Caddis Sees Major Retargeting + Retention Wins with Direct Mail

TLDR:

Caddis came to PostPilot looking for a new channel that could drive new and repeat revenue.
The team is using a wide array of direct mail tactics. They're dynamically retargeting anonymous site visitors and cart abandoners, and they're winning back one-time customers, customers with specific buying behaviors (e.g., purchased a particular product), and one-time holiday buyers.
They're seeing strong incremental ROAS across the board. Notably, they're running an automated abandoned cart retargeting campaign (targeting never-buyers) driving an incredible 15.3x incremental ROAS.

Background

Caddis is “a mission disguised as eyewear.” They keep it refreshingly real about aging, and they show that individuality, personality, and style aren’t just the realms of younger people. Needless to say, they’ve built a strong brand and loyal following around that mission—and their stunning glasses.

And like other highly successful brands, Caddis is always looking for new channels to reach and connect with their customers, especially in the face of tougher targeting and lower email engagement.

Enter: direct mail.

“We can quickly test and learn what’s working in direct mail—the same as with email. But we can’t always reach people through email.” -Becky Chambers, VP of Lifecycle + Retention @ Caddis

Tactics

**Driving First Purchases with Retargeting Postcards**

Targeting Anonymous Site Visitors

Brands in verticals with higher AOVs (like eyewear) often have many “window shoppers”—potential customers may visit the site a number of times before signing up for a list or purchasing.

In short: bigger purchases, longer consideration periods.

But until someone’s signed up for a list, brands are left to retarget them with Meta.

Unless you use direct mail, too.

Caddis has used SiteMatch^TM, PostPilot’s AI-enhanced retargeting system that dynamically sends mail to anonymous website visitors based on their likelihood to convert.

Bright promotional postcard from Caddis Eye Appliances featuring three glasses frames against a yellow background: D28 in Tabby, Wabi Sabi in Texas Tea, and Miklos in Heritage Green. Text reads 'The Frames Your Face Deserves' and offers a $25 savings. — *Postcard sent with SiteMatch*

SiteMatch automatically identifies, pools, and scores visitors most likely to convert through direct mail.

The payoff: another affordable, automated retargeting tactic that turns more window shoppers into first-time customers with stylish frames.

Dynamically Retargeting Cart Abandoners

Cart abandonment rates are high across the board, but they’re particularly high in the apparel/accessories vertical—over 70%.

While email flows should remain as a line of defense against Big Abandon, direct mail can serve as another line of defense for those thousands of customers who may sail past emails.

An automated, tangible, eye-catching second line of defense. Like this:

Postcard from Caddis Eye Appliances displaying three stylish frames: Miklos in Turtle, Hooper in Polished Gold, and Porgy Sun in Black Tort. Text offers 'Take 25% Off Your First Order.'

You can scroll past or miss an email, but you can’t ignore a postcard.

Caddis knows this.

It's why the team automated abandoned cart postcards with MailMatch^TM. (No address? No problem.) As soon as a potential customer goes through their abandoned cart email flow without purchasing, we’ll fire off a postcard to them.

“[Direct mail] is just like our always-on email flows we have, just through another channel.” -Becky

Keeping Customers Buying

Driving One-Time Buyers to Second Purchases

You know how it goes: customers purchase, they remain engaged with emails for a few months, and the engagement tapers off.

Caddis anticipates the decreased engagement by automating another guaranteed touchpoint:

As soon as one-time buyers hit a certain time threshold without repurchasing, they receive a physical reminder to own getting older with some new glasses.

Targeting Specific Buying Behaviors

“Most brands have a lot of really excellent customers who may have opted out of email or who aren’t engaging with it regularly. We wanted to leverage that audience we’ve built to drive specific actions using direct mail.” -Becky

We want to emphasize what Becky said here.

Most brands are sitting on a gold mine: their email list.

But when customers unsubscribe or stop opening emails, direct mail is the only owned channel that allows you to still reach them.

Knowing that, Caddis is dynamically sending postcards to unengaged/unsubscribed customers who haven’t purchased for a longer time, and they’re tailoring the offers to the customers’ purchase history.

Example: As soon as a customer hit the 365 day mark without buying a pair of sunglasses, they were automatically sent a postcard (featuring the extremely cool artist, Jim Olarte) as a reminder of what they’re missing out on.

Pro note: This serves as a winback prevention postcard (targeting customers who only purchased sunglasses a year ago) and as a cross-sell (targeting any customer who has not purchased sunglasses in the last year).

Holiday Winbacks: Bringing Back the Annual One-’n’-Doners

Every brand has tons of customers who pop in to buy over BFCM, looking for the deepest discounts possible, and then disappear.

Although some of them may repeat that behavior annually, many of them don’t.

Meaning you spent a ****ton of money to acquire them, often won’t recoup your margin, and likely won’t even be able to contact them (because they tend to be even less engaged with email and are more likely to unsubscribe).

So:

Send those one-’n’-doners a postcard instead, like Caddis.