Cardalogs: A New Acquisition Channel for Misook

Fashion trends have short lifespans. Misook’s pieces don’t. 

For almost 30 years, the women’s fashion brand has been creating elegant, versatile clothing with luxurious details—timeless designs that customers can wear for years. 

“We've always put a lot of love into everything from design to the end product,” said Samantha Rea, brand specialist for Misook.

The brand is one of five owned by Texas-based Meison. The lines, which include Ming Wang Knits, Jones New York, Kasper, and Masai Copenhagen, are carried by top U.S. retailers, among them Neiman Marcus, Saks, and Bloomingdale's. 

Misook also has a strong DTC business, which it supports with email, social media, digital ads, PR and catalogs. 

Recently, the brand started looking for an alternative to catalogs—a new channel for acquiring customers that was faster, more focused, and could even be launched on the fly. 

Their ecommerce agency, ROSWELL, recommended PostPilot.

“PostPilot delivers impactful results with nuanced targeting capabilities,” said Emily Roberts, ROSWELL’s vice president of retention marketing. “That allows us to amplify brand marketing, putting promotions in front of customers in a tangible way—in the physical world, outside of a crowded inbox.”

In this case study, we’ll show how Misook combined two of PostPilot’s signature capabilities—lookalikes campaigns and Cardalogs—to market a slow-selling collection. The results were stunning. 

The Problem: Time Is Money

Misook’s digital marketing strategy is dialed in. The brand sends marketing emails to customers on a daily basis, segmenting for optimal results. It keeps in regular contact with shoppers via SMS. 

The team also uses seasonal catalogs to give customers a deeper, richer experience. 

“Probably our biggest challenge is communicating to new customers everything that we want to about our brands,” Rea said. “There's so much that we have to offer—sustainability, quality, new product launches.”  

Catalogs give Misook the space and attention to show off a range of products and lay out its brand vision. They keep customers engaged and buying.

"We're really excited to see not just the initial results, but the continuous benefit the campaigns will provide.”

However, catalog launches also require a lot of bandwidth; each issue is usually a six-month process that involves concepting, designing, producing and mailing. 

“We needed a new solution that delivered a quicker turnaround time and required fewer tasks from our team from design to execution,” Samantha said. 

Misook decided to give PostPilot’s Cardalogs a try and the campaign concierge team.

The Promise: Catalog Power at Postcard Speed 

Like catalogs, PostPilot’s trifold Cardalogs give brands lots of real estate for photos and storytelling. 

But Cardalogs have no setup costs or minimums, and they can be ready within days. 

That means businesses can send personalized, highly targeted campaigns—fast. 

Plus, PostPilot’s concierge service can handle the whole process, from strategy design to execution.

It was a no-brainer for Misook to test a Cardalogs campaign.

“All we had to do was provide images, feedback, and approval,” Rea said. “And the results speak for themselves.” 

The Campaign: Cold Prospecting to Lookalikes 

Misook’s first Cardalog effort was a cold prospecting campaign. 

The brand wanted to be hyper-targeted, so it used PostPilot’s AI-powered lookalikes capability. PostPilot identifies the most relevant attributes of your customer segment and runs that against multiple consumer data sets. They contain thousands of nuanced behavioral data points. 

For Misook, just a few attributes of their best customers include:

• Married with kids still in the house
• Shops at Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Saks Fifth Avenue and other premium dept stores
• Purchases luxury women’s apparel
• High net worth/Income over $150,000
• Long-time homeowner
• Graduate degree

Armed with that data, Misook sent out 20,000 Cardalogs that included 15% off a first purchase. 

“We were able to fit in two blocks of copy, speaking to the brand, the vision, quality, sustainability—things that someone who is new to the brand would want to know,” Rea said.  

Misook also included copy specific to the collection, highlighting its flexibility and versatility.

Many brands would be happy with a 1-1.5x ROAS on a cold prospecting campaign. 

Misook’s results? More than triple that.  

The Payoff: High Engagement and a 3.4 ROAS

Misook drops a collection a month, and normally sells it for 90 days before discounting it. 

The goal of this Cardalog campaign was to promote a collection that was selling slowly. It was released in February; the campaign went out in April, just before the discounting deadline. 

It sold. A lot. And at full price. 

Overall, the campaign delivered a 3.4 ROAS.

But the benefits extended beyond the immediate sales—many of these new customers are sticking around. 

“We feel that customers who received those Cardalogs are still highly engaged in our content,” Rea said. “We're really excited to see not just the initial results, but the continuous benefit the campaigns will provide.”

The Postscript: Rinse and Repeat Lookalike Campaigns

Misook is sold on this new channel, and plans to keep adding to its direct mail strategy. 

The team is supplementing email flows with one-off postcard campaigns and continuing to send seasonal Cardalogs.

“The ROAS on these was really impressive,” Rea said. “We're hoping that if we can make it a more normal part of our routine, we can just continue to see great benefit.” 

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