Are e-commerce brands switching to direct mail marketing? It may seem to many that direct mail is dead or a strategy of old school marketing, but surprisingly it has made a come back with proven success. As an ecommerce entrepreneur, one is always looking for cost effective marketing tools to reduce customer acquisition costs and boost retention.
Direct Mail Marketing is one of the proven ways brands are achieving both reduced acquisition cost and improving retention more recently.
Key Reasons for DTC brands making the shift to Direct Mail Marketing:
1.Guarantees a High ROI:
In the earlier days, one had to design, create, instruct, print, post and manage direct mailers manually. It was an expensive procedure and was not well accounted for as it is manually impossible to monitor all of this seamlessly and smoothly. In today’s day and age, direct mail marketing is enabled by technology. DTC brands and marketers leverage platforms like PostPilot that have automated the entire sequence to get you a sparkling piece of direct mail creation that stands out and instantly connects with your customer. You could have your first campaign ready to go in minutes using a Shopify integration, pre-configured audience segments, design templates with drag and drop editor and plan for concierge services.
As paid search and social ad costs continue to rise, the cost of a postage stamp is fixed. That means no marked-up CPCs for targeting a desirable audience or to promote a holiday sales event when competition gets even more intense. Starting at just $0.49 including printing and postage, you can get your message directly into the hands of your customers for less than the cost of a click.
2. Helps Build High Engagement for your brand:
As direct mailers are a physical send, it sticks well with your customer any in comparison to any other marketing message. There is no spam and junk filter to your actual mailbox and the opportunity to win attention is unparalleled. According to data from USPS, over 90% of US households read or scan through all their mail.
A routine usually involves almost all household members scanning or sifting the mails. The noticeable or important ones get either kept for later reading. They are a welcome break from staring at digital screens all day. If an offer catches your eye, one might tuck it into your favorite go to drawer, stick it onto a refrigerator or insert it into your wallet for handy access.
3. Helps Build a Strong Complement to Paid Marketing:
A common marketing misnomer is that ecommerce entrepreneurs would do better if they focused on either email marketing or direct mail marketing. Research on the other hand shows that customers spend 25% more when businesses combine both email marketing and direct mail marketing as part of their marketing plan.
To drive further impact to your marketing strategy, direct mail offers must serve to reinforce existing offers communicated on emails and SMS marketing channels. If you already send targeted emails to past customers by segmenting lists, then leverage the same segmentation to maximize the response rate on your direct mail marketing campaign.
AB tests conducted on email and social media campaigns can equally be executed on direct mail marketing or postcard marketing. To send two similar postcards to your segmented list, divide it into two groups and utilize discount coupons to monitor which one performs best. You will learn useful information about your clients as you test, tweak, and repeat marketing campaigns over time. This knowledge can be leveraged to improve future direct mail marketing campaigns as well as your email, social media, and other advertising efforts. Adding direct mail to paid ads, email and SMS marketing campaigns truly provides an omnichannel experience.
4. Helps focus on Retention and Profitability:
Direct Mail drives customer retention; retention results in a steady increase in profits and topline revenue. One of the basic tenets of an ecommerce business means that acquiring new customers almost always is more expensive than retaining existing ones. Invesp reports that client acquisition expenses are five times higher than customer retention costs, however just 18% of businesses prioritize retention over acquisition. Additionally, your chances of selling to an old customer are 60-70% higher than those of a new prospect (5-20%). Prioritizing retention marketing as an integral part of your marketing strategy is a then no brainer.
When you see a surge in shoppers during different times of the year for example festive season, back to school, Valentine’s Day etc. you could use direct mail marketing to lure them back the rest of the year with great options in products or worthwhile discounts and bundled offers during the low peak periods.
5. Helps Compete With Big Retail While Spending Less:
If you see direct mail deployed today, the bigger retail companies with big budgets have been embracing it as part of the overall marketing strategy. DTC brands traditionally didn’t leverage direct mail, as it was considered expensive compared to email and was considered time consuming. DTC brands would have to pay a designer, then worry uploading files, tracking results, etc. Clearly, for small businesses stretched for time and resources, that’s a big ask. Post Pilot is the first direct mail marketing company designed to cater to ecommerce businesses specifically Shopify stores. With no minimum job size, no set up fee, free and easy-to-use mailer templates, and affordable prices, ecommerce businesses can finally access the power of direct mail to boost their business.
There has never been a better opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition since direct mail marketing has only lately become affordable for most ecommerce firms. Given that they are accustomed to receiving discounts from well-known retailers like Costco and Bed Bath & Beyond, your clients are more likely to be interested in an offer on direct mail from a DTC brand that is tailored and targeted to them.
Some of the brands that have successfully adopted Direct Mail Marketing are:
BOOM! By Cindy Joseph: Ezra Firestone CEO at Boom is a legend in the ecommerce industry. He runs businesses that generate $75+ million in annual revenue, including BOOM! by Cindy Joseph, a pro-age cosmetics line, Smart Marketer, and Zipify Apps, which manages a portfolio of Shopify apps.
Ezra knows ecommerce and how to retain customers.
Because of fierce competition in the cosmetics space, customer acquisition costs can be astronomical, and often exceed the gross margin on the first sale. The money is not made on the first purchase but on repeat purchases. (We call this the “One-Time Buyer Problem. To drive profits you need repeat purchases. This fundamental principle is at the heart of any business. So, how does Ezra know that a customer is about to churn? She stops buying. It’s as simple as that. Based on his customers’ behaviour he knows that if somebody buys more than once but then doesn’t buy anything for at least 35 days, she probably won’t buy again, resulting in a churned customer. Then a customer winback must be deployed to win over this churned customer. Below are the ways which Ezra used to winback customers!
a. The Win-Back Campaign: Ezra and BOOM deploy win-back campaigns to pull defecting customers back into the fold. BOOM deploys win-back campaigns in the top three ways:
b. Facebook retargeting (i.e. using your retargeting audiences to pull previous buyers back to buy again)
c. Email retargeting (i.e. emailing past buyers and getting them to come back to buy)
d. Direct mail retargeting (i.e. snail mailing past buyers to become repeat buyers)
Why add on direct mail marketing?
Most retailers neglect direct mail marketing . Marketers they think it’s slow, clunky, and requires a learning curve. But they are ignoring a huge opportunity.
a. It is often cheaper than a Facebook ad because the price of postage is capped
b. Direct mail is read more than email (average email open rates are 20%, and postcard read rates are 80%+)
c. Direct mail allows you to target customers who aren’t on your email list (or unsubscribed) and aren’t on Facebook
Here’s how Ezra Firestone, a global Shopify DTC thought-leader and entrepreneur millionaire set up his direct mail winback campaign for his brand BOOM! By Cindy Joseph in five steps:
a. Ezra added the PostPilot app to his Shopify store (2 min)
b. PostPilot pulled in his customer data (automatically)
c. Ezra built a simple “defecting customer” segment targeting both all customers who made one or more purchases and those who purchased 30/60/90 days ago
d. Ezra designed a 15% off limited time offer to customer segments (5 min)
e. Ezra automated the direct mail marketing campaign. In other words, every time a new customer matched that criteria, Post Pilot would trigger a send (2 min)
Results: Ezra turned $1,510 into $39,733 in 30 days!
Here is how Obvi a health supplement brand leveraged Direct Mail to boost ROI
Obvi: To tackle high acquisition costs on Facebook and TikTok they leaned onto old school direct mail marketing via PostPilot to retain existing customers and increase average order value. In this case study, you’ll see how Obvi drives consistent profits with a “hands-off” solution that brings customers back and gets them buying more.
The strategy has been so successful, Ronak Shah, CEO at Obvi – called it the “greatest of all time”. Obvi experimented direct mail with a VIP customer win back campaign. Obvi sent a postcard or direct mail to everyone who churned out but were pretty good customers at a certain point in time.
Obvi used its on-brand graphics and spotlights some of the most popular flavors of Obvi’s Super Collagen Protein. The card was personalized with the customer’s first name and included a thank-you for being a “favourite” customer, as well as a 20% discount.
On the back of the card, there’s a smiling woman with her arms full of Obvi product (a subtle suggestion to stock up). The back repeats the 20% discount to serve as a reminder. This campaign included a unique coupon code for each card, as well as a dynamic expiration date. Attributing conversions and sales to specific postcard campaigns is key for high-performance marketers like Obvi. It helped them optimize and scale their marketing efforts while maximizing the return on investment.
Learn how Oh!Mino supplements used postcard marketing to get 60% of customers coming back here.
Ways in Which PostPilot allows brands to track ROI:
a. Coupon based tracking: A discount code is an effective way to track campaign results. Include a unique code lets clients track all purchases and encourage customers to use the unique code when they make a purchase. Once a significant number of recipients have started receiving your campaign, check your PostPilot dashboard to see how many orders have been placed.
PostPilot knows when a customer has received their postcard and automatically tracks if that customer makes a purchase again within 30 days, or a date range of your choosing. So you know how every campaign is performing, no matter the message or offer.
b. Custom URL based tracking: Another option is to send recipients to a custom URL, not accessible to users simply browsing your site. Pick something short and simple. No one wants to type in a long URL which is difficult to read or comprehend.
Leverage Google analytics to measure traffic to that page. Since you haven’t referenced this URL elsewhere or put it in your site’s main menu, you can be confident that users visiting that page are a result of your direct mail campaign.
c. Custom phone number based tracking: some DTC owners might wish to have prospects or customers contact a sales representative or request a phone consultation. In this case, a custom phone number is a great way to track the effectiveness of your postcard.
Call tracking can be surprisingly easy to set up.
Services like Grasshopper or Call Rail provide the ability to assign different phone numbers to different advertising campaigns. Add a unique phone number to each postcard campaign or direct mail marketing campaigns – then track how many calls each campaign receives, as well as the length of each call and other details.
For its test campaign, Obvi targeted customers who used to purchase regularly, but hadn’t bought from the company in at least 90 days.
The result: $20.4K revenue was gained by sending 1123 postcards. The test drop brought in more than $20,000 in sales, for a 37X ROAS – numbers that sound almost too good to be true!
Learn more about how direct mail, email and SMS work together to scale DTC growth.
Concluding Thoughts:
Direct Mail Marketing works like crazy. It is no surprise why this medium is seeing dollars rising and increasingly shifting from other forms of social media and paid advertising. Direct Mail Marketing has all the ingredients to grow your DTC brands LTV, acquire and retain customers and make your brand unforgettable. Now what are you waiting for, embrace direct mail marketing now!
