thredUP’s 128% ROI boost: The secret behind their direct mail success with Lob

‍thredUP is a managed online clothing marketplace providing a range of fashionable, second-hand clothes. Founded in 2009, the company quickly grew into one of the world’s largest apparel resale platforms, connecting buyers and sellers of quality used clothing in a seamless resale experience.

The Challenge

thredUP was dealing with high churn – particularly a segment of customers who had gone inactive, with no purchases in over a year. In the past, they found that lapsed customers were the hardest to win back, as they’d likely lost interest or moved on to other options. 

To tackle this challenge, they needed a partner who could support them in designing and executing a direct mail reactivation campaign. It was also critical the partner offered A/B testing functionality, allowing them to test among creatives to understand which would resonate most with these disengaged customers and drive them to respond.

The Solution

‍thredUP partnered with all-in-one direct mail platform Lob to segment its churned customer base into two cohorts: those who subscribed to email and those who had unsubscribed from emails. The team designed a test to understand if the additional touchpoint of direct mail would influence the email subscribers' propensity to purchase and, for the unsubscribers, serve as a way to reach the audience they could no longer email.

Using Lob’s intuitive campaigns interface, thredUP easily personalized and customized each direct mail piece to its audience. They also used a high-performing postcard format in the reactivation campaign, with two versions of the back that allowed for A/B testing. 

Lob got thredUP’s mail campaign out the door with its world-class Print Delivery Network (PDN), ensuring quick and efficient delivery. The postcards were produced within Lob’s nationwide network of top printers with a focus on high-quality, fast turnarounds

In-depth: A look at their campaign

Version A contained a letter from thredUP’s CEO

Version B contained three reasons to thrift

For the control group, thredUP took another subset of the unsubscribed cohort and looked at its behavior over the same amount of time compared to the people who received the direct mailer and the number of orders, conversion rate, and profit to compare against the test cohorts.

‍‍The Results

‍thredUP’s reactivation campaign led to a 128% boost in ROI from the highest-performing version. Surprisingly, the team found that the highest engagement and Average Order Value (AOV) was among the unsubscribed group.  

"Direct mail worked especially well for the unsubscribed group, and the CEO letter proved to be a top performer," said Brittany Reano, Sr. Manager of Growth Marketing. "We projected that within a year, this creative would more than break even."

Lob recommended that thredUP immediately leverage these learnings, sending a special offer to incentivize action.  A month later, thredUP ran a follow-up campaign using the winning CEO letter and testing two offers: 45% off versus 30% off. 45% offer had a 4x higher conversion rate, solidifying it as the more effective choice.

Overall, using Lob’s automated, triggered campaigns allowed thredUP to reduce manual effort and increase efficiency while generating better responses and higher ROI.

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What's next

thredUP plans to use direct mail as an essential driver of ROI and revenue as part of its overall marketing strategy.

thredUP has multiple tests planned to continue its learning and optimization process. The team plans to experiment with new formats as well as highly customized direct mail pieces triggered by customer behaviors, such as liked items or recent purchases.

Eventually, we want to improve our recommendations,” says Reano. “For example, targeting recent customers with items to complete their look.”

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The team is also exploring testing more handwritten-looking creatives for the personal touch.“

When we started this relationship, we needed to get some postcards out to reactivate customers. Other than that, we didn’t know what our strategy was,” said Reano. “In just a short amount of time, we've learned a lot. We know we’ll make direct mail with Lob a permanent part of our strategy moving forward.”