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Dossier Hit a 12.5x ROAS on Postcards You Can Smell
Industry:
BeautyIn Partnership With:
Shopify
,
TLDR:
- Dossier partnered with PostPilot to solve a problem unique to fragrance: you can't smell a screen.
- They launched scratch-and-sniff postcards featuring their two best-selling fragrances, targeting non-buying list subscribers and lapsed customers.
- The campaigns hit a 12.5x+ blended ROAS, and the campaigns driving net-new acquisition both drove 3x+ iROAS (incremental ROAS).
Background/Challenge
Dossier sells stunning, luxury-inspired fragrances at accessible prices. Their mega-successful model: accurately recreate the scent profiles of luxury perfumes and offer them for 70–90% less.
However, there’s a fundamental challenge for any fragrance brand selling online: you can't smell a screen (try as you might).
The entire purchase decision hinges on a sensory experience that digital messages can’t match. Although great copy and imagery can convey what a fragrance evokes, the nose knows best.
Turns out, this was a perfect job for direct mail.
Specifically, PostPilot’s scent strips.
Direct Mail Campaigns That Made Sense
The Pitch + Process
PostPilot's account management team pitched Dossier on scent strips: postcards with an embedded scratch-and-sniff label carrying an approximation of their beloved fragrances.
Dossier was immediately on board to test them out.
They picked their two best sellers, Woody Sandalwood (inspired by Le Labo's Santal 33) and It Factor, a spicy, gourmand musk in the Dossier Originals collection.
Now, unlike our other rapid campaign launches, scent strips do take some lead time, as we work with a specialized partner to match the scents and produce the labels.
The entire process from concept to mailbox took about six weeks.
But the results were worth the wait. More on that shortly.
The Audiences
The scent strips were applied to postcards sent to two audiences (half of each audience received each scent):
- Recent list subscribers: This segment hadn’t converted after going through Dossier’s welcome flow. Dossier was able to retarget them using MailMatch™, which matches emails to physical addresses.
- Lapsed buyers: Purchasers who hadn't been rebought in over a year.
List subscribers have already shown interest and often only require a nudge to convert.
Meanwhile, lapsed buyers often are not seeing emails or ads, but they’re virtually guaranteed to see a postcard, which can often remind them of their past joys and bring them back into the fold.
In both cases, the scent strips were able to add another dimension to Dossier’s touchpoints.
Or, perhaps, another je ne sais quoi.
Results: Scents That Make Dollars
“This experiment with PostPilot helped extend that experience beyond the screen, giving shoppers greater confidence in their purchase decisions.” —Sanije Gjokaj, Director of CRM @ Dossier
Dossier’s scent strip campaigns hit a remarkable 12.5x blended ROAS across all four sends.
- Campaigns to lapsed buyers: 11.5x+ ROAS each
- Retargeting campaigns: 3.24x+ incremental ROAS (iROAS)
In other words, the scent strip campaigns both drove past customers to come back and drove net-new purchases among indecisive buyers.
And, given the strong performance of both scents with both audiences, it means that the scent strip format itself is driving conversions.
Those are results you can see, in a format you can smell.
We’re thrilled that these scent strips worked so well for Dossier, and we’re looking forward to more scented campaigns in the future.
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