Marieke Nagel, Campaign Manager at Maxima had already discovered that sending postcards was a highly effective way to encourage customers to place new orders. Traditional Direct Mail campaigns, such as those around King’s Day, had proven their worth, but were labour-intensive.

I wanted to use Direct Mail more often, but in a smart, low-effort way. We could, of course, send cards to customers ourselves, but that would take hours every week. Nobody wants that.

Fast forward to today, and the complete win-back journey is fully automated in Spotler Activate.

“Customers who haven’t ordered for a certain period first receive two emails to re-engage them. If they still don’t respond, the final step is a physical postcard via Print.one. We use it as the last push, with a higher discount to get them over the line.”

That final push works. On average, 3.6% of recipients make a purchase (the benchmark in the Netherlands is 1.78%, according to Adobe Business), making this campaign highly profitable.

For every euro invested in the postcard campaign, an average of €26 is returned, with peaks as high as €36. This delivers an average Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), after deducting discounts, of 2,611.61%. All told, that’s more than €120,000 in extra revenue within 12 months, achieved with minimal time investment and a budget of under €5,000.

“We’d never done automated Direct Mail before. I’m always keen on innovation and trying new things. I love bringing something fresh into our marketing mix, and when it works out so well, I’m proud of the result,” says Marieke.

According to Marieke, running the campaign each month takes almost no time at all. The integration between Spotler Activate and Print.one means the entire process is fully automated. As soon as a customer hasn’t placed an order for a set period and ignores follow-up emails, a postcard is triggered via webhook and sent automatically by Print.one. “At most, I spend a few minutes once a month checking the flow,” she explains.

Manually exporting and uploading customer data is now a thing of the past; everything runs automatically and securely in the background.

In the latest version of the flow, Maxima has made the timing of postcards fully dynamic. Using the RFM model (recency, frequency, monetary value), a different “sending pattern” is defined for each customer type. Customers with a higher order frequency may receive a card sooner than those who order less frequently.

The next optimisation will be to personalise postcard content by sector. “Using an AI model that identifies a company’s industry, we can segment recipients and send them a personalised postcard,” explains Marieke.

Imagine a postcard for bakers featuring products they truly use, both in imagery and in text, or a postcard for restaurants showing equipment that matches their kitchen, such as fryers or heated display cabinets. This level of relevance is expected to drive conversion rates even higher.

Maxima’s use of Direct Mail shows just how powerful a well-timed, personalised postcard can be. Especially when it’s perfectly integrated into your existing marketing automation and running entirely in the background. It helps you win back customers at exactly the right moment, without extra effort and, just as importantly, before your competitors step in.