The Attention Economy is Crowded. Here’s Where Direct Mail Fits.

Your customers aren’t tired of marketing messages.

They’re lacking reasons to pay attention to them.

Every day, your audience scrolls past hundreds of ads, deletes promotional emails and ignores notifications. Brands are competing for the same few seconds of attention, and the channels that once made it easy to reach customers are becoming increasingly oversaturated.

The answer isn’t necessarily to shout louder. It’s to show up somewhere different.

Enter Paperplanes, a postal marketing service that creates personalised direct mail to send straight to your customers doorsteps.

Is Postal Marketing Worth It?

Unlike another email or social ad, direct mail gives customers something tangible to interact with, hence its higher open rate of 80-90% (email has 20-30%). Direct mail also receives the highest ROI of 112% across all mediums, followed by SMS (102%), email (93%) and social media advertising (81%).*

When a letter arrives, it can be picked up, turned over, placed on a table or revisited later. It offers a different experience, increasing its impact and memorability.

And it doesn’t have to mean mass mailouts or generic leaflets. With Paperplanes’ programmatic direct mail, brands can use customer data and behavioural triggers to send relevant and personalised mail.

Direct Mail Isn’t About Replacing Digital.

We know that digital marketing isn’t going anywhere. The opportunity is to make these channels work together, ensuring your brand hits all contact points of the customer.

Imagine a customer sees your paid social ad, visits your website and adds a product to their basket, but never checks out. Your automated email might be your first reminder. A personalised postcard could provide another reason to return, reinforcing your message through an entirely different channel.

Paperplanes recently worked with Mattressman, a leading online mattress retailer. The brand had the challenge of converting high-intent customers who had shown purchase behaviour but hadn’t completed their transaction. Our approach included immediate abandoned basket recovery, follow-up communications for persistent abandoners, targeted messaging for customers who removed items from their baskets, and strategic winback campaigns for past purchasers.

The results exceeded expectations. Mailed customers proved 233% more likely to convert than non-mailed cohorts, and the abandoned basket campaigns showed improvement with conversions increasing 8.7% and average basket values rising. Most impressively, the winback campaigns for 6-month lapsed customers achieved a 75% increase in conversion rates.

Smarter Targeting, Less Waste.

Direct mail works best when it’s relevant. Sending the same message to everyone isn’t the most effective.

First-party data allows ecommerce brands to identify meaningful customer behaviours and tailor campaigns accordingly. Combine that insight with automated delivery, personalised creative and thoughtful timing, and direct mail becomes a targeted part of your retention strategy.

Rather than treating direct mail as a standalone campaign, brands can integrate it into their wider marketing strategy, using it to support acquisition, re-engagement and customer retention.

Ready to give your customers something worth opening? Head to our website to book a demo today.

@ Paperplanes.co.uk

*Source: Postalytics Direct Mail Statistics. Available at: https://www.postalytics.com/direct-mail-statistics/ (Accessed: 23 October 2026)