Integrating Direct Mail Into Your Marketing Mix

Digital ads, email, and SMS are, of course, fundamental for all ecomm brands.

But many of the fastest growing brands are now integrating direct mail into their marketing mix, too.

And they’re doing everything with it: customer acquisition, retargeting, and retention.

Let’s make an Olympic track and field event and discuss.

(We fired our head of content for that pun.)

Rising Above Digital Noise

Every customer’s inbox and social feed is flooded. You know it. We know it.

Even your best shoppers might miss your messages. In fact, on average only ~10% of your most valuable customers see your emails or texts. 

That means 90% aren’t hearing from you, leaving piles of potential revenue on the table. 

This is exactly why integrating direct mail matters. 

A well-timed postcard cuts through the digital clutter and grabs attention in a way an email or ad might not. It’s not replacing your Facebook and Google ads, nor your email and SMS programs–it’s amplifying them.

Consider the legendary Dr. Squatch. They realized they could do more than digital retargeting plus email and SMS. With direct mail.

And they began sending offers and product launches straight to mailboxes. 

The result? A massive incremental revenue boost from customers they couldn’t reach online. 

As their VP of Growth told us, “Direct mail has become a core channel.” 

By integrating direct mail into your marketing mix, you ensure your message lands in hands – not promotions folders or spam filters.

Finding New Customers (Without the Crazy CAC)

Customer acquisition costs on Meta are high. (“Yeah, great insight, PostPilot writer person.”)

And sometimes, they just sort of fluctuate whenever they feel like it.

Direct mail acquisition costs, though? The most predictable. 

How much does postage cost fluctuate? It doesn’t. Prices only rise from acts of Congress. It happens sporadically, but far from on a weekly (or hourly) basis. 

And with the right platform, you can build high-intent lookalikes of your VIP customers and track every order back to the campaign. 

It’s like running a Facebook ad, but with the tactile impact of a postcard. 

Integrating direct mail into your marketing mix for acquisition means you’re not limited to pricey clicks; you’ve got another way to get in front of the right people. 

(And often for less than the cost of a couple of ad clicks.)

Kindred Bravely has done just that:

PostPilot’s data team leveraged our proprietary lookalike builder, AcquisitionAI, to build the target list. It was made up of new and expecting mothers (also included a bunch of other targeting parameters). 

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In total, this prospecting postcard was sent to 27.4k potential customers. And it drove a strong 3.07x ROAS.

BTW… Sorry for that awkward keyword placement up there. Y’know. Search and stuff.

Retargeting the Ones That Got Away

Ever had shoppers join your email list or add to cart, then vanish? 

It’s frustrating.

It’s also a perfect case for direct mail retargeting. By integrating direct mail, you can give those warm leads a gentle nudge offline. 

Maybe they missed your email offer or ignored that Facebook ad, but a postcard at their door with a juicy discount can win them over.

The team at Toty (a suncare brand co-founded by Sofía Vergara) knows this well. Toty uses PostPilot’s MailMatch™ to send postcards to email subscribers who haven’t purchased yet, effectively saying, “Hey, we noticed you checking us out. Here’s 15% off to make it official.”

And those retargeting postcards? They see an average 5x+ ROI for toty. Pretty sweet for net-new customers.

But direct mail retargeting isn’t limited to email lists either. You can…

• Automate postcards for abandoned carts, just like an email flow. 
• Automate postcards for abandoned checkouts (also like an email flow).
• Target anonymous site visitors. No email? No number? No purchase? We can still send them mail with our proprietary pixel. 

Keeping Customers Coming Back for More

We all know acquiring a customer is just step one. 

The actual magic (and number one rule of business) is driving repeat sales. 

Retention is tough, though. Customers ignore your follow-up emails. Your SMS gets deleted. Thumbs scroll past your ads on the ‘gram. 

This is where integrating direct mail into your marketing mix truly shines: it gives you a tangible way to surprise and delight past customers and bring them back.

Consider GOOD AMERICAN, Khloé Kardashian’s denim and apparel brand. They started sending win-back postcards to lapsed shoppers and saw rapid results. These simple mailers—say, a “We Miss You, Here’s 20% Off Your Next Order” note—delivered an 8x+ ROI, driving about $1.40 in revenue per postcard sent​. 

(That’s nothing to sneeze at.)

Oh, and it works in the UK, too. Case (study) in point?

T.M. Lewin, a 126-year-old menswear retailer, uses postcards to win back customers and sees wicked strong ROIs on those campaigns:

• VIP Winbacks: Minimum 9x+ ROI (including 9.4x on customers who last purchased over a year ago)
• 2-3x Buyers: 4.9x–15x+ ROI
• 1x Buyers: 3.0x–11.5x ROI 

And these aren’t outliers.

They’re examples of what’s possible when integrating direct mail into your marketing mix with a focus on retention. Whether it’s a “come back and save” offer, a special preview of a new collection, or a heartfelt thank-you note, direct mail keeps your brand in customers’ hands (literally) and minds without feeling like just another promo email.

Seamless Integration & Easy Automation

Worried that adding direct mail will be a tech headache or require a whole new team? 

Don’t be. 

Modern direct mail platforms plug into your existing ecommerce stack so well that integrating direct mail into your marketing mix becomes a seamless experience. Your Shopify store, Klaviyo segments, Recharge subscriptions – they can all sync up ,so postcards go out exactly when they should, to exactly who they should. 

If you’ve already segmented your audience for email, those same segments can trigger postcard campaigns with minimal effort.

In fact, you can treat a direct mail campaign like any other automated flow in your marketing toolkit. Set it up once and let it run. HexClad’s team, for instance, routinely launches “set it and forget it” postcard automations triggered based on customer behavior (like a repeat purchase thank-you), creating a hands-off retention machine. 

Plus, because everything’s integrated, you get real-time tracking on results. A dashboard shows you orders, revenue, and ROI from your mailers as they roll in. No waiting weeks to see if it worked.

And to make things even easier, some services (like PostPilot) offer concierge support to handle design, segmentation, and strategy for you. 

When you have experts guiding you, launching direct mail is actually easier than adding a new ad platform. It’s literally fewer clicks than setting up a Facebook campaign, with far less uncertainty.

The Point (and we do have one)

Direct mail isn’t the old-school afterthought it used to be. 

It’s a power play for modern brands looking to unlock new acquisition, conversion, and retention, in tandem with digital channels. 

For the easiest channel launch of all time, reach out to us.