Everybody’s cup of tea – changing the channel stirs emotions and increases redemption rates

2 minute read

Tea – considered the world’s most popular drink after water itself – is an evocative beverage. A few sips seem to slow down time and summon comforting memories of past conversations.

DAVIDsTEA is a Montréal-based specialty tea and tea accessory retailer that carries the largest collection of organic teas and infusions in North America. It also designs tea accessories, everything from spoons and infusers to tea sets and travel mugs.

From its modest beginnings with one store in 2008, DAVIDsTEA has offered great selection, quality products and unparalleled customer service. Throughout its first decade in business, DAVIDsTEA spent almost all of its advertising budget on digital marketing. When it turned to Canada Post to help with a direct mail campaign, its initial success encouraged another, which resulted in a redemption rate of 40 per cent.

Using direct mail to drive results

Having direct mail as part of your marketing mix can help you better connect with customers and their individual tastes.

“Hitting the right people with the right content at the right time is critical,” says Jessica Schami, a Marketing Specialist at DAVIDsTEA. Showing consumers how good their product is beats simply telling them, she says. “The samples of tea help because customers can then taste the tea,” and the product speaks for itself.

Its early success with direct mail convinced DAVIDsTEA to shift a portion of its advertising budget to Canada Post Smartmail Marketing™ to address two perpetual business challenges: cyclical foot traffic; and ever-increasing competition. Canada Post took it from there.

How DAVIDsTEA reactivated customers with a direct mail marketing campaign

Fast forward to the 2019 holiday season when DAVIDsTEA combined its own data with Canada Post targeting to send samples to lapsed customers who had not made a purchase in the last 275 days – a long time to go without great tea!

DAVIDsTEA mailed 20,000 tea samples to customers, as well as a coupon for 20 per cent off their next purchase. The campaign elicited more than 3,200 redemptions.

The takeaway

For DAVIDsTEA, reallocating budget to combine data with direct mail steeped consumers in the product and encouraged conversion. With a steaming cup of tea in hand, they could taste the difference, and that beats simply telling them about it.

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