Direct Mail Marketing: The Definitive Guide to High ROI [2024]

Diversifying revenue channels can be a challenging hurdle. We know this. 

And relying purely on Meta and Google ads can make you feel like your marketing strategy is out of your hands. 

But what else is left?

As a company, making your brand stand out and stick with customers can seem impossible in the giant pool of digital marketing tactics. 

The solution? 

Focus attention on direct mail marketing in 2024.

Isn’t direct mail just for boomers?

Isn't direct mail, well, “old school”? 

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No.

Direct mail works, no matter the generation

Debunking the myth that direct mail marketing only works for older generations is long overdue. Let’s break it down:

First, Gen-Z is constantly online and fed non-stop digital marketing. 

Direct marketing is an effective way to stand out for this generation, with 72% of Gen Z customers saying they are excited to discover what the mail brings daily. 

What about millennials? 

Well, this generation has lived through both traditional and digital forms of marketing, meaning that they value aspects of both. 

Millennials enjoy the traditional components of direct mail, incorporating digital technology, such as QR codes that link customers to company websites—so much so that 47% of millennials recorded visiting a brand’s website after receiving a direct mail campaign. 

Gen X values direct mail because it often offers practical value, such as sales coupons and educational content. 

With raising kids, home ownership, retirement savings, and aging parents top-of-mind, it’s no surprise that this generation values any way to save. 

Last but certainly not least, Boomers.

This generation loves receiving promotional deals via direct mail, with 96% of Boomers saying they value coupons. 

The key with these folks: Easy-to-read and straightforward communication that addresses their specific needs. Even better if a coupon gets tossed in the mix!

Alright, you get it, direct mail works for all age groups, but why does this matter?

Direct mail is modern, alive… and completely overlooked

Despite digital clutter in modern marketing, direct mail is an underrated and overlooked marketing tactic today. 

The 2020/21 USPS Generational Research Report shows that direct mail drives customer action to visit adjacent channels such as websites and social media. An average of 42% of consumers (across all age groups) visit a brand’s website after receiving direct mail.

The Report also states that direct mail has a higher impact than email. Compared to email, direct mail is more likely to be read across all age groups, with 71% of consumers recording excitement about receiving direct mail marketing. 

Think about it: email inboxes are cluttered more than ever. 

How often have you clicked DELETE on a promo email without opening it, even from a brand you love? 

(We’ll wait while you tally it up.)

Consumers are becoming increasingly blind to the bombardment of social media ads while costs continue to skyrocket. Meanwhile, direct mail marketing is the successful solution sitting right under everyone’s noses. 

What direct mail marketing can do for your brand

Your know the common saying: 

“Direct Mail is the most beautiful and highest-converting art form available to eCommerce brands.”

- Michelangelo, probably (the artist, not the Ninja Turtle). 

Think about it…

Your message is literally staring your customer in the face. 

There’s no spam folder, unsubscribe button, promotions filter, envelope to open, or channel to change. It’s just a shopper and your beautifully designed mail in a stack of boring government letters. And the best part—direct mail comes in many forms: handwritten cards, catalogs, Cardalogs^TM, and shared mailers.

Plus, your customers actually want to read mail from you.

Really.

According to a USPS survey and as reported by Shopify, 75% of respondents said that getting mail makes them feel special. In contrast, 37% mentioned they receive marketing emails "way too often," and 90% found targeted ads annoying.

Plus, direct mail marketing is “sticky.” It “sticks'' with a customer for far longer than a random email that gets deleted within seconds. 

(How often does mail linger on your table? Days? Weeks? Months?)

Not to mention, direct mail elevates your brand. Today, among people being chronically online and endlessly doomscrolling, anything “analog” stands out. 

Especially given direct mail’s unique ability to provide an experience that feels personalized and tangible for the consumer. This is why major retailers have been using it for years. For over a century, in fact.

However, many DTC and multichannel brands have never considered it part of their marketing strategy, perhaps because they perceive it as expensive, difficult, or untargeted. Fortunately, it has never been easier for any size business to create an effective direct mail campaign targeting highly relevant customers, often for less than the cost of a click.

Here’s how in four steps:

1. Have a marketing goal in mind

Step one: find your target audience. 

Truth is, there’s no such thing as a “general audience.”

Impersonal ads aren’t exactly popular for persuading customers to take action, right? The same applies to direct mail marketing. Going too broad with an audience that isn’t highly relevant or engaged typically results in wasted spending.

So yes, the first step is finding who you are marketing to. 

But how?

Get existing customers to come back to your online store

With direct mail, you can hit those customers who haven’t opened your emails/SMS in a while or have even unsubscribed from your lists. 

Rather than run retargeting ads with the hope + prayer to bring them back into the fold, send ‘em a piece of direct mail.

TLDR: No more customer “reaqcuisition” costs. 

(We call it "CRAC.")

Your existing customers are a goldmine waiting to be tapped.

But where do you start? Simple. Check out how long it typically takes a new customer to make a second purchase.

If you have a product that needs to be replenished (think food or makeup), create n direct mail automation to dynamically fire off a personalized reminder or offer if the customer hasn’t repurchased within the expected timeframe.

Here are some other ways to drive more retention, loyalty, and revenue:

Cross-sell similar or complementary products

Think T-shirts to jeans customers, different jewelry styles, or your best-selling items. Send direct mail with an incentive to get them to explore similar products and categories.

How to put this into action and drive repeat order rates? The Bounce-Back Campaign. 

How a Bounce-Back Campaign works:

• At checkout, the customer would receive a bounce-back coupon good for a percentage off an “unexplored” category.
• Customers usually buy from the categories that they know exist. So, educating them about another part of your store can drive a repurchase from a different category. 

If you aren't proactively optimizing customer retention, you’re leaving money on the table. Every day. This is why it represents the highest return use of your marketing time, energy, and dollars.

The beauty of direct mail is that you can implement a bounce-back TODAY that targets EVERY customer checking out—not just the ones who have subscribed. 

Leverage winbacks

If you have customers who haven’t purchased in several months, it’s time to show them what’s new. 

Look at Dr. Squatch—a brand that uses this strategy to drive millions in revenue.

The venerable Sasquatch, M.D. encountered a common issue: email and SMS marketing were simply not enough.

(Often, only about 10% of a brand's most valuable audience—previous customers—receive the message.)

This resulted in significant missed revenue opportunities for Dr. Squatch. 

To shake things up, the team created a postcard campaign targeting customers who hadn't made a purchase in 7 to 9 months.

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Yielding a 12.66% conversion rate and an average ROAS of more than 10x, it’s safe to say that this direct mail campaign was a success. 

The lesson here? Give customers a reason to come back. 

Show love to your VIPs

Activate dormant VIPs through a programmatic direct mail program like HexClad did with PostPilot. By connecting with customers using first-party purchase data to send them promotional mail, the brand generated $3.2 million in revenue and 12X+ ROAS in just over four months.

Promote new products and/or upgrades 

Perhaps you own a shoe company and release a new version of your signature running shoe every year. Try contacting customers who purchased the older version and letting them know it’s time to upgrade. 

In fact, holidays are an effective and margin-saving time to introduce new products. This can be done by leveraging days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday to push new launches, as longtime PostPilot client Jones Road Beauty has done.

So you set your marketing goals and have plans to improve retention, but what about prospecting new buyers with direct mail?

2. Acquire new customers

This is all about hyper-targeting buyers and attracting them to your brand. No surprise here, but personalization is the name of the game.

Let’s go further and break down how you can do this.

Cold prospecting 

Using lookalike audiences, you can target direct mail campaigns to people who share similar traits with your best customers. Reaching out to those with comparable characteristics to an existing customer base increases the chances of resonating with new prospects and driving conversions. 

Retargeting 

Direct mail marketing optimizes retargeted ads by putting your message directly in customers’ hands, bypassing digital hurdles.

Thankfully, there are two easy ways to discover the best audience to (re)target:

Anonymous retargeting - SiteMatch^TM

SiteMatch enables brands to add a pixel to their eCommerce site, which can then ID and match 20-40% of anonymous site traffic to a physical address.

Warm Leads and Abandoned Cart Retargeting - MailMatch^TM

MailMatch targets prospects who have engaged with your brand but need an extra nudge. Perhaps they load up their cart but need some help pressing purchase. By finding mailing addresses those card-adders and retargeting them with direct mail, plug that funnel further

Yes, you read that right—we’ve moved beyond the “buying lists of potential customers” era and can lean on technology to find interested and highly engaged potential buyers. 

Phew!

3. Design direct mail that sells

Once your audience is selected, good postcard design is crucial to maximizing your campaign performance. Let’s break it down. 

Write an effective call to action

Any good campaign includes a strong call to action.

Whether it’s. . .

• Driving the consumer to visit your website
• Pushing the consumer to make a product or service purchase
• Following you on social media

. . .The call to action reflects the ideal outcome of your campaign.

Take a look at the CTA Bones Coffee uses. The brand implemented a strong CTA on its direct mail to urge customers to visit its site to shop its fall coffee collection via a simple QR code scan. 

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The mailing campaign crushed, showing 7.35X ROAS just two weeks after launching. 

Stand out with personalized direct mail

Our brains naturally engage and get excited when we hear our own name. 

Use that to your advantage by personalizing your direct mail with merge fields that allow you to dynamically insert a person's name or a variety of other attributes. 

But you can also take this one step further. Because using an “enter first name” code isn’t personalization and blah, blah—yes we know.

So beyond using first names, look at Plum Deluxe, a customer who successfully implemented personalization in their direct mail tactics by sending out handwritten birthday cards to their customers. 

This initiative was a huge success, yielding an average CVR of 28.5%.

Use images effectively in your direct mail marketing

They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

That’s definitely true when it comes to advertising when you have to make a quick impression.

Be sure to:

• Include your logo prominently for easy recognition. 
• Use high-quality product photography.
• Use images that are appropriately sized for good print quality - a minimum of 300 DPI is recommended.
• Take advantage of free Stock images on sites like Unsplash, Pexels, and even Shopify.

P.S. Don’t want to do any of the design yourself? PostPilot will design your mailers as part of your subscription. Reach out here.

Know what type of direct mail paper stock you should choose

At PostPilot, we use 120#, double-sided, UV-coated, full-bleed card stock, so you can rest assured your card will be high quality.

But, here are some things to think about if you’re using a printer service: 

• Finish: Using many photos? Stick with a gloss finish. Looking for a more subtle feel? Go with matte. 

• Thickness: Remember, the thicker the stock, the more resistant it is to damage during transit.
• Color or B&W: Unless it’s for artistic reasons, use full color.
• Single-sided or double-sided: Use what you have! Printing on both sides uses as much real estate as you have available.

4. Measure the results of direct mail marketing campaigns

The beauty of marketing is things are always changing. That’s why it’s so important to track the performance of your direct mail campaigns and adapt your messaging, targeting, and designs as you go.

“But I can’t track direct mail?”

Yes, you can! Just look at these simple methods to track direct mail marketing performance:

Discount codes 

Easy but effective.

Simply include a code on your direct mail campaign that is not available elsewhere. As your mail gets delivered, track how many orders are placed using that unique code.

With PostPilot and Shopify, discount code tracking is built into the platform.

What we’ve found about discount codes on mailers is that, regardless of how big or eye-catching a QR/numerical code may be, few (usually ~10-30% of customers) will use the discount, instead of purchasing at full price. 

Custom URLs and website landing pages 

Another option is to send recipients to a custom landing page built specifically for your campaign. You can track the performance of customers visiting that specific page.

For optimal results, ensure you have a consistent design and message on both the landing page and direct mail.

The alternative: track via an eCom platform and lookback window

Direct mail attribution comes down to strong data. 

You need to be able to tie mail delivery dates with mail recipients’ purchases over a particular attribution window. If you can map this out, you can get a general idea of how what you’ve sent influences buying behavior.

Whether you’re doing this manually or with a mail provider, it’s essential to have access to your first-party purchase data via API and build a model based on an approximate 60-day timeframe. 

At PostPilot, we provide real-time attribution using these data points as part of our programmatic direct mail platform.

• We know approximately when a customer receives a piece of mail.
• We know when a customer who has received mail makes a purchase.
• We typically evaluate campaigns over a 60-day attribution window. We attribute the purchase to the mail if it occurs within 60 days.

How to get started with direct mail marketing

As we said before, to launch a direct mail marketing campaign, you have to establish your:

• Target audience 
• Brand message  
• High-quality design

If you own an online store, there are software tools that directly connect to your eCommerce store and make the process simple.

Like us!

With PostPilot, we can connect directly to your online shop with a click of a button. And with our concierge services, you can get automated campaigns and designs done for you.

So, To Recap…

Direct mail marketing can be a highly effective channel for increasing revenue and customer retention. New tools allow you to easily design and build targeted, personalized campaigns.

Ready to grow your bottom line with direct mail marketing? 

Create a PostPilot account for free to try it out and see how easy it is to build your campaign.

Still have questions? Need help building your campaign? Just want to chat about marketing? Drop us a line. We’re here for you.

Or, if you want to learn more. . .

Check out our other direct mail case studies for additional reads on our customer’s success stories.