Seasonal spikes and promotion-heavy calendars are nothing new in retail, but for one national furniture brand, the peaks and valleys were becoming too steep.
Promotions delivered quick wins, but they also made it challenging to sustain demand, nurture long-term customer value, and preserve the brand’s premium positioning.
To break the cycle, the retailer looked for a more consistent, data-driven way to generate traffic and incremental revenue year-round. That’s where PebblePost’s Programmatic Direct Mail came in.
The Challenge: A Business Model Built on Promotions
Furniture is a high-consideration purchase, and shoppers often respond strongly to price-driven messaging. While promotions consistently generate short-term sales for this furniture retailer, they also create hurdles:
- Uneven demand makes forecasting and inventory planning difficult
- Overreliance on discounts dilutes the brand’s premium look and feel
- Gaps between promo periods cause demand to drop off sharply
The brand needed a strategy that could amplify key promo periods and create consistent demand between them, without compromising brand equity.
The Solution: Full-Funnel Programmatic Direct Mail to Drive Always-On Demand
Leveraging PebblePost’s full suite of Programmatic Direct Mail solutions, the retailer activated a multi-layered audience strategy designed to reach shoppers at every stage of the customer journey:
- Lookalikes to expand reach and acquire new, high-value customers
- Optimized CRM to refine and re-engage lapsed audiences using traits of the brand’s best customers
- Retargeting to convert high-intent website browsers
- Super Shoppers to engage consumers who spend at least 25% more leading up to key holidays and tentpole events
Category-based targeting enabled the brand to tailor messaging by product and price, ensuring relevance across value-driven and premium offerings.
A key inflection point came when the brand shifted from a regional to a national activation strategy, unlocking greater scale, more efficient delivery, and stronger performance.
The Results: A Top-Performing Channel With Outsized ROI Year-Round
Fueled by the PebblePost Graph and an identity match rate 4x higher than competitors, Programmatic Direct Mail quickly emerged as a top-performing channel in the brand’s MMM.
Performance Highlights
56x blended iROAS (consistently exceeding the brand’s 8x iROAS goal)
140% lift in conversion rate for Lookalikes
+30% lift in AOV from Retargeting audiences vs. control
+68% lift in repeat orders from Retargeting audiences vs. control
All results are verified by third-party measurement, giving the retailer confidence in the incremental impact of its campaigns.
A Consistent Incremental Revenue Engine
By pairing PebblePost’s Programmatic Direct Mail with a strategic, full-funnel audience targeting strategy, this national furniture retailer has transformed its demand curve, strengthened its brand, and created a predictable flow of incremental revenue throughout the year.
Promotions will always play a role in retail. But now, they’re no longer the only lever the brand can rely on—and Programmatic Direct Mail has become a reliable engine for ongoing growth.
Contact us to find out how your brand can achieve measurable outcomes year-round with Programmatic Direct Mail.
