Data-driven marketing has never had more capability than it does right now. We can target almost anyone, almost instantly, across almost any digital channel. But in the race for speed and scale, the industry has quietly dropped some of the discipline that made direct marketing effective in the first place: proper testing.
Most brands think they are ‘testing’ because they compare two creative routes or run a holdout. That is useful, but it is not a testing programme. Other brands will test multiple changes at once, such as price, creative and call to action – but learning becomes somewhat blurred.
A testing programme is systematic, continuous, and linked to commercial outcomes.
Direct mail gives you clean test conditions. You have a defined audience, a defined cost, and a measurable response window. That makes it ideal for learning what truly drives behaviour, not what gets clicks. In 2026, the brands that treat each drop as a hypothesis, not a broadcast, will achieve successful outcomes with direct mail.
Start with behaviour, not demographics
Traditional targeting often leans on demographics and broad lifestyle assumptions. Behaviour beats both. People tell you what they want through what they actually do.
If you have access to real consumer behaviour, you can build segments that reflect intent. For travel, this could be households with a pattern of booking short breaks every spring. For retail, it might be customers whose basket size increases in the two months before Christmas. For finance, it could be people showing consistent switching behaviour, not just those in a certain income band.
Behavioural insight makes your direct mail more relevant, more timely, and far more efficient.
The tests that can drive performance in 2026 are likely to sit in three areas:
- Audience strategy: Compare behavioural segments against broad targeting. Test suppression rules. Look at incremental reach beyond your digital pool.
- Offer and incentive: Not just discount versus no discount, but the structure of the offer. Free delivery versus bonus product. Fixed saving versus tiered saving. Timing of the incentive.
- Messaging and creative hierarchy: What is the main reason to act, and does it align with the segment’s behaviour? Test benefit-led uplift against reassurance-led uplift. Introduce urgency only where intent signals suggest it will work.
Each test should have a clear success metric tied to profit or lifetime value, not just response. Set it up so you can read it quickly, learn, and roll the winning logic into the next cycle.
Use direct mail to improve your whole mix
Learnings from your direct mail test programme should not simply stay in direct mail. If a behavioural segment responds strongly to a specific proposition in print, that can be transferred to your email or paid social. Mail may be slower to deploy, but is often faster to teach you something true about customers. In addition, the targeting is far richer.
The future for direct mail is not bigger volumes. It is smarter volumes. Plan fewer, better drops. Build audiences from real behaviour. Test, learn, and optimise.
And here is the biggest shift brands need to make in 2026: no longer treat testing and speed as trade-offs. With the data and tools now available you can do both at once. Behavioural insight lets you set stronger hypotheses, run cleaner tests, read results faster, and build winning strategies straight into subsequent campaigns.
That’s how to get your kicks in 2026. Not by chasing the next shiny platform, but by using data to bring back the discipline that makes direct marketing work and using that rigour to move faster, not slower.
