Earlier this month we brought you a direct mail case study of Casper, the successful mattress brand and self confessed “digital native”. We examined how Casper scored big victories with their print media campaigns, embracing the “tangibility effect”, giving customers something to pick up, hold, and keep. By adopting this approach, Casper put their brand, and their products, at the forefront of their prospects’ minds.
Today we are examining another digital brand, one you might have encountered yourself: makeup brand, Glossier.
Glossier is the brainchild of Connecticut-born stylist, writer, and entrepreneur, Emily Weiss, and is well established as one of the leading providers of high-quality makeup and skincare products in the United States. The brand is a uniquely 21st Century one in that it grew directly from the success of a blog. After her Into the Gloss blog gained serious popularity among American makeup and style enthusiasts, Emily was able to launch the Glossier brand – an organization which was born online and which continues to thrive there.
However, Glossier does not exist exclusively in the online environment. Instead, the organization’s directors have recognized how important a print campaign is to their business. They’ve launched print mail campaigns with great success alongside their already impressive digital endeavors. But perhaps alongside is the wrong word – alongside implies that the two aspects of marketing, digital media and physical media, exist side by side but in isolation. In fact, Glossier has made sure that these two pillars are inextricably linked.
Like Casper, Glossier uses physical mail to target potential customers for their brand.
If you are a woman living in the United States, you are probably already aware of this; it’s likely you’ve encountered one of these direct mail pieces yourself. They are, of course, very much on brand, utilizing Glossier’s signature soft pink coloring and sans-serifed font, instantly locking in the attention of any potential customers already aware of what Glossier has to offer. These prospects immediately understand that what they are holding in their hand has come from Glossier, and the brand’s identity is strengthened.
But a business cannot thrive simply by reinforcing its own identity in the minds of those who are already aware, and who perhaps have shopped with the brand already. While this is an important aspect of securing maximum lifetime value from a customer, a brand’s marketing campaign must also seek to elicit new business from consumers who perhaps have never previously heard of the organization and their products. Glossier achieves this by forging an indelible connection between the print and digital sides of their strategy.
When a potential customer finds a Glossier leaflet on their doorstep and begins to read its content, they will find a discount code for the brand’s products online. This discount code may have a distinct set of parameters attached to it – for example, it may have a time limit attached to encourage urgency, or it may relate to a new product range, steering potential customers toward new offerings. The code is delivered to the consumer via a physical flyer, and the consumer acts upon this by logging on and using the code online. In one effective stroke, a strong bond is formed between physical and digital marketing channels.
A successful marketing strategy is a diverse one. Even in the digital age, brands must work to engage their prospects across all potential channels, achieving a diverse but harmonious strategy that really connects with the consumer. Print, as we can see from the example of Glossier, has an enormous role to play in this.