How Caden Lane Uses Postcards for Cold Prospecting

About 3.6 million babies are born in the U.S. each year, and Bryant Jaquez wants to reach all their moms. 

That’s a slight exaggeration. 

Jaquez is the CMO of Caden Lane, a San Antonio-based company that sells stylish baby clothes, matching family pajamas, swimsuits, and personalized gifts.

Founder Katy Mimari began it in 2005, selling her chic diaper bags in department stores. Today, Caden Lane has a nine-figure valuation. In 2022, it was featured in the Inc 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. 

To keep fueling that growth, Jaquez needs to get as many new and expecting parents as possible into the customer pipeline. 

It’s tricky. He has to reach families at just the right moment—far enough along into a pregnancy that they’re ready to shop for personalized hospital outfits, but not so far that they’ve latched onto other brands. 

He recently uncovered a powerful way to do that: postcards. 

Caden Lane’s first cold prospecting campaign resulted in a 3.8x ROAS and a very happy CMO. 

"As soon as it went out, the platform dashboard started reporting ROAS numbers that surpassed my expectations,”  said CMO Bryant Jaquez.

In this case study, we’ll explain the steps Caden Lane took to get huge returns on its prospecting campaign—first testing automated winback campaigns to existing customers and prospects, then going for the big win on cold acquisition.

Testing the Direct Mail Waters

Jaquez loves to experiment and iterate. 

Caden Lane’s marketing team uses obvious channels like Google and Facebook. Expecting parents have also seen them on TikTok, television ads, affiliate marketing channels, podcasts, and more—with varying levels of success. 

Jaquez noticed that many DTC thought leaders were bullish on postcards, and a successful private equity firm recommended PostPilot. 

Caden Lane installed the free app and designed a test winback campaign with an initial budget of $10,000. Postcards went to VIP customers who hadn’t purchased in at least 90 days (and in some cases, far longer). 

“As soon as it went out, the platform dashboard started reporting ROAS numbers that surpassed my expectations,” Jaquez said. 

The initial returns looked crazy but actually made sense. Caden Lane launched baby clothes in 2020, eventually expanding into toddler and bigger kid sizes. Many early fans of the brand simply didn’t know about newer products, like matching family pajama sets. 

The high open rate of mailboxes allowed the brand to break through to customers, without interference from filters, privacy settings, unsubscribes or email overload. 

After automating winbacks and running some successful holiday postcard campaigns, Jaquez decided to see if direct mail could deliver on the biggest challenge: cold prospecting. 

Cold Prospecting with a Mailing List 

Jaquez worked with PostPilot to build a mailing list of 60,000 expecting moms. They sent a postcard that showcased products that would be perfect for their baby’s arrival. 

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Caden Lane had been hoping just to break even, but the campaign generated a >3.8x ROAS. 

“Our results were shocking,” Jaquez said. “It was outstanding.”  

A first touchpoint that didn’t lose money would have been a hit, he said. It would have established relationships they could follow up on. The company is working on optimizing results even further by layering on other attributes like household income, location, or seasonal copy. 

“I'm an evangelist for postcard marketing now,” he said. 

Reaching All of Their Target Customers

Email is still one of Caden Lane’s main channels. But Jaquez feels like they’re squeezed as much juice as possible out of it. 

Plus, email has shortcomings. Even campaigns with high reported open rates miss people who unsubscribed, never opted in, or whose devices have privacy constraints. 

Postcards confirmed that many of those prospects actually want to buy from Caden Lane—they just need to be able to receive the message. 

The brand has dramatically expanded its product line over the past couple of years. But some of its early customers naturally moved on as their babies grew. Because they unsubscribed from email lists or ignored messages, they didn’t know that the company still had products they might want to buy. 

“We had their contact information, but they weren’t leads that were easy to interact with,” Jaquez said. “Postcards solved a problem that otherwise would've been pretty challenging to work around.” 

Caden Lane has automated its winbacks and is working to build out more campaigns. 

“This may be the oldest kind of marketing you can do, and it’s the most exciting. I guess that’s what people mean when they say that sometimes the frontier can be found in the forgotten.” Jaquez said. “We love PostPilot.”