Is Email Better Than Direct Mail?

Let's settle this up front: neither email nor direct mail is "better." 

They’re different. They each have their strengths. 

But when you combine them, they drive even better results for you.

Brands that treat email and direct mail as complementary (not competing) channels drive better customer relationships and bigger results.

Why It's Not About "Better"

Choosing between direct mail and email misses the point. They serve different purposes and excel in different situations.

Email is super fast and more affordable per send. It's ideal for more frequent, more time-sensitive communication. But it comes with challenges: crowded inboxes, spam filters, and unsubscribes.

Direct mail, on the other hand, can reach customers who email can't. Even unsubscribed customers still check their mailbox. Direct mail stands out in a way another email simply can't—it’s tactile, it lingers, and it often gets seen by multiple people in a household.

Used together, these channels amplify each other's impact and close the gaps that a single-channel strategy leaves open.

How to Blend Email and Direct Mail into Your Customer Journey

Thanks to programmatic direct mail platforms like PostPilot, blending direct mail into your existing email flows is ridiculously easy.

We natively integrate with your tech stack, including Klaviyo, so you can seamlessly integrate an email x direct mail (and SMS) strategy.

Instead of thinking of direct mail as a standalone "campaign," you can treat it just like another channel in your lifecycle marketing strategy.

Triggered postcards can be sent based on the same actions that trigger emails: new signups, abandoned carts, post-purchase milestones, and VIP customer engagement.

The result: a seamless customer experience that feels natural, timely, and personal, without adding heavy manual work.

Here are a few core areas where combining email and direct mail delivers real results:

Welcome Flows: Starting Strong

When a new subscriber signs up, most brands kick off an email welcome series. Smart. But adding a direct mail touch early in the customer journey can dramatically increase engagement.

Example: Red Land Cotton used PostPilot to send targeted welcome postcards to new customers, achieving a 9x ROAS by introducing their brand with a physical touchpoint. The postcards reinforced the brand’s story and values, helping to build trust and drive early conversions.

Tactic: Send a beautifully branded postcard a few days after signup for subscribers who haven't yet made a first purchase. It's a friendly, physical reminder that's hard to ignore.

Abandoned Cart Flows: Recovering Lost Revenue

Virtually all ecommerce marketers already use email to chase abandoned carts. It's cost-effective and automated.

But not everyone opens those emails. Some people miss them entirely. 

That’s where direct mail wins: a physical postcard with a visual reminder of the abandoned item(s) often gets the customer’s attention.

Example: Caddis leveraged direct mail to automatically re-engage cart abandoners, achieving an incredible 15.28x incremental ROAS on their campaign. By reaching beyond the inbox with a memorable postcard featuring abandoned products, they were able to capture revenue that email alone would have missed.

Tactic: Trigger a postcard to cart abandoners who don't open or click your email series. Show the products they left behind, and make it easy to complete the purchase.

Post-Purchase Flows: Building Loyalty

Post-purchase emails are standard. Order confirmations, shipping updates, review requests, "how to use" guides. They keep customers informed and engaged.

Direct mail fits here, too. A thank-you postcard or card with an additional discount can make customers feel recognized beyond the transactional noise of email. Plus, because recency is the single strongest predictor of subsequent purchases, an extra push after one purchase can drive another purchase.

Example: Country Life Natural Foods synced post-purchase postcards to be sent to customers who spent over $100 in their first orders, and it drove an incredible 13.6x ROAS. 

But (seriously) they kicked it up from a standard postcard. Check it out:

Tactic: Trigger a handwritten-style card after a first purchase to create a truly memorable opening experience with a brand. It’s personal. It's memorable. It’s not just another "Thanks for your order!" email. One brilliant thing that Mitchell does here is actualy suggest to keep this postcard near a fridge (which is a common thing we see happen with direct mail): the more a brand is in a home, the more customers are likely to purchase. 11/10 marketing.

You can also introduce another product category or a discount to be used in a subsequent purchase.

VIP Customer Engagement: Treating Your Best Customers Like Royalty

VIP customers deserve special treatment. They are your most loyal, highest-value buyers, and a little extra attention can turn them into lifelong advocates.

Example: Portland Leather Goods (a brand that’s driven an unbelievable 8 figures in revenue with direct mail alone) created their "Unicorn Whisperer" postcards to surprise and delight their best customers (the top of the top of the top customers in their incredible 7-tier loyalty program). These postcards drove recognition, connection, and making their most valuable customers feel seen and appreciated. The result? Deeper loyalty and even more repeat purchases.

Tactic: Set up a trigger to send a personalized VIP postcard once a customer crosses a high lifetime value threshold, or after a major purchase milestone. Think beyond discounts. Focus on gratitude, exclusivity, or early access to special products.

Why It Works: Different Strengths, Same Goal

Email and direct mail are built for different jobs, but they share the same mission: driving action.

• Email is instant, cost-effective, and easy to optimize. It's ideal for promotional blasts, cart reminders, product launches, and frequent customer touchpoints.
• Direct Mail is tactile, highly visible, and often sticks around much longer than an email. A well-designed postcard might sit on a kitchen counter or desk for days, serving as a repeated reminder of your brand. It’s excellent for brand storytelling, retention, high-ticket sales, and reaching customers who are otherwise unreachable online. Plus, as with email, you can hyper segment customers, A/B test, and more.

When you use both, you don't just double your chances. You multiply them. 

Some customers will respond to the immediacy of email. Others will feel a stronger connection when they hold a postcard in their hand. By covering both bases, you’re not leaving money on the table.

Direct mail and email are not redundant. They are reinforcing. They are stronger together.

1+1=3: The Real Power of Combining Email and Direct Mail (Proprietary Data!)

When you layer email and direct mail, you can drive outsized results. We proved it!

Our goal was to test the incremental benefit of email + direct mail vs. just email to a segment.

What we did: 

1. We looked at MailMatch^TM campaigns (i.e., direct mail campaigns sent to retarget email subscribers who haven’t purchased yet) with holdouts because those can tell us whether somebody received an email or an email + a postcard.

We can be fairly certain that almost everyone received emails.

2. We used incremental ROAS as the metric that determines whether there is a difference between email and email + postcard.

What we found: 

Based on a sample size of 544K postcards across 122 campaigns, on average (weighted by the size of the campaign), average incremental ROAS is 2.89x.

This is extraordinary initial data showing what we've thought all along: combining email & direct mail generated a ~3X incremental ROI compared to email alone.

The takeaway: Email and direct mail don't just reach different customers, they reinforce each other. Customers who see multiple touchpoints are more likely to engage, remember your brand, and ultimately, buy.

Running direct mail and email together isn't just smart. It's essential if you want to maximize your marketing investment and capture the revenue that single-channel strategies leave behind.

Combining Direct Mail and Email with PostPilot and Klaviyo

Making email and direct mail work together doesn’t have to be complicated. If you're using Klaviyo for email and PostPilot for direct mail, the integration is seamless.

You can trigger postcards based on the same behavior that powers your email flows: new signups, abandoned carts, post-purchase milestones, VIP upgrades, and more. No need to pull lists manually or guess at timing. Everything happens automatically.

The brands mentioned here, Red Land Cotton and Caddis, didn't have to overhaul their entire strategy. They simply added PostPilot to their existing Klaviyo flows and let the systems do the heavy lifting.

Want the easiest way to combine the power of email and direct mail? PostPilot and Klaviyo make it simple and wildly effective.

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P.S. Want to see more of what's possible with direct mail? Read about 31 other direct mail tactics.