The Canadian company Prime Data has launched the world’s first net-zero carbon direct mail service.

The company  determined that their largest source of emissions was paper production, transportation, and its internal operations (employee commutes and energy use). They then worked to reduce their impact through targeting these areas. Prime Data prioritises paper vendors with lower carbon footprints, is encouraging its trucking company to switch to electric vehicles, is reducing the weight of its mail, and is encouraging hybrid and work from home situations.

Prime Data helped Sephora address its issue of customer cart abandonment by conducting a test study to see if direct mail could convince a group of 13,000 customers, split into two test groups, to revisit their cart and purchase the items they abandoned.

24 hours after abandoning their carts, both groups received an email that reminded them to purchase their item, containing images of their items. 48 hours after the cart abandonment, one test group was also mailed personalised, 6×9 inch cards containing images of the item in their cart in addition to other top-selling Sephora products.

The results showed the test group receiving direct mail had a 16% higher response rate than the group that did not, making them more likely to purchase the items and go into Sephora physically. Prime Data stated that while this was a preliminary study, it demonstrated the marketing power of personalisation.

Source:
Sephora, 2022

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