Abandoned Cart
+8.8%
60-day risk free trial
Who Is Transparent Labs?
Transparent Labs built its name on refusing to do what most of the supplement industry still does by default: hide dosages behind proprietary blends. Every pre-workout, protein and performance formula the brand sells lists exact dosages for every active ingredient, aimed at an audience of serious lifters and athletes who want to know precisely what they're putting into their bodies and why. That audience tends to be unusually loyal once earned, and Transparent Labs has built a large subscription base (powered by our friends at SKIO) around repeat training-cycle purchases of its core formulas.
Transparent Labs had already run Direct Mail with another vendor previously. But like so many other, their previous experience was lacklustre and they felt like they needed to take things up a level… that's when they reached out to Paper Run.
Diminishing Returns
Transparent Labs’ previous direct mail program was plagued by many of the same issues we commonly see across brands: overspending, poor measurement, and a lack of proactive account support.
Paper Run took a fresh approach, integrating directly into Transparent Labs’ e-commerce stack (Shopify, Klaviyo, and Skio) and helping the team test and scale automated direct mail flows throughout the customer lifecycle.
Built On Holdout, Not Hope
Recovering cart abandoners is a particularly important focus area within Transparent Labs’ customer lifecycle. With such strong brand loyalty, converting a prospective customer is hugely valuable to the business.
Unfortunately, like many e-commerce brands, a significant number of these abandoners simply never see their existing abandoned cart recovery emails, with many landing in customers’ rarely checked promotions tabs.
Using our integration with Transparent Labs’ e-commerce stack, the Paper Run team identified abandoners who weren’t being reached through their existing flows and designed a test to determine whether direct mail could help recover these lost opportunities.
The test automatically split cart abandoners at random into two groups: a mailed group that received direct mail and a holdout group that did not. By measuring the difference in recovered orders between the two groups, we helped Transparent Labs understand the precise incremental impact of adding direct mail to their abandoned cart recovery flows.
The Numbers, Verified
Compared to the holdout group, this single automated flow is driving an 8.8% uplift in cart recovery and a 4.93x incremental ROAS. While Transparent Labs’ previous direct mail provider's measurement approach left the team with little confidence in the channel, Paper Run’s measurement methodology and tooling delivered the precision and transparency they had been looking for.
Transparent Labs can now scale the channel with confidence rather than caution, treating each additional mailer as a measured investment rather than a repeat of an unproven tactic.
For a brand built on disclosing exactly what goes into every formula, having a direct mail channel that reveals exactly what it delivers is a fitting match.
"We’d previously worked with another direct mail provider but were left unimpressed. Paper Run takes an entirely different approach to how direct mail programs should work for brands like Transparent Labs, enabling us to drive performance gains across the funnel."
Director of Retention, Transparent Labs
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