2020 dramatically accelerated the pace of ecommerce. Many direct to consumer brands, who typically rely on digital marketing to build their audience and drive sales, incorporated more direct mail as part of their omni channel marketing strategy. One home service brand combined email and Facebook ads around their direct mail in-home window and saw a 120% lift in sales and 43% decrease in cost per acquisition.
Direct mail allows marketers to utilize their existing data to create lookalike modeling, tracking, and personalized messaging just as they do for digital channels. It can also be integrated into digital customer journeys to deliver more impactful results for both customer acquisition and loyalty.
According to Brand United, “Direct mail is acclaimed for achieving response rates 6x higher than all digital channels combined, and can be integrated with digital advertising mediums (email, display, social, video, CTV, etc.) to boost response rates by as much as 120%.” With these types of returns, direct mail is a natural expansion from their digital strategy that allows for just as sophisticated targeting as digital channels and to offset rising digital costs.
Online retailers are building their direct mail lists from a mix of first-party data and demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and transaction-based offline data sources. This data allows them to use modeling to drive top-of-funnel campaigns as well as retargeting mailing for abandoned carts through triggered campaigns and retention mailings to increase loyalty. They can tie in website activity, life events, purchase frequency and more into their direct mail campaigns and deliver a time-sensitive personalized message right to their audience’s door with a tangible mail piece.
By combining online strategies with direct mail campaigns, ecommerce companies are driving exponential growth and strengthening customer loyalty.
References: Brand United, “How DTC Brands Are Using Direct Mail to Drive E-Commerce Growth” https://www.brandunited.com/article/how-dtc-brands-use-direct-mail-drive-e-commerce-growth/
