Intro

Our mission at No Time For Dat is to make life easier for ambitious ecommerce operators (that's you!). Our usual programming features a general blend of news, trends, learning threads, tools and laughs - this weekend special instead focuses entirely on a specific tool or practice that will really help you exponentially. We only partner with brands that have a product that will be genuinely useful to you.

Deep Dive

Marketing, in a nutshell, is about making potential customers aware of your product or service. For ecommerce brands, that usually means digital channels - social media and email dominate, though for some larger scale brands, billboards, print and other physical channels are utilised. But one channel has been buzzing recently: direct mail.

What is it and why does it work?

Prior to the rise of digital marketing, direct mail marketing served as a primary advertising channel for most brands to communicate with and convert their customers. The most well known historical application was to blast a brand message to a chosen geographical region based on demographics or purchase data and hope to see an uptick in sales. Attribution was challenging. As more and more brands mailed consumers irrelevant messaging, the channel became oversaturated and brands were drawn in by the rapidly expanding digital ad space.

But what if we could fix the attribution problem and make direct mail a cost effective channel for DTC brands by focusing on retargeting versus prospecting? That is direct mail today: still physical assets sent directly to a customer’s mailbox, but now that piece of physical mail is personalized, tracked, and delivered to an existing customer who is more likely to convert again. And in most cases, for less than the cost of a click!

Why is it so effective and what has changed in customer sentiment towards direct mail?

1. Customers now view direct mail as a ‘gift’ from the brand.

Forget about the term ‘junk mail’ and flip your thinking 180 degrees and on its head. Modern consumer behavior research shows that a piece of physical mail, personalized and delivered from their favorite brand, is viewed as a gift from the brand rather than a disturbance in their day-to-day life. When a past purchaser sees their name next to your logo and a special VIP offer, they feel seen. Surprise and delight!

2. Direct mail gets read.

Email marketing is great, as is SMS, and PPC, and every other digital medium we use to spotlight our brands. But we know direct mail has a key advantage: email marketing open rates can not compete with direct mail. Despite our best efforts on curating an effective message and offer, strong email marketing campaigns typically see a 20% to 30% open rate at best. And the average lifespan of an email is only 17 seconds. Direct mail, on the other hand, is consistently opened and read 90%+ of the time. Think about the last time you checked the mail. You likely skimmed the headline, branding, and offer (if there was one) on the card at the minimum. Maybe you even threw it on the kitchen table for later reading > oh, did we mention the average lifespan of a postcard is 17 days?

3. Direct mail achieves predictable results.

For as cheap as $0.49/postcard, you can send a direct mail campaign to your past purchasers driving incremental revenue and increasing LTV. Because direct mail is so affordable, it is efficient to scale and repeatedly generates strong results. It is not uncommon for those sending direct mail campaigns to observe 5-10X ROAS and 28X more engagement than email and digital. And the best part is that direct mail costs remain consistent with scale and seasonality. This means that in peak shopping seasons, when CPCs shoot through the roof thanks to increased competition, direct mail stays at the same $0.49/postcard rate.

The technical details - how the app works:

When is it useful?

Case Studies

How Ezra Firestone's Cosmetics Brand BOOM! Achieved a 2600% ROI

How Grande Cosmetics Keeps VIP Customers Coming Back

How Urbani Truffles Used Postcards to Win Back High-Value Customers

Ben Jabbawy, Founder & CEO of Privy on Driving 6% of Revenue with Automated Postcards