427: This Old School Marketing Tactic Converts Like Crazy With Mike Epstein

Podcast: Download (Duration: 47:33 — 54.7MB)

In this episode of the My Wife Quit Her Job podcast, I sit down with Michael Epstein, co-founder of PostPilot, to unpack why postcard marketing has become one of the highest-ROI channels in ecommerce. Direct mail at 49 cents per card now costs less than most Facebook and Google clicks, and win-back campaigns routinely produce 6X to 26X ROI on customers your email list can no longer reach.

Mike and his partner Drew Sanocki have been building direct-to-consumer businesses together for over a decade, from the nine-figure Auto Anything turnaround to their agency Growth Engines. They acquired PostPilot four years ago because they were tired of the spreadsheet-and-print-house grind and wanted a Klaviyo-style automation platform for postcards. It worked.

Below I have organized the playbook we walked through: what postcard marketing costs, which campaigns to launch first, what ROI to expect, and how to design cards that actually get read.

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Key takeaways

• Postcards cost about 49 cents each all-in (postage included), which is below the cost of a typical Facebook or Google click in 2023.
• Over 90% of people at least skim their direct mail, and postcards have a longer physical lifespan on kitchen counters than any email ever gets.
• Ezra Firestone’s BOOM! ran a win-back campaign that produced a 26X ROI. Beardbrand’s Eric Bandholz produced 10X ROAS targeting people who had not bought in 6+ months and were unsubscribed from email. Obvi supplements produced 24X on a 90-day win-back.
• Start with a win-back campaign targeting lapsed buyers, then layer in VIP appreciation, second-purchase, and abandoned-cart triggers.
• Millennials respond as well as (or better than) older shoppers because physical mail is now novel to them.
• PostPilot’s Mail Match feature matches your email subscribers against physical addresses at about 60% accuracy, unlocking direct mail to email-only leads.

Why is postcard marketing making a comeback for ecommerce?

Postcard marketing is making a comeback because iOS 14 crushed Facebook attribution, email open rates have decayed to 20 to 25% for well-run ecommerce lists, and a 49-cent postcard now costs less than a paid click on most platforms. Merchants who were dependent on Meta and email for the last decade are actively looking for channels they own and can attribute cleanly.

Two years ago most ecommerce operators would give Mike a quizzical look when he mentioned direct mail. The response now is the opposite. Almost every conversation starts with “I have been wanting to try this, how do I get off Facebook.”

The math also changed. When Facebook clicks cost pennies, sending a 49-cent card felt expensive. Now clicks cost more than a card, so the relative economics flipped in direct mail’s favor.

How much does postcard marketing cost per card?

Postcard marketing on PostPilot costs about 49 cents per standard 4-by-6 card, all-in with postage included. Larger 6-by-9 “cartolog” formats run 59 cents. A small monthly subscription unlocks the lowest per-card rate and includes full-service design and account strategy from PostPilot’s in-house team.

That 49-cent all-in price is the number to compare against your current cost per click on Facebook and Google. For most ecommerce brands, especially post-iOS 14, that is a favorable trade.

The 6-by-9 format costs 10 cents more but gives you roughly double the design real estate. It is worth the upgrade only if you have a large product assortment or a real brand story to tell.

How do you track postcard marketing ROI?

Postcard marketing ROI is tracked in two ways: total recipient attribution (any customer who received a card and then purchased) and coupon attribution (customers who redeemed the specific code printed on the card). PostPilot’s native Shopify integration matches recipients to purchases in real time on a dashboard, so both numbers are visible without spreadsheet matchbacks.

Think of the two attribution numbers as bookends. Recipient attribution is the aggressive read and coupon redemption is the conservative read. Reality lands somewhere in between, closer to the recipient number for lapsed segments where the postcard was the only recent touch.

For most merchants, if the coupon-redemption ROI looks strong, the real number is well above it. Many recipients forget the code, apply a different one they find online, or just come back and buy at full price.

What ROI can you expect from a postcard marketing campaign?

PostPilot’s internal benchmark for a well-targeted postcard campaign is 6X to 10X ROI, and top campaigns routinely produce 15X to 26X. Real examples from PostPilot customers include a 26X ROI on Ezra Firestone’s BOOM! win-back, a 24X on Obvi’s 90-day win-back, a 16X on Orbit Baby’s Mail Match acquisition campaign, and a 10X on Beardbrand’s win-back targeting people who were unsubscribed from Klaviyo.

Here is a snapshot of documented PostPilot customer results:

I ran my own test on Bumblebee Linens and hit about 16X ROI. That was with a first-time campaign against a lapsed segment, so the setup was closer to worst-case than best-case for PostPilot’s benchmarks.

The pattern across these campaigns is consistent. Postcards work hardest on customers who have already bought once, especially when email and Facebook have stopped reaching them.

Which postcard marketing campaign should you launch first?

Launch a win-back campaign first. The safest, highest-ROI starter campaign is a triggered card sent 60 to 90 days after a customer’s last purchase (or 5 to 10 days after your normal refill window if you sell consumables), with a 10% off code or a QR-code cart link.

Win-backs work because you are hitting people who have already trusted you enough to buy once. Their credit card is on file, they know your product, and the barrier to a second purchase is small. All you have to do is remind them.

The reason a postcard beats an email here is reach. Even a well-run ecommerce email list has 20 to 25% open rates, which means 75 to 80% of your list is invisible on any given send. A postcard bypasses the inbox entirely.

The postcard marketing campaign order of operations

The recommended order for launching postcard campaigns is win-back first, VIP appreciation second, second-purchase and abandoned-cart triggers third, then acquisition (Mail Match) once your retention plays are producing consistent ROI.

Here is the practical launch sequence Mike recommends:

1. Win-back: Trigger a card at day 60 to 90 post-purchase (or shortly after your product’s expected reorder date) with an incentive to come back.
2. VIP appreciation: Trigger a handwritten card after a customer’s fourth purchase or once they cross a lifetime-value threshold like $500. Top 10% of customers routinely produce 40 to 50% of a store’s revenue and deserve the touch.
3. Second-purchase / cross-sell: Trigger a card 30 days after a first purchase pushing a complementary product (day 30 after jeans, offer a t-shirt).
4. Abandoned cart: Tack a postcard onto the tail of your email abandoned-cart flow, sent on day 3 or 4 to shoppers who did not respond to email.
5. Acquisition (Mail Match): Send cards to email subscribers who have opted in but not purchased in 14 to 30 days. PostPilot matches roughly 60% of email addresses to physical addresses.
6. One-off campaigns: Layer in Black Friday, new product launches, and seasonal sales on top of the always-on triggered campaigns.

Start narrow and go broader once each layer proves itself. That is the pattern that keeps ROI healthy as you scale spend.

How does Mail Match unlock top-of-funnel postcard marketing?

Mail Match is PostPilot’s feature that scrubs your Klaviyo email subscribers against a physical-address dataset and finds a match for roughly 60% of them, using AI to filter for accuracy and currency. That unlocks direct mail to email-only leads (people who signed up but never bought), which is one step warmer than pure cold acquisition.

Traditional direct mail to cold zip-code or demographic lists is expensive and hard to make work. Mail Match sidesteps that by only sending to people who have already raised their hand for your brand.

Orbit Baby ran a Mail Match campaign against subscribers who had opted in 30 to 90 days earlier and had not purchased. That single campaign produced a 16X ROI on recipients, plus a separately strong coupon-redemption number.

What are postcard design best practices for ecommerce?

Postcard design best practices are: make your logo prominent so the recipient recognizes your brand in the mail flip, keep the message succinct like a Facebook ad, include an incentive (10% off, free shipping, or a gift), add a QR code that either drops the shopper into their cart or auto-applies a discount, and use a dynamic expiration date printed on the card to create urgency.

Familiarity is the first battle. A shopper flipping through mail decides in a fraction of a second whether to keep or trash each piece, and brand recognition is what earns the keep.

QR codes came back from the dead during COVID and are now table stakes on postcards. A QR that lands the recipient directly in a discounted cart cuts several steps out of the redemption flow and dramatically improves conversion.

Does postcard marketing work for millennial and Gen Z customers?

Yes, postcard marketing works well for millennial and Gen Z customers, and in some cases better than for older demographics. Younger shoppers get less physical mail, engage less with email overall, and studies show they perceive a piece of mail from a brand they know as a gift rather than an interruption. Novelty is a feature, not a bug.

The old assumption that direct mail is for retirees is out of date. Younger shoppers grew up with digital everything and now find physical mail surprising, which is exactly the emotion you want at the moment of engagement.

Handwritten cards are the extreme case. PostPilot uses robotic technology that mimics natural handwriting variation, prints in a handwritten envelope with a real postage stamp, and produces the kind of piece almost anyone will open regardless of age.

How does postcard marketing compare to catalogs and pamphlets?

Postcards outperform catalogs and pamphlets on a cost-per-conversion basis for most ecommerce brands. PostPilot’s 6-by-9 “cartolog” format gives you enough real estate to display a product grid or tell a brand story at 59 cents per piece, which is significantly cheaper than producing and mailing a traditional catalog.

The 4-by-6 versus 6-by-9 decision is not about conversion rate. If you would send the same offer in either size, go with the 4-by-6 and save the 10 cents.

Choose the 6-by-9 when you have a large assortment to show (t-shirt brands, seasonal collections) or a premium brand story that needs more design space. Orbit Baby switched from a full brochure to a 6-by-9 card to convey their premium positioning without the catalog production cost.

How does postcard marketing fit with email, SMS, and Facebook ads?

Postcard marketing supplements email, SMS, and Facebook ads rather than replacing them. Its highest-ROI use case is reaching the 70 to 80% of your email list that is not opening any given send, plus customers who have unsubscribed or lapsed entirely. Around big events like Black Friday, postcards cut through inbox and ad-auction saturation that no digital channel can beat.

Postage cost is fixed, so a postcard reaches an inbox that costs the same in November as it does in June. Facebook CPMs and Google CPCs, by contrast, spike hard around Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

If your email is working well, that is a positive signal for postcards, not a reason to skip them. The two channels stack rather than compete.

Frequently asked questions

What does postcard marketing cost per card in 2023?

Postcard marketing on PostPilot costs about 49 cents per 4-by-6 card, all-in including postage. Larger 6-by-9 cards cost about 59 cents. Both prices include full-service design and account strategy when you subscribe to a monthly plan.

What ROI should I expect from a postcard marketing campaign?

Expect 6X to 10X ROI on well-targeted campaigns as a benchmark, with top campaigns producing 15X to 26X. Documented examples include Ezra Firestone’s BOOM! at 26X on win-backs, Obvi supplements at 24X on 90-day win-backs, and Orbit Baby at 16X on Mail Match acquisition.

How do I track direct mail attribution for ecommerce?

Direct mail attribution for ecommerce works two ways: total recipient attribution (customers who received a card and later purchased) and coupon-code attribution (customers who redeemed the printed code). Platforms like PostPilot integrate directly with Shopify and match both automatically in real time on a dashboard.

Which postcard marketing campaign should I run first?

Run a win-back campaign first. Target customers who have not purchased in 60 to 90 days (or 5 to 10 days past your product’s expected reorder cycle) with a 10% off code and a QR code that lands them in their cart. It consistently produces the highest ROI of any first campaign because you are reaching lapsed buyers who already trust your brand.

Does postcard marketing work for young millennial customers?

Yes, postcard marketing works well for millennial and Gen Z customers. They receive less physical mail, engage less with email overall, and studies show they perceive brand mail as a gift rather than an interruption. Handwritten cards work especially well on younger cohorts because they are so uncommon today.

What is PostPilot’s Mail Match feature?

PostPilot’s Mail Match feature scrubs your Klaviyo email subscribers against a physical-address dataset and finds a physical address for roughly 60% of them. That lets you send postcards to email-only subscribers who have never converted, which is one step warmer than cold acquisition and produces significantly higher ROI.

Should postcard marketing replace email marketing?

Postcard marketing should supplement email, not replace it. Even the best-run ecommerce email lists have 20 to 25% open rates, meaning 75% of your subscribers are invisible on any given send. Postcards reach that unreachable majority, plus lapsed customers who unsubscribed entirely.

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