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Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

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Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#21

Post by reaperducer »

There's a reason that high-end* retailers require their sales people to send hand-written thank you notes: it works. My wife works in this space, and says it's an incredibly important part of the customer retention process.

Tech people always ridicule written communication, but then idolize Japanese culture, where written communication is so massively important. Funny how that mental disconnect works.

* By "high end" I mean the sort of place where customers routinely spend $90,000 in a single purchase, and several million per year at a single store.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#25

Post by reaperducer »

samwillis wrote: post #5

There was a brilliant Twitter thread last year showing a project to "hand write" with cnc robots thousands of personalised letters for a mailout. They initially started off with off the shelf hand writing robots, but ended up building their own massive ones to increase speed and efficiency. https://mobile.twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/143888821947...

Reinventing the wheel. Hand writing robots at scale was a market for decades from the 1950's. They went away when desktop publishing arrived.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#27

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

sweetheart wrote: post #10

Being kind is fine and all, but my one gripe with it is that it doesn’t make me any money. Glad to see the dark days of being nice without any ROI are ending.

> Being kind is fine and all,

Being kind is not always necessary, but being respectful goes a long way.

People (especially the type who participate in this forum) frequently equate kindness with weakness. I really get sick of that attitude. It's not an "either/or" thing. It's entirely possible to be kind, and also to have strong boundaries, and real mettle.

Respect is something that is usually (not always) appreciated; even by our enemies.

Cops are often quite respectful to you, as they slap on the bracelets.

> but my one gripe with it is that it doesn’t make me any money.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. These are exactly the types of things that are almost impossible to measure, except in a rather vague way (i.e. "Six months after we started our personalized letter campaign, our sales increased by 30%").

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#28

Post by spicybright »

mikkergp wrote: post #19
samwillis wrote: post #5

There was a brilliant Twitter thread last year showing a project to "hand write" with cnc robots thousands of personalised letters for a mailout. They initially started off with off the shelf hand writing robots, but ended up building their own massive ones to increase speed and efficiency. https://mobile.twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/143888821947...

“How do we scale that feeling that someone got a personal handwritten note” is really dystopian.

Very reminiscent of the movie Her, where the main character worked at a letter writing service you could pay someone to write thoughtful letters to family and friends.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#29

Post by lotsofpulp »

mikkergp wrote: post #19
samwillis wrote: post #5

There was a brilliant Twitter thread last year showing a project to "hand write" with cnc robots thousands of personalised letters for a mailout. They initially started off with off the shelf hand writing robots, but ended up building their own massive ones to increase speed and efficiency. https://mobile.twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/143888821947...

“How do we scale that feeling that someone got a personal handwritten note” is really dystopian.

I would have preferred a video FaceTime call from the business owner or one of the partners anyway.

Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales

#30

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

mikkergp wrote: post #19
samwillis wrote: post #5

There was a brilliant Twitter thread last year showing a project to "hand write" with cnc robots thousands of personalised letters for a mailout. They initially started off with off the shelf hand writing robots, but ended up building their own massive ones to increase speed and efficiency. https://mobile.twitter.com/aarondfrancis/status/143888821947...

“How do we scale that feeling that someone got a personal handwritten note” is really dystopian.

Alternatively, "a scalable way to bring a little bit of joy to many people" is actually nice & good.
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