Why eCommerce Businesses Are Switching to Postcard Marketing [Updated 2024]

As an eCommerce business, you’re constantly inundated with offers to advertise.

From new social media platforms to local publications, there are endless opportunities for you to try something new. As eCommerce veterans ourselves, we understand that when you’re working with a limited marketing budget you have to make every single dollar count.

Throughout our careers in eCommerce, we’ve seen the power of direct mail marketing for acquiring and retaining customers…and so have leading eCommerce brands like HexClad, Dr. Squatch, GOOD AMERICAN, BOOM! and thousands of others.

Direct mail is cheaper than a Facebook click and gets 4-5X more engagement than email. It works.

Trouble was, creating a direct mail campaign was a pain. Finding a print house, exporting and uploading spreadsheets, getting a graphic design…and tracking actual results was both hard and imprecise.

PostPilot was created to make postcard marketing easy for eCommerce stores.  

Read on to learn about the top reasons that eCommerce businesses like yours are finally making the move to postcard marketing.

Reason #1: Postcard Marketing Is Much Easier and Way Less Expensive Than You Think.

Forget about those clunky spreadsheets, hiring designers, and questionable tracking methods…

PostPilot has made it a cinch via programmatic direct mail, which enables brands to launch automated postcard marketing programs in less than a week. We have a native Shopify integration, preconfigured (and customizable) audience segments, plus unlimited access to an account manager and in-house design team for brands on our Pro plan.

Although paid search and social ad costs continue to rise, the cost of a postage stamp is fixed. That means no jacked up CPCs for targeting a desirable audience or to promote a holiday sales event when competition gets even more intense. Starting at just $0.53 including printing and postage, you can get your message directly into the hands of your customers for less than the cost of a click!

Reason #2: Postcard Marketing Is “Sticky”

No, this doesn’t mean your mailer should be covered in super glue. When we say “sticky,” we’re referring to the way that physical postcards seems to “stick” with a customer for far longer than the average marketing message.

The average person receives 125 emails per day. No one has time to read that many emails, so what do they do? Delete. Delete. Delete.

Think about how you check email. Are you trying to sort through your inbox quickly in the morning so that you can get started on your day? Are you scanning email subject lines quickly on your phone over lunch to see if you’ve missed anything urgent?

If you’re like most people, you rarely check your email at a leisurely pace, and you can delete what you perceive as dozens of “junk emails” in a matter of seconds—or move them to your spam folder so the sender will never get through to you again.

Of course, there is no spam filter for your actual mailbox, and the United States Postal Service tells us that over 90% of households scan or read advertising mail.

Now think about your routine with checking the mail. Perhaps you flip through the stack your spouse left on the kitchen table or read through each piece on a leisurely walk back from the mailbox. Wherever you are, you’re far less likely to be in a hurry, and your eyes welcome the break from staring at a screen all day. Your defenses are down, so you’re more likely to notice and absorb each message you’ve received.

If an offer catches your eye, what do you do? You keep it, maybe filing it in a kitchen drawer, sticking it on the refrigerator, or tucking it away in your wallet to be used later. On the other hand, if you don’t respond to an email offer right away, it’s going to be forgotten and buried below hundreds of other messages by the end of the day.

That’s what we mean when we say direct mail is “sticky”—it can stay in front of your customers for days and weeks, not just seconds.

Reason #3: Postcard Marketing Complements Your Digital Marketing

One common marketing mistake eCommerce businesses often make is to have a “this or that” mentality. They believe that they have to choose between emails and direct mail when research shows that they would benefit most from embracing both. Studies show that customers spend 25% more when businesses combine digital and direct mail marketing. This is why large, nationwide companies haven’t stopped sending mail in the technological age. They know it works for them—and it will work for you, too.

To make the most of a multifaceted marketing strategy, your direct mail should reinforce the offers you make in your emails and vice versa. The more often you can put your name and offer in front of your customer, the more likely you are to break through the thousands of advertising messages they see and hear every day and catch their attention.

If you already send targeted emails to past customers by segmenting your list according to number of orders, time since last purchase, total amount spent, geographic location, etc., simply use the same segmentation to maximize the response rate on your direct mail campaign.

You can also apply the tests you run on email and social media campaigns to your postcard marketing. Split your segmented list into two groups to send two similar postcards and use discount codes to track which one performs best. As you test, refine, and repeat marketing campaigns over time, you’ll glean valuable information about your customers—information you can use not only in future direct mail campaigns, but also to sharpen your email, social media, and other advertising efforts as well.

Reason #4: Postcard Marketing Helps You Retain Customers (Retaining Customers = Massive Profits)

One of the first rules of business is that it costs more to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one. Invesp reports that customer acquisition costs 5x more than customer retention—yet only 18% of companies focus more on retention than acquisition. Furthermore, the probability of making a sale to an existing customer is 60-70%, while you’ll only sell to a new prospect 5-20% of the time.

No matter how you look at it, your advertising strategy is most effective when you focus on those who have made the decision to purchase from you before, and postcard marketing is an ideal way to get those customers back in the door.

If you see a surge in customers at certain times of the year—maybe they shop for new clothes when school starts back or buy more gifts closer to the holidays—you can use direct mail to draw them back with a compelling offer during your lulls. This is far cheaper and more effective than trying to drum up new business in slower seasons when fewer people are looking for new brands or products.

Reason #5: Postcard Marketing Lets You Compete with the Big Guys

Big retailers with massive marketing budgets have been capitalizing on the power of direct mail for years, but many eCommerce business owners have never even considered it as part of their marketing strategy. The research shows that direct mail works for eCommerce businesses, so why aren’t more online businesses already using it?

The answer is simple.

Before now, direct mail has been prohibitively expensive for modest advertising budgets. Large direct mail companies have minimum job sizes and hefty set up fees, making even a test run a significant investment. On top of that, the company would have to pay a designer, then worry uploading files, tracking results, etc. For small businesses stretched for time and resources, that’s a big ask.

PostPilot is the first direct mail company designed to cater to eCommerce businesses and, more specifically, Shopify stores. With no minimum job size, no set up fee, free and easy-to-use mailer templates, and affordable prices, eCommerce businesses can finally access the power of direct mail to boost their business.

Because direct mail has only recently become attainable for most eCommerce businesses, there’s no better time to stand out from the competition. After all, your customers are used to receiving coupons from big name stores like Costco and Bed Bath & Beyond, but a personalized, targeted postcard from an eCommerce business is a fresh and interesting offer that’s sure to catch their eye.

Reason #6: Postcard Marketing Helps Reduce Your CAC

We never see conversations around customer reacquisition cost (or as we call it, CRAC).

Your CAC is probably higher than you want it to be. But the worse news is that it's likely even higher than you think. There are initial acquisition costs. Then some customers unsubscribe from your email/SMS/push notifications. Goodbye to your connection with them.

You end up trying to retarget them on non-owned channels.

So many brands never factor this into their marketing. Then, those brands overspend on marketing and wonder why they’re not as profitable as they think they should be.

But this doesn't have to be the case. If you use postcards, you can reach virtually 100% of your customers, even after they've unsubscribed from typical channels.

Instead of paying another $20 for a chance to get in front of them with retargeting, you can pay $0.53 for a postcard.

Reason #7: Postcard Marketing Helps You Increase Personalization

A part 2 to Reason 2 here. There is a certain je ne sais quoi about direct mail that makes it fundamentally more of an experience for the recipient. A text or email is just pixels. Being able to send something to your customers (or potential customers) that they can actually hold automatically puts you (literally) closer to them.

But you can kick this up a notch with handwritten cards.

Handwritten cards enable brands to add a human touch to their postcards. While some small businesses may be able to get away with literally hand writing a few dozen cards every month to their most important customers, larger businesses with thousands or millions of customers simply couldn't manage that.

Which is why at PostPilot, we have actual handwriting robots that use real pens and algorithms to mimic human writing at scale. Meaning: you can send as many handwritten postcards as you want and choose from a variety of handwriting styles.

(After all, our robots' "hands" never get tired.) 

You can use them to send thank you notes, birthday wishes, and more.

More on High ROI Postcards (and Other Mail)

Are you ready to get a leg up on your competitors who are still trying to stand out in overcrowded email inboxes? With PostPilot, you can start competing with big companies who have been using mailers to grow their profits for years.

Places to start:

• Learn more about PostPilot
• Check out some direct mail examples designed by our superstar in-house design team.
• Read a popular success story: how HexClad built a 7-figure direct mail program with PostPilot

Or, if you're just ready to talk, head over here.