The Selling Power Of Handwritten Notes

Here’s the links to 2 posts that I just read. They are both powerful case studies for handwritten notes.

The first I read at Duct Tape Marketing, by John Jantsch. It was referring to a post by David V. Lorenzo.

In his post, David says,

” I decided to try a little experiment. I went through a couple of weeks of local periodicals and I picked out people that were featured in articles and I send them each a handwritten congratulations note. I said something to the effect – “I saw the article on your business in XYZ Magazine. Congratulations on your success. I’d love to speak with you some time to hear the story of how you got to where you are.” I sent twenty of these notes. “

Want to know how it turned out ? Go visit David’s blog, read the rest of the post and subscribe to his blog’s feed. I did.

The second post I read was on the Church of the Customer blog. Jackie Huba tells us about her experience with Natalie from her local J. Crew store.

Jackie says,

” How does a $800 million company connect personally with customers?

Handwritten notes is a nice start. “

Go by and read how they do it and subscribe to their blog.

Now, what are we gonna do with this ?

Here’s a few ideas to start and I’d like for you to help me out with what you do or what you think you could do with handwritten notes.

1) Send a thank you to every customer who buys from you on your slowest day of the week. Offer them a 15% dicount that’s only good on that day of the week.

This is a big draw for those that make their living doing hair, cleaning teeth and other personal services businesses.

2) Don’t have enough time to write all these ? Grab an inexpensive little digital recorder, ” speak ” the notes and then have someone else transcribe them for you. ALWAYS double check them before you mail them.

3) Send one to every customer whose purchases exceed an amount that you set or who allow you to exceed your average gross margin. I love customers who don’t beat me up everytime we do business.

I don’t mind paying a bit more for good service. In fact I like to buy from someone who I know will take care of me. Calling or driving around with the intention of saving a nickel doesn’t appeal to me. Calling a business and checking their prices, but never buying from them will not get you a good deal. Buying from a salesperson repeatedly gets you a good deal.

What can you add to this ?