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Fair Harbor Automates Prospecting (and Everything Else) with PostPilot
Industry:
ApparelIn Partnership With:
Shopify
,
Klaviyo
,
Case Study TLDR
- Background & Challenges: Fair Harbor was on a mission to increase retention, and VP of Marketing Alexa Chryssos wanted to use direct mail because she knew that it worked well. The team previously had a negative experience running mail through a traditional marketing agency, as the results weren't clear, and the agency discouraged holdout testing.
- Solution: A full-funnel direct mail program on PostPilot with clear results and built-in holdout testing. Strong results on retention and retargeting led Alexa to leverage automated prospecting with AcquisitionAI.
- Results: Incremental results all around, with the highlight being 3.43x iROAS (incremental ROAS) on automated prospecting.
Background/Challenges
Fair Harbor is a (rightfully) beloved coastal apparel brand, and “sustainability is in the fabric” of who they are. They run a serious lifecycle marketing program, and they have spent years investing in Meta and testing other digital channels.
But when VP of Marketing Alexa Chryssos joined in late 2024, one of the first questions she asked was about direct mail, as one of her goals was to increase Fair Harbor’s retention—after all, even if someone isn’t seeing emails/SMS or has unsubscribed, they can still receive direct mail.
"If they weren't subscribed, then they were kind of dead to us. And we were putting all this money into Meta. It was just a waste." —Alexa
As it turned out, Fair Harbor had tried direct mail in the past, but the team had some subpar experiences with the channel.
Before Alexa joined, they tried working with a traditional direct mail marketing agency (one that Alexa also happened to have challenges with in past roles). Although they were pleased with the design, the campaign timelines were monthslong, results were sent in spreadsheets, the KPIs were unclear, and the agency discouraged Fair Harbor from running holdout testing to prove the incrementality of their campaigns.
Beyond the agency experience, Alexa had tried another programmatic platform, but found it “didn’t mesh well with Shopify,” required “uploading data every other day,” and provided data that “required manual reporting.”
Bottom line: Alexa knew direct mail worked, but she needed a much, much better and more complete solution.
That was PostPilot.
Solution: A Platform (and Results) They Could Trust
Real-Time Dashboards + In-App Holdout Testing
Direct mail is a performance marketing channel. And it should be as easy to understand as any other.
(That’s how we think, anyway.)
Now, when Alexa launches campaigns, there’s real-time data in campaign dashboards, and in campaigns with holdout tests, incrementality is front and center. No data uploads or downloads are required, and thanks to PostPilot’s native Shopify integration, it’s all data she can trust.
A Team That Runs It (and Runs It Quickly)
"PostPilot is so much more than just the platform and performance. It's the account management, the extra data, the innovations, the constant communication. I love your team. Really, I’ve had no issues. It’s been super easy.” —Alexa
Instead of monthslong lead + campaign times at the agency and frequent manual effort required from the previous programmatic solution, Alexa has rapid turnaround times (in days) to launch and most work delegated to PostPilot—including campaign setup, strategy, and launch.
While Fair Harbor’s team handles design work internally, PostPilot’s in-house design team is tagged in to adjust mailers and optimize based on need. So, effectively, Alexa has an expert on-call design agency in case needs ever arise.
The Tactics of the Trade
Acquisition (Net-New Revenue)
Automated Prospecting with AcquisitionAI
“In the past, whenever we tried prospecting with direct mail, we never got above a 1x iROAS. Now, we’ve taken some budget out of our other channel mix and put more into AcquisitionAI.” —Alexa
Alexa’s past experience with direct mail prospecting is an all-too-common one. Middling to poor results—and to rub salt in the wound, those results are usually delivered weeks after the campaign ends.
Naturally, Alexa jumped at the chance to test AcquisitionAI when we released it.
AcquisitionAI is a proprietary, AI-powered lookalike engine built and refined over two years by PostPilot’s data science and engineering teams. It enables both one-off and automated prospecting, like in any digital ad channel.
Set a budget, choose a cadence (daily, weekly, monthly) to fire off mailers to prospects, and watch results in real time.
Like Meta for mail.
Results were decidedly incremental and far above the 1x iROAS of the past.
Retargeting
Automated List Retargeting with MailMatch™
Beyond pure prospecting, Alexa’s team has made serious use of a classic PostPilot feature: MailMatch™, which enables brands to send direct mail to subscribers using only an email address.
In Fair Harbor’s case, they’re automating cards to be sent to subscribers who signed up for their email list more than 14 days ago but haven’t purchased yet.
In effect, an extension of their Klaviyo welcome flow.
As a rule, if you’re doing it in Klaviyo, you should be doing it with PostPilot, too.
Because it works. Really well.
Retention (Repeat Revenue)
Winbacks to Lapsed Buyers
The reason Alexa fought to bring direct mail back to Fair Harbor: mail reaches everyone, including the lapsed buyers who unsubscribed from email or stopped opening it.
Fair Harbor has launched dozens of retention campaigns to buyers who'd gone quiet, and they’ve reactivated customers who otherwise would be long gone, including those who had not purchased in 400 days.
Results
Behold: Fair Harbor’s very incremental results.
- Automated prospecting (AcquisitionAI): 3.43x iROAS (!!!)
- Automated Klaviyo list retargeting (MailMatch): 3.09x+ iROAS
- Automated winbacks: 5.81x iROAS @ 200 days lapsed, 12.45x iROAS @ 400 days
A couple notes here.
The prospecting number deserves a second look.
When was the last time you heard a marketer report a 3.43x incremental ROAS on a prospecting campaign? On Meta, you never hear it. Because you can't measure it. But Fair Harbor can with PostPilot.
Plus, look at that retention curve: the deeper the lapse, the higher the incremental return. The customers Fair Harbor had given up on turned out to be the most profitable to win back.
These full-funnel returns are why the team has turned prospecting into an always-on program and reallocated budget into PostPilot.
Next up is scaling the channel further and reaching even more people yearning for a coastal style.
We’ll see you at the beach.
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