of the “sea of sameness” through strategic omnichannel integration. With nearly 30 years of brand, agency, and consulting experience, Kinney offers fresh insights on combining direct mail with digital channels to create campaigns that truly stand out.

Breaking Through the Home Services Marketing Monotony

The home services industry faces a critical challenge: marketing materials that blend together in a sea of sameness. As Kenneth Kinney points out, “Almost all of them look exactly the same. You rip the logo off; it’s the same stock imagery.”

This uniformity creates a prime opportunity for innovative marketers to stand out—not through louder messaging or bigger discounts, but through highly personalized, precisely timed direct mail that complements digital efforts. When competitors are all using identical approaches, the company that delivers the right message at the exact right moment creates an immediate competitive advantage.

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The Ingredient That’s Missing from Your Marketing Recipe

“Shark” Kinney frames omnichannel marketing with a powerful metaphor that resonates particularly well in the home services space: it’s like a recipe where each channel is a crucial ingredient.

“When you think about it from a recipe standpoint, if you think about an ingredient that’s missing from a dish…it’s often that maybe you didn’t put salt in there because you got to cut back on your sodium, but you can sure taste it on the back end,” explains Kinney.

This applies directly to home services companies that might be questioning the value of direct mail in their digital-heavy marketing mix. Removing that “ingredient” might seem cost-effective in the short term, but the overall campaign results will suffer.

For home services businesses—where trust, reliability, and local presence are paramount—a multisensory approach that includes physical mail creates a more complete customer experience than digital channels alone.

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The Acquisition Addiction Problem

One of the most compelling insights “Shark” Kinney shares is what he calls “an aquediction—an acquisition addiction problem.” Home services companies often obsess over lead volume while neglecting optimization on the backend.

“They are so interested only in lead volume,” Kenneth Kinney notes. “I can help them bring the leads. But if they don’t know how to optimize it on the backend, whether that’s responding to the phone call more quickly, integrating their postcard and digital campaigns together…they’re going to lose.”

This is particularly relevant for home services marketers who often spend heavily on acquisition but struggle with conversion rates and customer retention. The solution? A more holistic approach that aligns marketing channels with operational capabilities.

Direct Mail’s Unique Advantage in the Home Services Space

While many marketing channels get ignored in today’s noisy digital environment, direct mail offers a persistent presence that’s particularly valuable for home services brands:

“Once you’ve ignored the TV and the digital and the radio ads, you pick up a piece of direct mail sitting on your counter,” Kenneth Kinney explains. This physical reminder creates multiple opportunities for engagement that digital-only campaigns simply can’t match.

For home services companies—whose offerings are intimately connected to customers’ physical spaces—this tangible marketing channel creates a natural alignment with your services.

Timing Is Everything: Coordinating Your Marketing Channels

One of the most actionable insights from the podcast comes when Kelly describes how Postalytics customers are integrating direct mail delivery timing with their broader marketing operations:

“We have a lot of customers that are actually timing their call center staffing based on the delivery time of direct mail…emails can be delivered on the same day that somebody opens up a direct mail package.”

This level of coordination represents a significant opportunity for home services marketers who typically operate with smaller teams and tighter resources than enterprise companies. By knowing exactly when direct mail pieces will reach potential customers, you can prepare your team to respond to inquiries promptly, maximizing conversion opportunities.

Kenneth Kinney on Standing Out with the Von Restorff Effect

Kinney provides a powerful psychological principle that home services marketers can leverage immediately: the Von Restorff effect (or isolation effect).

“Think of a bunch of red apples and in the middle you’ve got a green apple. The green apple stands out,” explains Kinney.

In an industry where marketing materials often look indistinguishable from competitors’, this principle offers a clear path forward. Your direct mail doesn’t just need to convey information—it needs to be distinctive enough to command attention in a stack of mail.

From Traditional to Transformative: A New Approach for Home Services Marketing

The podcast highlights how direct mail has evolved from a traditional, standalone medium to an integrated, measurable component of modern marketing strategies. Kelly notes that Postalytics has “tapped into the post office’s internal barcode scanning system” to provide tracking data that integrates with CRM systems like HubSpot and Salesforce.

This capability transforms how home services marketers can use direct mail—from strategic campaign planning to tactical customer journey mapping. It’s no longer just about sending out postcards and hoping for calls; it’s about creating triggered, personalized physical touchpoints that complement your digital strategy.

The Bottom Line

For home services marketers and agencies serving the industry, the key takeaway is clear: direct mail isn’t just still relevant—it’s transformative when properly integrated with digital channels. By breaking away from industry templates, embracing tracking technologies, and coordinating your marketing efforts, you can create campaigns that not only stand out but deliver measurable results.

As “Shark” Kinney summarizes, “It’s not that hard to go from ordinary to extraordinary if you know how to think of it from a customer’s point of view, as opposed to just your own.”

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To learn more about how Postalytics is helping home services companies automate, track, and integrate direct mail into their marketing stacks, check out this article on personalization in Home Services or schedule a demo today.