Welcome Flow
60-day risk free trial
Who Is MM LaFleur?
MM LaFleur designs womenswear built around a simple idea: dressing with ease should help women live with purpose. The brand's collections are made for professional women who want clothing that works as hard as they do, thoughtful, versatile pieces built for the reality of a full week rather than a single occasion.
That same intentionality shows up in how MM LaFleur treats a brand-new customer. A first order is the start of a relationship, not the end of a transaction, and the brand invests accordingly in making that first purchase feel personal rather than purely transactional.
The First Order, Left To Chance
The gap between a first and second order is where most new customer relationships quietly stall. A first-time buyer converts once, gets folded into the standard email flow alongside everyone else, and the moment that made the first purchase feel special starts to fade before a second order ever has the chance to happen.
For MM LaFleur, that meant a welcome experience with real conversion potential sitting untested, relying on the same digital touchpoints as every other lifecycle email rather than something built specifically to turn a first purchase into a habit.
A Founder's Note, Delivered By Hand
Paper Run built an automated welcome mailer triggered ten days after a new customer's first order was fulfilled, featuring a personal note from MM LaFleur's founder. It's a small creative choice with an outsized effect: a founder's note lands differently as a physical, handwritten-feeling touchpoint than it ever could as another email in an inbox, giving the brand's most important new relationship a genuinely personal moment.
The flow was tested against a true 50% holdout from day one, so MM LaFleur could measure the actual causal impact on second-order conversion rather than assume the mailer was working.
Proof In The Second Order
Against that holdout, the flow drove a 17.6X incremental ROAS and a 41.72% uplift in conversion from first to second order, a result that's measured, not modeled. That's a meaningful share of new customers converted into repeat customers specifically because of the mailer, isolated cleanly from everything else already at play in the funnel.
For a brand whose growth depends on turning first-time buyers into a wardrobe habit, that early second order matters more than almost any other conversion event. A holdout test proved the founder's note wasn't just a nice touch, it was the difference between a one-time purchase and a returning customer.
"The holdout test proved what we felt instinctively: a founder's note delivered as a physical piece of mail creates a moment email simply can't replicate. It's become one of the most effective ways we drive that crucial second purchase from new customers."
Senior Director of Marketing
Book
Setup time with the Paper Run team and learn how the world's best DTC brands are using Direct Mail.
More amazing stories
Read more about how rockstar brands are converting customers who don't open their emails.
