Direct mail marketing is a crucial part of omnichannel marketing as it bridges the offline and online. 64% of consumers report taking action on a direct mail piece which can include visiting a website.
Marketers have been laser-focused on the online portion of marketing and want a solution that makes sending direct mail as easy as managing digital marketing campaigns. Direct mail marketing companies like Postie and Lob deliver that solution. Lob is an excellent alternative to Postie for automated direct mail marketing.
Choosing the right partner for automated direct mail marketing services is a decision that can make or break the success of your campaigns. Your partner for direct mail should bring expertise and efficiency to your marketing initiatives.
Look for a provider who offers an extensive print delivery network and a comprehensive suite of services, including but not limited to address verification, audience targeting, printing, mailing, and robust analytics. Ensuring a seamless end-to-end solution optimizes your direct mail campaigns for maximum impact.
The right partner understands the nuances of direct mail automation, leveraging technology to enhance targeting, personalization, and overall campaign effectiveness, and doing all those things while minimizing the environmental impact of direct mail. Direct mail services should offer direct mail that is carbon neutral through the entire lifecycle, from raw materials to ultimate disposal.
In a competitive market, selecting a trusted ally in automated direct mail is the key to unlocking the full potential of your marketing efforts.
“Often, as marketers, we think of direct mail as an ancient channel, but it works surprisingly well! I was shocked to see that it drove so many conversions.” - Malin Dettmann-Levin, CRM Lead Reactivation, Marley Spoon
Marketing budgets are tight and many are seeing diminishing returns on digital channels. By integrating direct mail with digital marketing campaigns, marketers can spread out costs, reach customers on new channels, and increase overall marketing ROI.
“What would normally be a very tedious process of customizing mailers, reviewing proofs, and going back and forth with a printer has been completely streamlined. There’s no effort on either the provider’s or our client’s part, making it a very effective solution for us and them.” - Abhas Gupta, CEO, Mabel
Automated direct mail allows for personalization that was once thought impractical on a large scale. Marketing messages, no matter the channel, need to be relevant and targeted. With Lob, you can personalize your direct mail and create specific messages for different demographics, interests, and behaviors, creating a more intimate connection with your audience. This personalized touch captures attention and fosters engagement, transcending the limitations of traditional mass-mailing approaches.
Cost-effectiveness is not just about reducing expenses but optimizing your return on investment. Lob’s streamlined processes and advanced automation technology ensure that every dollar spent translates into tangible, meaningful results. Personalized targeting extends beyond addressing recipients by name; it's about understanding their preferences and tailoring content to resonate with their unique needs. This level of personalization significantly boosts the relevance of your direct mail campaigns, increasing the likelihood of positive responses. 68% of consumers are more likely to engage with a brand’s message if it’s personalized.
Improved response rates are the ultimate goal, and with Lob, you're not just sending mail but but sending mail your customers and prospects want. Businesses choose Lob to leverage the advantages of direct mail efficiency and effectiveness, leaving traditional, outdated methods in the past.
"Direct mail is the cornerstone of our marketing program, and we’re going to continue to double down on what's working for us." - Tim McGarvey, Co-Founder, VentureStack
Understand why marketers choose Lob over Postie for direct mail marketing.
Address verification can help you enrich and correct your customer data. These solutions allow you to programmatically correct typos, validate an address’s deliverability, and access metadata to enhance customer insight. Using Address Verification enables you to save time, eliminate errors, automate manual tasks, and increase the quality of your data - at scale.
Lob Address Verification enables you to send mail to the right place at the right time— every time. Lob customers can reduce shipping costs by 15% and eliminate customer churn segments. By removing the root cause of common customer-facing problems, Lob Address Verification has saved thousands of hours for fulfillment and support teams. With our flexible API, thorough documentation, and over 30 integration partners, implementing Lob is easy; most customers are up and running in days.
In the 2024 State of Direct Mail Marketing Report, 82% of respondents reported increasing direct mail spending for 2024, a marked increase from 58% in 2023. Marketers and direct mail practitioners invest more in direct mail marketing because it’s a proven, time-tested channel that delivers high conversions, response, and ROI. But for those things to be true, you must ensure you get the most bang for your marketing budget. Choosing a direct mail automation platform that offers customizable pricing plans to help manage your direct mail costs is crucial. A competitive direct mail automation platform should have pricing plans that include print and postage so you’ll never be surprised and can accurately forecast your spend per campaign.
Some direct mail automation companies will give you access to ready-to-use templates for various direct mail formats, including postcards, letters, self-mailers (tri-folds), and more. You can even get inspiration from these Best Direct Mail Campaign examples.
More robust direct mail automation platforms, like Lob, will also provide access to a nationwide Print Delivery Network, ensuring your direct mail pieces will always be printed and mailed on time, whether you are sending one or one million pieces.
As marketers, we need to be able to track an analyze every marketing channel and campaign. With Lob, you get an out-of-the-box analytics suite to measure how each direct mail campaign performs so you can learn and iterate with each send.
Direct mail doesn’t exist in a silo, it’s designed to work alongside your digital marketing campaigns. Lob’s direct mail platform has seamless integrations with marketing automation, customer relationship management, and customer data platforms so all marketing channels are working together and using the same customer data.
“We use Lob's integration with Iterable when we send our direct mail letters, so it's very automated. The first time we sent a batch of postcards, we sent 5,000, which went out within five minutes. I remember getting all the receipts and thinking, 'Wow!'" -Gabriel Tornberg, Senior Operations Manager, Branch
For many industries that rely on direct mail to reach customers, clients, and prospective customers, security is something that cannot be compromised on. Lob’s industry-leading security is trusted by Fortune 500 companies to reach compliance goals and is built into every aspect of our platform.
As a leader in the direct mail industry, Lob undergoes annual audits conducted by a third party to ensure SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA compliance.
For more information regarding compliance certifications and the standards to which Lob adheres, please contact security@lob.com.
54% of consumers agree they are likelier to purchase from a brand that prioritizes sustainability. We know the impact direct mail marketing has on our natural resources and we minimize that impact by investing in sustainable direct mail and helping our customers meet their ESG goals.
Lob sets the standard for sustainable direct mail by certifying that our mail is 100% carbon neutral, from raw materials to ultimate disposal.
Since 2018, we’ve planted over half a million trees, more than double the amount used to produce our mail pieces, through our partnership with Eden Reforestation Projects. Our customers can further reduce waste through built-in address verification, error handling, and following direct mail best practices.
Lob’s direct mail solution isn't just a platform; it's a partnership dedicated to your success. We understand the intricacies of direct mail and are committed to staying at the forefront of technological advancements.
Over 12,000 companies choose Lob over the alternatives in the market to reach their direct mail marketing goals. We’re proud to be the solution they trust and excited by the success stories they’ve shared.
Let’s take a look at two Lob customer success stories.
iExit Interstate Exit Guide is a free travel app that guides road trippers to the best stops on U.S. interstates. From I-5 to I-95, travelers can open the app and discover what exit to take to fuel up, get food, or find lodging for the night.
iExit also allows the businesses on interstate exits to claim a listing for their business and sponsor the exit closest to their location - ensuring travelers see their listing first for that exit. By sponsoring an exit, businesses often get over 75 times more visibility and engagement with their listing than they would have received with a free listing.
iExit was looking to acquire new customers to fuel its growth and recurring revenue. Its challenge was engaging and connecting with local businesses to make them aware of iExit and the advertising opportunity.
iExit tested a postcard campaign with Lob and got immediate results with an Annual Recurring Revenue ROI of 155%. We realized that this has potential.
“Our sales methods couldn’t scale in any form or fashion. It was around this time that we came across Lob and the light switch for direct mail came on. Not only could it scale, but direct mail was profitable right off the bat.” - Evan Metrock, Founder and CEO, iExit
The iExit team sent out almost 64,000 mailers and signed on hundreds of new customers for the exit sponsorship program and generated over almost $30,000 in profit from the direct mail campaign. Also, by removing undeliverable addresses from the database, the iExit team saved thousands of dollars on the campaign.
iExit saw a 40% increase in users claiming their business listing on the app, and a 60% increase in purchased sponsorships when sending a two-page letter. The new format not only increased sales, but it also drastically cut down on customer support time by proactively providing the information customers needed.
Metrock shares they’ll continue experimenting and testing the messaging and visuals on their current letters to drive more ROI but it seems for iExit they’re on cruise control in terms of automating their direct mail. Metrock tells us, “The vast majority of our efforts have been in direct mail to arrive at a business mailer with highly predictable and highly profitable results.”
By leveraging Lob’s intelligent direct mail platform, the iExit team saves time on sales outreach so they can focus time, productivity, and resources on other business development initiatives.
North Carolina-based VentureStack provides real estate investors with better deals.
Direct mail for the real estate investing market hasn’t changed much in the last decade, resulting in many firms using similar-looking boilerplate mail. The templates were basic, handwritten letter formats and lacked personalization, customization options, and elements like QR codes for tracking and attribution. Because of the limiting templates, VentureStack struggled to stand out from the competition in acquiring new home-selling clients with its direct mail campaigns.
VentureStack began using Lob in its new customer acquisition campaigns. It found near immediate success with a two-page letter.
“A real differentiator was the ability to customize our mail pieces. And something that stood out immediately was not having the bottleneck of someone fulfilling an order. Having a technology integration to get some of my time back and not focus on placing orders was a big win from the start. I could focus on A/B testing, finding new data, and tweaking different things, so Lob was a big game changer for us.” - Tim McGarvey, Co-Founder, VentureStack
The most critical metric VentureStack uses to measure the efficacy of its direct mail campaigns is the return on ad spend (ROAS), essentially the return on investment. It tracks each campaign with an individual phone number. McGarvey says, “If we're at or above that mark, that's an indicator that we need to put effort into the channel, and we'll break that apart and figure out how to continue to increase the return.” He further explains, “In our industry, companies normally target a 4 to 5 times return to be a viable, sustainable marketing channel. We have an 8.3 return on ad spend from direct mail, so we're blowing that out of the water.”
Read VentureStack’s full success story.
As you’ve learned, having a partner, not just a platform for your direct mail marketing success, is crucial. If you’re looking for an alternative to Postie for your direct mail marketing, Lob will be a great partner for your campaigns.
Lob is here to help you hit the ground running and leverage the unparalleled conversion, response rate, and ROI that direct mail delivers. From our intuitive Campaigns interface to our advanced APIs, nationwide Print Delivery Network, advanced tracking and analytics, and trusted security and compliance to our sustainable, carbon-neutral mail, Lob is the choice for direct mail marketing.
Ready to learn more? Request a demo from our direct mail experts.
Have other questions? Check out our direct mail FAQs.
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