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Author: Ilan Mann

Bring back pen pals!

Posted on by Ilan Mann

Imagine meeting your best friend for the first time, after sixty years.

That’s the story of Canadian Dolores Baily and Australian Lyn Carpenter. They started corresponding at age ten through a school pen pals program. They haven’t stopped writing since. They bonded over their mad love for the Beatles. They sent photos and little gifts to each other. They got through the teen years together. They celebrated marriage, had kids—writing letters to each other all the time. And in 2019, Dolores finally hopped on a flight to Sydney, Australia, to meet Lyn for the first time.

“She’s the friend I’ve had the longest,” as Carpenter put it. All made possible by the simple joy of writing a message and mailing a letter.

Reading this story got us thinking: Whatever happened to pen pals? We recently shared how writing letters fights depression. And the reason is: When you can’t have a conversation in person, a letter feels like a conversation apart. Letters are authentic – the deepest form of human connection, next to physical interaction. A reader will feel the investment of time, energy, and emotional output that went into a letter. Letters are intimate. Letters are personal—especially in an era of impersonal, easy methods of communication. Notes feel special and make the reader feel special.

Which brings us to our question: Whatever happened to pen pal programs? We’re happy to tell you—they never went away. Pen pal programs are in schools all over the world. Some pen pals never stopped writing to each other, like Dorothy or Lyn. Or Britain’s Nona Avery and Ohio’s Alice Powers, who have written more than 1,000 letters to each other over 72 years. Their letters followed every moment of their lives—including the sad passing of their husbands. “Obviously, we were both on hand to write letters of condolence and share our grief,” says Nona.

“I know Alice’s letters will comfort me. Our correspondence shares the sadness, ¬the happiness and everything in between.”

PBS Kids makes a strong case for the benefits of pen pal programs for young people.

  • Writing letters grow literacy skills. Communicating via letter is a great way for kids to practice writing skills. Not just the technicalities of writing, like grammar and structure, but also communicating effectively and compellingly with a real person.
  • Writing letters teaches kids patience. We live in the era of instantaneous gratification—the funny YouTube video, the video game, or the text message to your best friend, are always a click away. Part of the joy of letters is their infrequency. Once a kid sends a letter, they have to wait to receive a reply. The reply won’t come five minutes later, with a notification on their phone. In a time when good things happen faster, learning patience young is critical.
  • A pen pal is a great way to teach kids about other cultures. Many kids were and are fortunate to have pen pals in different countries. What an incomparable opportunity to explore other languages, other cultures—all the insights gathered from genuine friendship with those different from us. That’s a special experience for any young person, made possible by having a pen pal.

And pen pals aren’t something only kids enjoy. Adults like Dorothy, Lyn, None, and Alice want them too. The pen pals subreddit has 134,000 members as of this writing. We’re happy to say there are many websites, apps, and platforms where prospective pen pals pair up.

So, what happened to pen pals? That’s up to you. This is a time where we could all use a little more connection in our lives. Try doing it the old-fashioned way, made new again. Sit down and write a letter to a stranger. Watch how quickly a stranger can become a lifelong friend.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

The Revenge of Analog

Posted on by Ilan Mann

Life is moving online—so why are so many of us going offline? The Revenge of Analog explains why.

If you’re a literary junkie, you know there’s been a quiet civil war raging among the community of book-lovers. At the core of this conflict is a sacred question—would you ever peruse a book using an e-reader? Is a book really a book if it isn’t on paper? On one side are those who appreciate the practicality of their Kindles and Kobos. No wonder why. They make books more affordable, take up less space than shelves, and are easier to travel with.

And the other side of the divide? To them, it isn’t a practical argument. To them, the sanctity of the paper book is spiritual.

Consider comments in this Reddit thread explaining why users prefer paper books:

“I love the feeling of a good book in my hands.”

“There is nothing more satisfying than opening a new book and getting the honour of breaking the spine.”

“Seeing withered spines and taped covers makes me smile, and I like to think the reader is reliving so many memories just from that one book.”

Note the commonalities. “Feeling,” “opening,” “breaking the spine”—these describe the physicality of the book. They say: Nothing compares to the experience of touch. Touch is connected to memory, and especially to good memories. Touch becomes the doorway to the soul.

The sanctity of touch is the theme of David Sax’s 2016 bestseller, The Revenge of Analog: Real Things and Why They Matter. The book explores a contradiction in the digital revolution. At a time when most of life is moving online, more and more consumers are showing a clear preference for analog—or physical—alternatives. Essentially, things they can hold in their hands—and how feeling things makes them better. Where a Google calendar offers efficiency, a paper calendar offers beauty. Where a Facetime call provides convenience, a conversation over coffee creates intimacy. Where digital can feel distant, the physical feels closer—even in the case of a handwritten letter, where the sender can live far away.

Sax chronicles the analog revolution through anecdotes that would make Malcolm Gladwell smile. He opens with the unexpected resurgence of vinyl records. Sales reached half a billion dollars in 2015—the highest level since the late 1980s. Vinyl is an experience of music that feels “heartfelt, raw, and organic,” says Sax. “You watch the record spin, and it’s like you’re sitting around a campfire,” one musician tells him. “It’s hypnotic.” And hypnotism remains a face-to-face art.

Do you think this anti-digital vengeance comes from older demographics pining for simpler times… a Bingo club of “You kids, get off my lawn” consumers? You’d be wrong. Those now dipping their toes in analog grew up bathing in digital products: Millennials and other young consumers. They are driving the success of analog alternatives like old-school Polaroid cameras with built-in printers.

Our favourite part of the analog trend is what it reveals about our enduring love of good old-fashioned paper. For instance, beyond books, Sax raises the hopeful future of magazines:

“The newer magazines that are succeeding today, publications like Kinfolk and Monocle magazines, they’re saying, ‘Okay, we might have a few ads in here, but we’re really not dependent on ads in the way that time and Newsweek and Vanity Fair is. We depend on your subscription dollars. If you like it, you pay for the subscription, you pay for each issue, and it’s going to cost you more than those Sports Illustrated things, and we’re not sending you a football phone. You’re going to pay for this, but you’re going to get something that’s a high quality and that you’ll like and it won’t feel as disposable’. And if enough people think that, then, that’s a business.

In our industry, we at Postalgia see the paper preference at play with the power of direct mail. From the huge plurality of consumers who look forward to checking the mail to the ways direct mail gets better response rates than comparable digital marketing, we see paper’s incomparable capacity to create an emotional connection between you and your stakeholders. Forging a connection in a way that digital marketing hasn’t yet matched.

This is why the paper preference is so powerful. Paper creates relationships. We’ve seen that during the COVID-19 pandemic, with the enormous proliferation of pen pal groups and letter-writing among family members as an antidote to social isolation—and in contrast, how draining the endless Zoom meetings can be.

Nowadays we hear a lot about disruption—and that the only way to be disruptive is digital. Today, the opposite is true. The revolution of analog products is on. This revolution won’t be televised—it will be handwritten on paper you can hold in your hands.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

How writing letters can fight pandemic depression

Posted on by Ilan Mann

Life-giving responses to COVID-19 can include:

    • Physical distancing;
    • Mask-wearing in public spaces;
    • Handwritten letters; or,
    • All of the above.

The answer is four. Yes, actually. Handwriting letters to loved ones can make a big impact in the era of COVID-19—especially in addressing the health crisis offshoot of the virus, the depressing effect of social isolation. We all know it first hand after too many draining Zoom calls: the threat of loneliness is very real. One study published in the academic journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences put it bluntly: “Loneliness kills people.”

“Social isolation, or a lack of social opportunity, gives rise to a sense of loneliness,” say the McGill and Oxford researchers in the study. “Directly or indirectly, this feeling has many wide-ranging consequences for our psychological well-being as well as our physical health, even our longevity.”

We have more ways to connect with others than ever before—even in a public health crisis that demands physical distancing even from our closest family. But many of these methods of “connection” don’t provide the jolt of warmth and community that comes from face-to-face social contact. Texting, WhatsApp messaging, video and phone calls—they just don’t feel the same.

It’s not only you who feels that way.

Two academic experts on the topic—one a professor of organizational behaviour and the other a psychologist—have written that “meeting online increases our cognitive load, because several of its features take up a lot of conscious capacity.” These experts point to the increased difficulty of noticing and processing non-verbal social cues during video calls, the lack of natural conversational rhythm caused by freezing streams and choppy audio…even looking at our own faces constantly can be stress-inducing!

Amazingly, writing letters to and receiving letters from our loved ones is a far more positive social experience than the looping roller coaster of daily video calls. We aren’t the first to notice this. To support lonely children during the pandemic, Kids Help Phone organized a letter-writing campaign where kids from across Canada could share letters of encouragement—a global, open-concept pen pals’ program. There’s an Ohio-based non-profit organization called Love For Our Elders whose sole mission is to share love with lonely seniors by empowering strangers to write them letters. Even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is getting in on the action, encouraging employees to write letters to elderly relatives to “brighten your loved one’s day.”

One advocate for letter-writing as a balm for the isolation of COVID-19 is Nashville social entrepreneur Courtney Cochran. Through her organization Shut-In Social Club, Courtney connects potential pen pals across the country and empowers Americans to write letters of encouragement to strangers. Courtney calls letter-writing during the pandemic “a silver lining on a very gray cloud. We just need it right now, more than ever…” Americans agree: the U.S. Postal Service reported higher product sales, including stamps, in April 2020, and also published survey results showing one in six American consumers were sending more mail to loved ones during the pandemic.

Now, you’re reading this and thinking: This sounds like a wonderful thing to do in your personal life. But why not your professional life?

Think about it. Your customers, donors, and leads are people just as much as your friends and family are. They’re feeling the same weight of isolation we all are – the strain of too many video calls, missed family time, the loss of their favourite hobbies and social activities.

We often think about ways to offer an open heart and a shoulder to cry on for those we love. Why not those our business depends on as well? Here at Postalgia, we know about the power of handwritten letters. We help businesses, charities, and other organizations produce and send them at-scale, to create an intimate personal connection with thousands of contacts.

Consider sending our handwritten letters to your professional contacts—not to sell anything, but to offer something. Offer to help. Offer to hear. Offer to offset some of the hurt they have experienced due to this pandemic—a pain we have all experienced in our own way. Use handwritten letters to commit a humble good: letting them know you’re here, you’re living this too, and we’re all in it together.

Doctors, nurses, grocery store staff, and other essential and frontline workers—these are the folks carrying the heaviest weight in the fight against the pandemic. But we all have a part to play. And maybe your part is the simple, radical act of sending a letter, to let someone know you care.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

These six attributes explain the power of direct mail

Posted on by Ilan Mann

Is direct mail dead? It’s the question on marketers’ minds. At the very least, it’s the question they’re Googling: with 167 million results for the search “is direct mail dead?”

So, is it? Let’s just say you shouldn’t wait around for the funeral procession. In 2018 alone, Canada Post delivered nearly 8 billion pieces of mail and parcels—almost 32 million items delivered daily. Direct mail isn’t going anywhere. Its place in the wider toolset of marketing and sales channels may be changing. But its power to build your business isn’t. Here are six reasons why.

1. Direct mail delights

Those of us old enough to remember when we went to Blockbuster Video for our Friday night entertainment will recall when mail was annoying—the inbox spam of the ’90s. And like the movie rental chain, those days are long gone. 41{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of Americans look forward to checking their mail every day, including 36{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of Americans under the age of 30. In turn, a whopping 90{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of Americans look forward to receiving personal letters and cards… something we know a little bit about.

An enormous number of your potential customers, donors, and stakeholders like mail. They really like it.

2. Direct mail sticks around.

Today’s email inboxes are a blast zone of unopened brand newsletters, sales emails, and spam from that one store you visited on vacation once, and foolishly gave your email address for a digital receipt instead of a printed one. Big mistake trying to save the trees there.

Avoid the digital wasteland that is your customers’ spam folder. Direct mail, in contrast, sticks around. Over an 18-month research study, the UK’s Royal Mail service found that:

  • nearly 40{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of consumers have a dedicated display area for mail;
  • that nearly one-quarter of mail is shared among members of a household; and
  • mail remains in the home for anywhere between 17 and 45 days after delivery, leaving multiple opportunities for your message to be seen and re-seen.

A strong direct mail piece – potentially displayed publicly – will catch the eye of multiple occupants in one home and will stick around far longer—unlike an email, always buried by the next email to arrive. This boosts message recall, enhances brand recognition, and means more bang for your marketing buck.

3. Direct mail gets responses.

Sure, email marketing can be cheap—but sometimes, you get what you pay for. Canada Post found that postcard marketing has a response rate of 4.4{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57}, compared to digital marketing at 0.12{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57}. That means postcard marketing is 10-30 times more effective.

But why cause a lover’s spat when you can be a matchmaker? Ultimately, email marketing and direct mail are better off together. Canada Post conducted neuromarketing research and concluded that recipients “paid 39{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} more attention to integrated direct mail and digital campaigns than to single-media digital campaigns, and consumers had 40{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} higher brand recall when direct mail followed email.”

4. Direct mail drives customers to your website.

Let’s go a little deeper into the power of integration. Today’s consumers seamlessly move from offline experiences to online ones. We can catch an ad on a subway car, whip out our phones, and search more about what’s caught our eye.

The United States Postal Service commissioned a study into how direct mail directs traffic to senders’ websites. The results will make you smile. Direct mail and catalog recipients were not only more likely to make an online purchase—they were also more likely to buy more items and spend more money. Catalogues were particularly impactful. The study found a revenue lift of 163{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} for websites supported by catalogues, as opposed to those that were not—boosted especially by a greater influence on first-time shoppers, and a discouraging effect on competition shopping.

Direct mail, in this way, can serve as a strong cue for driving a consumer to your digital platforms—a particularly powerful insight for an e-commerce retailer, or other company dependent on-site traffic.

Given this extraordinary website traffic-driving effect, consider one of direct mail’s greatest benefits for retailers…

5. Direct mail can help you control sales fluctuations.

It’s a problem facing many retailers—peaks and troughs over the course of the annual sales cycle. Some are plagued by these fluctuations more than others. For instance, in 2017 many famous American retailers—like GameStop, Best Buy, Kohl’s, and Macy’s—depended on the holiday season alone for more than one-third of their annual revenue. That’s a nail-biting dependency for any business owner, where a bad season can mean downsizing, layoffs, or worse.

Direct mail’s ability to drive consumers to online stores can be strategically leveraged to even out your sales across the year. Consider identifying the period of the year where your sales performance is worst and deploying a direct mail campaign to boost revenue through special discount events and other tactics.

6. Direct mail is emotional.

Put simply: direct mail stimulates all the emotions that can create a lasting, loyal relationship between you and your customers.

That Royal Mail study we mentioned earlier found that more than half of recipients feel more valued after receiving mail, and value something they can touch 24{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} more than something they simply see.

We’re no strangers to the emotional punch of handwritten, direct mail here at Postalgia. We’ve written about how direct mail can turn an e-commerce transaction into a real-life relationship, and have also taken a deep dive into the ways expressing gratitude to customers or donors through direct mail can build lasting, loyal, long-term connections with key market demographics. Creating a genuine emotional connection with your brand is a time-tested way to build a business that lasts.

These are only six examples of how direct mail packs a powerful punch for any organization, whether you depend on new leads, donors, customers, or lasting loyalty. And no direct mail is more impactful than handwritten letters produced at scale—an incomparable personal touch for thousands of your stakeholders. Click here to learn how.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

Turn e-commerce into an IRL relationship with handwritten letters

Posted on by Ilan Mann

E-commerce is everything for entrepreneurs in 2020. The NASDAQ estimates that by 2040, 95% of purchases will be facilitated by e-commerce. But we are already seeing that shift happening now. Consider: An Adobe report found that American consumers spent more than $50 billion on their smartphones during the 2019 holiday season—accounting for 84% of the holiday season’s spending growth that year.

E-commerce represents an amazing growth opportunity while also being plain scary. Why? Two words: frictionless and spontaneity. E-commerce sales represent a nearly frictionless experience for consumers. Today, a customer can see an ad for a watch, feel an instantaneous emotional connection, and make an impulse purchase under a minute from their phone with pre-loaded credit card information. The time between initial awareness and purchase decision can be less time than it takes for a freshman to microwave a bowl of instant noodles—a food that literally has the word “instant” in its name.

But a spontaneous purchase decision is also an easily abandoned one, and that’s a scary thing for online retailers. That Adobe report we mentioned above found that 50% of smartphone shoppers abandon their carts—half of online shoppers! You can lose them as quickly as you get them, and you can lose them as soon as they click off their browser to open a text from the ex they weirdly still talk to. Distractions abound. But as long as these distractions continue to negatively impact the bottom line—letting checkout carts collect dust in your backend—online retailers are left with a critical challenge.

How do you create a personal relationship online with an easily distracted customer you’ll never talk to?

You see, back in the good ol’ days…  (Narrator: “They weren’t that good.”)

Customers would come into your store, and you would talk to them. Over time, you could build a relationship. They would recognize you and your expertise. And you had opportunities to persuade them about the value of a product or a purchase.

Today, persuasion is happening over ad images and tight copy. And as much as you’re competing with others in your product category, you’re also competing for customers’ attention as they scroll through the device in their hands. Insert The Simpsons’ “Old Man Yells At Cloud” headline. Your enemy in this scenario is a calendar notification as much as a competitor.

To win the fight, get off the digital battlefield onto winning ground. Go analog. Handwritten letters can be a surprising but effective counter-measure in the battle for customers’ online attention.

E-commerce retailers think everything about their customer experience has to be digital. Flip that thinking on its head.

Here are six specific ways an e-commerce retailer can use handwritten letters to outsmart the competition—not to mention that pesky calendar notification.

1. Send a handwritten thank-you note along with a shipped product.

A thank-you note is just an incomparably personal and simple way to build a connection with a customer. You’re shipping to this customer anyway—why not include a personalized, handwritten note thanking them for their purchase? There’s so much research to support the conclusion that expressing gratitude is a powerful way to build trust and relationships. Telling a customer how much you appreciate their business is just one effective way of making a one-time customer a loyal and long-term one.

2. Send a follow-up letter months after a customer has purchased a product…

There’s an impactful generosity to giving a customer free information before they become a customer.  In turn, to check in on a customer’s experience of your product months after they’ve purchased shows how deeply you care. Consider including your phone number or email address so they can follow up personally with feedback. This is also a great way to keep you top-of-mind with a previous customer, and an encouragement for them to come back.

3. …And up-sell in that letter.

Use that follow-up letter as an opportunity to up-sell the customer on new products. This is especially true if you’re in a product category where certain items can complement your customers’ purchases, like a new hamper for a towel set, or a travel bag for shampoos and other bathroom items.

4. Drive direct mail targets to your website.

One InfoTrend survey found that more than half of customers who responded to direct mail either went to the brand’s website or visited their offline store. Once you’ve piqued a potential customer’s interest with a piece of mail, they’ll visit your website and start browsing. Worst case, they are sharing data through their clicks, allowing them to be targeted with paid ads. The boundary between online and offline is gone. With handwritten letters, you’re sending recipients straight to your website—right where you want them.

5. Try special discounts for letter recipients.

Send handwritten letters at scale with the help of Postalgia to a new market segment in a certain geographic area. For any new customer receiving your letter, include a QR code or a special checkout discount code. Like the thank-you note mentioned above, a personal invitation, combined with the opportunity to save a little money on their first purchase, is a great way to create a relationship.

6. Send a newsletter with product tips, along with a handwritten introduction.

People love getting things for free. Especially when those things are valuable. And whether it’s fashion tips for a new season, the most up-to-date info on local real estate prices, or the hottest trends in home furnishing, a colourful, visual newsletter can deliver high-value information to potential customers that might inspire them to buy from you. Even better: with today’s direct mail targeting, it’s easier than ever before to micro-target a newsletter right to your best consumer demographic.

Including a handwritten introduction with a newsletter is a great way to personalize the information shared—include an email or phone number so a potential customer can reach out to you and learn more.

These are just six examples, but any creative entrepreneur can think of occasions than fit their sales process. The lines between the offline and online worlds haven’t just been blurred—they’re gone. Take advantage.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

12 Tactics for Using Handwritten Letters in Your Sales Funnel

Posted on by Ilan Mann

Sales funnels. If you’re an entrepreneur or salesperson, you’ve heard the term enough to make your ears bleed. Yes, those YouTube ads by teenage sales “gurus” are torturous. (“Here’s how my 15-year old daughter made six figures in two months as an Amazon reseller,” she says. Ok, Karen.) But they’re right about one thing—you need a sales funnel, and well-defined tactics for every stage of the funnel, to succeed in your business.

But first, a quick refresher on sales funnels. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need them: customers discover our store or website, take a close look, decide to buy—no questions asked—and then tell their friends and family.

We don’t live in that world. We live in a world where companies go to war for the attention of their customers’ over-extended brains. And even when we get a flash of that attention, we have to get them interested enough to learn more. Then we need to convince them to buy something. Even when we’ve done that, we actually need them to click the “Confirm purchase” button to complete the sale.

That’s the traditional sales funnel: how we move a potential customer from awareness of our offering to interest in it, to making a decision to buy, to taking action.

Proven tactics for each stage of the sales funnel are helpful when you are putting one together. Handwritten letters—of the kind Postalgia can produce in spades—fit into any stage of an effective sales funnel. Here are just some examples to get you thinking creatively about how handwritten letters can build your business.

Awareness

  • Many companies use direct mail targeting through their postal service. Consider leveraging this tactic with a handwritten note to introduce yourself to potential customers. For instance: a realtor could send ageing homeowners in a local neighbourhood a handwritten introduction. It could include the realtor’s history selling houses in that neighbourhood, and how the realtor can help any family looking to downsize. It’s a friendly way to introduce yourself and build credibility in a new market with a targeted segment.
  • Starting a new business? Why not send a letter to all your professional and personal contacts, letting them know you’re hanging your shingle? You’ll find no greater advocates than your closest friends and family. The human touch of a handwritten letter may inspire them to share your info with others.
  • Mail your list of loyal and past customers, letting them know about a new line of products or a major sale you’re launching. Consider connecting your letter to their previous purchase. “Sarah, if you loved the fall scarf you purchased from us last year, you’ll adore the new fall scarves we’re releasing this October!”

Interest

  • Many companies keep subscription lists for branded newsletters. Consider surprising subscribers with a handwritten letter. For instance: if a non-profit or charity offers a regular newsletter, that organization could mail their first edition to a new supporter with a special handwritten letter thanking them for their support.
  • Consider sending a letter with a timely call-to-action related to a topical news event. For instance: Let’s say meteorologists are predicting a chilly winter. If you sell outerwear, send a letter to local residents, letting them know about the cold to come and offering a discount on coats. Connecting your product to a top-of-mind challenge is a great way to clinch a purchase decision.
  • If you offer product samples, especially online, accompany those samples with a handwritten letter thanking the potential customer for their consideration and explaining the many benefits of your products. It’s a great way to create a personal connection right when a potential customer weighs whether they want to go further.

Decision

  • There’s nothing an e-commerce entrepreneur dreads more than seeing a user with a full shopping cart, who hasn’t hit the “Checkout” button. Worry not—if you have their shipping information, send them a handwritten letter reminding them to complete their purchase. You can even offer a special discount as an incentive to finish.
  • Do you host informative webinars for potential customers exploring your product or market? It’s easy to connect that experience to a handwritten letter. Whether you use EventBrite or another event management platform, require that attendees share their mailing information. Follow up with each attendee by letter after your webinar, thanking them for attending and providing your phone number if they’d like to learn more. That personal touch will take the sometimes-impersonal experience of a webinar and make an attendee feel valued.
  • If you provide personal consultations to potential customers—say, the way a realtor will offer a free, no-obligation house appraisal—you can offer to follow up that consultation with a one-page summary of your recommendation for the customer. Helping customers for free—and encouraging them to purchase your services along the way—is a great method for building loyalty.

Action

  • We know the extraordinary effects of gratitude on the human psyche. It’s not surprising then how effective a simple thank-you letter for a new customer can be. Sending a thank-you letter with any product you ship, or after service you provide, will leave a memorable mark – particularly among new customers whom you hope to keep for the long-term.
  • Handwritten letters are also a great way to upsell a customer in a non-pushy, friendly way. Let’s say you sell furniture. If a customer buys a new coffee table, you might attach a handwritten letter to their shipment, letting them know your recommendations for rugs, side tables, or chairs that would perfectly match. Connecting your helpful suggestions to their purchase shows that you are offering personalized advice tailored to their tastes—and may convince them to buy more.
  • Show customers how much you care about their experience with your company. An appropriate period after their purchase, send them a follow-up letter asking about their use of the product. Are they fully satisfied? Do they have any questions? Are they enjoying the product as you hoped? Provide your email or phone number—show the customer you care deeply about their enjoyment of the product, long after they have paid you. It’s an excellent way to build a relationship and earn a customer’s loyalty in the long-term.

These are just a few ideas for every stage of the sales funnel. Handwritten letters are an effective tactic, no matter where your customer is at in their journey. And with the power of Postalgia’s robots, you can produce handwritten letters on mass for any sales campaign. Click here and learn how.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

Gratitude is a Business Strategy

Posted on by Ilan Mann

Gratitude: you might know it as a hashtag, or an Indigo mug, or a word your mom has crocheted on her wall. What you may not know is that gratitude is also a business strategy—because a grateful business is a business that customers return to again and again.

Consider a 2017 research article entitled Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation. In it, researchers Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley demonstrated how we often assume expressing gratitude will be taken awkwardly by the recipient of our affections. In their study, participants expressing gratitude underestimated how happily surprised the recipients of gratitude would be and overestimated how awkward they would feel. Which is too bad, because the researchers also found that both expresser and recipient reported positive emotions and better well-being because of gratitude.

The simple fact is that people love being thanked and love thanking—even if, on the surface, they think they don’t.

The power of gratitude in building loyalty

Decades of research has confirmed this, as Harvard Medical School attests. “Gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness,” they write, and “Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.” Your mom was on to something.

But before we call your mom the next Jeff Bezos, it’s worth asking the question: how can we apply the positive emotions of gratitude to a business strategy?

Let’s start by considering how expressing gratitude builds loyalty and commitment in stakeholders—whether customers, clients, or donors. Gratitude is motivating. In Globoforce’s Spring 2014 Employee Workforce Mood Tracker Survey, 86 percent of employees recognized at work felt more motivated to do their jobs. 85{c5c42d2e0b68f182649ca85478c9eaed180e8fe94e932f32b8af828d359c4a57} of employees said recognition added humanity to the workplace. And those who express gratitude are more extraverted, agreeable, open, and conscientious, leading to more employee friendships at the office and, consequently, more long-term commitment to the company.

Now apply that thinking to your key stakeholders, whether your biggest donors or your most critical customers. The same outcomes that gratitude generates in employees are just as powerful and relevant. A customer or donor who feels deeply appreciated will feel more motivated to continue working with you. A customer or donor who finds you agreeable, open, and conscientious has found a comfortable place to park their hard-earned dollars.

And in a world where AI and technology are replacing the human element, we know customers still prefer human interactions—and want to do business with brands they view as “human.” One study conducted by Forrester Consulting found that consumers who perceive a brand as human are more than twice as likely to love the brand, nearly twice as likely to purchase from that brand, and nearly twice as likely to recommend it. What’s not to love about being twice as effective with your sales? Gratitude brings humanity to your business interactions. When customers feel like appreciated people, rather than numbers, they come back.

The best part about gratitude as a business strategy?

How easy it is to implement.

Becoming an organization that intentionally expresses gratitude to its customers, donors, or clients doesn’t require rethinking your growth plan. It doesn’t require a million-dollar marketing campaign. It doesn’t require a guy in a just-too-well-fitted suit clicking through a PowerPoint and telling you how Tik Tok is the next Amazon.

Actually, all it takes is a pen, a piece of paper, and a good old-fashioned thank-you note.

Don’t take our word for it. Here’s etiquette expert Dan Post Senning:

“When I get a handwritten letter, I’m excited to open it. The art of the postage stamp, the feel of the paper, the graphic quirks of a friend’s handwriting: There is simply nothing as personal as a handwritten note. In a stack of bills and flyers, it’s a treasure in a sealed packet, full of promise and potential. It is a visceral reminder of someone far away… Handwritten notes still have a personality, warmth and, when needed, gravitas that computer screens don’t.”

Why do handwritten notes deliver a gratitude punch that no other medium can?

  1. They take just a little bit more effort. It’s easy to quickly type out an email or a text on your phone. You can jam out either of those while you’re sitting on the toilet. But a handwritten note is tailored. The uniqueness of each note and the effort of the sender says to the recipient, “I cared enough about you to write this down.”
  2. They can’t be missed, and they stick. How easy it is to delete an email or miss it entirely. Our inboxes are sources of stress, not sources of delight. But a handwritten letter is unignorable. In a pile of junk mail, there’s no joy quite like seeing a real note—they will be opened, every time. As Dan Post Senning puts it, “You can’t hold digital thanks in your hands the way you can hold a note. When was the last time you printed out an e-card? Right. Email is read and deleted. A mailed note is seen again and again on a desk or counter. Would you rather your thanks be remembered or deleted?”
  3. They are authentic and human. Penmanship is the child of personality. When we read someone’s handwriting, we can feel them on the other side of the ink—and we can sense the authenticity of their words, considering that precious time was taken to put them to paper. Earlier we talked about how customers want to do business with “human” organizations. The sense of authenticity, humanity, and personalization produced by handwritten letters offers an incomparable human touch. And that will keep the recipient committed to you for a long time to come.

Building an authentic, long-term, loyal relationship with your stakeholders is as easy as thanking them, again and again, for being part of your work. And all it takes is a handwritten note.

The best part? Handwriting letters are easier than you think

Gratitude is a winner, but let’s address the elephant-shaped pile of paper in the room. “Of course, I’d love to write handwritten notes to everyone,” you’re thinking, “But who has the time?”

Good news: you don’t need the time. Here’s how.

Oh, and we almost forgot:

Thanks for reading.

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

Long Live the Concierge – Personalizing the E-Commerce Customer Experience

Posted on by Ilan Mann

 

The transition for the brick and mortar storefront has been hugely exciting for a whole host of reasons:

The need to pay top dollar to rent space in a mall or heavy-traffic area, hire full-time staff, and catch window shopping customers eyes with immaculately curated glass displays presented an impossible barrier for most aspiring brands and entrepreneurs to overcome.

The e-commerce revolution has democratized the economy in a way thought impossible 30 years ago, using technologies that were unthinkable 20 years ago, at a scale unimaginable even 10 years ago.

The nosedive in operational costs has allowed e-commerce brands to focus their efforts on customer acquisition, product development, and excellent customer service.

What is often overlooked, however, is what has been lost from the traditional retail – and particularly luxury retail –  experience.

E-commerce has allowed small but mighty emerging brands to punch far above their weight, putting out exceptional products, and selling the customer new high-end and luxury purchases – a transaction that would have previously been impossible without tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars of marketing, PR, and brand awareness efforts.

Think about Gymshark, Allbirds, or Colourpop.

The luxury retail brands that used to dominate shopping malls across America have woken up, and gotten the memo. Tools like Shopify have empowered retailers of all sizes, big and small, to compete for online traffic in the way that they used to compete for foot traffic.

 

If e-commerce brands want to continue to capitalize on the new, online economy, they need to take lessons about what was right about the old, brick and mortar economy.

A Place Where Everybody Knows Your Name

One thing that kept customers coming back to their favourite brick and mortar stores was the feeling that someone at the store knew them personally, and would take care of them personally.

Some of the functions of a friendly sales associate can be replaced by a chat-bot, or live-chat agent, but the feeling that a human being – rather than a faceless company – stands behind the purchase is much more difficult to replace.

E-commerce brands that want to keep their customers coming back need to find a way to make a human connection, and trigger the psychological feeling of comfort that comes from buying from another person, rather than a machine.

E-Commerce brands are also missing opportunities for up-sell and cross-sell. 

The deluge of data now available to retailers when they sell to you online has allowed them to better target their offers to you, but it has also rendered them totally apathetic to the negative effects of spamming you.

Advantage: Brick and mortar.

Personable, commissioned sales representatives knew that once you were in their store, the hardest part of acquiring a customer was over, and that the longer they kept you in the store, the more likely you were to buy something else.

Bought a shirt? Here are some matching ties. Bought a guitar? How about an amplifier? A tuner? A set of replacement strings?

E-commerce companies have a massive edge at their disposal when it comes to the data that they have about their customers purchasing habits, but they waste that rich data by emailing you over and over until you unsubscribe, or running ads that you rapidly scroll past to get to pictures of your ex-girlfriend’s dinner.

 

 

food
Not my ex-girlfriend’s dinner.

They know that those emails have an abysmally low open rate (when they make it past spam filters, that is), and an even lower click-through rate.

They are basically saying “you’ve purchased from us once, and in the case of 99% of our customers, we’re satisfied with the relationship ending there.” Why would these marketing managers ever aim so low?

Can you imagine a commissioned salesperson deciding that it was totally fine to let 90% of customers leave the store without even hearing their pitch for a cross-sell or up-sell? Neither can I.

Big mistake. Big! Huge!

The last thing that you want to do, when running an E-commerce retail store, is turn your advantages into disadvantages, or accept that with the benefits of automation, data, and low overhead must de facto come the sacrifice of impersonal customer experience, low retention, and poor customer stewardship.

The days of strolling through a mall and window shopping while taking in the smells of the food court and sounds of the toy stores may be behind us, but the customer acquisition, retention, and engagement strategies that served big brick and mortar retail so well for so many decades shouldn’t be.

With data and automation at your fingertips, margins are higher, everywhere is local, and the opportunities for high-touch personalization are endless.

Get in touch to learn how you can turn your data into personal, handwritten cards that will get opened, read, and activate your customers.

 

Want to level up your direct mail? Contact us.

Should You Ask For Donations When Saying Thank You?

Posted on by Ilan Mann

“Dogs look up to you, cats look down on you. Give me a pig! He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal.” 
– Sir Winston Churchill
 

Recently a friend remarked that she doesn’t like cats, because they only show you affection when they want something – food, attention, etc…

Dogs, on the other hand, may be driven by the same innate motivators, but they are less transparent in their self-interest, and so their affection seems credible, says this friend.

As someone who loves cats and dogs equally, I am not sure that I agree with my friend’s cynical perspective on the bond between human and animal, but the timing of the observation was impeccable.

I had just begun reading a paper from Professor K. Sudhir et al. at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics at Yale University that specifically dealt with sincerity when you want something.

The paper, Greedy or Grateful? Asking for More When Thanking Donors, details the results of an experiment, executed in concert with a non-profit, that saw nearly 200,000 donors receive a direct mail piece with several calls to action of varying subtleties.

Some donors were asked explicitly to donate again while being thanked. Some were thanked and asked to like the non-profit on Facebook. Some were simply thanked, and though a reply envelope and donation mechanism (in the form of a reply coupon) were included in the mailer, neither an ask nor a call to action was made.

The findings were particularly interesting and it’s well worth your while to read the study in its entirety (though I happily provide what I find to be the salient details below):

 

  • Non-profits know the importance of saying thank-you (for more on this, see here, here, and here), but with limited budgets already stretched thin, there is a temptation to use expensive stewardship opportunities as a chance to ask for money.

 

  • Asking for more money while thanking donors has the opposite  of the intended effect amongst frequent, recent, and high value donors. They seemingly interpret the expression of gratitude as insincere, and some punish the organization by giving less than they otherwise would have, or not giving at all.

 

  • For these donors, simply including a reply coupon and envelope can serve as a reminder, and increase the likelihood that they will donate.

 

  • Segmenting the list proved extremely effective, as “lapsed, infrequent, and lower monetary value donors” were moved to donate more by the explicit call to action.

 

By targeting different messages to different segments – including explicit calls to action for lapsed, infrequent, and lower monetary value donors, while avoiding it for recent, frequent, and higher value donors (for whom it isn’t just ineffective, but actually seems to backfire) –  the architects of the study were able to increase donations overall by as much as 11%.

The lesson is clear: Just as powerful expressions of gratitude can improve a donor’s disposition towards a non-profit, mixing in an ask or a CTA (call to action) can poison that disposition with feelings of resentment.

 

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Call Me Maybe (But I’d Rather You Didn’t)

Posted on by Ilan Mann

If you were to ask Millennials or Gen Z (defined as those born between 1980 and the early 2010’s) how they feel about receiving phone calls, they would likely rank the experience as one of the biggest inconveniences you can thrust upon someone.

It’s a notable difference between generations, one that I especially notice with my father, who calls me several times during the day with small pieces of information that could easily be delivered over text – and while he sees calling me up to communicate verbally as a quicker, more efficient method, I see it as an interruption. I’m forced to drop everything I’m doing in order to talk to him for a couple of minutes, whereas my fingers could have rattled off a response to whatever question he had in a matter of seconds.

 

From my father’s perspective, verbally asking me or telling me whatever he needs to is faster, but in reality, the two versions of the conversation play out as follows:

 

Text Conversation:

 

Dad: “Garbage day today. Bring down your bin.”

Me: “Np”

 

Phone Call:

 

Dad: “Hey, what’s happening? what’s shaking? what’s going on?”

Me: “Not much, how about you?”

Dad: “Not much, uhhhh I just wanted to remind you that today’s garbage day”

Me: “Ok, alright”

Dad: “So make sure you bring down whatever you’ve got in your room, any wrappers, bottles, that sort of thing”

Me: “Yeah, no problem, sounds good”

Dad: “Ok, cool, uhh… oh, I finally finished season 3 of-”

And so on and so forth.

While I don’t by any means mind having full conversations, in a world where we’re constantly multitasking and juggling multiple conversations at once, phone calls are seen as inconveniences for the younger generations, as they force everything else to be put on hold. For the generations that grew up without email and instant messaging, communicating verbally is what they know best. It is significantly easier for them to articulate themselves verbally. This is especially true for those who aren’t as acclimatized to the small keyboards on most smartphones, or those who have trouble seeing the screen in front of them to begin with.

 

Of course, these are generalizations that don’t necessarily apply to everyone, but I believe that it speaks more to those who did grow up with technology – the difference between the two conversation examples I gave above lies in efficiency.

Imagine that your phone rang, and when you answered it, all you heard was “get milk on the way home,” followed by the click of someone hanging up. It would be jarring, and you’d probably feel it was a bit rude. That kind of bluntness is acceptable in today’s culture of quick, back-and-forth texting, and it’s the necessity of those pleasantries on the phone that often makes phone calls feel so taxing for today’s youth, and leads to them avoiding them at all costs.

 

 

As a matter of fact, a new survey from BankMyCell indicates that not only are millennials ignoring phone calls, but their reasons are often related to time consumption, or avoiding confrontation and interaction with people such as telemarketers. Millennials usually ignore unknown numbers altogether

 

So the question becomes, in a world where phone calls are seen as an interruption, and immediately put the person on the receiving end in a negative mood, how does one reach clients in a unique and effective way? With all the notifications coming through on our phones and laptops- whether from iMessage, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, or our emails – messages from unknown parties get lost in the shuffle. Unless you’re attempting to get in contact with a personal friend, you might find it a bit more difficult to reach them than you’d initially think.

 

While mail is a great and effective way to reach the younger generation, not just any mail will do. Speaking from personal experience, when I see a grey envelope with my name showing through the thin strip of plastic, I immediately assume it’s some useless (other otherwise boring) information from my bank. However seeing a white envelope with my name and address scribbled across the front in pen gets me excited. Mail, for me? What a pleasant surprise – is there an event? Am I being invited somewhere? It’s not the contents of the message, but how they’re delivered. You could send me the same information over email, in a printed beige envelope, or as a handwritten letter, but only for the last of those will I be excited to see what’s inside.

 

This is because technology has moved past the need for letters, allowing us to communicate with others across the world in an instant. This makes letters as we know them scarce, as society pivots into the digital age. These advances in technology, however, have been unable to replicate arguably the most important aspect of handwritten letters: intimacy. A letter is an indication of importance – why take the time to write something down by hand that could be typed out in a matter of seconds with a keyboard? Why take the time to have it go through a post office, when the internet can transmit your message and a response back in an instant? Because handwritten letters mean something, and when social interaction has become so easy to the point of tediousness, sometimes it’s better to take a step back and reach your clients with something more authentic.. Not only will your clients be enthused to open their mail -significantly more so than opening an email – but they will be able to process the information without the burden of being forced to give an immediate answer over the phone.

 

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