Orbit Baby Uses Postcards to Acquire High-AOV Customers

Parents know that all strollers are not created equal. And that goes double for the gear made by Orbit Baby. 

The DTC brand makes luxury stroller and carseat systems that meld form and function. They look great—high tech and almost futuristic—and are made from premium materials, including aerospace-grade aluminum. Their products have patented features like a 360-degree swivel that makes it a cinch to move a car seat from a vehicle to a stroller. 

“I have a 2-year-old now,” said Mike Krantz, director of marketing and ecommerce for Orbit Baby. “Me and my wife are like, ‘How many people are going to stop us today to ask about our stroller?’”

Though Orbit’s products are niche and expensive, the company is doubling each year. They want to maintain that momentum—while spending wisely. 

“This is a bootstrapped business, a small team,” Krantz said. “Every dollar we make we put back into the business. We’re really frugal.” 

Krantz is a forward-thinking CMO who’s always looking for new channels and smart growth strategies. 

He wanted to diversify Orbit’s acquisition strategy away from online ads. But because expensive strollers are generally a one-time purchase, he only had email addresses for the leads. With PostPilot’s proprietary MailMatch™ technology, he was able to send postcards to abandoned-cart customers and other prospects—and the results blew him away. 

In this case study, we’ll explore how Orbit used MailMatch™ to send physical mail to potential customers, based solely on email lists. Krantz is so happy with his returns, he’s planning to double down on postcards. 

The Problem: Digital Platforms Can Leave You High and Dry

The iOS privacy changes that took effect in 2021 crushed many DTC brands’ marketing strategies. Orbit was an exception—they’ve weathered the storm with a combination of focus, creativity and luck. The company may not like paying triple-digit acquisition costs, but it can, thanks to its high average order value. 

Still, Krantz is aware of the risks of relying too heavily on one platform. 

“I need to diversify our acquisition and retention channels,” he said. “Sure, Facebook is working—but if it’s gone tomorrow, what do we have?” 

Over the past couple of years, Krantz noticed some of his favorite brands turning to direct mail, sending high-quality catalogs to his home. He looked into a couple of options for Orbit, but they were prohibitively expensive—hundreds of thousands of dollars—with no guarantee of a return. 

Then he learned about PostPilot. It seemed straightforward and seamless, with great service. Orbit uses Klaviyo a lot, so PostPilot’s integration with the platform was a big selling point. 

“Klaviyo powers all of our automations, our email campaigns, our flows,” Krantz said. “But we also push a ton of data to it, so it acts like a CRM for us. Wherever we can integrate and use behavior data to guide our marketing, we try to do it.” 

Because Orbit strollers tend to be a one-time purchase, customer acquisition is everything. Orbit decided to test whether PostPilot could help. 

The Promise: From Email to Direct Mail 

In Krantz’s home, the mail lives on the dining room table, next to his keys and phone. It gains mindshare as he walks past it again and again. 

“There’s no better way to get someone’s attention than to live inside their household. A postcard tends to live on someone’s counter. You don’t throw it away right away, whereas an ad you fly through instantly.”
Mike Krantz, Director of Marketing

But how do you send mail to someone when you don’t have their address? 

Enter MailMatch™. 

With PostPilot’s proprietary address-matching feature, all ecommerce brands have to do is upload an email list (or link to it through Klaviyo). With a high degree of accuracy, MailMatch can identify physical addresses for those customers and prospects. 

The Postcard

For his first campaign, Krantz created a segment of high-intent customers. 

“It was people who were showing activity, coming back to the site multiple times, people with multiple product views,” Krantz said.

The email list was nearly 4,000 strong. MailMatch found addresses for the majority of them.  

 Orbit wanted to speak specifically to where these prospects were in the sales funnel. Here’s the postcard they created: 

The front includes a “lifestyle” shot and the brand’s logo. 

The back does heavier lifting. There’s a five-star review, designed to convince customers to buy. Orbit created a grid of user-generated photos showing happy families with their stroller systems—in effect, a pack of visual testimonials. A $50 coupon code rounds out the pitch. 

PostPilot created the initial design, then Orbit’s art director jumped in. Once a layout was approved, the postcard quickly went out. 

“PostPilot really felt like it was a fit for our brand,” Krantz said. “And it shows in how fast we were able to get a campaign going.” 

The Payoff: A 300%+ ROI

Sales from the test campaign started rolling in within days. 

The postcard mailing ended up generating a 1600% ROI from recipients and a nearly 350% ROI based on coupon tracking. The coupon was unique to the postcard campaign so sales are easily attributed, though the actual ROI is higher since buyers often forget to use the coupon or find a different code. 

“That’s’ killer,” Krantz said. “It’s right in line with some of our other really well-established channels. That signals to me that this is something we need to invest in and build out.”

He thinks that future acquisition campaigns will perform even better, as Orbit dials in its messaging and segmentation. 

“We can do some creative testing on the postcard, with what we’re showing and how we’re saying it,” he said. 

The Postscript: Bigger, Better, More 

Kratz is excited to experiment with additional direct mail campaigns. For starters, he wants to try PostPilot’s larger 6-by-9 format, which is even more attention-getting. 

“It stands out more, and there’s more real estate to communicate with the customer,” he said. 

Orbit offers live video demos to help convince on-the-fence shoppers to purchase. Krantz plans to promote that feature in postcards. 

“We can put a little QR code on it and get customers right to a page where they can book an appointment,” he said.  

He plans to automate everything, so as new customers fall into different segments, postcards automatically ship out. All he has to do is check his dashboard for results, just like with Facebook ads. 

“I think we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we can do with it,” he said. 

Ready to  get rolling with direct mail? Contact us today.