I’ve been thinking a lot about molting lately. Possibly too much, although it’s tough to gauge what the “right amount” might be…
When molting, an animal sheds an external layer (old feathers, skin, even a shell) in order to facilitate new growth. And while the process is often uncomfortable and seldom pretty, the end results can be downright stunning. Just think about the songbirds in your backyard (or fire escape) trading their fluffy down for sleek, colorful feathers.
PebblePost has been going through a bit of a “molt” itself over the past few months. A brand refresh culminated in the launch of a completely reimagined PebblePost.com this past weekend.
To say we’re excited to share this next stage of our brand’s evolution with you is an understatement. For us, this is more than just a website redesign. Sure, you’ll see an expanded, more vibrant color palette and aesthetic that better reflects the powerful nature of our technology. But the changes go deeper than what you see on the surface.
For us, this is a milestone in our continued maturation as a business and channel pioneer; a shedding of our outer layering to make way for new growth and new capabilities, while still holding true to what has fueled our success to date. As we embarked on this relaunch, one of our main goals was to bring our brand marketing up to date with the impact we’ve been able to make for brands and our full set of solutions.
In other words, we didn’t reinvent PebblePost. We just revealed what we and the brands we work with already knew to be there.
I encourage you to explore the new website yourself, but before you do, I wanted to share a few thoughts on some common themes you’ll encounter along the way.
The Importance of “Home”
The idea that “Home” is one of the most critical environments in which to engage new and existing customers is part of PebblePost’s DNA. It’s why we took those first steps years ago to build a data and technology platform that would ensure the experience of receiving a physical piece of mail from a brand was just as relevant, performance-driven, and measurable as any digital channel.
The result was something not quite traditional direct mail and not quite digital marketing. It was an entirely new channel: Programmatic Direct Mail.
Nowadays, with digital channels growing increasingly more expensive, overcrowded, and unstable, forward-thinking marketers are making the Programmatic Direct Mail channel (and thereby “the home”) an integral part of their omnichannel strategy. It’s right there alongside Search, Social, CTV and Display. Why? Well, sure, it offers incredible performance and scale, but it’s more than that.
With Programmatic Direct Mail, you’re not interrupting someone as they watch Kittens at Work videos or read a listicle on the 12 Greatest Cake Fails of 2022. Instead, the recipient invites your marketing into their home, where they can engage with it on their terms, on their timeline. In a world of platforms where consumers are made to feel like the product, that experience is something truly unique.
And we’re here for it.
Bridging Online and Offline Data
The lines between worlds are blurring, and PebblePost is in a unique position to help the brands we work with bridge those worlds. It all starts with data – the right data, at scale, used to fuel the platform.
There is no pure “online” or “offline” customer experience anymore. These days, “Home” and “Work” are sometimes the same physical structure. “Digital experiences” are interwoven into the “real world,” and transactions can occur across any number of “ecommerce” and “brick and mortar” points of sale.
Your brand needs a way to confidently connect what happens online to offline and back again, especially when engaging people at home. Which is exactly what the PebblePost Graph does. It’s your key to powering relevance in the real world, securely connecting billions of first-party household, online intent, and transaction data points with its privacy-by-design framework.
By building the Graph around households, we provide you with a solid foundation on which to build your marketing program that offers both accuracy and reach, and is not reliant on 3rd party cookies . That’s important not only for targeting, optimizing, and measuring the impact of your marketing efforts, but also to ensure those who shouldn’t receive your marketing, for any reason, don’t.
Relevance, after all, is as much about knowing the perfect time to engage someone as it is knowing when not to.
Performance Throughout the Customer Lifecycle
Over the past few years, we’ve introduced a number of new products and features that have expanded our capabilities beyond just retargeting to help the brands we work with engage new and existing customers throughout the customer lifecycle, from Discovery to Loyalty.
Now we’re going even further in aligning our capabilities with your needs by introducing PebblePost Acquisition and Retention Solutions, and expanding our product suite with Prospecting Audiences and Customer Engagement.
Building on your brand’s first-party data and your goals, each of these solution sets can be adapted to perfectly complement your existing customer acquisition and retention programs. And no matter if you’re focused on topline revenue growth or life-time value, you’ll still have access to an ever-expanding suite of reporting tools and services that will allow you to continue to invest and scale with confidence.
Sustainable Outcomes
One of the wonderful things about Programmatic Direct Mail is that it is inherently greener than traditional direct mail marketing. That’s because only people with the highest likelihood to convert receive a piece of marketing mail.
By increasing the relevance of the marketing mail consumers receive at home, you decrease the amount you need to send in order to drive better outcomes: Better for consumers, better for your business, better for the Earth.
In fact, we estimate that brands can reduce their mail volume by up to 75%. Yet they still hit their performance goals using PebblePost instead of traditional direct mail. But we also know we can’t stop there.
As a part of PebblePost’s ongoing commitment to further sustainability, we aspire to replace what we’ve taken from the forests twofold with our partner, One Tree Planted. We call this “Environmental ROI.”
One tree returns approximately 269 sheets of the paper on which the mail pieces sent through our services are printed. We use this number as a baseline to determine exactly how many trees have been used in support of the brands we work with. Then we offset that impact by planting two trees for every one invested.
There’s More to Come…
As exciting as these changes are, they’re also just the beginning. Our success as a company intrinsically depends on the success of the brands we partner with every day.
As we continue to deliver products, features, and data to power profitable growth for our partners, we’ll grow with them.
Who knows what changes that growth will necessitate, or what fun metaphors from the natural world it will inspire? We’re excited about where we are, where we’re going, and for everyone that’s coming along on the journey with us.
And that includes you.
So check out the new PebblePost.com and let us know what you think! You can always email me directly at nick@pebblepost.com.
