Know Your Routeto the Summit.
Creating a lead generation program is like climbing a challenging big wall in Yosemite. Your success is more likely if you know a safe route to the top.
Frictionlesslead generation.
Direct mail, digital direct, list development, and social, run as one measured program by the operator who built them inside two finance companies he founded and two publicly traded ones.
Fig. 01
David Kord Murray
Founder, aerospace engineer, author of Borrowing Brilliance.
How Kord Direct works
Financial services only
Business and consumer financing. Loans, leases, credit, and financial software, sold rather than merely marketed.
Measured against a control
Every program is judged on funded volume, cost per acquisition, and credit quality against a hold-out group.
Start-up to public company
Direct Capital and Copperline built from zero. OnDeck and Intuit at scale, where the numbers get audited.
Track record at a glance
Years operating
Aerospace to fintech
Institutions served
Public co. & start-up
Variables that matter
List, offer, timing, piece
Languages in print
Borrowing Brilliance
A proventrack record.
Selling loans and leases. Selling financial software. Driving orders of magnitude improvement in funded volume and cost per acquisition, inside start-ups that were built and sold and inside publicly traded companies where the numbers get audited.
Measurement over guesswork
Guessing isexpensive. Measuringis not.
Direct marketing isthe lost art oflead generation.
Every program comes down to four variables. Get one wrong and the program fails, which is why most of them do. There is no fifth variable and no way around any of the four.
List
Seasoned databases built from multiple sources and compounded in value over time. In-house lists outperform prospecting every time.
Offer
A reason to act that is specific, credible, and worth the postage. Pre-qualification, savings, waived fees, a named account manager.
Timing
Capital needs are seasonal and event-driven. The same list and offer move by an order of magnitude on timing alone.
Piece
Personalized, brand-grade, frictionless to respond to. A QR code to a pre-populated application will beat a blank form.
Fig. 02. Specimen set. List, offer, timing, piece.
Every channel on one list and one offer.
List generation & preparation
Sourcing, hygiene, modeling, suppression, segmentation.
Direct mail
More powerful today than it has been in years.
Direct e-mail
Sequenced against the same list and offer logic.
Direct text
Short-cycle, high-intent, permission-forward.
Social media
Paid and organic reinforcement around the drop window.
Lead processing
Landing pages, in-funnel comms, routing, remarketing.
The products these programs sell.
What the work covers.
Direct Marketing Strategy
A holistic approach to database marketing: developing seasoned databases from multiple sources of data, then strategically building the value of that database over time through a comprehensive, multi-channel program.
Direct Mail
As AI floods every inbox and feed, consumers and businesses are buried in digital noise. A well-made physical piece has less competition for attention now than it has had in years.
List Development
In-house modeling, third-party overlays, and channel feeds treated as one asset. Paid-in-full, approved-never-funded, actives, and drop-offs each become their own campaign.
Digital Direct
E-mail, text, social, and landing pages held to the same discipline as the mail: one list, one offer, one measurable window, and a hold-out group to prove what worked.
David KordMurray.
Principal
An aerospace scientist who took engineering discipline into markets. The International Space Station, the MX Missile Program, and the Space Shuttle came first. Then two finance companies he founded, the Chief Innovation Officer seat at Intuit, and an online tax preparation company started before the category had a name.
Fig. 03. David Kord Murray. Aerospace engineer, founder, author.
Penguin Publishing, 2009
Wall Street Journal Bestseller
One of INC. Magazine's Best Business Books
Translated into 14 languages
Borrowing Brilliance
The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others.
Every new idea is built out of old ones. Murray traces that pattern through Gutenberg, Google, George Lucas and Steve Jobs, then turns it into a working method: define the problem, borrow from places that already solved a version of it, combine what you took, incubate, judge it honestly, and enhance it under pressure.
It is the same sequence behind the direct programs on this page. A control package is a borrowed structure, tested against numbers instead of opinion, and improved on a schedule. Business Week called it “an entertaining, easy-to-read romp through the history of innovation, plus a method that appears to actually work.”
Defining
Define the problem you're trying to solve.
Borrowing
Borrow ideas from places with a similar problem.
Combining
Connect and combine these borrowed ideas.
Incubating
Allow the combinations to incubate into a solution.
Judging
Identify the strength and weakness of the solution.
Enhancing
Eliminate weak points while enhancing strong ones.
Start at the topof the funnel.
An engagement starts with a study of the business model and an audit of current direct performance, then a strategy and a twelve-month testing roadmap. Send a note describing the product and the list you have.