Postcard marketing continues to show strong growth, with Google searches up 271% year-on-year and direct mail postcards specifically seeing a 240% increase. As digital marketing channels become increasingly saturated, physical postcards provide a tangible way to capture attention with near-perfect visibility rates.

Paperplanes has revolutionised this traditional format by bringing data-driven targeting and personalisation to postcard campaigns. Our programmatic platform delivers highly personalised direct mail postcards at critical customer journey touchpoints, with clients consistently achieving impressive ROI across various sectors. For CRM and growth professionals seeking cost-effective alternatives to digital channels, postcard mailing services like Paperplanes offer a proven solution for awareness campaigns, special offers, and customer reactivation. This article explores what postcard marketing is, how much postcard campaigns cost in the UK, and how to create effective postcard campaigns that integrate seamlessly with your existing marketing strategy.

What is Postcard Marketing?

JICMAIL Response Rate Tracker 2025 provides the latest UK benchmarks for direct-mail and door-drop campaign response rates. Postcard marketing involves sending targeted promotional postcards to current or potential customers to drive engagement, sales, and brand awareness. Unlike traditional letters that require opening, postcards deliver their message instantly with visual impact as soon as they land in recipients’ hands.

In today’s digital-first world, programmatic postcard marketing like that provided by Paperplanes combines the immediate visual engagement of physical postcards with the data-driven targeting capabilities of digital marketing. Modern marketing postcards leverage customer data to deliver highly relevant imagery, offers, and messaging tailored to each recipient’s specific interests and behaviours.

With average attention spans decreasing and digital inboxes overflowing, postcards achieve remarkable cut-through with essentially 100% visibility rates—every postcard is seen, unlike emails with average open rates hovering around 20% (UPrinting stats).

How Successful is Postcard Marketing?

Your email campaigns are experiencing declining open rates and digital ad performance is suffering from banner blindness.

The effectiveness of postcard marketing in today’s fragmented media landscape is impressive. While digital channels face increasing challenges with viewability and engagement, postcards consistently achieve breakthrough results:

  • 100% visibility rate – Unlike emails that may never be opened
  • Average retention in the home of 7–10 days – Creating multiple impression opportunities
  • ROI ranging from 5X to 20X – Demonstrating excellent return on marketing investment

According to the Marketreach Direct Mail Effectiveness report (WARC-backed), mail-in-the-mix campaigns are 52% more likely to drive ROI and 43% more likely to boost revenue.

Paperplanes’ Inflight analytics confirms these performance advantages with concrete data. For example, our analytics suite revealed that retail clients experienced a 37% higher website return rate for customers receiving postcards compared to control groups. The platform precisely measured how abandoned basket recovery postcards drove 42% of recipients back to the website within 48 hours of delivery, timing insights only possible through advanced tracking technology.

Further industry benchmarks come from the DMA UK “The Value of Measurement 2024”, which offers panel-based insights into household responses to direct mail, door drops, and business mail, and from the DMA UK “JICMAIL scales up its Response Rate Tracker for 2024”, highlighting an average warm DM response rate of 7.9% vs. cold mail at 0.9%.

And the WARC “The Attention Advantage” report shows how physical mail cuts through digital saturation to maximize visibility and engagement.

What Makes an Effective Marketing Postcard?

Effective marketing postcards combine several key elements that drive superior engagement and conversion:

  • Eye-catching design – Bold visuals that grab attention instantly
  • Concise messaging – Clear value proposition that can be understood in seconds
  • Personalisation – Tailoring offers and imagery to recipient interests
  • Strong call-to-action – Obvious next steps, whether online or in-store
  • Quality production – Professional printing that reflects brand values
  • Strategic timing – Arriving when recipients are most receptive to your message

Paperplanes’ approach to postcard marketing encompasses all these elements while adding the critical dimension of programmatic automation. Postcards are triggered based on specific customer behaviours and delivered within precise timeframes for maximum impact.

Successful Postcard Campaign Examples

Abandoned Basket Recovery Postcards

Abandoned basket recovery postcards have proven highly effective at bringing customers back to complete purchases. Fashion retailers implementing abandoned basket postcards have seen:

  • Conversion rates 15–25% higher than email-only recovery attempts
  • Average order values 10–15% higher from postcard-influenced purchases
  • Significant reduction in time-to-purchase after postcard receipt

New Customer Welcome Postcards

Welcome postcards help convert first-time buyers into loyal customers by reinforcing their purchase decision and encouraging ongoing engagement. Subscription businesses implementing welcome postcards have experienced:

  • 20–30% higher second purchase rates compared to digital-only onboarding
  • Reduced time between first and second purchases
  • Higher customer lifetime value from postcard-welcomed customers

Customer Reactivation Postcards

Reactivation postcards reconnect with dormant customers who have become unresponsive to digital channels. Service businesses implementing reactivation postcard campaigns have seen:

  • 40–60% higher re-engagement rates compared to email-only approaches
  • 15–25% higher average spend from reactivated customers
  • Improved retention among previously at-risk customers

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

While traditional postcard campaigns have been criticised for measurement limitations and generic messaging, Paperplanes’ programmatic approach eliminates these disadvantages:

  • Limited tracking: Integrated QR codes and personalised URLs provide precise attribution and conversion tracking
  • Generic messaging: Dynamic content allows for personalisation at scale
  • High minimum volumes: Enables smaller, highly targeted campaigns without prohibitive quantity requirements
  • Slow deployment: Programmatic postcards are produced and mailed within 24–48 hours of behavioral triggers
  • Environmental concerns: Targeted approach significantly reduces waste compared to mass mailings



According to Marketing Charts, including direct mail in campaigns can yield an 18% uplift in ROI.

How to Create a Postcard Campaign

Creating high-performing postcard campaigns requires attention to several key elements:
  • Define clear objectives
  • Identify target audience
  • Create compelling design
  • Craft concise copy
  • Implement tracking mechanisms
  • Establish fulfillment logistics
  • Plan measurement framework

Paperplanes handles these elements through an integrated platform that manages the entire process from data integration to design, production, mailing, and performance tracking.

Integration with Digital Marketing Channels

Adding postcard marketing to your strategy shouldn’t create operational complexities or data silos. Paperplanes integrates seamlessly with your existing martech stack through straightforward API connections. Integration with platforms like Klaviyo, Braze, and Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to trigger postcard campaigns using the same segmentation and workflow tools you already use for email and SMS.

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:

  1. Data integration
  2. Campaign design
  3. Trigger setup
  4. 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.

Contact us