Smarter Direct Mail for Higher ROI

Catch the key takeaways

In our latest webinar, Amsive’s experts explored the surprising resurgence of direct mail marketing, and what it means for brands navigating digital fatigue and evolving consumer preferences.

Younger and digital-first demographics are increasingly embracing direct mail. For marketers, this renaissance presents both validation and opportunity: leverage the tangible, personal nature of physical mail, or miss out on a channel that’s outperforming traditional digital benchmarks.

Here are the top five takeaways from the conversation:

1. Younger audiences are driving direct mail’s comeback

Millennials and Gen Z are leading the growth of direct mail. Engagement rates have jumped from 70% to 85% in just one year, with these “digital first” generations showing the strongest response increases.

The reason? Digital fatigue. After years of oversaturated inboxes and constant online ads, 53% of consumers feel more special and valued when receiving relevant direct mail. For younger audiences who’ve never experienced less cluttered digital environments, physical mail feels exclusive and personal.

2. Predictive modeling multiplies direct mail effectiveness

Intuition-based targeting is leaving money on the table. Predictive modeling consistently delivers 30-40% lifts over traditional list selections, even for seemingly “universal” products like urgent care services.

The modeling process reveals hidden insights about customer preferences and market penetration opportunities that intuition misses. One credit union achieved a 200% increase in response rate by combining predictive modeling with digital overlays, proving that data-driven audience selection amplifies performance across all channels.

3. Trigger-based campaigns create always-on direct mail programs

Direct mail doesn’t have to be a periodic blast—it can be as responsive as your email automation. Trigger-based campaigns automatically send mail based on customer behaviors: abandoned carts, lapsed purchases, website visits, or lifecycle milestones.

Website retargeting is a prime example of this shift. Using JavaScript tracking, brands can identify anonymous visitors, match 70% to postal addresses, and deliver targeted mail within 24-48 hours. One furniture retailer saw lifts ranging from 25% to 82% across product categories using this approach.

4. Cross-channel integration amplifies all marketing performance

Direct mail works best as part of an omnichannel strategy, not as a standalone channel. The same predictive modeling audiences can feed programmatic advertising, social campaigns, and email marketing, creating consistent targeting across touchpoints.

Physical mail builds trust and recall while digital channels provide immediate response paths and retargeting opportunities.

5. Start with manageable tests and scale based on proven results

Direct mail success doesn’t require massive initial investments. Begin with statistically significant test volumes (25,000-30,000 pieces minimum) using predictive modeling to ensure you’re targeting your best prospects from day one.

Focus on format fundamentals: 6×9 postcards mailed first-class provide speed and engagement across most industries. Test personalization, messaging, and promotional strategies once baseline performance is established. The key is building scalable processes that can grow with proven success rather than hoping large initial investments will work without optimization.

FAQs: Direct Mail Marketing

What is the current state of direct mail marketing?

Direct mail is experiencing a renaissance with volumes doubling year-over-year. Digital fatigue from oversaturated inboxes and constant online ads is driving consumers back to physical mail. Engagement rates have jumped from 70% to 84% of consumers interacting with direct mail on the first day received, with millennials and Gen Z leading this growth.

Why are younger audiences responding to direct mail?

Millennials (ages 28-43) and Gen Z (ages 18-27) are the fastest-growing segments for direct mail response. These “digital first” generations feel more valued and exclusive when receiving relevant physical mail, with 53% reporting feeling special when they receive targeted direct mail pieces. The tangible, one-to-one nature cuts through digital noise.

Is predictive modeling necessary for direct mail success?

Predictive modeling consistently outperforms intuition-based targeting by 30-40% in many cases. While you may know your customer profile, modeling reveals hidden insights and prioritizes cost-effective audience segments. One urgent care client achieved 35% lift through modeling even for a “universal” service, identifying preferences for primary care versus urgent care usage.

What mail formats are most effective currently?

6×9 postcards are the top performer across most industries due to first-class delivery speed and higher engagement rates. They outperform traditional tri-folds and catalogs. However, nonprofits still see better results with envelope letters rather than postcards, demonstrating industry-specific format preferences.

How does direct mail retargeting work technically?

A JavaScript code snippet tracks anonymous website visitors through first-party cookie IDs, matching them to postal addresses via database partnerships. About 70% of visitors can be matched to physical addresses, scored for response likelihood, and mailed within 24-48 hours. One furniture client achieved 25-82% lift across different product categories.

What are trigger-based direct mail campaigns?

Automated campaigns that send mail based on specific customer behaviors, similar to email triggers you already use. Examples include abandoned cart follow-ups, lapsed customer reactivation, lifecycle milestones, and website visitor retargeting. These “always-on” campaigns complement digital triggers with physical touchpoints.

Should I include promotions in direct mail pieces?

Only if promotions align with your existing brand strategy. Don’t add promotions solely for direct mail if that’s not typical for your brand. However, you can customize promotional offers by audience segment and A/B test different incentives easily with direct mail’s segmentation capabilities.

How important is personalization in direct mail?

Personalization significantly impacts response rates when relevant. Addressing recipients by name and creating contextual messaging outperforms generic greetings like “Current Resident.” Each additional layer of relevance increases response rates measurably.

What’s the minimum test size for reliable direct mail results?

Plan for 25,000-30,000 pieces minimum for statistical significance. Mailing 5,000 pieces typically won’t provide actionable data. The exact volume depends on your expected response rate and market characteristics, but substantial volume is essential for valid testing.

Can direct mail audiences be used in other marketing channels?

Audiences built through predictive modeling transfer across all channels. The same segments can feed programmatic advertising, social media campaigns, and email marketing. This creates consistent targeting and messaging across your entire omnichannel marketing mix.

How does direct mail integrate with digital marketing?

Direct mail amplifies digital performance through cross-channel reinforcement. The physical-digital combination creates higher brand recall and trust than either channel individually.

What KPIs should I track for direct mail campaigns?

Focus on cost per acquisition, return on marketing investment (ROMI), and incremental lift. Use control groups to measure true performance versus what would have happened naturally. Track response rates, conversion rates, and time-to-response for trigger campaigns. Factor promotional costs into ROI calculations.

How does direct mail work for small communities or niche markets?

Modeling works at every geographic level, including rural areas. The key is ensuring statistically valid audience sizes for analysis. Amsive works with tenth-of-a-mile “hex grids” to identify population clustering in low-density areas. Geography doesn’t limit direct mail effectiveness.

How quickly can direct mail be delivered?

First-class postcards enable rapid delivery within 24-48 hours. Retargeting campaigns can have mail pieces in recipients’ mailboxes within this timeframe after website visits. Speed is crucial for trigger-based campaigns to maintain relevance and impact.

How should nonprofits approach direct mail differently?

Envelope letters outperform postcards for nonprofits, unlike most industries. Consider whether pieces should come from your CEO/president or relationship officers based on donor segments. Different cause categories (environmental, animal rights, etc.) require tailored approaches based on donor psychology.

How will AI and digital saturation affect direct mail’s future?

Direct mail effectiveness will likely increase as AI adds to digital message overload. The tangible, one-to-one nature provides differentiation from AI-generated content. Brand trust and the “valued” feeling from receiving relevant physical mail become stronger differentiators as digital noise increases.

Dive into the transcript

Introduction

Cindy Miller (00:09):

Everybody, welcome to our webinar on Smarter Direct Mail for Higher ROI. We’re so glad that you could join us today and just want to let you know during our live talk, we’ll leave about 10 minutes at the end for questions, 10, 15 minutes, whatever time we need. So if you’ve got any questions as we go through, please jot them down or just drop ’em into the chat and we’ll get to those as soon as we can. Before we get started, I do want to make some quick introductions.

I’m Cindy Miller and along with my teammate Angie, we’re part of the strategic development team here at Amsive, and we’re really excited, because Ray Owens was able to join us today. He’s our EVP of Customer Intelligence. Thanks, Angie. Thanks Ray for being here.

What we’re going to cover today is how even the smallest tweaks that you can make with direct mail can make a difference, make it more effective, bring a little bit of lift to your ROI. We’re going to talk about how younger audiences are interacting with direct mail and talk a little bit about compliance. I know we’ve got a lot of folks on the phone that have to deal with that as well and how data usage is part of that.

When we started talking about what we wanted to do for this session, direct mail came to mind. We are calling this the renaissance of direct mail. What we’re seeing is that volumes out there are doubling from what they were last year, and part of that is because there’s some performance that’s doing very, very well and many of the execs are saying that they’re going to continue it and finding it’s up there with some of their top performing channels.

Why the shifts? Why the jump? And the direct mail part of it is there’s several, but digital fatigue is one of those. As consumers, everybody’s bombarded with their inboxes and emails. They’re having ads pushed to them. The one thing about direct mail is that there’s few pieces in your direct mail mailbox and so you’re able to go through those. There’s a lot of interactive with it.

Engagement, I think over 70% of the folks interact with their mail on a weekly basis. We’re also seeing the responsiveness of the younger generations or those that we felt were digital first and then also how the privacy ships are kind of reshaping how we can use data.

And I know this is something Angie’s going to jump in here and want to talk about really quick is the privacy shifts, but we want to talk a little bit first. We’re going to let Ray talk here about the younger generation and what we’re seeing with Gen Zs and the millennials.

The Direct Mail Renaissance: Why Now?

Ray Owens (03:22):

We saw this study come out this year just a few months ago, and even in our own reporting teams we’re seeing an uptick in response rates from millennials especially. And Gen Z segment is growing too. Cindy was talking about the 70% engagement rate. So the statistic last year was 70% of consumers were engaging with direct mail on the first day.

That has jumped actually to this year to 84%, which was a huge drop and it was actually led by these two particular segments. So that was huge. But also we saw just looking at the same study, really a big increase in brand trust and authenticity with receiving direct mail.

Folks just felt like it was cutting through maybe some overloads they were getting in typical maybe some digital advertising, but I think the quote was 53% felt more special, exclusive, valued when they received a relevant direct mail piece.

We saw this especially in retention efforts. And Angie, I think you have a great example of sort of a digital client that went direct mail with their CRM program that sort of proved that out.

Case Study: Digital-First Company Success

Angie Arnspiger (04:44):

Yeah, absolutely. I do and I want to review this, but one thing I’ll mention with that study is that 80% of brands said that they are going to increase DM spend over the next 12 months, and that’s over an increase. I think the spend the value of direct mail today is like north of 37 billion.

So it is a renaissance year as Cindy had said for sure. Absolutely. And it’s because of that digital fatigue a little bit cutting through that clutter, but also it’s thriving. Direct mail is thriving alongside the other channels and so it should be part of the mix to consider.

But this case study here, this is one that we’re really excited about. We had a digital first company, a customer of ours that is younger demographic that were seeing some of that fatigue in digital retargeting actually to their customer file. And so we said, let’s see what we can do.

So we set up a direct mail campaign that was not only a study of direct mail, we mailed about a hundred, 200,000 pieces, but also it was a strategy in frequency. So everybody on the list received three postcards in this case and we developed a result of 10 times return on investment. And not only are they scaling now for success, they’re big believers in direct mail.

So coming from a few months ago never had done it to this great success and seeing a higher AOV on top of everything else, it was fantastic. And so I think one of the takeaways here is that the younger demographic is looking at their mail often every day as Ray had mentioned. And also this is a great way to nurture somebody outside maybe some of those other channels where we’re hitting them multiple times.

Yeah, so Cindy had mentioned just real quick privacy, brand safety, message control, and one of the things that people don’t really think about with direct mail that I get really excited about is that direct mail is a channel that gives you a lot more control than the other channels.

So one, it drives really great measurement, but also it allows you to make sure that your message is being seen where you want it to be seen. So in today’s environment, there is that concern about advertisement showing up somewhere where maybe it’s a little bit iffy content or content that you necessarily don’t want to be associated with.

Maybe your creative changes a little bit just to make sure that you’re meeting the algorithm and the programmatic responsibility. This gives you the opportunity to get a message out in the time that you want it to be out to the person you want it to be out to.

So that one-to-one messaging I think is really important and it does eliminate some of those other concerns that you have. Sometimes with advertising, whether it’s to your first party data or acquisition file, we can absolutely, direct mail is one of those more safe channels that you could absolutely get a message out in front of somebody.

So Cindy, if you advance to the next slide, I will just introduce Ray back in because a lot of the hurdles or one of the main hurdles that we do get when somebody is saying, okay, I will dabble in direct mail, help me through it. What do I need to do? It seems like it’s really costly, how do I control for that? And the number one thing that you can do is make sure you’re measuring to the right or you’re mailing to the right person at the right time.

And so predictive modeling is something that we leverage for that. And Ray, I’m hoping that you’ll just talk through a little bit about what that is, how it works and what the folks out in the audience can take away when they’re starting to think about direct mail and the value prop it brings.

The Role of Predictive Modeling and Audience Targeting in Direct Mail

Ray Owens (09:02):

Yeah, thanks Angie. Yeah, we’re big fans of the modeling process itself just because it does prioritize sometimes large consumer sets or large market areas where we might be testing direct mail and we want to make sure that we’re reaching the right segments or really in a cost effective way, but also to segment and get the most response.

Predictive modeling itself is just a technique obviously, and I think we’ve all used it, have had experience with it or have used it, but really there’s greater depth of what modeling does across sort of the marketing journey. And I want to talk a little bit more about that. And so obviously on the next slide, Cindy, when we start with modeling, usually the first thing we do is we want to take a deep dive, obviously in who’s using your product or service. So advanced segmentation profiling is really the starting point because that’ll dictate what those attributes are that we’re really trying to model, replicate, and obviously build into our predictive process.

And the predictive modeling itself, what it does is that type of segmentation, it sets up really what’s at the market potential using my product or service, how many more are out there, how many are in my trade area, what’s my opportunity to grow, how much penetration can I get into any given area given the competition or just what I’ve been doing with my product set so far.

So those two things really are paramount to sort of establishing the baseline of the types of audiences we want to build, but also just all the things you learn from the model that you learn from the profile, obviously go into the creative because how you message to folks segment those audiences are really important.

But also prioritizing the channels, not just direct mail because we are leading, we’re there, but also if we’re going to use any of these insights into additional channels, whether it’s out of home or digital, this is where it’s obviously a big boost.

And obviously what comes after that is any measurement that would go on. But one of the nice things if you’re not using a predictive model, if you’re not using an audience that you built to actually put into other, I guess other channels or publisher channels, you can actually use that data itself to sort of segment and actually create audiences in a third party setting just based on those insights.

So anyway, all these things that go into the process itself, Cindy’s got a great example of how we’ve used this for a credit union client really from start to end.

Case Study: Credit Union Integration Campaign

Cindy Miller (11:45):

Yeah, this is a great example. This is also one, not only did we do predictive modeling, but we also integrated it with the digital. When we started working with this customer, we did a baseline with direct mail just to kind of figure out what kind of response that they would get. It was one that we were driving membership, and what we found is once we established the baseline, we did some continually testing and we did some digital overlays like what Ray was talking about, and we had two different groups, one that just had direct mail and one that had direct mail.

And using the predictive model data over top of that with the digital layer of different channels, it resulted in a 200% increase in conversion. And within a six month period, this credit union had gotten about 13,017 million in loans and deposits. I guess the real incredible thing is the ROI that they got for the CPA was about $182, which was much, much lower than what the national average is.

I know with direct mail and predictive modeling, it’s really big S is very leaned into that, but there’s other ways that we know that we can use direct mail, one being triggers, whether it’s coupled with predictive modeling or not. I think Angie, you may want to talk a little bit more. I know you’re the trigger expert.

Trigger-Based Direct Mail Campaigns

Angie Arnspiger (13:22):

I love the triggers for sure, and one of the things that we talk to our clients about all the time is typically in today’s marketing landscape, you are going to have some always on triggers for your campaigns. You’re going to have an email always on abandoned cart campaign. You’re probably going to have an email welcome letter campaign. So those, when you think about your always on and even digital, your digital retargeting, that’s always on and it’s a trigger that happens as a result of something.

And so these triggers from abandoned cart to lifecycle milestones, lapsed, customers, reactivation win back, and even just driving loyalty. As you think about those standard triggers you do, a lot of people don’t realize you can also do them with direct mail. And the cool part about that is that these direct mail pieces can go out quickly. They’re one-to-one your conversation to Ray’s point, you can have creative that is specific and messaging that is specific to the segment or the type of persona that you are actually targeting for that piece.

And so the ask here is just think about your standard triggers that you set up today through email and display and include potentially direct mail as part of that. It’s cost effective. It drives a high response. And as stated earlier, that younger generation especially feels very honored to receive a one-to-one piece and allowing you to get that message in front of them.

Now, I do have one trigger I haven’t mentioned yet because it is my all time fave, which is direct mail retargeting to your unknown abandoned browsers. So those that have come to the website demonstrated intent, but they left without engaging for one reason or another.

Let’s pull those in, let’s score them and let’s get a retargeting piece out. And again, this is a omnichannel unified channel for all of your retargeting, but in particular, this one is my favorite and Cindy has a case study to talk about one of our current clients who has this as always on and is seeing really great results.

Case Study: Furniture Chain Retargeting Program

Cindy Miller (15:53):

Yeah, definitely. This is a great example of that. This is a national furniture chain that is using the DM retargeting is what we’re calling it. And what we are able to do is identify who has went to their website, the visitors that have not converted, they haven’t purchased anything and they haven’t abandoned a cart and what we’re doing within 48 hours or 36 hours later after they’ve visited the site, worse, we have a mail piece virtually into their mailbox. And after they do that, we’re able to measure when they come back and when they’ve revisited.

And as you can see here, over 13,000 came back and revisited right after they had the piece in their mailbox that resulted in this particular case of over a thousand applications. And many of those turned into purchases. It was like 82% I believe. We had a really high ROI on this one and we did it by categories and some of the categories did a little bit better than others.

Again, this was a company that had their traditional digital stuff always on that they’re doing. They didn’t change that, but we added in this direct mail. On top of that, you might say, well, would they have gotten that? Anyway, with the retargeting alone, we put in control groups on this in the different categories. So the lift in the categories were anywhere from 25% for living rooms all the way up to 82% for mattresses. So it’s a great story.

We’re continuing this. There’s a merchandise sale or special, we’re using this to drive people back to the website. And I think the best part about this is the folks that we identified after we mailed them, we were able to go back and do a matchback to their customer file and we found 85% of these folks were new customers to them. So they’re using this as a new customer effort as well. So Angie, I don’t know if there’s anything you want to add to that, Angie?

Case Study: Insurance Industry Success

Angie Arnspiger (18:18):

No, but I do get that comment a lot. I think we all hear that a lot on how the uniqueness of the audience is really fantastic. So no kudos. This is a great program that you’ve got running. Another one though that’s really great for triggers is this one here for one of our insurance brands. And again, at the top of the call we said the younger demographics, they like direct mail. Also digital first is seeing some great success with direct mail, and this company is both of those. And so they are targeting the younger demographic for one of their new products that they’re offering that they’re rolling out.

It’s their auto product. And as part of that, we were able to target prescreen credit triggers. And so what’s really great about that is not only were we able to take a very, very specific list and understand who is in the market for this potential brand, we were able to drive in this test scenario in the pilot over 2,700 quotes, and the industry standard is like four to $700 per policy.

We saw $285 per cost per policy. And so again, just demonstrating that we’re outperforming industry benchmarks, we are targeting who you wouldn’t think loves direct mail, which is that younger demographic as well as being able to really help these digital first companies see more growth as they expand through their different channels.

So I think Cindy, I know that one of the things we always get asked is Elevate your direct mail program. What do you have to do next? What are some ideas and thoughts? And so I’ll let you take it from here.

Getting Started: Direct Mail Best Practices

Ray Owens (20:26):

Great. Well, I know one of the things that I guess makes the point of entry into direct mail a lot easier is that you don’t have to go all in. You can actually start with a manageable test campaign, and that’s something we can help set up in terms of having the mix the right quantities to get a really good stat valid read on the output.

But as we’ve talked about with profiling and predictive modeling to enhance that, it really does make a difference in terms of getting higher performance out of direct mail. One of the industries that we work in urgent care, if you think about urgent care in general, it’s kind of a universal product everybody, everybody needs it.

But by actually modeling the markets and the areas around these locations, we did find there was a difference. And in fact, when we actually modeled the audiences, even though it was universal in appeal, we got a 30%, almost 35, sometimes 40% lift and modeling in certain segments and some of those model outputs, really it was folks had a preference for going to primary care, maybe going to ER when they could have gone to an urgent care.

I mean, there are times when you have to go to an ER and that’s what you do, but when given the option they didn’t. So we were able to actually segment the audiences out there and really prove the effectiveness of the campaign and that the modeling worked. But the good thing about it, and I think Angie and Cindy have talked about this throughout, is that no matter what model audience you build and you test direct mail, those same audiences can be used for digital touchpoints.

You can push the same audiences into programmatic, you can push it into social use your audiences, use your modeled audiences, but use those particular platforms for their reach and their algorithms to actually get folks served those particular ads.

But at the end of the day, especially if you’re testing direct mail, we want to make sure we set up the right KPIs for measuring effectiveness. If it’s lowering your cost of acquisition, if it’s getting a higher return on your marketing investment, those are all KPIs that we’d want to build out and make sure that we’re tracking. For you, Angie, I know you’ve done a lot with introducing folks that new to direct mail, anything you would add to that?

Angie Arnspiger (22:43):

A couple things I think are important. If you are new to direct mail, you’re probably thinking, okay, you know what? I know who my customer is, and so let’s just pull a list of those people and we have so many case studies and results to demonstrate that sure, you may intuitively know who your best customer is, but let us guide you, let us make sure that we’re doing a profile and this propensity modeling because that list is going to outperform any outside list select that you think that you should start with. So starting with the right audience is going to one, drive a better baseline for you, but two, it’s going to give you some additional insights that maybe you don’t know today. So that’s one. And then the second one is you want a substantial direct mail start a test that allows you to get stat sig results.

It needs to be significant. If we go out and mail 5,000 pieces, it’s probably not going to give us a stats to read of any kind, so it needs to be significant, but I’ll tell you what, we can help, we can help with the creative, we can help with the design, we can share multiple pieces and formats that work well for your industry and we can do that heavy lift. So just keep those things in mind. It’s not a daunting task.

We want to do the heavy lift where we can to help you ease into it, but I think the most important thing is getting that baseline and then optimizing from there. That’s the best recommendation that we can bring to the table is getting that baseline using the audience and let us help with that creative if you need it.

Ray Owens (24:30):

That’s great, Angie. In fact, I think a lot of what you just said there can also be applied to what we could actually help with when you’re already using direct mail, and that is really, sometimes there are things that are working, but if we audit the process, all these things that Angie mentioned, what types of lists you’re using, what kind of data is going into the marketing itself, the creative mix, the cadence of when things are going out, are we hitting the seasonal spurts just right, looking at cost effectiveness for the way to segment the audiences or the packages themselves, but also maybe if you’ve done some prior modeling, there’s some advanced segmentation that can go on that can sort of build and enhance that as well. We love testing creative personalization, dynamic creative.

Those are important in being relevant with messaging. One of the biggest setbacks or failures we might see in direct mail or really any advertising is to make sure that messages are relevant, the audience is relevant.

So all of that is really paramount. And of course we’ve said this many times, cross channel integration like cross sell, getting Lyft with bolstering if you’ve got the confidence, putting it in their mailbox and let’s reinforce that message with the digital channel as well. So it just makes the direct mail work better. We see discernible lifts with the integration of that.

So again, it’s not necessarily reinventing the wheel, but it’s making sure that we go in and look at every step of the way and just make sure that we’re going to market in the most effective way. Cindy, I’ll pop it back to you.

Q&A Session

Cindy Miller (26:18):

Yeah, great points guys. Definitely. Now we’ve come to the end of our talk and we’d like to open it up for questions if you have any questions. Oh, this one is actually a good one and I think I’m going to give this to Angie for digital first brands, what’s usually the tipping point that pushes them to add direct mail to their mix?

Angie Arnspiger (26:48):

So I think it’s that first case study that we shared. They had been overs, saturating, if you will, to their customer file. They weren’t getting lapsed buyers reconverted, they just were having a hard time. And so I think dabbling into a new channel that drives great response, that gives you a lot of control and again, that measurement and reporting aspect is one of the first things that you can do.

And then just all the data that’s out there that demonstrates that more and more people are seeing hundreds of ads, digital ads, your email box is flowing. It’s just a really great way for those digital first brands to break out a little bit through some of that clutter and just start doing the one-to-one messaging to the direct mail.

Cindy Miller (27:45):

Okay, thanks Angie. We have another question, Ray, I think I’m going to toss this one to you. What do you consider a younger audience age span?

Ray Owens (27:57):

When we were looking at the two faster growing segments, gen Z and millennials, millennials, if you think about ages of millennial, Beyonce, LeBron James, who’s another, Britney Spears, they’re at the top end of the millennial age. So they were 18 when they were millennials when they first came out. So if you think about their current ages, that’s the millennial spread and then the Gen Z is actually less than that.

So it would be that 18 up to 30-ish or twenties kind of span. So the direct mail we see more in millennial, the younger millennial, the older millennial is that group, but then the Gen Z is that sort of 18 to late twenties kind of spread. So those were the two audience span ages that we were referring to.

Angie Arnspiger (28:52):

And I’ll mention in the first case study that we shared, it was digital first. It was their first time going out with direct mail. That demographic of their best customer is the age 29 to 49, and so that’s kind of that age group.

They’re typically, in that case it was women who typically make most of the decisions in the household from buying perspective. They buy a lot online. And so that was the demographic that we were targeting and trying to find incremental audiences for.

Cindy Miller (29:26):

Okay, thanks Angie. We got a third question here. I think I might toss this one back to Ray. How should I be taking advantage of promotions for direct mail? Angie, you might want to weigh on this one too.

Ray Owens (29:43):

Well, Angie, you want to go first? I know you’ve got quite your promotions.

Angie Arnspiger (29:47):

Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, here’s what I will say about promotions is if you typically do promotions and that’s true to your brand, then absolutely we should be incorporating them into direct mail. If you don’t typically don’t feel like you need to just for direct mail to work because that’s not the strategy we would recommend, but the cool part about it is you can take advantage of the promotions that you are offering today by different segments of your audience.

And so everything that we do with direct mail that Ray had spoken a lot about with regards to that audience and that predictive modeling, we can augment those promotions to be custom, if you will, custom messaging to different segments and that allows you to look at the performance based on the promotion that you’re offering for that segment.

Now the other thing that I would recommend is that this is a channel where I think we had mentioned it earlier, A/B testing is easy to do and so taking a look if you’re not sure which promotion works best, let’s test ’em both. It is no trouble to test two or three. We love A/B testing, we love testing in general and especially when we can get personalized by segment in the audience.

Ray Owens (31:11):

Yeah, I think just to piggyback on that, in some of the segmentation work that we do, we can see folks who are price driven or price conscious or do price comparison, so that might be something that goes into the consideration for creative as Angie said, but also in the KPIs too because there is a cost to doing promotion.

So we want to factor in any ROI or any cost of acquisition consideration that what was the impact of that promotion on the response as well. So we just want to make sure we fold that in.

Angie Arnspiger (31:52):

Yeah, good point.

Cindy Miller (31:55):

Thanks Ray. Angie, on that we have another question. How would that KPI work for very small communities or is it an example here is women’s health in like 5,000 universe, right? You want to take this one?

Ray Owens (32:16):

Sure. I mean urbanization obviously impacts testing size if you’re in a urban area with high density versus rural community. So modeling works at every level. As long as we have a stat valid audience to examine, we can project those into any level of geography. In fact, we have many instances where we work in 10th of a mile, what we call hex grids. It’s kind of a honeycomb looking shape that we actually stamp into rural areas so that we can see where we actually see some population clustering. You’re really not limited by any level.

We would just have to make sure that the volume themselves or the counts themselves are, as I’ve said, stat valid in order to get a good readout. If it’s 2000, 3000, 5,000, we will help design that. But again, small communities were used to it, especially in low levels of density, the rural community, so you can certainly get an effective read in that type of market.

Cindy Miller (33:34):

Thank you. We actually, we have several questions. This next one, Angie, I think this one’s for you. What mail pieces are you seeing success with? Is it letters, is it postcards?

Angie Arnspiger (33:50):

So it really does depend on the industry. As an example, not for profit success format is going to be your envelope. What’s worked, we’ve tested postcards in that industry and they don’t work as well. An actual letter works. But in general, what we’re seeing across all industries on average is that postcards, especially the six by nine postcards work really, really well and I think that’s twofold.

I think the reason being is that one, we can mail them first class and so they count as that quicker delivery as we have to consider in everything that we do. The postage strategy goes along just as much as the creative and the audience strategy, which by the way Amsive will help you do so.

Again, that heavy lift we manage to what options there are for the USPS, but we are seeing six by nine postcards really outperform a lot of the other pieces that typically people do. Trifolds used to work well really, really well.

Many catalogs used to work really well, slim jims, it depends on the industry, but in general, my go-to is let’s get a baseline. Let’s use postcards, let’s try a mail quicker, get this out in the mail quicker than not, and let’s see what the baseline is and then adjust from there and let’s test different formats. That’s the cool part of direct mail us being able to do that. But my go-to typically, six by nine postcard.

Cindy Miller (35:32):

We have another question. I’m going to toss this one back to Angie. From a technical perspective, how does direct mail retargeting work, or rather how would I convert an anonymous website visitor to a known physical address?

Angie Arnspiger (35:48):

Yeah, so we’re able to do that for you and what happens is it starts with a one line JavaScript code that you just copy and paste into your tag manager, and we can again help with that. Once that tag is on the website, what happens is we are tracking the anonymous browser that comes over. We’re looking at first party cookie IDs. We’re taking those IDs, we’re doing a match to our match partner network, and 70% of the time we’re getting postal name and postal address. And so on those 70% that we see, so let’s say there’s a hundred unknown visitors today, we can match 70 of them to a postal name and address.

From there, what we do is we actually look at the scores or that level of intent, what is the propensity score, the likelihood somebody is going to be able to or will respond to this direct mail piece If we mail it tomorrow, we look at those scores, make a decision how deep to mail, and then that piece is going out the door the next day.

So we take it on and again, we’re matching about 70% of those to a postal name and address, and we’ll mail those first class six by nine. Postcard is highly recommended for that piece goes out the door the next business day.

Cindy Miller (37:09):

Okay. We have another question. In your experience, how does personalization in direct mail, such as addressing someone by name and pack response rates, compare to using a generic reading like current resident? Actually, I think I’ll take this question.

Personalization if it’s relevant is fantastic. Whatever you can do to make that more meaningful to the person that’s receiving the direct mail, that would be ideal. Addressing them by name, oftentimes we’ll do things, especially when we’re doing triggers where we’ll say, Hey Sam, we miss you. Why don’t you come back? We haven’t seen you for a while.

Always, whenever you can make a personalization and add the name, it’s going to be that much more relevant to the person. And generic greetings, like current resident is kind of old school these days.

We know enough about those households that we can meet them where they are. Know probably a little bit too much about sometimes what is going on in that household. But yeah, it allows us to leverage personalization

Angie Arnspiger (38:25):

And I think it’s important to note that people expect that relevant advertising and they expect it to be personalized in the lease. That’s what you should do. And to Cindy’s point, every step that you make it more relevant to them, the higher the response rate is going to be. So absolutely. Yeah, ditto everything Cindy said.

Cindy Miller (38:51):

We got another question. I’m going to toss this one to re, do you have any case studies for Medicare Advantage Insurance?

Ray Owens (39:02):

Oops, I was muted. Yes. In fact, we actually have a tracking and trending study that we update every year. I think we have seven to nine years of history across Medicare Advantage, and so yeah, we’re happy to share that with you. We actually share it internally. We share it with clients just trending the cost of enrollment, the cost per lead, they’re applicable KPIs, so we do have those and can share.

If you just reach out to us here at Amsive, we’re happy to actually, we’ll put the whole package together and share it with, but we’ve had clients ask for it. We do that and we certainly would do it. In any case, for someone who wants to see how the performance has been over the last couple of years, actually up to seven, eight years.

Cindy Miller (40:08):

We have a question about one of the case studies, one of the furniture case studies that I went over, it said how many direct mail pieces were mailed out for that? It varied by a category, but on average it was right around between 25,000 to 30,000 pieces that went out. We would kind of do that in a week or like seven 10 day type of campaign period.

And you have to remember, we’re identifying these website visitors, but we’re also looking at the ones that are more likely that we think based on their behaviors respond to this customer and come back that they were showing real strong intent.

If we have any more questions, oh, another question. Does Amsive execute campaigns and or support vendors who execute campaigns? Angie, you want to take that one?

Angie Arnspiger (41:23):

Sure, absolutely. So one of the cool things about AMS I is that we can help with every aspect of a campaign and from brand strategy to the creative to the execution among any channel from digital email, SMS, direct mail, any of that is done and it’s all done under one roof essentially.

We don’t outsource that. We’re managing all of that under one roof, but at the same time, we can do bits and pieces. If you have the audience that you want to mail to or onboard for social display, we can absolutely take that in and execute that. Or if you want us to provide an audience to a partner that you already have for direct mail and or social display, and we can do that too.

So we’re very agile, very flexible. We are a one-stop shop, which I will say the benefit of that is our optimization amongst all the channels. If we’re doing an omnichannel campaign, we can optimize and manage budget that way. It’s sometimes easier for you, the client, but we are absolutely happy to do ad hoc and bits and pieces to help support you get to the goal that you need to get to.

And if that is sending the data to another partner, we’re happy to do that. Or if you want to send us data and we execute, we’re happy to do that or we can do it all.

Cindy Miller (43:05):

Thanks Angie. We have another question. Can you email a copy of this webinar to share with my leadership team? The answer is yes. You receive an email, this webinar on demand, and we also have another one. This is who do I reach out at Amsive for Medicare Advantage?

Yes, we actually have a QR code here on the deck as well as you can link in with any one of those folks, either myself or Ray or Angie, and we will get you to the right person. We have experts on staff that deal with all the Medicare and healthcare teams,

Ray Owens (43:52):

And I just wanted to follow up and I took a look at the trending deck when we were chatting here. And so yeah, we’re running at about for every dollar spent in the industry for a cost of acquisition, we were spending about 46% less with Amsive.

So we have some specific case studies around how that works, and we’re running about $200 lower as well in terms of cost of application than the industry norm. So a lot of data on MA and the trends there. So again, if you just hit the QR code, we’ll follow up with that.

Cindy Miller (44:39):

Another question, what do you recommend besides running an A/B test? We usually send our direct mail pieces from our president to higher level donors, but our officers are typically the ones who call and meet with them. Should we consider adjusting our strategy so that the pieces come from our officers instead? Want to take that one, Ray?

Ray Owens (45:06):

Yeah, so really I think it gets back to relevance too, and also we were doing a recent analysis of donor types and we were looking at the different areas where environmental causes had a different approach than animal rights, than environmental, et cetera, et cetera.

So really we would want to take a look at that and just look at what type of donor area or I guess the category of that and sort of analyze that before we actually would make a recommendation. But yeah, we look at it, we do a lot of analysis in the different segments and we’d be happy to share that as well.

Cindy Miller (46:08):

Sure. If we have any more questions or not, I think we have one more. How do you see direct mail evolving over the next few years as AI keeps advancing? I dunno who wants to take that one.

Ray Owens (46:28):

Yeah, I think is what we’re seeing in some of the studies of brand trust, there is a lot of fatigue. Folks are bombarded with messages from everywhere, and so I think that the one-to-one interaction is I think we’ll see that trend continue. I was really surprised to see how much it jumped this year just alone because for those particular reasons.

But yeah, I think direct mail, again, just kind of cuts through that. We’re seeing that folks are relying more for customer retention. They feel more valued when they get that, so I don’t see that diminishing and AI is really as adding to the noise as well.

I mean AI is great for productivity for some creative applications research, but again, from just how you’re getting messaging out and getting those messages in front of the consumers, DM is still one of those that will be very effective.

Cindy Miller (47:38):

I think that’s all the time we have for questions, and I know there’s some more questions out there that we didn’t get to. If you would like to go ahead and scan the QR code there and we’ll be happy to answer those questions. Thank you for joining us and taking time out of your day.

Ray Owens (48:04):

Thanks everybody.

Cindy Miller (48:06):

Thank you.

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