Direct mail has long been a crucial strategy for marketers. It’s a great way to reach consumers at scale with a relevant message. However, with the advent of digital advertising, a whole new world of reach and precision has opened up to help marketers get the most out of their campaigns.
Case in point, a national premium ice cream shop chain was looking to drive traffic to 22 brick and mortar locations across five markets. Their commercial printing company realized that to give their client the maximum bang for their buck, they needed a digital solution to complement the traditional direct mail effort. Simpli.fi’s combination of precise targeting, scale, and attribution capabilities made us the ideal programmatic vendor to work with.
Ultimately, the printer decided to partner with Simpli.fi to complement its direct mailers by delivering household-level digital ads to the same addresses via Addressable Geo-Fencing and by taking advantage of Simpli.fi’s advanced foot traffic conversion reporting. As you’ll see below, the results far exceeded the brand’s expectations.
Check out the full case study below to see details of Simpli.fi’s addressable and foot traffic attribution solutions in action.
Proving ROI for Direct Mail
Advertisers widely recognize the importance of proving a strong return on investment (ROI) for their campaigns. However, for traditional advertising channels with limited attribution capabilities, this can be particularly difficult. As such, a commercial printing company that runs direct mail marketing for large brands knew it needed to improve its ability to showcase the impact of its advertising efforts by taking advantage of innovative digital solutions.
When a national ice cream chain approached the printer about running a holiday direct mail campaign for the final six weeks of the year, the printing company wanted to pull out all of the stops. The company decided to partner with Simpli.fi to complement its physical mailers by delivering household-level digital ads to the same addresses via Addressable Geo-Fencing and by taking advantage of Simpli.fi’s advanced foot traffic conversion reporting. The printer understood that Simpli.fi’s Geo-Conversion Lift reporting would allow it to accurately track users who visited one of the ice cream brand’s physical stores after being served a digital ad, ultimately helping to gauge ROI.
Synergy of Direct Mail and Simpli.fi’s Addressable Geo-Fencing
The ice cream chain wanted to position its ice cream pints as the perfect holiday gift and drive foot traffic to 22 stores across five metropolitan areas—Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, and Nashville. Using the brand’s customer address lists for all five markets, the printing company was able to onboard the same lists into Simpli.fi’s platform using Addressable Geo-Fencing, effectively targeting each household with digital ads alongside its direct mail campaign. By targeting the same households with both physical and digital ads, the advertiser could increase touchpoints and reinforce its message.
To ensure that users in each household were primed to receive and recognize the direct mail piece, Simpli.fi started running its digital campaign four days prior to the delivery of the mailer. The printer supplied Simpli.fi with digital display creatives that matched its direct mail piece, and the cohesive look of the two campaigns allowed users to quickly identify the mailer upon receipt, making it stand out.
Household-Level Targeting
The ice cream chain supplied 17,500 total addresses—3,500 addresses per market—of some of its top customers. Then, Simpli.fi uploaded the five address lists to its platform and split the campaign’s budget equally across all five markets. Using GPS data paired with plat lines, Simpli.fi automatically matched these addresses to the exact physical location, shape, and size of each household with a 97.21% match rate. The Simpli.fi system then built a geo-fence target zone around each address to capture users for retargeting across all devices seen within the household.
The team also built Conversion Zones around each of the 22 ice cream stores to track the number of users who were seen at a targeted address, were served an ad, and then visited a store. To demonstrate the impact of the campaign, the printing company and ice cream chain wanted to achieve a Cost Per Visit (CPV) to a store location of $10 or less.
Results Prove Direct Mail and Digital Success
Over the six-week campaign, Simpli.fi—in conjunction with the printing company’s direct mail efforts—generated 2,044 total visits to the ice cream chain’s 22 stores. This amounted to a CPV of $1.71, almost six times lower than the $10 goal. The advertiser was able to granularly track the performance of its individual stores, revealing useful insights throughout the lifecycle of the campaign. In fact, the Chicago and Columbus locations saw the strongest results with more than 600 visits each.
Additionally, the printer and advertiser used Simpli.fi’s Geo-Conversion Lift dashboard to distinguish between the conversion rates of users who received digital ads compared to those who only received the physical mailer. Simpli.fi geo-fenced every household that received the mailer, thereby tracking the number of users who visited a Conversion Zone, regardless of whether they were served a digital ad. Therefore, the advertiser and printing company knew the percentage of users who visited a Conversion Zone after being served a digital ad, as well as the percentage of users who visited a Conversion Zone without being served a digital ad.
By comparing the conversion rates of each, they discovered that the campaign achieved a Geo-Conversion Lift of 68.89%. This means that the users who received Simpli.fi’s digital ads and the printing company’s mailer were nearly 70% more likely to visit one of the ice cream chain’s stores than those who only received the mailer; those who received both converted at a rate of 1.98%, while those who only received the mailer converted at a rate of 1.17%. Furthermore, Simpli.fi tracked the average time it took for users to visit a Conversion Zone after being seen in a target geo-fence and revealed that the users who saw both ads converted more than 16 times faster than those who only saw the mailer.
Simpli.fi’s Geo-Conversion Lift report enabled the printing company to showcase the campaign’s ROI and prove that users who received its mailer and digital ads did, in fact, convert. The results also highlighted the complementary nature of running digital ads alongside direct mail campaigns, as users who received both converted at a higher and faster rate than those who only received the mailer.
Ultimately, the printing company and ice cream chain were ecstatic with the campaign’s results. The printing company was so pleased that it will continue to use Addressable Geo-Fencing from Simpli.fi to demonstrate the impact of its direct mail campaigns and to exponentially improve their results.
Interested in taking your direct mail campaigns to the next level with Addressable Geo-Fencing?
Get in touch at hi@simpli.fi or contact your Simpli.fi representative.