When you step into the office of a Chief Marketing Officer this quarter, you’ll likely encounter a stack of vendor proposals focused on 12-month payback periods. Vendors are confident about the first year but less certain about the third year, leading to potential technical and operational debt.
The pitches for agentic commerce solutions start to blend together, with promises to rewrite funnels, consolidate stacks, and replace tools purchased just a year ago. The acronyms fly around (UCP, MCP, A2A, etc.), and the demos are flashy. However, in this emerging category, there are significant uncertainties: acquisitions, evolving protocols, and pricing changes that could disrupt a three-year roadmap.
To assess these investments, it’s beneficial to look at a channel that has weathered decades of technological disruptions: direct mail.
Despite the rise of AI agents influencing Cyber Week orders and driving billions in sales, direct mail continues to endure, defying predictions of its demise with the arrival of email, banner ads, programmatic advertising, social media, and retail media. It remains in budgets, having adapted through multiple rebuilds around it.
Contrary to attention-grabbing headlines, direct mail endures because brands have ownership over what makes it effective. This enduring quality serves as a valuable benchmark for evaluating current agentic commerce investments.
Direct mail thrives because brands own the assets, focus on lasting functions, and consistently measure results. These same principles can guide the evaluation of agentic commerce investments.
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1. The brand owns the asset base
Direct mail operates on infrastructure that is unlikely to be disrupted soon, as postal addresses are a public utility. Customer data, response history, and knowledge of audience preferences only become more valuable over time, all retained by the brand.
In the digital realm, the past decade has shown how little infrastructure brands truly own, translating into revenue for platforms that seize it first.
In contrast, direct mail offers a stable foundation, while digital ad inventory and audience access are subject to frequent changes and lack of transparency. Marketers must navigate evolving protocols and uncertain profitability in the agentic commerce landscape.
Investing in structured first-party data and transferable know-how can mitigate risks of vendor lock-in and high switching costs, critical factors in evaluating agentic commerce investments.
2. The function provides a strong foundation for new formats
Direct mail has evolved to incorporate various formats over the years, maintaining its core function of delivering targeted messages and measuring responses. This consistency contrasts with newer marketing investments where changing formats precede unclear functions, leading to procurement cycles with each industry shift.
As AI and technology trends evolve, marketers must ensure tangible value beyond the hype, learning from past investments that failed to withstand rebrands and replacements.
Gartner’s caution about the cancellation of agentic AI projects underscores the need for robust evaluation during platform demos, emphasizing sustainable value beyond transient trends.
The remaining tasks involve agent washing, attaching labels to older assistants, and utilizing decades-old robotic process automation (RPA).
It is essential to require vendors to explain their product in terms of a core function that remains essential even if the underlying model, interface, and delivery method undergo significant changes within three years.
For instance, a durable function would be “Representing our offer accurately in machine-mediated buying environments,” while a format masquerading as a function would be “Orchestrating multimodal generative experiences across the omnichannel surface.”
Choosing new technology can be the right decision. The key is to identify the work that would still be necessary if the platform disappeared suddenly. Direct mail vendors provide immediate answers to this question. Agentic vendors who can do the same deserve your attention.
3. Consistent measurement enables steady improvement
Direct mail measurement has evolved gradually over time while maintaining stability. Elements such as the list, offer, date, cost, and response window are constants in direct mail. Marketers have been measuring incremental response using a control cell for at least 40 years.
In contrast, digital advertising and engagement have never achieved the same level of stability. Each new wave introduces new vocabulary and challenges the previous approach. Agentic vendors now promote terms like “agentic ROI” and “outcome attribution,” which may not withstand the rapidly changing environment.
When evaluating an agentic commerce platform, consider how benchmarks and metrics will endure over time. Two key questions can help determine the long-term value of your investment:
- What does the brand retain? This includes product data, interaction history, and negotiation policies that can be moved to another system as owned assets. Contrast this with configurations locked within a vendor’s platform.
- What questions will it still answer in 2029? Valuable questions like “Did the agent’s recommendations increase qualified conversion against a holdout?” should be prioritized over achieving a high score on a vendor’s proprietary index.
Answering these questions will help determine if your investment is long-lasting or if adjustments are needed to align with a more temporary arrangement as the market evolves.
If a platform offers valuable core capabilities but relies on rented infrastructure, renegotiating the initial procurement scope for greater long-term ownership may be a strategic move.
Considerations for the months ahead
Balancing the need to keep up with competitors and meet customer expectations can lead to the temptation of early adoption. However, moving too quickly on an unstable foundation may end up costing more in the long run. It is crucial to maintain coherence while moving swiftly, as speed on a rented foundation only accelerates the need for migration.
Before entering into a new contract or renewal, define the future version of the capability you expect to operate in 2029. If this vision includes assets, knowledge, and measurement owned by the brand rather than the vendor, the investment can grow over time. If these owned assets cannot be defined, then the investment may only offer short-term benefits and should be reflected in the contract terms.
While vendors will continue to market future innovations, the strategic approach is to determine what assets you intend to own and invest accordingly.
