Marketing teams across sectors are facing growing challenges in reaching and engaging customers. Email open rates have fallen below 20% in many industries, digital ad performance is hindered by increasing customer fatigue and ad blindness, and third-party cookie deprecation has made attribution murkier than ever. Amid this noise, one channel has re-emerged with renewed relevance: physical postcards.
Unlike digital messages that can be ignored or blocked, a postcard is a physical object that enters the consumer’s personal space. The recipient must engage with it—at the very least by looking at it—and this creates a fundamentally different type of attention. Research by UPrinting shows that 95% of recipients engage with direct mail, and postcards remain in the home for an average of 17 days. This long dwell time leads to multiple exposure opportunities, building brand recall without requiring ongoing ad spend.
Google Trends data supports this shift. Searches for “postcard marketing” have grown 271% year-on-year, a clear signal that marketers are actively seeking alternatives to saturated digital channels. According to the JICMAIL Response Rate Tracker 2025, direct mail consistently delivers response rates that outperform digital display, social, and email advertising—especially for warm audiences.
Direct mail’s re-emergence is not about nostalgia. It’s about precision. Programmatic technology has transformed postcards from generic mass communications into dynamic, behaviour-triggered experiences. This convergence of physical impact and digital intelligence is why forward-thinking marketers are now embedding postcards within their omnichannel CRM strategies—often with ROI far exceeding digital-only approaches.
In today’s crowded marketing ecosystem, where attention is expensive and trust is fragile, postcards offer a unique blend of visibility, credibility, and personalisation. The result? Higher engagement, longer brand resonance, and conversion rates that rival or outperform many online formats.
Why Direct Mail Postcards Are Transforming Modern Marketing
Traditional direct mail campaigns were often characterised by slow production cycles, high print costs, generic content, and limited visibility into performance. While these campaigns could achieve high reach, they lacked the targeting, agility, and measurability that modern marketers demand. Paperplanes has solved these problems by transforming postcards into a fully automated, data-driven channel that integrates seamlessly with your digital marketing stack.
At the core of Paperplanes’ approach is programmatic direct mail—a process that uses real-time behavioural triggers to send highly personalised postcards to individuals at critical moments in the customer journey. Whether it’s an abandoned basket, a lapsed customer, a milestone anniversary, or a welcome message for a new buyer, our system automatically generates and dispatches a relevant postcard within 24–48 hours.
The entire workflow is managed through our cloud-based platform, which connects with major CRM and ecommerce tools such as Shopify, Klaviyo, Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and others. Marketers can configure postcard triggers using the same logic and segmentation rules they already use for email or SMS campaigns—no need to learn a new system or export CSV files manually.
Beyond automation, Paperplanes excels in personalisation. Each postcard can be dynamically generated using live customer data, including product recommendations, location-based offers, previously browsed items, and more. This creates a level of relevance that is rare in physical mail. Instead of “Dear Customer,” recipients might see the exact product they abandoned in their cart, an exclusive offer related to a past purchase, or a countdown to a sale in their nearest store—all printed, professionally designed, and delivered to their doorstep.
Crucially, Paperplanes also provides full attribution through trackable elements embedded in every postcard. Using personalised URLs, campaign-specific QR codes, and discount codes, marketers can monitor conversions, return visits, and even time-to-purchase. This transparency allows for continuous optimisation, with results measured to the same standard as digital campaigns.
In essence, Paperplanes has turned the postcard into a responsive, personalised, and accountable marketing asset. With the speed of email, the tangibility of print, and the intelligence of modern CRM data, programmatic direct mail delivers performance where other channels fall short—particularly in retention, reactivation, and high-value customer journeys.
The Four Core Advantages of Direct Mail Postcards
Modern marketers operate in an environment where consumer attention is fragmented, digital saturation is high, and brand trust is harder than ever to earn. Direct mail postcards offer a distinctive advantage in this landscape by combining physical presence, sensory engagement, and precision targeting. Below are four core strengths that make postcards an indispensable component of a high-performing omnichannel strategy.
1. Visual Impact That Commands Instant Attention
Unlike emails, which sit unopened in crowded inboxes or are filtered into promotions tabs, postcards guarantee visibility. There’s no envelope to open, no link to click—just a bold, visual message that lands directly in a customer’s hand. According to JICMAIL, postcards achieve 100% view rates and remain in the home for an average of 7–10 days, offering multiple opportunities for brand reinforcement and conversion.
This visual advantage is further amplified by the creative freedom that print allows. With postcards, marketers can explore high-impact design elements like bold typography, tactile finishes, premium stock, die cuts, foils, and variable imagery. The format supports the use of personalised photos, product shots, and branding in ways that immediately connect with the recipient. A well-designed postcard can become a fridge item, a desk pin-up, or a talking point—transforming brand communication into a memorable, physical experience.
2. Tactile Engagement and Deeper Memory Encoding
One of the most powerful attributes of direct mail is its tactile nature. Neuroscience studies show that physical media generates stronger memory encoding and emotional engagement than digital screens. According to the DMA UK, tactile marketing materials drive 70% higher brand recall compared to digital content.
This sense of permanence also has a psychological impact. Recipients tend to assign higher value and credibility to physical mail—particularly for high-value offers, loyalty communications, and premium brands. Unlike digital ads that disappear with a scroll, a postcard feels intentional, crafted, and important. It says: “This message matters.”
Real-world results support this. Clients using direct mail postcards report engagement rates of up to 7.9% for warm audiences—compared to typical email open rates of 18–22% and click-through rates below 3%. In many campaigns, the postcard is the medium that reignites attention, builds trust, and prompts action after digital efforts have gone unseen.
3. Personalisation That Goes Beyond “Hello {FirstName}”
Today’s consumers expect marketing that reflects their behaviours, preferences, and purchase history. Paperplanes enables a level of personalisation that rivals digital channels, allowing you to tailor each postcard based on behavioural and contextual data. This includes dynamically inserting:
- The exact products a user abandoned in their online cart
- Relevant complementary or recommended items based on purchase history
- Location-specific offers, deadlines, or store events
- Customer-specific loyalty rewards or tier-based incentives
This level of detail transforms a postcard from a mass-marketing tool into a 1-to-1 communication channel. Rather than sending a generic discount, you’re sending a hand-picked reminder of something the customer was already interested in—delivered at a time when their intent may still be active.
Marketers who use this style of variable data printing consistently report stronger second-purchase rates and increased customer lifetime value. In fact, clients using personalised welcome postcards through Paperplanes see 20–30% higher engagement compared to generic formats.
4. Seamless Integration and Operational Efficiency
Programmatic direct mail removes the historical friction from postcard campaigns. Gone are the days of printing delays, minimum order requirements, and manual fulfilment. With Paperplanes, postcard campaigns are set up once and triggered automatically by customer behaviour—just like an email or SMS flow.
Thanks to direct API integrations with popular platforms like Klaviyo, Shopify, Salesforce, and Braze, marketers can launch campaigns in days, not months. Trigger logic is configured within your existing martech stack, and postcards are printed, personalised, and mailed on demand—within hours of the customer action.
This automation enables marketers to run always-on postcard campaigns without creating new operational overhead. Paperplanes handles creative rendering, address cleansing, print management, postage optimisation, and delivery tracking. Real-time dashboards track performance metrics like conversion rates, delivery status, AOV uplift, and more—providing complete transparency and control.
In short, postcards no longer require manual lift. They operate at the speed of your digital marketing while delivering the lasting impact of print.
Proven Results: Real-World Performance Metrics
Direct mail postcards are no longer a speculative investment—they are a performance channel backed by hard data and real attribution. Paperplanes’ clients span retail, subscription, service, and B2B sectors, and across thousands of campaigns, the results remain consistently strong.
Using Paperplanes’ proprietary Inflight analytics suite, marketers gain real-time insights into each campaign’s performance. The platform offers:
- Conversion tracking via QR codes, PURLs, and discount codes
- Time-to-purchase measurements from delivery to sale
- Custom attribution windows that reflect offline engagement behaviour
These capabilities transform postcard marketing from an awareness tool into a quantifiable sales engine. Consider the impact across four high-value use cases:
Abandoned basket recovery postcards have proven to outperform email alone in both speed and revenue generation. When a customer leaves an item in their online basket, an automated postcard is dispatched within 24–48 hours. Featuring personalised product imagery and a compelling offer, it lands at the precise moment when purchase intent may still be active. Clients typically report conversion rates of 15–25%, with average order values 10–15% higher than from email recoveries. In one instance, a fashion retailer recovered more than £38,000 in abandoned revenue over just three weeks—driven entirely by postcards.
Customer reactivation campaigns—targeting lapsed or dormant segments—consistently outperform digital win-back emails. Whereas emails to inactive customers often go unopened, postcards offer a fresh, tangible nudge. Paperplanes clients have seen response rates 40–60% higher than email, with 15–25% of recipients making a purchase within 30 days. One home services business reactivated over 700 customers from a 5,000-piece campaign, generating revenue at a cost-per-acquisition lower than their digital benchmarks.
Welcome series enhancement is another high-impact use case. By adding a printed postcard to a digital welcome flow, brands reinforce their value proposition, establish trust, and drive earlier second purchases. Paperplanes data shows that welcome postcards lead to 20–30% higher second-order rates, shorter time-to-repeat-purchase, and increased customer lifetime value. These postcards serve as tangible extensions of your brand’s voice and can include QR links to tutorials, loyalty programs, or user-generated content.
Loyalty program engagement is where postcards shine as retention tools. Paperplanes enables brands to send milestone-triggered postcards—such as birthday offers, points updates, or exclusive VIP rewards—that feel thoughtful and personalised. These campaigns often generate redemption rates of 25–40%, while reinforcing emotional loyalty. One retailer integrated postcards into their tiered reward system and saw an 18% lift in year-on-year repeat purchases within the top loyalty segment.
All of this activity is trackable. The Inflight analytics platform monitors downstream actions—website visits, conversions, coupon redemptions—allowing marketers to measure ROAS with the same confidence as paid social or email. On average, Paperplanes clients achieve return on ad spend ranging from 5× to 20×, with optimised campaigns exceeding 30×. And while digital fatigue has reduced the shelf life of emails to mere hours, postcards maintain visibility in homes for 7 to 14 days, delivering a lasting brand impression with every glance.
These are not projections. These are real-world outcomes, supported by campaign data and verified through end-to-end attribution models. In an era where performance matters more than ever, direct mail postcards—when powered by automation and analytics—deliver results that few channels can match.
Implementation: From Concept to Campaign
Implementation: From Concept to Campaign
Unlike legacy direct mail processes that required lengthy timelines and complex print management, Paperplanes enables brands to launch automated postcard campaigns in record time—often within hours of initial contact. The entire process is built for agility, with every step designed to integrate seamlessly into your existing marketing workflows.
The starting point is a strategic consultation to map out the moments in your customer journey where physical touchpoints will deliver the most impact—such as basket abandonment, new customer onboarding, loyalty tier upgrades, or reactivation windows. From there, you define the trigger logic based on the same behavioural or transactional signals you use in your CRM or marketing automation platform.
Integration is deliberately simple. Paperplanes connects directly with leading platforms like Klaviyo, Braze, Shopify, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud using secure, lightweight API calls or pre-built connectors. If you’ve installed a Facebook Pixel or integrated an ESP, you already have the technical skills to get started. Most clients activate campaigns without the need for IT support or complex development cycles.
Once integrated, design assets are loaded—either selected from our high-performing template library or created bespoke to your brand guidelines. Variable data fields are configured to personalise each card dynamically, whether that’s including the recipient’s name, abandoned products, past purchases, location-specific offers, or loyalty status. These templates are fully modular, allowing easy updates without rebuilding the design from scratch.
After a brief proofing stage to confirm data flows, test records, and artwork quality, your campaigns are ready to launch. From that point forward, postcards are dispatched automatically whenever a customer action triggers your defined rule set. There is no manual intervention, no batching, and no delays. It’s marketing-on-demand, delivered in print.
Every postcard is processed through our automated fulfilment engine—optimising postage, verifying address quality, and tracking delivery status. You can monitor campaign performance via a real-time dashboard that includes metrics like conversions, revenue, time-to-response, and attribution breakdowns. This transparency allows you to iterate and improve, just as you would with email or paid media.
In short, Paperplanes removes every traditional obstacle from launching direct mail—replacing manual processes with automation, replacing guesswork with data, and replacing slow timelines with speed-to-market that matches digital campaigns. Whether you’re sending 100 postcards or 10,000, implementation is fast, frictionless, and designed to scale with your goals.
How Much Does a Postcard Campaign Cost in the UK?
While postcard marketing does require higher initial investment than some digital communications, the superior engagement and conversion rates typically deliver exceptional return on investment. Paperplanes clients consistently achieve ROAS between 5X and 20X across various campaign types.
The cost of a UK postcard campaign depends on several factors:
- Campaign volume
- Postcard size and design complexity
- Level of personalisation
- Print quality and finishing options
- Postage class selected
Unlike traditional mass mailings, Paperplanes’ approach focuses on highly targeted communications to minimise waste and maximise ROI. For example:
- A 1,000-piece targeted abandoned basket postcard campaign typically delivers 150–250 recovered sales
- A 5,000-piece customer reactivation campaign can generate 500–750 returning customers
- A 2,500-piece loyalty reward postcard campaign often drives 25–40% redemption rates
The cost-per-acquisition through targeted postcard marketing often compares favorably to increasingly expensive digital channels, particularly when considering lifetime value of reactivated customers.
Overcoming Traditional Postcard Marketing Challenges
For many marketers, the idea of incorporating postcards into a digital-first strategy raises a familiar set of questions—ranging from cost and sustainability to technical complexity and creative workload. These concerns are valid, but with Paperplanes, they are also outdated. Below, we address the most frequent hesitations and explain how our platform has evolved direct mail into a modern, intelligent channel built for performance and simplicity.
“Isn’t Direct Mail Too Expensive?”
Postcards do carry a higher unit cost than emails or SMS messages. But cost-per-send is only half the story. The real value lies in return on investment. Paperplanes postcards typically generate 5×–20× ROAS, with optimised campaigns achieving even higher returns. A £1.20 postcard that drives a £60 sale delivers better economics than a thousand unopened emails.
More importantly, our programmatic approach ensures you’re not paying to send postcards to everyone. You’re sending them only to the right people, at the right moment, based on real behavioural signals. That targeting precision reduces waste and increases conversion efficiency—delivering more value from each mail piece.
“What About the Environmental Impact?”
Sustainability is a priority for Paperplanes and for our clients. All postcards are printed on FSC-certified paper using responsible sourcing, environmentally safe inks, and local production partners that meet ISO and carbon footprint standards. Our targeted model also dramatically reduces the volume of mail compared to traditional ‘spray-and-pray’ campaigns, leading to far less paper usage and significantly lower waste.
It’s worth noting that digital marketing isn’t carbon-neutral either. The energy used by data centres, email servers, and ad networks is considerable—and growing. According to Easibind, 70% of consumers research a brand online after receiving physical mail, showing that postcards serve as efficient entry points into your digital ecosystem. With Paperplanes, physical and digital work in harmony, not in conflict.
“Will I Need a Design Agency?”
No. Our platform offers a library of proven, customisable postcard templates for every use case—abandoned baskets, welcome flows, reactivations, loyalty offers, and more. These templates are optimised for personalisation and performance, meaning you can launch without an in-house designer or agency retainer.
For brands seeking bespoke creative, our in-house design team can craft fully tailored templates aligned with your brand guidelines. Creative areas can be made dynamic, so you don’t need to build a new design every time you change an offer, product, or audience. Once you approve the core layout, updates happen automatically based on customer data.
“Is Integration Complicated?”
Not at all. If you’ve ever connected a CRM, added a tracking pixel, or used an ESP, you already have the experience needed to integrate Paperplanes. Our platform connects with major tools like Klaviyo, Braze, Shopify, and Salesforce via secure API authentication. In many cases, integration takes under an hour—with no need for engineering support.
For custom systems, integration can be achieved in under 10 lines of code. Our onboarding team works directly with your CRM or marketing ops stakeholders to get campaigns live quickly and accurately. You don’t need to become a direct mail expert—we’ve automated the hard parts so you can focus on the strategy.
In short, every historical barrier to direct mail has been removed. You don’t need a big team, big budget, or complex tech stack to make it work. With Paperplanes, launching a postcard campaign is no harder than building an email automation—only now, your message shows up in the one inbox that’s never full: the real one at the end of your customer’s hallway.
The Future of Customer Engagement
The evolution of customer engagement is being shaped by a paradox: as digital channels multiply, the effectiveness of those channels declines. Consumers are constantly connected, yet increasingly disengaged. Open rates are shrinking, ad costs are rising, and audiences are becoming numb to the noise. In this context, brands that rely solely on digital communications are fighting a losing battle for attention.
At the same time, consumer expectations are climbing. People want timely, relevant, and thoughtful communication—but they also want it to feel authentic and human. That’s where the hybrid approach of programmatic direct mail comes in. Paperplanes is redefining how brands connect with customers by merging the immediacy and intelligence of digital channels with the sensory and emotional depth of physical mail.
What once seemed like an outdated medium is now one of the most innovative. With postcards triggered by real-time behaviour, personalised at scale, and measured with digital precision, physical mail is no longer a blunt instrument—it’s a strategic, high-performing part of your marketing mix. When integrated into your CRM journey, postcards don’t replace digital—they complete it.
Take a typical lifecycle journey: a customer abandons a cart, receives an email reminder, and ignores it. A follow-up SMS pings them during work and goes unnoticed. But then, two days later, they receive a beautifully designed postcard featuring the exact product they left behind and an exclusive offer. It sits on their kitchen table all weekend. They scan the QR code Monday morning and make the purchase. That’s omnichannel synergy in action.
According to Marketreach, campaigns that include mail are 52% more likely to deliver ROI and 43% more likely to increase revenue. This isn’t just theory—it’s a competitive advantage. Brands that blend physical and digital touchpoints see higher engagement, longer retention, and stronger customer satisfaction. Postcards, in particular, are becoming essential for moments when digital simply can’t break through.
Looking ahead, the brands that win will be those that can build trust, deliver relevance, and stand out—without overwhelming their customers. Programmatic direct mail enables all three. It brings back the emotional impact of physical marketing but with the intelligence, automation, and accountability marketers now expect. And as third-party cookies disappear and inboxes get smarter at filtering, having a channel that goes straight to the customer—literally—has never been more important.
Paperplanes isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about what works next. The future of customer engagement isn’t purely digital or physical—it’s the intelligent integration of both. And postcards are the bridge.
Integration with Digital Marketing Channels
Leveraging Ecommerce APIs for Real-Time Personalisation: By tapping directly into Shopify’s REST and GraphQL Admin APIs (REST / GraphQL), Paperplanes can dynamically pull customer data—like recent purchases, browsing behaviours, and VIP status—in real time. This lets you inject hyper-personalised offers and imagery onto your postcards the moment an event occurs in Shopify (e.g. cart abandonment or new customer milestone), ensuring every piece of mail resonates with the recipient’s latest activity.
Real-Time Attribution via API-Driven Tracking: Our integration writes back delivery and engagement metrics into Shopify via webhooks, so you see exactly when a postcard triggered by a Shopify event resulted in a click, site visit, or order. That closed-loop data in your Shopify dashboard transforms direct mail from a “black box” into a first-class, instantly attributable channel—letting you optimise campaign triggers and creative on the fly.
These integrations enables truly omnichannel customer journeys:- Email for regular communications and detailed information
- SMS for urgent, time-sensitive messages
- Postcards for high-impact visual communications at critical moments
Getting Started with Paperplanes Postcard Marketing
Incorporating programmatic postcards into your marketing mix begins with a straightforward consultation process designed to identify your specific needs and opportunities. Paperplanes’ team of CRM specialists will analyse your current customer journey to pinpoint where postcard interventions can deliver the greatest impact.
The implementation follows a proven four-step process:
- Data integration
- Campaign design
- Trigger setup
- Testing and optimisation
Typical implementation timeframes are 2–3 weeks from initial consultation to first campaign launch. Many clients begin with a focused intervention at a single customer journey point—often abandoned basket recovery or reactivation campaigns—before expanding to additional touchpoints.
The results speak for themselves. Brands implementing Paperplanes postcard marketing typically see ROI ranging from 5X to 20X, with conversion rate increases of 15–30% compared to digital-only approaches.
Ready to transform your customer engagement strategy? Contact Paperplanes today to discuss your strategy and how we can help.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does postcard marketing still work?
Yes—more than ever. Postcard marketing is experiencing a resurgence in effectiveness, driven by digital fatigue, improved targeting technology, and consumer demand for tactile, trustworthy communication. According to JICMAIL, response rates for warm audiences average 7.9%—significantly higher than typical digital benchmarks. Google Trends also reports a 271% year-on-year increase in searches for “postcard marketing,” highlighting its growing appeal among marketers looking for channels with impact and accountability.
What’s changed is the method. With programmatic automation, postcards are now triggered based on live customer behaviour—just like email or SMS. They’re no longer slow, expensive, or generic. They’re fast, intelligent, and fully integrated into modern CRM workflows. The result is a channel that combines the stopping power of print with the performance rigour of digital.
What is postcard marketing?
Postcard marketing is the practice of sending printed cards through the mail to engage, convert, or retain customers. Historically, this involved static, batch-mailed content. Today, with platforms like Paperplanes, postcard marketing has evolved into a dynamic, data-driven strategy. Postcards are automatically generated and dispatched based on specific customer actions—such as an abandoned basket, a lapsed subscription, or a new account signup.
Each postcard can be personalised using real-time data, including product images, customer names, geographic location, and purchase history. The message arrives in the customer’s home within 24–48 hours, and it includes trackable elements like QR codes and personalised URLs for full attribution. This fusion of automation and tactile engagement makes postcard marketing an essential tool for lifecycle and retention strategies.
Do postcard advertisements really drive results?
Yes. Postcards consistently outperform many digital channels in engagement, trust, and return on investment. Physical mail has a level of staying power and visibility that digital formats struggle to match. According to PostcardMania, postcards have the highest response rate (4.25%) among all direct-mail formats—and that’s before adding personalisation and behavioural triggers.
Paperplanes clients routinely see 15–25% conversion rates on postcard-based abandoned basket campaigns, 20–30% higher second-purchase rates in welcome flows, and 25–40% redemption rates for loyalty reward postcards. The tangible nature of a postcard invites repeated exposure, builds trust, and can prompt action long after digital messages have disappeared from view.
How much does a postcard campaign cost in the UK?
Costs vary depending on personalisation complexity, volume, design requirements, and postage class. But it’s important to think in terms of ROI rather than price per unit. A typical campaign might cost £1.00–£1.50 per postcard, all-in. That figure includes personalised printing, postage, delivery tracking, and access to Paperplanes’ analytics platform.
More crucially, our campaigns are not sent in bulk—they’re precisely targeted. You only send to recipients who meet specific behavioural criteria, ensuring your budget is spent on high-value moments in the customer journey. For example, a 1,000-piece abandoned basket campaign might yield 200+ recovered orders. A 5,000-piece reactivation campaign could drive 700–800 conversions from previously dormant customers. When compared with rising CPMs on digital channels and low engagement on email, postcard campaigns often deliver a lower cost-per-acquisition and a higher customer lifetime value.
If you’d like a personalised estimate based on your goals, data sources, and audience size, contact our team for a tailored ROI model.
