Winning the retention game with postcard marketing

Revolutionizing Customer Retention: The Wine By Lamborghini Case Study.
Harnessing the Power of Direct Mail to Elevate Engagement.

Overview

Founded in 1968 by Ferruccio Lamborghini, the man behind the iconic sports car, Wine By Lamborghini is an Italian brand that produces premium wines between Umbria and Tuscany regions. The bottle is usually gold or has a metal finish, making it a fancy product to open – the perfect gift for special occasions.

Problem

Acquisition costs started to rise, and Wine By Lamborghini reached out to DTC Gang to optimize its marketing effort, focusing on increasing customer retention.
Over the years, they have done a great job acquiring customers through Facebook, where, during the pandemic, they captured many shoppers looking for a luxury experience at home.
But eventually, it became clear that they needed to diversify their marketing channels and focus on retaining those VIP customers.
The email marketing channel was working well, with a 35% open rate, but they were still struggling to reach two-thirds of recipients who weren’t reading the message.

Strategy

It’s estimated that 90% of direct mail is read, which puts physical mail’s open rate higher than email’s.
Another benefit of direct mail is its cost predictability, as it doesn’t change depending on the season or demand (contrary to CPM on other online channels). In fact, you know exactly how much you will spend to print and send it.
With this in mind, we tested the channel with one campaign sent to two different segments: people who subscribed to the email list who hadn’t purchased in 30 days and unsubscribed customers.
The results were so successful that we implemented multiple automation for this e-commerce.

Results

Here are some of the automation we implemented for Wine By Lamborghini:

Welcome campaign. We automatically mail a postcard to new email subscribers who didn’t use the included discount code to make a purchase. The postcard offers a higher discount to encourage that first purchase.
So far, the campaign has a 13x ROI.

Unsubscribes. When a customer opts out of the email list, a postcard is sent to their address.
Compared to other automation, it has a lower ROI but is still positive.

Abandoned cart. When customers insert their physical address at checkout but don’t finalize the purchase, we trigger cart abandon emails. If those are ineffective, we’ll follow up with a bigger discount via mail to seal the deal.
So far, the campaign has a 6x ROI.

VIP thank-yous. VIP customers receive a handwritten card 30 days after their most recent purchase. The card is written by a robot mimicking human handwriting, making it nearly indistinguishable.
The personal touch works, this campaign has a 6x ROAS, even without a coupon code!

Conclusions

By ingeniously blending traditional and digital marketing tactics, Wine By Lamborghini excelled in increasing customer retention and cultivating enduring relationships with its VIP clientele, solidifying its position as a pioneering force in luxury wine offerings.