Patrick George/Ikon Images
When programmatic digital advertising rose to prominence in the mid-2010s, it promised pinpoint targeting based on user data, with a low barrier to entry and easily tracked conversions. However, the channel is losing its luster. Costs per click have steadily increased for both Facebook and Google, even as click-through rates on many social platforms have stagnated.
These trends are raising alarms for CMOs looking for new ways to connect with consumers and for CFOs looking at ballooning digital budgets and questioning the plateauing returns. And they are setting the stage for the rediscovery of direct mail. Far from a relic of the 20th century, direct mail can achieve impressive engagement and persist for days on a kitchen counter, whereas a banner ad disappears as a user scrolls past it, research has found.
The resurgence of direct mail is not merely a reaction to digital saturation; it reflects an understanding of how tactile experiences are able to break through noise. Sophisticated marketers — including retailers such as Free People, J.Crew, Pottery Barn, Warby Parker, and Wayfair — have already tapped into direct mail’s ability to engage consumers. The channel now benefits from new attribution technologies (more on those below).1 Such tools allow marketers to tie physical mail to online behaviors and track results more accurately than before. Additionally, Amazon has begun producing physical catalogs for back-to-school and holiday toy promotions, while both Amazon and Shopify have incorporated direct mail into their B2B marketing strategies, further highlighting its versatility across industry sectors. Direct mail is increasingly looking like a strategic investment that can amplify the effectiveness of digital channels rather than compete with them.
Testing Physical Mailings’ Performance
My research set out to measure direct mail effectiveness. During one industry collaboration, I partnered with a direct mail agency to analyze data from more than 50 distinct campaigns in categories such as apparel, furniture, and outdoor goods. Each campaign provided several metrics, such as the total number of mailers sent; the orders generated; overall revenue; and the size, or “tier,” of the brand behind the effort. I applied econometric models to account for variables like seasonal demand spikes and whether a brand was already well known. The outcome was a comprehensive picture of how direct mail volume influences key results — particularly revenue — across diverse retail segments.
These analyses yielded some striking findings. One of the most notable was a near 1-to-1 elasticity between mail volume and orders, meaning that for every 1% increase in mailers sent, the corresponding rise in actual purchases was nearly commensurate. Revenue was even more responsive, growing at a rate of about 1.27% for each 1% increase in mailing volume — a dynamic that suggests that direct mail results in upselling and higher average order values. Meanwhile, brands classified as Tier 1 (widely recognized, with a broad and loyal customer base) enjoyed more pronounced boosts from each additional mailed piece than lesser-known, Tier 3, brands. Seasonal timing also emerged as a critical factor: Campaigns that landed in mailboxes during months in which shopping volumes are typically high, such as November and December, saw a marked uptick in response rates, sometimes exceeding 35% above off-peak baselines.
Although these large-scale analyses revealed that direct mail performs well on an aggregate level, I also wanted to compare the results of direct mail against those of specific digital ad platforms. I collaborated with a beauty and personal care e-commerce brand that agreed to run a four-month test, pitting direct mail against Google’s, Amazon’s, and Facebook’s ad platforms. I set out to measure which medium drove the strongest return on ad spend (ROAS) by examining cost per acquisition, average order value, and purchase frequency.
For this study, the e-commerce brand sent out 8,015 physical catalogs, at a cost of 75 cents per mailer, and ultimately acquired 160 new customers — a 2% response rate and a per-customer acquisition cost of $37.50. Simultaneously, Google ads brought in 1,532 new shoppers at an average cost of $50 per acquisition, while Amazon ads notched 2,016 new customers at $40 each, and Facebook ads, which had a lower cost per click, still landed at $45 per new buyer. Each consumer’s subsequent purchases were tracked for four months, ensuring that we captured both immediate and repeat transactions. The average profit margin was 40%, which allowed for the calculation of profit and thus ROAS for each channel.
The results were illuminating. In addition to costing less per customer acquired, direct mail yielded an average order value of $75, exceeding that of all three digital platforms, whose values ranged from $58 to $65. And the cohort that received direct mail also made two purchases over four months, while those reached via digital channels made from 1.65 to 1.95 purchases during the same period. Adding it all up, direct mail handily delivered the highest ROAS, at 55%, far above Google’s 21.4%, Amazon’s 15%, and Facebook’s 4.7%. Brand executives suggested that mail recipients might have explored a broader range of the brand’s offerings, resulting in the higher number of purchases, which could indicate that physical formats such as catalogs invite more browsing across a product portfolio.
The findings in the studies described above aren’t entirely surprising, given previous psychological and neuroscientific research. There are a number of reasons why physical mail may resonate more deeply than digital ads alone.
Understanding the Appeal of Direct Mail
Direct mail wields a critical advantage over digital media: touch. Neuroscientists have shown that people process physical objects with less cognitive effort but stronger emotional responses.2 When an individual holds a well-designed mailer or a catalog, multiple sensory regions of the brain — especially the somatosensory cortex — activate. A widely cited study by the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General and Temple University found that physical media requires 21% less cognitive load to process compared with digital ads but leads to better recall.3
Touch also fosters what scholars call the endowment effect. Simply handling a physical item may lead a consumer to feel a sense of ownership — raising the perceived value of both the piece and the brand behind it, even before a transaction has occurred. This research stream has demonstrated that physical touch leads to a heightened desire to acquire an object.4 For brands trying to cut through the clutter of digital banners and emails, this sensory immersion is invaluable.
Physical marketing collateral also engages emotions, which significantly drive consumer decisions. Studies using fMRI scans and eye tracking have shown that paper advertisements activate more emotional processing centers than purely visual digital ads. This prompts the formation of deeper and more memorable connections, which in turn can build stronger loyalty.5 In a world of fleeting online impressions, a brand piece that a consumer can physically hold — and perhaps keep for a few days — can embed itself in their mental schema far more effectively.
During in-depth interviews I conducted with consumers, they validated these points. One millennial respondent said that they discard most emails without opening them but that “a nicely designed mailer stays on my coffee table. I’ll even show it to roommates if it’s intriguing.” This underscores the interplay of tactile marketing and social sharing — two factors absent or muted in purely digital channels.
That interviewee’s anecdote points to another benefit of physical mail: object permanence. The mail piece remains visible, enabling repeated exposure. Even if someone initially sets it aside, it can be rediscovered days or weeks later. In contrast, digital ads vanish as soon as a user scrolls past them or closes a browser tab. The lingering presence of direct mail can spur unplanned purchases, brand reappraisal, or word-of-mouth recommendations.
Technology Has Transformed Direct Mail
It’s not just thoughtful design that sets today’s direct mail campaigns apart from the scattershot mailings of yesteryear. Programmatic mailings now allow marketers to send print pieces automatically when consumers abandon online shopping carts or repeatedly view certain product pages, ensuring timely, context-specific outreach. Meanwhile, variable-data printing tailors each mailer with unique images, copy, or offers, based on a recipient’s browsing or purchase history. Further enhancing the online-offline connection, QR codes and personalized URLs embedded in these mailers link consumers directly to product videos, e-commerce portals, or event sign-ups — capturing real-time data on who engages and how. Thanks to these innovations, direct mail no longer stands alone as a static tactic but is linked to digital campaigns. A prominent example of this convergence is the U.S. Postal Service’s Informed Delivery, an opt-in service that sends customers preview images of incoming mail pieces via email and allows recipients to click through to related digital content before the physical pieces arrive. Informed Delivery emails reached more than 70 million people in 2024 and had an open rate of nearly 60%.6
Meanwhile, modern attribution techniques now allow marketers to more closely track the results of direct mail campaigns. The matchback analysis technique compares the addresses of buyers against the addresses mailed to, quantifying the incremental lift over baseline sales. Using holdout groups — a random subset of the target audience that is not sent the mailing — provides another layer of rigor, illustrating the direct impact of mailing versus not mailing. Marketing mix modeling enables marketers to evaluate how various channels — digital, TV, catalogs, and mail — together influence revenue and brand metrics, and to isolate the effect of direct mail.
These approaches provide data that CMOs can present to CFOs as evidence that direct mail lifts revenue by a tangible margin and is well worth the printing and postage expenses that finance executives are concerned about. In fact, my interviews surfaced C-suite tension around direct mail: With privacy regulations increasingly eroding the precision of targeted ads, CMOs see physical mailings as a strategic bet, whereas CFOs focus on cost control and scrutinize per-piece expenses. They want to see robust attribution models to ensure that any observed uptick in sales stems from direct mail rather than simply a shift of purchases from one channel to another. As one CFO in the consumer electronics sector put it, “We don’t mind spending on direct mail if it works better than our next-best alternative. Show me the data that each piece drives incremental revenue, and I’ll greenlight the investment.” And a retail CFO said, “We assumed direct mail was too old-school and had no modern measurement. Once our marketing team showed us matchback data revealing a 15% revenue lift, we realized how wrong that assumption was.”
Balancing the Marketing Mix
My research results do not imply that companies should abandon digital ads. Google’s ad platform excels at capturing high-intent searches, while Facebook’s and Amazon’s remain unmatched in reach. However, the synergy from layering direct mail onto digital campaigns — especially for mid- to high-value customers — can substantially elevate total ROAS. This can be accomplished by integrating direct mail with real-time digital triggers — using abandoned-cart alerts or browsing histories to generate personalized mail that arrives at a moment of high intent, for example. One CMO of a high-end skin care brand explained, “We can’t just mail blindly. What excites us is sending a sleek, premium mailer to a would-be customer who paused at checkout. We’ve found that one tactile reminder can bring them back to complete the purchase.”
Many organizations begin by reallocating 10% to 20% of their digital budget toward physical mail, starting with small holdout tests that confirm incremental lifts in revenue. Others invest in premium materials and hyperpersonalized messaging, recognizing that brand perception hinges on avoiding the mass-mailed “junk” label.
From a CMO’s standpoint, the near-proportional growth in orders and outsize gain in revenue my research found point to direct mail’s strong scalability — particularly for brands already recognized in their markets. Scaling campaigns to larger volumes, particularly to loyal “house list” customers, can substantially increase the return on marketing dollars. Less-prominent brands, however, may find that they need more frequent or personalized mailers to have comparable traction. For brands still building their name recognition, a combination of personalized mailings and integrated digital retargeting can mitigate the risk of wasted postage while amplifying response rates.
The direct mail channel can also serve broader strategic goals of interest to CEOs, such as improving brand image and awareness. The CEO of a global furniture retailer told me, “Digital channels still dominate our ad spend, but I’ve seen how quickly consumers tune out repetitive online campaigns. Direct mail, when measured effectively, can spark new life into our brand story and improve overall ROI.” Another CEO, this one from a fast-growing consumer electronics startup, described how direct mail changed the company’s growth trajectory: “We launched a targeted postcard series to 50,000 high-intent leads and saw a 40% better conversion than we’d been getting online. Once the CFO saw how quickly those mailers paid off, the conversation shifted from caution to expansion.”
Ultimately, the path forward involves treating direct mail as an integral part of an omnichannel mix that offers both high engagement and systematic attribution while balancing both short-term performance metrics and long-term brand equity. As screens increasingly dominate modern life, a tangible mail piece can offer a welcome respite, forging stronger emotional ties and converting consumer curiosity into measurable sales. At a moment when digital fatigue has become the norm, forward-thinking executives recognize that direct mail is less a step backward than a carefully orchestrated leap toward a more holistic, human-centered marketing ecosystem.