Awe Inspired's Automated, Hyper-Incremental Direct Mail Program

TLDR:

• Background & Challenges: Awe Inspired hit a ceiling with email: solid open rates but difficulty reaching high-value customers. Additionally, they wanted to test direct mail, but the first platform they tried did not have the functionality they needed, such as retargeting and a robust Klaviyo integration.
• Solution: The team switched to PostPilot, uses direct mail to enhance their Klaviyo program, and is driving automated net-new and repeat revenue with direct mail.
• Results: Off-the-charts numbers (and we do mean off-the-charts), with an 14.02x iROAS (incremental ROAS) across all campaigns with holdouts and two segments hitting over a 16x iROAS.

Background & Challenges

Awe Inspired creates extraordinarily beautiful, inspirational jewelry that "carries stories of survival and renewal." It's emotional and visual, and many of their customers (rightfully) come back to buy quite frequently—their loyal customers have even joined their paid membership program, the Goddess Circle.

But Awe Inspired faces the challenges that all brands (from billion-dollar brands to mom-and-pop shops) face: brutal digital competition and cramped inboxes. In fact, the customers worth the most were exactly the ones getting hardest to reach.

"Honestly, like most DTC brands, we'd hit a ceiling with email. Our open rates are solid, but there's a real chunk of our customer base, especially lapsed and high-LTV customers, who just aren't in their inbox the way they used to be." —Randall Elie, Director of Lifecycle Marketing @ Awe Inspired

It was time to tag in direct mail. 

Randall’s team "wanted a physical touchpoint that could reach those customers in a way that felt premium and actually on-brand… Something that looks and feels like us."

However, Randall’s team didn’t get the functionality they needed—such as retargeting, a deep Klaviyo integration, holdout testing, and account management—from the first direct mail platform they tested.

Enter: PostPilot.

Solution: A Platform and Team Covering All the Bases

After switching to PostPilot, Randall's team got what they needed (and more) for direct mail.

Retargeting: Driving Net-New Purchases

To push their Meta dollars further and extend their Klaviyo tactics (e.g., welcome flow), Randall's team is leaning into PostPilot’s features SiteMatch™ and MailMatch™.

• SiteMatch allows Randall to send direct mail to anonymous website visitors, via PostPilot’s pixel. No email or address needed.
• MailMatch allows her to send mail to email subscribers’ homes. No address needed.

After seeing fantastic results with MailMatch, Randall and team expanded to SiteMatch, too.

She says, "SiteMatch and MailMatch have been really useful for targeting people who are in the consideration phase but haven't pulled the trigger.” 

A Robust Klaviyo Integration

Leveraging Klaviyo and PostPilot means having a complete owned marketing program (email, SMS, direct mail), and everything that can be done with Klaviyo can be done with PostPilot—such as triggered messaging to Klaviyo segments, retargeting, retention, and leveraging dynamic data from the rest of a tech stack.

Randall gets it:

"We think of Klaviyo and PostPilot as sequenced, not competing. Awe Inspired sends a lot of email, and Klaviyo keeps owning the high-frequency digital work, but PostPilot picks up where that drops off. By the time someone's getting a postcard from us, they've probably already tuned out our emails. So there's no cannibalization worry. We're reaching a different version of that customer, one that digital can't reliably get to anymore."

Holdout Testing

PostPilot enables real-time, in-platform holdout testing so that brands can get a true look at direct mail's performance and understand where (and how) to scale their program. 

Randall explains, "What's different with PostPilot is that you can measure true incremental lift through holdout testing. It's a real performance channel, not just a gut-feel brand play.”

Strong Account Management

The last main piece: execution. 

The PostPilot platform turns direct mail into an integrated performance channel, but the real key is great account management and design, which handles the full strategy, management, creative work, and operations of Awe Inspired’s program—and continues to push it forward. 

Randall sees it as "a real partnership, not just a tool we log into on our own." 

Tactics of the Trade

Retargeting (Net-New Revenue)

Automated List Retargeting with MailMatch™

"For a brand like ours where buying is pretty emotional and visual, getting something physical in front of someone while they're still deciding is powerful." —Randall

To hit warm leads and drive more first purchases, Randall’s team is using MailMatch to extend their Klaviyo welcome flow in the mailbox. New subscribers receive a postcard timed at the end of the flow to maximize the power of both Klaviyo and PostPilot.

This way, those who are going to convert via email/SMS will do so, and those remaining—who may convert via direct mail—will receive postcards. In other words, Randall’s team is delivering the right message to the right customers in the right medium at the right time.

Automated (Anonymous) Browser Retargeting with SiteMatch

Knowing that they could convert prospective buyers subscribed to email with MailMatch, Randall wanted to test moving higher in the funnel to target cooler leads. Specifically, digital “window shoppers” who had visited Awe Inspired’s site but had not signed up for email and had not purchased.

And they started doing just that with SiteMatch. 

Setup is a piece of cake (just add our pixel to Google Tag Manager). 

Once installed, SiteMatch IDs and matches 20–40% of anonymous traffic to a physical address and automatically sends direct mail. Existing customers and visitors who don’t demonstrate valid intent signals are filtered out automatically, boosting acquisitions and performance. 

This is key to pushing Meta spend further. 

While some folks who visit your site via digital prospecting ads will sign up for email/SMS or purchase, having another way to reach and convert everyone else (other than via digital retargeting ads) means that you’re making the most of that initial spend.

Retention (Repeat Revenue)

High-Value Customer Winbacks (One-Off + Automated)

Randall’s team has taken advantage of major brand moments (like their annual Blue Moon sale, “which customers really look forward to,” and major product launches) to get in front of lapsed high-value customers.

Check out the stunning postcard ahead of their Blue Moon sale:

And one used in automated campaigns prior to their Yemaya collection launch:

In both cases, the cards drove off-the-charts incremental returns by turning a significant moment into a beautiful physical touchpoint.

Automated Membership Winbacks (+ Fighting Membership Churn)

"These are people who love the brand. They just needed something physical to bring them back. Email wasn't cutting it with that group anymore." —Randall

The team has dialed up their high-value retention even further by reactivating their most important customers: their Goddess Circle members.

Churn happens in membership programs (even among Goddesses), and inbox chaos affects everyone. By sending postcards to churned Goddesses, Randall’s team was guaranteed to reach them.

The cards are simple, elegant, and remind previous members about a key benefit: store credit. 

And the campaign certainly has worked. 

“Our churned Goddess Circle campaign is our most consistent evergreen performer. We validated it with holdouts and it's been running profitably ever since. These are people who built up credits, genuinely loved the brand, and then drifted away—often because life got noisy, not because they stopped caring. A well-timed postcard that reminds them what they're sitting on has been the best way we've found to bring them back.” —Randall

Results

“We've already increased our direct mail budget once based on the iROAS data and plan to keep scaling it. Long-term, direct mail is becoming a real third pillar for us alongside email and paid.” —Randall

Awe Inspired’s entire direct mail program has been extraordinarily incremental, with all campaigns with holdouts driving a 14.02x iROAS. 

That’s including both net-new and repeat revenue. 

But let’s break it down by tactic:

• Converting anonymous browsers (SiteMatch): 4.68x iROAS
• Retargeting non-buying email subscribers (MailMatch): 4.74x iROAS
• Automatically reactivating Goddess Circle members: 4.42x iROAS (a small but highly qualified audience by nature)
• Automatically reactivating Lapsed HVCs (product tease): 16.34x iROAS (!!)
• Lapsed HVCs (Blue Moon Event): 23.17x iROAS (!!)

There’s incremental, and then there’s incremental. This is the latter.

Across the board, Randall and her team are able to drive incredible results with PostPilot because they can send the right message to the right customer at the right time… in the right medium. 

This is particularly the case with lapsed HVCs: many of them may not be seeing as much of Awe Inspired’s emails and other messaging, but a physical message with exciting offers (like, say, product launches) are simply too good to pass up.

With a 14x iROAS and a still-scaling program, we can't wait to see what's next for Awe Inspired (and to keep building it alongside them!).

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