I got what looked like one while ordering some cheap parts from China, then realised it was just a font. It was memorable but did not increase my chances of ordering from the seller due to other issues with the product. I suspect once everyone starts doing it, it will no longer be memorable nor have any other effect.
Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
91–100 of 208 posts
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would have preferred a video FaceTime call from the business owner or one of the partners anyway.
Let's see, we already have deep faked audio that can be trained to sound like anyone, deep faked video, and chat bots that can be trained to talk/write like anyone, so scaling this to millions of customers is not far off
It already exists. I won’t link to anyone, but I just found a site claiming to be a “personalization platform for automated 1:1 video messaging”
They specifically show that their videos will use text to speech to personalize the “Hi $firstname” greeting at the top of the video.
Dystopian, like many people here are saying.
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#93Fucking marketers just want to destroy all sincerity in the world.
Time to roll out the pen plotters to make fake handwriting!
This has been going on for a while. I've seen it mostly in the "I will pay cash for your house" industry. The process has definitely gotten more convincing; before, all the letter shapes would be the same, but now there's enough variation that it's plausible that these notes are handwritten if it weren't for the context.
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last year I built an entire service [1] around the idea that scaling handwritten cards was a good business… Before ultimately concluding that you’re right, it’s pretty dystopian. So I called it quits. [1] fountaincards.com
Was it working / were you making money? Automated handwritten notes companies seem like they render text using a handwritten font and then potentially pass it off (via API) to a “print anything and ship it” company — is that an accurate statement? Is there a clear advantage to building and maintaining the hardware / plotting pen portion? i.e. isn’t that something you could do by randomizing font parameters? Also, it…
I replied to parent, but we built the company that shows up #3 for that query (at least on my browser) - handwrite.io. I felt that there would be a massive audience for the API so worked on building that out in the early stages while my cofounder built the hardware. It's a super costly process, requires a lot of human touchpoints even when you've automated a lot of the machinery (e.g. sealing and stamping cards). There was a decent amount of competition but even more demand. We had a couple of good sales guys working strictly on commission that got us to 40k MRR ish in a relatively short timespan but the margins were horrible. In the end we burnt out and sold to a client.
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#95That bar chart looks like something out of "How to Lie with Statistics". Going from $26 to $52 - doubling is a nice and significant result, there's no reason to fiddle with the Y axis to make it look like a 6x instead.
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#96Fucking marketers just want to destroy all sincerity in the world.
In a few months, the headline will be: Handwritten thank you notes no longer increase sales
So once everybody has automated this, the next level will be the handwritten note with a personal detail, which will increase (repeat) sales.
Back in the day, I used to write a handwritten note with every single box I sent out. Since I had often had a conversation with the customer prior to that, I could often include some personal detail, showing that the message was not generic but truly written for that person. (I did have a generic message that I would use in a minority of cases.)
It does take a little bit of dedication and love of the customer to do this over and over again, so I'm not convinced shady, unscrupulous marketers would do it.
Caveat: My business eventually failed, so...
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#97Fucking marketers just want to destroy all sincerity in the world.
Well, yes, but... take away from this something less grim. It's something a friend who was in marketing used to say to me all of the time: "good customer service is the best marketing, and it's often very nearly free." Chick-fil-a figured this out years ago. Their employees are required to be nice and kind, and they can get fired for having a crappy attitude. This sounds awful, Stepford-wifeish, but in reality it imp…
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Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#98Well, if this is provable and significant, here's an idea for a YC startup -- handwritten than you notes as as service (HTYNAAS)! Perhaps a pen plotter can write them, and some AI net can give it the human touch.
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#99this is all based on a South Korean study, and this the claim assumes western consumers have the same values and behaviors as East Asian consumers.
The blog owner for this openly injects adz right before the main content, and after, so I wouldn’t take anything they say with any seriousness.
Re: Handwritten thank you notes increase sales
#100I get enormous value out of having a box of thank you cards, envelopes, and stamps in easy reach. I keep a box on my desk and in my travel bag. When someone does something for me (e.g., an introduction, buys lunch), I have little friction to sending them a note. They are often delighted to receive them, as it is so rare now.