What do brands like Uber, Harry's, Glossier, Modcloth, Casper, and Quip all have in common? It’s not VC, UX, or BS—it’s that they all use postcard marketing to drive their top line.
Some of today’s most successful brands use an analog and often overlooked marketing channel to acquire new customers, retain existing customers, and get stale customers to come back and buy. Here’s why…
LESS COMPETITION
While email may not be getting more expensive, it’s a more crowded field than ever. According to a DMR report the average number of emails an office worker receives each day is 121. That’s a lot of emails. More email means the higher the chance your message will be deleted, lost or ignored—and the lower your response rate. On the other hand, 90% of direct mail gets opened, compared to only 20-30% of emails (at best), and the average lifespan of an email is 17 seconds, compared to direct mail’s average lifespan of 17 days.
Snail mail is a different story. According to the United States Postal Service, 79% of households scan or read advertising mail. A mailing is likely to end up on a counter or table where it can be seen again and again. Unlike with email, you might have multiple customers looking at a single mailing.
Adweek research has shown that conversion rates on direct mail can be36 times higher than on email (4.4% versus 0.12%). And PostPilot makes it easy, plugging right into your Shopify store so you can create and automate campaigns that work.
Believe it or not, not everyone is on Facebook or email. And even if your customers are on email, they may not subscribe to your email list. But with direct mail, you can reach them with postcards.
IT’S CHEAPER
Back in 2005, we were paying five or 10 cents a click on AdWords. Today, the cost per click has gone up 10x or more.
With postcard marketing, your cost is limited to printing and postage—that’s it. And the more you buy, the lower your prices get.
It’s HIGH ROI
Research has shown that the average email campaign has a response rate of 0.12%. Mailers to existing customers, on the other hand, achieve an average response rate of 3.4%. Postcard marketing campaigns can be a whopping 28x more successful than email campaigns.
If those two benefits aren’t enough to convince you to try postcard marketing, Adweek conducted a survey in which they looked at email vs. direct mail conversion rates. They found that the conversion rates on direct mail were about36 times higher than on email (4.4% versus 0.12%).
How can you get started with Postcard Marketing?
Back in 2005, when we started using postcard campaigns execution was horrible. Every month we’d export a customer list into a CSV file, then import it into a postcard provider. Next, we'd have to configure the cards, add coupon codes that let us identify each customer and then send them out. Once the cards were mailed, we’d track coupon redemptions in a spreadsheet and calculate the return, if we had one. And we’d do it again the next month.
But now there’s PostPilot, a fully-automated postcard marketing platform.
PostPilot integrates seamlessly with Shopify to let you easily create and send postcard marketing campaigns. It works even if you’re not on Shopify (you just have to manually upload your customer list), and makes it super-simple to turn your existing Klaviyo, Mailchimp or Facebook campaigns into mailers. You design your card, we handle the rest.
You worked hard to get the sale. Now you can send a hyper-targeted, automated, personalized postcard to get your customers to come back and purchase again and raise your customer LTV.
Step 1: Integrate PostPilot with your store.
(Import all your customer data with 1 click.) The first step is to integrate your store with PostPilot to ensure that your customer data is available to you for segmentation when you want to run your campaign. You can also integrate with Klaviyo and import your lists and segments if you use Klaviyo as your email provider. For those without Shopify or Klaviyo, you can upload your lists in a CSV file.
Step 2: Create Your Postcard
(It only takes a minute.) Choose one of our free templates, upload your own design, or take charge of our user-friendly design tool to create impressive, on-brand mailers for every occasion. Easily insert customer names and other customer data for more for powerful 1-to-1 personalization. Every professionally printed, full-color card comes on high-quality 120-lb stock with UV coating. (In other words, they’ll be wowed.)
Step 3: Setup your Workflows & Automations
(Unique one-offs + fully automated campaigns.) Segment customers for your send. You can target customers based on Shopify Tags, date filters, purchase history or existing segments in Klaviyo (if you have it). You can choose between a one off campaign or setting up automations that automatically send perfectly-timed promotions that boost your bottom line and increase customer loyalty.
Step 4: Send your Campaign
(Unique one-offs + fully automated campaigns.) Finalize your campaign and send it and then track and wait for the conversions. Campaigns can be tracked for up to 120 days and you can monitor sales generated, how many cards were sent, how many orders you received and many more insights allowing you to make informed decisions on your campaign.
"Not only is the Post Pilot team responsive and experts in their market position, they are there to guide you to drive the best results. We’ve worked with them on numerous campaigns and continue to as they help us reach our consumers in direct ways."
Send delightfully simple, effective one-off + automated campaigns. The result? More loyalty, sales, and profits out the wazoo. Sign up for our newsletter to get tips, tricks and updates on improvements we are making to PostPilot.
We are here to help. We've got answers to all hesitant queries you might have about PostPilot and Direct Mail.
How do I know if direct mail is a good option for me?
The best way to measure the effectiveness of direct mail is by testing it. But there are some common tell-tale factors, many of which come down to your product/service, revenue model, lifetime value, and customer acquisition costs (current and tolerance). We find that companies with a high cart value ($50 and above) and repeat customers get the best results.
Isn’t Direct Mail is a bit expensive?
If you come from the digital marketing world, you might think direct mail is a bit expensive. However, if you are doing direct mail right, the investment is well worth it. US marketers sell $2,095 in goods for every $167 they spend on direct mail (that’s a 1,255% return on investment).
Is PostPilot right for me?
If you are an ecommerce store running on Shopify, then PostPilot needs to be an essential part of your marketing mix. Statistics show that your customers will spend 25% more when you combine digital and direct mail marketing. If you can create an email campaign, you'll have no problem creating an effective postcard campaign.
Can I track the results of my campaign?
Because of our native integration with Shopify, we are able to track each sale that comes in as a result of your campaign. We also check the addresses and remove any that we find aren’t valid, saving you money on each campaignorder.
What kind of results can i expect?
Customers who use Direct Mail in tandem with their existing digital strategies getgets 28X better engagement than email and ~10X better response rates. Ecommerce stores tend to see a conversion rate of between 2% to 4% on each send. To give an example, 2 of our customers TruDog and Bulletproof had ROIs of 838.22% and 1892.16% respectively.
What are estimated delivery times?
All orders are sent to be shipped out 24 hours after being processed, and take 4 to 6 days to arrive at their destination. For international orders, orders can take anywhere from 9 to 13 days.
I’m new to this. Do you have a customer support team to help walk me through the process?
Yes. We have a customer success team that will be happy to take a look at your business and walk you through the best way to leverage direct mail. They can also help you set up your first campaign and make sure you are set up for success. Schedule a call with our customer success team today.
