Direct Mail Retargeting Explained: How it Works & Best Practices

Is direct mail retargeting making a comeback? No! Because it never left!

Direct mail is still a powerful tool for engaging prospects who leave your website without converting. More than ever, blending traditional direct mail with digital strategies is the best strategy to help your company stand out.

Direct mail retargeting offers a unique way to do that by reconnecting with website visitors with a personalized postcard, increasing the chance of conversion.

Main Takeaways:

• Direct mail retargeting bridges the gap between digital and traditional marketing by reaching visitors offline.
• Personalized direct mail boosts engagement and improves conversion rates through customized messaging based on behavior.
• LeadPost identifies anonymous website visitors and collects the data needed for effective direct mail campaigns.
• Integration with digital channels enhances the impact of your marketing strategy.
• Best practices such as A/B testing, timing, and design maximize the effectiveness of direct mail retargeting.

What is Direct Mail Retargeting?

Direct mail retargeting is the practice of sending postcards to website visitors who leave without completing a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a form. Unlike traditional direct mail, which targets broad lists of recipients, direct mail retargeting focuses on specific individuals based on their interactions with your website.

This strategy fits seamlessly into a multichannel marketing strategy by providing an offline touchpoint to complement your digital efforts. Online ads and emails can be effective on their own, but adding direct mail makes your campaign more robust by offering a tangible, memorable experience.

How Direct Mail Retargeting Works

Let’s break down the step-by-step process of how direct mail retargeting is done:

1. Identify anonymous website visitors.
   LeadPost’s website visitor identification technology captures information about users who browse your site but leave without converting. This is done based on filters you can set up to avoid paying for data you don’t want. For example, you don’t want to pay for customer data you already have. You also might not want data from people who don’t spend a certain amount of time on your site.
2. Collect key data points (name, mailing address, behavior).
   Once identified, key data points such as visitor name, address, and browsing behavior are collected for personalization. You can also collect demographic information like gender and income range if you choose. (This information can be sent to your CRM as well.)
3. Personalize postcards or direct mail based on visitor data.
   With the collected data, your business can use LeadPost’s dynamic injection feature to create customized direct mail pieces tailored to your visitors’ interests, such as showcasing products they viewed.
4. Send physical mail to re-engage prospects.
   When a visitor matches your filter, it will trigger the delivery of a postcard to that visitor. Personalized direct mail is sent to the identified visitors, offering incentives like discounts to encourage them to complete a purchase.

The Benefits of Direct Mail Retargeting

Adding direct mail retargeting to your marketing strategy offers several advantages that boost engagement and improve ROI.

Higher Engagement Rates

Higher engagement rates significantly enhance overall campaign success by increasing the likelihood that recipients will respond to your marketing efforts. In a digital-dominated world where consumers are bombarded with emails, ads, and social media messages, physical mail stands out due to its tangible nature.

Direct mail offers a more personal touch, leading to higher open and response rates—typically around 9%. This differentiation helps brands capture attention, build stronger connections, and ultimately drive more conversions.

Personalization for Improved Conversions

Direct mail enables businesses to personalize messaging and offers by leveraging visitor data to create targeted communications tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. This personalization increases the likelihood of engagement, as recipients are more likely to respond to offers that are relevant to their interests.

For example, if a visitor abandoned their cart on your site, you could send them a postcard featuring the exact products they were viewing, along with a special discount.

With LeadPost, you can use visitor data—such as browsing behavior or purchase history—to craft unique offers for each prospect, ensuring that your direct mail campaigns are both relevant and compelling.

Complementing Digital Efforts

Direct mail enhances ongoing email, social, and display ad campaigns by adding an offline touchpoint that reinforces the messages consumers encounter digitally. This omnichannel approach increases brand visibility and engagement, as recipients are reminded of the offer across multiple platforms, making them more likely to convert. By creating a cohesive experience that bridges both digital and physical channels, businesses can strengthen their marketing efforts.

LeadPost’s platform helps businesses seamlessly blend digital and offline retargeting by identifying anonymous website visitors and collecting key data for personalized direct mail campaigns. This integration ensures that your digital ads, emails, and direct mail work together to deliver a consistent and engaging customer experience.

Building Trust and Credibility

Direct mail offers a tangible experience that digital channels cannot replicate, which helps foster deeper trust with potential customers.

The physical nature of direct mail creates a sense of personal connection and legitimacy, as recipients can physically hold and engage with the message. This builds trust by making the brand feel more reliable and credible.

Case studies show that companies using direct mail is considered more trustworthy, as the physical mail reinforces the online message and adds a personal touch that digital alone cannot achieve​.

Many brands have successfully improved customer trust through direct mail campaigns, particularly in industries like financial services and retail, where personalized offers and tangible mailings help establish credibility.

Best Practices for Effective Direct Mail Retargeting

Of course, you can’t just send any piece of mail. To get the most out of your direct mail campaigns, follow these best practices:

Audience Segmentation

Targeting the right audience is crucial for campaign success because it ensures that your message reaches individuals who are most likely to be interested in your products or services.

By focusing on high-potential prospects, you can maximize engagement and conversions while minimizing wasted marketing spend. Segmenting visitors based on behavior, such as time spent on site or specific product interest, allows you to deliver more relevant, personalized messages that resonate with each segment, leading to higher campaign effectiveness​

Personalized Messaging

Creating tailored messages based on visitor data, such as previously viewed products or services, helps improve campaign success by delivering more relevant content that speaks directly to each prospect’s needs and interests.

Personalized offers or discounts based on these behaviors can increase engagement by making recipients feel valued, thus motivating them to take action. By aligning the message with their specific behaviors, businesses can create a stronger connection with prospects, leading to higher conversion rates and better campaign outcomes.

A/B Testing

Testing different postcard designs, offers, or copy allows you to discover what resonates most with your target audience. By experimenting with variations and running split tests (A/B testing), you can compare performance metrics and identify which elements lead to the highest engagement and conversion rates.

This data-driven approach helps refine your direct mail efforts, ensuring that you optimize both messaging and design for the best possible results​. We’ve got some postcard templates to get you started.

Timing and Frequency

Timing and frequency are critical for direct mail success. Sending mail too frequently can overwhelm prospects, while sending it too infrequently may cause them to forget your brand.

Aim to send mail within a specific window after a visitor’s online interaction—typically within a week—to maintain relevance and capitalize on recent interest. This ensures your message arrives when prospects are still engaged with your brand, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

Design and Call-to-Action (CTA)

Creating visually appealing, easy-to-understand direct mail with a clear call-to-action (CTA) ensures that recipients can quickly grasp the message and know exactly what action to take. The CTA should be prominently featured and enhanced with compelling design elements, such as bold fonts or contrasting colors, to draw attention.

Incorporating special offers, like a limited-time discount, can further motivate recipients to act, increasing the overall effectiveness of your direct mail campaign.

Integrating Direct Mail Retargeting with Your Marketing Strategy

Many businesses may feel that direct mail is an outdated marketing method, but in reality, it’s a highly powerful and conversion-heavy strategy that consistently outperforms digital-only campaigns.

The ability to create a personal and tangible connection with direct mail enhances overall engagement. It also provides a unique opportunity to complement digital efforts for maximum impact. Even so-called “old school” methods like catalog marketing are still effective when done properly.

Digital Retargeting Ads and Direct Mail Synergy

Combining direct mail with digital retargeting ads—such as email, social media, and display ads—creates a cohesive marketing message that engages prospects across multiple touchpoints. By synchronizing your direct mail campaign with digital efforts, you reinforce your brand and messaging, keeping your offer top-of-mind.

One highly effective strategy is to follow up direct mail with a digital retargeting ad, which reminds recipients of your offer and encourages them to take action, boosting overall conversion rates

Tracking and Measuring Results

Using tracking codes, QR codes, or dedicated URLs in direct mail allows businesses to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns by tracking which recipients engage with the mail and take action. These tools provide clear data on response rates, helping marketers determine the ROI of their efforts.

Platforms like LeadPost make it easy to add this tracking so you can assess the success of each campaign and optimize future direct mail efforts

Omnichannel Retargeting in Action

A Virginia car dealership sought to bring more visitors into their showroom by retargeting online shoppers. When anonymous visitors viewed vehicles on their website, LeadPost identified 30% of them and sent targeted postcards featuring the specific vehicles they were browsing.

The campaign resulted in seven car sales, four of which were for the exact vehicles shown in the postcards, at an incredibly low CPA of just $34 per vehicle sold.

VSP, a nationwide vision insurance provider, used direct mail retargeting to see how direct mail retargeting could impact conversion rates for website visitors who left without purchasing. They sent postcards to 35% of non-converting visitors and held back the remaining 65% as a control group.

The direct mail recipients showed a 43% increase in conversion rates compared to the control group, demonstrating the effectiveness of integrating direct mail with their digital efforts.

Ryan Homes, a national homebuilder, faced a long sales cycle of 90 to 120 days and sought to build trust and emphasize the value of their homes during that time. To achieve this, they used LeadPost to launch a 6-week direct mail drip campaign targeting anonymous website visitors from three new communities. These visitors received personalized postcards with varying messages and promotions to keep them engaged.

After the campaign, Ryan Homes found that out of 838 anonymous visitors who received the drip sequence, five home sales could be directly attributed to their LeadPost campaign.

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Boost Direct Mail Retargeting with LeadPost

Direct mail retargeting complements digital efforts by offering a tangible, memorable touchpoint that re-engages prospects. With LeadPost, businesses can take advantage of personalized postcards and sophisticated data collection to drive higher conversions and ROI.

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