Your personalization strategy needs automated direct mail marketing

Marketers and brand managers across industries face increasing competition for reliable, resilient data. As cookie confusion continues, open rates decline and regulations increase, we crave a better way to reach customers.

Millennial and Gen Z customers want personalization from brands. According to Salesforce, 67% of shoppers in these groups expect it all the time. Research from the United States Postal Service shows that physical mail creates an emotional connection with people — one that digital ads don’t evoke.

Could it be, perhaps, that mail holds the solution to our personalization woes?

As consumer sentiments shift toward tangible, personalized experiences, direct mail marketing is seeing growth. In 2024, it grew by about 2.6%, bringing the market total to $37.3 billion, according to Winterberry Group research.

Evolving past the proverbial “snail mail” of past generations, mail in 2025 gets to households with both speed and accuracy. To take it one step further, marketers can look to automated direct mail, a unique integration of print and digital marketing, to scale personalization.

Automated direct mail marketing builds better datasets by combining online to offline customer intent signals and behaviors. It further removes much of the manual work with pre-designed templates that send based on event- or behavior-based audience triggers.

“People, processes and technology have come together to allow direct mail to operate at the same pace as email,” says John Puterbaugh, VP, Advanced Media and Innovation at Quad.

Take a digitally integrated solution such as At-Home Connect by Quad: Each mailer, flyer, postcard or letter enters design, printing, sorting and delivery based on online point-of-capture triggers such as when a customer abandons a shopping cart, browses a website or celebrates a birthday. In essence, automated direct mail involves the marriage of consumers’ online expression of interest or intent with traditional mail delivery.

By automating mail with advanced direct marketing tactics, brands can integrate household and online data to build a more accurate direct mail data set, and improve conversion for warm online leads. 

“Where we are is often more important than who we are. The household is the one place where devices come together via a common Wi-Fi point for a specific period. And what customers receive in the mail is key to unlocking household intent,” says Puterbaugh.  

A significant portion of digital data remains nonaddressable. However, by taking online behavior and combining it with household intent, we can improve direct mail targeting. At-Home Connect, for example, provides an always-on data platform that can track transactions, lifecycle events and other behaviors, so marketers can personalize mail with increased accuracy.  

Using At-Home Connect by Quad, brands can convert warm digital leads, often more so than digital retargeting can do alone. 

“When someone visits a website, it shows they’re interested, but websites don’t always convert. If we send out direct mail piece based on digital signals or behaviors, it’s an effective way of converting warm leads,” adds Puterbaugh. 

By leveraging integrated technology and household data, direct mail can deliver the personalized approach and high performance that marketers require today. 

Marketers face an uphill climb to personalize messaging to the right customer at the right time. One traditional channel continues to endure: direct mail marketing.  

At Quad, our At-Home Connect automated direct mail marketing platform combines speed to market and personalization with advanced data tactics and production expertise. With Quad, marketers reach customers at home in moments that matter. Learn more.