Background
Like other smart and successful retailers, Lo & Sons is always looking for strategic opportunities to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers. And like other successful retailers, the Lo & Sons team leads those retention efforts with strong data.
It made perfect sense, then, for the team to take a proven retention strategy (direct mail, powered by PostPilot) and layer in precision buyer data (via analytics, powered by Segments Analytics) to push that strategy further.
The Tactic
Lo & Sons sent postcard campaigns to two segments built by Segments Analytics, in an effort to test whether the team could drive second purchases of specific cross-sell products via direct mail.
Each segment received one postcard featuring product(s) that, based on Segments Analytics’ analysis, were the most likely second purchase based on specified first purchases.
- E.g., If customers across the board tended to buy product Y after buying product X as a first purchase, could product X buyers be more reliably driven to buy product Y?
We sent the first segment, who had purchased a single Waverley 2 bag as their only purchase, a postcard featuring a number of colorways on the front and a discount on the back. This postcard’s mission was to drive the single Waverley 2 purchasers to buy a second Waverley 2:
Then, we sent the second segment, who had purchased a single laptop case as their only purchase, a postcard showing a number of Lo & Sons’ crossbody bags. The bags included the Waverley 2, but the postcard also showed off other crossbody bags in Lo & Sons’ collection.
This postcard was designed to drive a second purchase of any crossbody bag. It included copy on the back geared to connect with the customer (“Keeping your life in order is obviously a priority for you”) and quickly speaking to a lifestyle that includes each of the bags.
So… Did it work?
Results
In a word, yes.
“The teams at PostPilot and Segments Analytics have both been incredibly supportive throughout this test. If we needed anything, either team was ready to dive in and help bring this to the finish line with light effort from the Lo & Sons internal team. They made it really easy for us to execute.”
The test showed that Segments Analytics successfully predicted Lo & Son’s first to second purchase behavior.
- The Waverley 2 one-time buyers purchased an additional Waverley 2 56% of the time.
- The laptop bag one-time buyers purchased a crossbody bag 64% of the time.
And, those second purchases postcards? High-ROI.
- The Waverly 2 second-purchase postcards drove a 7x+ ROI.
- The crossbody bag second-purchase postcards drove a 10x ROI.
Direct mail works. And so do profitable segments built by powerful buyer analytics.
Thank you to Lo & Sons and PostPilot for contributing to this case study. To learn more about PostPilot and how to launch a profitable programmatic direct mail channel for you in under a week, head here
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