PostcardMania continues its winning streak following a year of milestones, growing earnings 31% in 2021, from
$64.2MM in 2020 to
$83.9MM, and adding over 40 new jobs to its roster, bringing its staff count to a new high of 328. The direct-mail-turned-martech firm reached new heights in several areas, but its fastest-growing segment by far was PCM Integrations, a newly launched division focused on direct mail automations — up 154%.
Direct mail automations bring personalized automations to the direct mail marketing process and allow businesses to connect with consumers offline in a more personalized way. Rather than printing and mailing a postcard or letter by the thousands, an automation is programmed ahead of time to deliver a single mail piece to any individual consumer when triggered.
Triggers can be linked to over 200 CRMs and SaaS platforms in minutes and set depending on specific behaviors, events or dates, for example:
- Abandoning a shopping cart
- Making a first-time purchase from a local business
- Unsubcribing from an email list
PostcardMania's landmark year signals growing strength in the offline marketing space and sheds light on where marketing budgets may be headed in 2022. With inflation hitting 40-year highs and the cost of digital advertising steadily rising throughout 2021, businesses appear poised to find ways to make each dollar stretch farther. Automated direct mail offers two advantages that may be key moving forward: a greatly reduced cost of entry compared to traditional direct mail, and a more personalized consumer experience offering tangible touchpoints, which digital lacks.
Also Read: 4 Important Digital Transformation Strategies to Overcome Digital Transformation Challenges
Studies show that implementing personalization into the customer journey can lift sales 10% or more and increase ROI 500–800%. Among PostcardMania's 101,163 small business clients, similar success stories can be found. One roofing contractor client landed a new roofing job from their automated direct mail campaign after sending just 57 follow-up postcards to website visitors. Each of those automated postcards cost roughly
$1.50, while a new roof could be anywhere from
$10,000 upwards. That's an approximate ROI of over 11,000% conservatively.
PostcardMania Founder/CEO
Joy Gendusa commented, "Putting this kind of marketing technology into the hands of everyday small business owners with smaller budgets has been our mission since 2013, when we first began our pivot from a direct-mail-only marketing company to a technology driven marketing company covering everything from direct mail to digital advertising. We're in a position now where we can help small business owners with every facet of their marketing — online, offline, integrating both, automating it all to make it easier — at an affordable rate. And a more competitive and thriving small business sector is good for all of us."
Gendusa credits her decision not to cut her marketing budget or lay anyone off throughout the first weeks of the pandemic in 2020 (despite being down an average of 41% over 5 weeks) as the impetus that gave PostcardMania the momentum to rebound that same year and end 2020 up nearly 10%. Now, those gains are compounding and accelerating, with growth now up 31% and nearly 100 new jobs added since
May 2020 in order to keep up with demand.
