PARTNER CONTRIBUTION

By Douglas Wiggins    September 17, 2026     7-minute read

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Marketers are under more pressure than ever to prove what's working and justify every dollar spent. As scrutiny over marketing budgets intensifies, impressions and clicks alone are no longer enough to tell the full story. Businesses need a clearer, more complete view of campaign performance.

Many measurement approaches still rely heavily on digital signals, but attribution doesn't start or end with a click. Today's customer journeys are fluid, spanning various channels and touchpoints. To measure performance accurately, attribution must take a bigger-picture view, encompassing both online and offline engagement. What's more, with artificial intelligence (AI) taking on an increasingly active role in marketing decisions, quality attribution matters more than ever. But AI-powered systems are only as powerful as the data they receive, and incomplete data can lead to incomplete insights.

By incorporating data from offline signals into attribution models, marketers can gain a more complete picture of customer behavior, improve measurement, and help AI systems allocate channels and resources more efficiently.

In an omnichannel world, direct mail can act as a high-impact, measurable offline signal — strengthening attribution models, closing gaps in the customer journey, and helping marketers make better investment decisions.

Direct mail is not a disconnected, stand-alone channel. With tools like QR codes and personalized URLs (PURLs), mailers can create measurable links between offline and online interactions. QR codes make it easy for recipients to access a brand's website with a simple smartphone scan, while PURLs can lead customers to personalized landing pages with tailored product recommendations based on past interactions.

According to a 2026 MemeBurn report, organic search traffic has declined with the rise of AI summaries. This makes it increasingly important to provide customers with direct paths to digital content. The results can be significant. According to a 2025 Lob report, 81 percent of consumers say they've followed up with a brand after receiving a piece of direct mail, up from 60 percent in 2024, and 62 percent say they've subsequently converted. Among the consumers who engage further after receiving a mailpiece, 76 percent use a digital channel to do so.

Matchback analysis offers another way to connect mail exposure to customer actions, similar to how attribution is used in digital channels. Rather than rely on recipients to scan QR codes or access PURLs, marketers can compare conversion data against mailing lists to identify which customers took action after receiving a mailpiece. This helps capture conversions that might otherwise go untracked, making it easier to measure cost per acquisition (CPA) and overall return.

In the current climate, customer journeys typically span multiple channels, providing more opportunities to engage customers but making it harder to pinpoint what's behind the results. Without a unified way to measure these interactions and connect offline and online data, it can be hard to see the full impact of a campaign.

Direct mail highlights the value of a connected attribution approach. Mail campaigns often spur customers to look up a brand online, visit a website, or make a purchase. According to a 2026 Lob report, 94 percent of leaders say direct mail delivers stronger results when integrated with other channels. With these interactions increasingly spanning both online and offline channels, marketers need ways to understand how each touchpoint contributes to performance.

Identity resolution can bridge the gap between these channels, making it easier to tie mail campaigns to digital behaviors; the term "identity resolution" refers to the process of connecting fragmented data points to flesh out customer profiles, which began gaining traction in the early-to-mid 2010s as customer journeys became more complex. Today, marketers use identity resolution to connect customer interactions across channels.

Customer data platforms can use these insights to provide a better understanding of how direct mail influences downstream actions such as website visits, product engagement, or conversions after mailpiece delivery, providing a much clearer picture of the customer journey and overall campaign performance.

Once online and offline channels are connected in a unified attribution model, marketers gain a much better understanding of their top performance drivers and identify areas for improvement and optimization.

With a holistic approach in place, marketers see how mail works in tandem with paid search, social, email, and other digital touchpoints to influence customer behavior and drive conversions. A more complete attribution model also makes it easier for AI systems to identify which channels and combinations of channels are driving performance.

Armed with this data, marketers can make better use of AI to inform decisions around channel mix and allocate spending toward high-return touchpoints. In fact, marketers report that AI is already delivering measurable gains. According to a 2026 Winterberry Group report, 63 percent of marketers said AI has generated clear effectiveness gains and 62 percent reported heightened campaign efficiencies.

Quality attribution models can also drive tangible performance gains. A 2025 Lob report shows that the organizations achieving the strongest direct mail ROI are 35 percent more likely to use multi-touch attribution models, which helps reduce the risk of over-crediting easy-to-measure digital channels while overlooking the offline interactions that help move customers to act.

As customer journeys become more fluid, marketers are moving away from evaluating channels individually and focusing instead on how they work together as a system. A customer may receive a promotional mailer, click a paid ad, and a few days later make a purchase after receiving an email. When just one channel is credited with the sale, marketers miss the impact of other touchpoints. Direct mail can play an important role in these journeys, driving engagement that influences downstream digital actions and helping to build more accurate, balanced attribution models.

In the digital age, where consumers see countless ads every day, a tangible mailer can create a uniquely personal, memorable experience. For instance, 2025 research by Jonathan Zhang, and professor at Colorado State University (who also discussed direct mail marketing at an ANA event), found that printed material such as direct mail requires less cognitive effort to process than digital, while generating stronger emotional responses and higher memory retention. Indeed, offline interactions can provide insights into customer behavior that digital-only measurement may miss.

By working with both online and offline channels within a unified measurement strategy, marketers can see the full scope of campaign impact and ultimately create a more cohesive customer experience.

As customer journeys become increasingly fluid, marketers are under growing pressure to prove measurable ROI. However, digital-focused attribution often provides an incomplete picture of campaign performance and how different channels work together.

Effective measurement necessitates a unified view of the customer journey, with both offline and online channels properly accounted for. Incorporating direct mail into attribution models can allow for more accurate measurement and better-informed investment decisions.

With the use of digital innovations like QR codes and PURLs and a strategic approach to attribution, direct mail becomes a highly measurable signal — helping marketers better understand how each channel sparks action and, ultimately, drives customers toward conversion.

USPS is a partner in the ANA Thought Leadership Partner Program.

All information, content, and materials discussed in this article are for general information purposes only and do not, and are not intended to, convey, or constitute advice from USPS. 

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