This Place is a strong and established natural cosmetics brand that grew up in online retail. To make the brand feeling and philosophy of This Place tangible offline as well, the company opened its first flagship store in Berlin. Passers-by responded positively to the store immediately. However, This Place noticed that most existing customers had not heard the news about the opening.
The problem: customers do not read your emails
The problem for This Place was that most customers did not read their emails. Although email open rates at This Place are above average, around two thirds of customers still did not react to the email. And those who did open it were only rarely activated by it and came into the store. The reason is simple: customers receive so many emails today that important messages often get lost in the crowd. And even when emails are opened, they are usually archived quickly and the content is then forgotten.
To inform all Berlin customers about the opening, This Place decided to run a postcard campaign with PostPal. This Place knew that postcards are read almost 100% of the time and kept for 17 days on average. That makes postcards the ideal medium for communicating the opening and staying remembered until customers have time to stop by.
The campaign
The postcards were sent to all Berlin customers of This Place. Thanks to PostPal’s native Shopify integration, segmenting customer data was simple and the campaign could be set up easily and without complications.
The postcard design conveyed the familiar brand feeling of This Place, while also being optimized for conversions and encouraging action. The postcard was sent as an exclusive invitation that allowed each recipient to pick up a free gift and experience the product world of This Place on site with personal consultation. The gift period was time-limited to create urgency. A map section of Berlin was also printed on the back of the postcard, making it easier for customers to find the store.
The results
The results are impressive. Within six weeks, more than 3% of contacted customers came to the flagship store with the postcard and redeemed their gift. In addition, This Place recorded a significant increase of around 15% in store visitors and sales during the campaign period. What was especially notable about this campaign, however, was that more than 9% of contacted customers purchased again online after receiving the card. This underlines the activating effect of postcards, which allow a brand to place itself positively in customers’ awareness. The entire campaign cost €971 and generated revenue of €35,690, equal to a ROAS of 3,676%.
For founder Laura Simonow, the most beautiful result was how happy customers were about the postcard. “When customers came into the store, they were already smiling from ear to ear and happy that we had addressed them in such a personal way. This is definitely the kind of marketing we want to do to show our customers the appreciation we feel for them.”
With postcards, This Place found a marketing channel that made it possible to address customers emotionally, communicate content flexibly and achieve high marketing efficiency at the same time.