How Harlow Timber re-engaged inactive customers with joined up online and offline marketing

Harlow Timber Group isn’t your average timber & associated products supplier. Based in the Midlands, with a wide network nationally covering all your timber needs. From various Timber Centre stores, to a multi million pound growing E-commerce business along with dedicated Timber Systems, Stables & Shelters and Manufacturing departments.
Their marketing team? Just two people. That means every campaign has to count, and every channel has to prove its worth.

Rebecca Bailey at 8 Group first connected with Harlow Timber and suggested trialling a direct mail campaign. But rather than traditional print marketing, they built the entire strategy on Dotdigital’s platform – using its segmentation, automation, and data capabilities to power personalized direct mail through integration partners ZAP~POST and 8 Group. What began as a small test soon shaped into a full cross-channel re-engagement strategy.

A cold audience and a sceptical business

For Harlow Timber, the brief was simple enough: wake up dormant e-commerce contacts and get people shopping again, online and in-branch.

The reality was trickier. Their ERP made data segmentation a nightmare. Trade and retail customers needed different messages, but often sat in the same data pool. The team had to work around complex audience models while tracking results at branch level with little more than a pen and paper.

Convincing the wider business to spend money on print wasn’t easy. There was a strong belief that it no longer paid back, and with limited time and staff, the marketing team needed to keep things simple, repeatable, and worth the effort.

Dotdigital as the engine for connected marketing

Dotdigital identified and segmented cold contacts using browse data, abandoned cart fields, and purchase history – the building blocks for smart targeting. These highly specific segments were then pushed to ZAP~POST via Dotdigital’s real-time integration.

ZAP~POST then generated personalized mailers with dynamic content, QR codes, and exclusive discount codes trackable back to individual customers.

Once the print was out the door, automated email journeys via Dotdigital picked up anyone who scanned a code, revisited the site, or added to their cart – keeping the conversation going across channels until they converted. Every touchpoint, whether physical or digital, was tracked and triggered through the same platform.

Proving data-driven print can deliver

The numbers spoke for themselves. The campaign brought 600 inactive customers back into the fold from a pool of 8,000 – a 7.5% reactivation rate that exceeded all expectations.

The e-commerce re-engagement segment delivered average order values north of £500 – well above their typical AOV of £200–£300, proving that dormant customers weren’t just coming back, they were spending more.

Branch campaigns captured six tracked orders across branches, each between £500–£1,000, delivering a 3:1 ROI on the print investment.

Meanwhile, the warm-lead nurturing continued to deliver: a Black Friday email (triggered by the direct mail engagement data flowing through Dotdigital) earned an eye-popping 88% open rate among 12,000 contacts.

Beyond the raw stats, the campaign changed perceptions internally. Print was no longer a risky spend – it was a measurable, targeted part of their marketing mix, powered by the same data and automation capabilities as their email program.

Harlow Timber’s marketing team is exploring “thank you” campaigns sent by mail to customers post-purchase.

For marketers, the takeaway is clear: when you use Dotdigital to power both digital and physical channels with the same data, you can track every touchpoint – no guesswork required.