Direct Mail for Abandoned Cart Recovery: It Might Be the Easiest Money You’ll Make

The best DTC marketers (like you) rightfully make abandoned cart recovery a huge priority. Our partners at Klaviyo have shown that “7 out of 10 shopping carts get abandoned,” which is a borderline revenue hemorrhage.

Naturally (and also rightfully), email and SMS are likely the two fundamental tools in your abandoned-cart-fighting toolkit. They both plug your retargeting funnel. Email has been the gold standard for over a decade, and SMS swept in a few years later.

But it wasn’t until the last few years that another option emerged for cart recovery: direct mail. 

And no, we’re not talking about shooting thick catalogs at every person who forgets a lipstick, tee shirt, or bag of protein in your cart.

We’re talking about postcards. Postcards that are triggered to be printed and mailed based on chosen parameters. Just like with an email or text.

We’re talking about postcards! Postcards that drive ludicrously high ROIs, much like your abandoned cart emails and texts.

More on how that works...

The good news: if you can do it with email, you can do it with direct mail

And there’s no bad news. If you can build an email flow in Klaviyo, you can add programmatic direct mail into one, too. 

After a <5min integration setup between Klaviyo and PostPilot (or your preferred ESP—we integrate with Yotpo, Attentive, Omnisend, and Sendlane, too), you can drag n’ drop a postcard timed at the end of your email (or email-SMS) flow.

It’ll arrive in-home a few days later. 

So, if one of your typical abandoned cart sequences lasts 7 days, you can time your postcard to land at day 10, as a final, physical touchpoint. And of course, you can (and should) postcards to only be sent if customers don’t take action via email or SMS.

Quick FAQ: What if I don’t have an address? 

For first-time customers who aren’t fully in your CRM, PostPilot’s feature MailMatch^TM can match over 70% of customers’ email address to physical addresses. 

That means it can be used for targeting carts AND non-buyers on your email/SMS lists!

But why should I use direct mail for abandoned carts?

Two words: high ROAS. 

Maybe that’s actually five words in a non-abbreviated state, but you know what we mean.

Just as you can expect many customers to click through emails and tap through texts to complete their purchases, you can expect many customers to convert via email. 

And there’s some important points here (besides the high ROAS thing). While, as we said, email and SMS should absolutely remain standard in your abandoned cart recovery strategy, direct mail offers a couple key benefits.

If customers aren’t subscribed to SMS: They may simply not see your emails. Even though abandoned cart emails in general have 50% open rates at minimum, there will be plenty of non-openers (and, naturally, the majority won’t end up converting). Direct mail is guaranteed to be seen if it’s delivered. Recipients have to literally, physically hold it and look at it, which isn’t the case for an email.

If they’re receiving both emails and text: In the end, we’re talking about funnels. There will be dropoffs at every stage, and any additional (profitable) layer means that you’re building a less leaky funnel, and direct mail is an easy (and highly profitable) final touchpoint before it’s time to move on.

We keep saying high ROIs, we know. 

We’ll prove it. Check out these 5 examples of customers actively using direct mail for abandoned cart recovery.

Real examples of incredible DTC brands saving carts with (PostPilot’s) postcards

1. KURU Footwear - 7.5x ROAS

KURU Footwear found that pairing postcards with their existing abandoned cart emails created a mega-powerful one-two punch. Customers who ignored emails responded incredibly well to physical postcards arriving in their mailbox. 

As Megan Kolbe told us, “​​I’ve been pleased with every single campaign we’ve put out. I check on the data to get a sense of performance, and honestly: there haven’t been any flops.”

“There haven’t been any flops” is right. KURU’s abandoned cart postcards drive more conversions and a high ROAS, showing that a tangible reminder can make all the difference.

2. Petite Keep - 10x+ ROAS

They got three sharks on Shark Tank (because they’re an incredible brand making beautiful products), and they use direct mail at the end of their email flow as another touchpoint.

Taylor LaMay, Petite Keep’s Sr. CRM Manager, told us, “Direct mail is playing a pivotal role in becoming an acquisition channel for us!” Powered in particular with abandoned cart postcards. 

3. SheBird - 13x+ ROAS

We have a sneaky bonus tactic here: SheBird uses postcards to recover carts and checkouts, and both tactics are driving double-digit ROAS.

The team uses the same design to automatically retarget cart or checkout abandoners 6 days after abandonment (whenever a potential buyer reaches that point, we fire off a postcard to them).

Are you convinced yet?

No?

Fine, here are another two.

4. Made In Cookware - 8.35x incremental ROAS (iROAS)

More carts saved, more pans in-home. Which is great news for the world, because Made In makes astonishingly beautiful products.

Honestly, we’re asking ourselves how people are leaving these in carts. Our credit cards are heating up just thinking about their pans.

To save their carts, Made In is reminding almost-buyers that some of the most famous chefs in the world use the products they’ve almost-bought.

5. Barker Beds - 10x ROAS

Barker Beds, the dog bed brand backed by science, has been a PostPilot customer since 2022, and they’ve been pushing more dogs—uh, we mean, people to complete their purchases.

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Amanda Friemann, Campaign Manager @ Barker Beds, told us, “At Barker Beds, our mission is rooted in improving the lives of dogs and the people who love them. PostPilot offered a way to literally put that message into the hands of our customers.”

And when you literally put your message into your customers’ paws—uh, we mean hands, it’s a reminder you can’t ignore, not open, or forget about.

“So… How do I launch this yesterday?”

Hopefully, you’re having thoughts along those lines. That was our goal, anyway.

If you want to add direct mail to your own cart recovery strategy and complement your killer emails and texts, we can definitely help.

We’ll even plan the rest of your direct mail strategy (prospecting, other retargeting, and retention) and design every single one of your postcards.

Learn more about what we do at PostPilot. 

Or, if you're PUMPED AND READY TO TALK, give us a shout. Let’s go.

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