Out of Step
Public Desire is a fast-fashion footwear and clothing brand known for on-trend styles and accessible pricing, targeting fashion-forward customers who love the latest looks. They partnered with Paperplanes to run pilot activity for programmatic direct mail, testing whether triggering relevant, personalised physical media to customers who recently purchased and hadn’t returned could drive results. The overarching goal was to see an increase in customer engagement online and boost overall conversions through responsive and triggered mail, which is the perfect way to produce strong results and ongoing lifetime value.
The Perfect Fit
Paperplanes launched an abandoned basket campaign in March 2023, sending 1,650 personalised A4 letters in C5 envelopes featuring products customers had abandoned or recommendations based on their browsing behaviour. The creative was simple, clear, and engaging, with incentive variants tested across campaigns (15% off with code TREATYOURSELF). The strategy employed an 80% test, 20% control split on abandoned baskets to measure incremental impact, with customers mailed once within a 30-day period to avoid over-saturation whilst maintaining engagement.
Runway Ready
The campaign got off to a strong start, achieving an 8.8% conversion rate and generating strong sales with a cost per acquisition of just £8.47. Customers proved 10% more likely to return to the website after receiving mailings, with engagement metrics showing mailed customers viewing more pages and staying longer than non-mailed counterparts. The optimal time to conversion was 9 days (mail in-home for 6 days), demonstrating how physical mail stays in homes longer and reaches multiple decision-makers. Mailed customers achieved both higher conversion (8.8% vs 8.3% control) and stronger basket values (£42 vs £36 control), whilst 6% had already made more than one purchase, proving direct mail’s effectiveness in driving both immediate sales and repeat purchase behaviour for fashion ecommerce.
