Recapture attention with handwritten mailings

The opportunities to address existing and potential customers individually via various channels are much greater today than before the spread of mobile Internet and social media networks. However, the chances of reaching the recipients with a message are not growing to the same extent. Despite the efforts of marketing and communications managers to provide interesting and relevant content, the time and receptiveness of recipients are simply limited. In the flood of information, news, posts, comments, emails and messenger messages, attention is increasingly becoming a rare commodity. Newsletters often fail due to automatic or manual spam filters, and print mailings usually end up unopened in the trash.Handwritten letters arouse interestBut it is precisely this so time-honored form of print marketing that holds an opportunity to regain the recipient's attention after all - if you send handwritten letters and cards instead of the usual printed documents, which is also done at scalable prices when sent to thousands of customers. Such handwritten documents are 99% opened and read; the recipient intuitively attaches greater importance to them. The innovation: it is not a human hand that writes, but that of a robot. Companies such as Wonderpen, a start-up from Berlin, offer this service for companies - letters and invitation letters written with a fountain pen or ballpoint pen, cards with the typical tactile grooves left by a ballpoint pen, with real stamps instead of postmarks. Thousands of cards, each of which, written within a few minutes, has its own individual characteristics and no two are completely alike. Interested parties can choose from several handwritings or have a writing scanned themselves and thus create their own and unmistakable handwriting of their company.Content and address quality remain critical to successThe return to the original cultural technique of handwriting thus helps to overcome the attention barrier of the modern recipient, who is flooded with information. Handwritten texts act as door openers and create an entry point into communication with the customer, in other words, the first step. For this step to be followed by others, all the other criteria of good communication must of course be met: exciting content tailored to the recipient's interests, textually sophisticated, reader-friendly, clearly structured. Handwritten letters are not the continuation of blanket mass mailings by other means. Their preparation requires comparatively more effort, but promises a far higher success rate. Address quality is important here: an unchecked list of addressees who once signed up for a trial offer years earlier, for example, would not be a suitable solution.If the above criteria are taken into account, the performance of a mailing can be significantly increased. While a typical mass mailing can be expected to have a conversion rate of around 0.5-1 percent, handwritten mailings achieve average rates of 5 to 15 percent. In the case of enclosed coupons or vouchers or codes, these conversion rates can be measured directly on the basis of redemption. In other cases, indirect effects are also verifiable. For example, in one case, after sending out thank-you letters to donors, the volume of donations increased in the following year. This effect is not directly measurable, but here another, deeper aspect comes into play: the customers written to felt recognized and valued for their contribution.Appreciation as the real currencyRecognition and appreciation are what the recipient originally associates with a personal, handwritten letter. But this method quickly reached its physical limits, so a robot was needed. Today, the spectrum of performance and branding measures with handwritten cards and letters includes, for example, upselling campaigns, reactivations, invitations to special customer events and anniversaries, congratulations, greeting cards and thank-you notes. But also apologies, if something did not go so well, are suitable as handwritten messages to communicate a maximum of appreciation to the customer - "Sorry as a Service".Customer Relation = Customer AppreciationThis offers considerable advantages for customer loyalty and customer life time. And companies often still pay too little attention to these aspects. Yet around 70 percent of all customer cancellations are due to poor service. At the same time, acquiring a new customer costs a company around five times as much as retaining an existing customer. Of course, a provider's overall package has to be right: The right service also includes fast response and delivery times, clear online offers, good advice or actual improvement and reparation if mistakes are made. And yet, handwritten communication offers the chance to convey a special and personal appreciation to the customer, to strengthen customer loyalty and to stand out from competitors.Interestingly, this effect lasts even after customers have learned that a robot was at work here. Studies conducted in-house confirm this. A before-and-after comparison of customer ratings reveals no significant differences.