Latest / Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast / Building Loyalty and Retention With Handwritten Notes With David Wachs

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Building Loyalty and Retention With Handwritten Notes With David Wachs · Selling on Giants: The eCommerce Marketplace Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to another exciting episode of Selling on Giants.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Mr.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Will, and today we have a very special guest, David Wax.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: David is a serial entrepreneur who is revolutionizing the way brands build loyalty and retention with unique touch of handwritten notes.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: In this episode, we'll explore the power of personalized handwritten notes and discuss practical strategies for incorporating them into your customer engagement toolkit.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: You'll learn how this approach can create a memorable customer experience, drive higher retention rates, and help you stand out in a crowded e-commerce market.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: David's impressive background includes founding SellIt, a leading mobile marketing platform that redefined a mobile customer relationship management.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: His leadership and innovation have been recognized by major publications and at prominent industry events.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're eager to hear his insights and learn from his extensive experience.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned as we dive into the benefits of personalized handwritten notes and how they can transform your customer relationships.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get started.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: David, welcome to the show.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: David, can you share a bit about your entrepreneurial journey and how your experience as founder of SellIt and Handwritten have shaped your expertise in customer engagement and retention?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh thank you so much for having me on.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Will I've actually been in the messaging space for 20 years now, combining sell it and handwritten.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And whether that was sell it, that was text messaging and push notifications.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, this is back before the days of the iPhone, we started and we were sending um millions of texts a day for brands like Apercompany and Fitch, Toys R Us, Broadway shows, like Blue Man Group and Spamalot, um, casinos, uh, you know, you name it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: We uh we we kind of ran the gamut there.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And we did that from 2004 to 2014, uh, was when I exited.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: I sold the company in 2012, but I had to keep with the company until 2014.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, over the last two years, my my title was kind of broadened.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was the SVP at mobile for a company called ePRISE, which is now called Hello World.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's the company that acquired us.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So there I was in charge of mobile, but I was also interfacing with the other e uh departments of this marketing company.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then now with handwritten, I've turned from going from small, super fast, quickly deleted text messages to longer, slower, kept and savored handwritten notes.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I've just kind of flipped the coin on what we do.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I did that was by 2014, I saw everybody was receiving literally 150 emails a day.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: They were sending and receiving thousands of text messages a day.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the average office worker spent 24% of their time managing their inbox.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then nowadays, it's even worse.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have Slack, tweets, Teams, everything we were shutting down right before this webinar here, this uh podcast here.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all the interruptions that everybody gets every day.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: But what people don't get is old-fashioned handwritten notes.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: They're hard to write at scale, they're time consuming, they're expensive, especially if you have your team sitting down and doing it, you know, what's the cost of their time?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're hard to keep consistent.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to uh create a way to make sending handwritten notes as easy or easier than sending an email.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: So uh that's where handwritten came from.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we were formed in 2014, we've been doing this 10 years.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you kind of forward wind to where we are now, we're the largest and I think oldest provider of robotic written handwritten note solutions.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we have a 175 robots that we built ourselves.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're constantly building, constantly refining.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was the first programmer of those robots.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we actually have some more out in the field uh being leased.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: But those 175 robots hold a real pen and they write your notes long hand at scale.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then we write out the envelope and stick a real stamp on it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole idea is to bring back the lost art of letter writing in a very um repeatable, scalable process.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Long answer to a short question.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Quite the journey.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, what a the SMS in the early 2000s, like uh obviously you've been very innovative catching that wave, you know, early as it was picking up.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: To your point now, saturated market.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: And now with the handwritten notes, you know, you hear you hear handwritten and you think, you know, it's slow pacing and even position it as that.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: But the technology you have is is really innovative, and that's really uh really an interesting journey.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: I guess last question, what do you enjoy most about the handwritten and and the role you're in now and what you're how your company serves uh its customers?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think the differentiation, well, there's there's a couple answers to that question, but but uh helping our our clients differentiate and create some really lasting brand stickiness, I think are really exciting and unique to see.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, we have a piano tuner, small time business, goes in your house once a year to tune your piano, doesn't need to be back in your house for an entire year, automatically is set up a zap year zap to send a handwritten note after tuning your piano, thanking for the opportunity.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: When he returns to the house a year later, that handwritten note is often standing up on the piano.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: So not only is it opened, not only is it read, but it's put on display on their most prized possession, a piano, in the fanciest room of their house, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't buy that real estate.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly none of my text messages from sell it would have been printed out and stuck to the piano.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So um that's exciting to see.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, building our kind of uh client base of really um loyal, great clients from so many different verticals has been great.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then also personally, because I am a gearhead, going from engineering a product being the robot or being the website to engineering a business, which is kind of hard to explain, but it's no longer about writing on a handwritten note for us.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's about how do you follow that handwritten note automatically through all the steps from writing to QA to stuffing and stamping and out the door and delivery confirmations, all those things.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: How do you create automated processes that work at scale?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because it was very different when we were just sending a thousand handwritten notes a day, but when we were sending 20,000 pieces a day, it's it's very different.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: I could see that.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And talk about impact marketing at its finest.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the to your point, the piano story on top, I mean, that is great branding.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's authentic and obvious it's memorable to get that type of customer feedback.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really interesting.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And for all our sellers listening, this is very relevant to e-commerce.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited to dive into our main topic.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So let's jump in.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: David, you kind of went into it, but just could you briefly describe some of the key benefits e-commerce sellers can expect when incorporating handwritten notes into their customer engagement strategies?
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if you go to our website, handwrittenwith.com, and it's handwritten with a why.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: So just replace the I with a why, um, you can go to the top resources tab and click customer uh outreach survey.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And there, what we did was we did a blind survey of 2,000 plus consumers, and we asked them different forms of communication and what they'll respond to.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And they told us they don't feel appreciated by brands.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if they did, you know, what would make somebody feel appreciated by brands?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the top ways to feel appreciated is to receive a handwritten note.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that wasn't us pushing that, that was them telling us that from a multiple choice option list.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you feel appreciated by a brand, what are you going to do?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're going to buy more, you're going to buy more frequently, you're going to refer more.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what we try to do with these handwritten notes is raise loyalty, help our clients get better ratings and reviews, ask for referrals, and certainly try to upsell them and get them to buy a larger ticket item.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: So those are kind of the use cases.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: If people ask us to do prospecting, um, yeah, we can do it.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we can send out 10,000 or 100,000 handwritten notes to an area or your list or whatever.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be very expensive.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna need a high type ticket item to generate ROI off that.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: So car dealerships do that, jewelry brands do that.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you're you know selling dog toys, that's not a method you're gonna want to go.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's really about retaining your existing clients and building upon those versus trying to find new clients.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so, so much of the time now, everybody's effort is on Google SEM, you know, search engine marketing, Google AdWords.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about finding new clients, but the cost to that to attract that client, it's much better to retain an existing client than to pay$10 or$20 a click to get a new client.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we help our our um our clients really maximize their ad spend by by squeezing every dollar that they can from their existing client base.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And that makes the most sense.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, retention marketing is the most cost effective, and uh referral from an existing customer is warmer and holds more weight than just to your point, cold outreach, SEM, uh, and all the other mechanisms that uh someone would use to attract a customer.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: But on that note, kind of diving deeper, how now let's just play, let's do some uh story on how many commerce brand.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I sell dog toys.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a really great example.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's just say I'm moving a thousand units a month.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a small, I'm relatively small business.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: How do you integrate with our process?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Are you able to get actual customer names?
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like uh briefly describe what it would look like uh if I'm integrating if I'm choosing to work with you and we're gonna integrate this handwritten notes as a retention mechanism with our with our brand and our dog toys.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are um doing your own fulfillment, um certainly you can order a bunch of notes from us in advance.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to, you know, we'll tell you the pen we use.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pilot G2 Ballpoint pen.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: We could write off the entire note except for the person's name and maybe write in that part.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's one way to do it.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that you have a stack of notes pre-written and you just fill in their name.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: The second way to do it is after the fact, which is we have a direct plug in to Shopify.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would say there's maybe one other provider out there that does this, but um, ours, I believe, is by anyway the best as far as real handwritten notes go.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: But you can go in and create rules.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: So you could say after the first purchase, send a handwritten note, or after the third purchase, or after they spend a certain amount, or anniversary purchase, or um uh abandoned shopping cart, whatever those rules are, you can trigger a handwritten note to automatically go out via our platform.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if it is a after first purchase or after third purchase, whatever that is, it's nice to have that secondary touch point.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not in the box.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you are selling dog toys and you have a phenomenal dog toy.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: I get home, um, that dog toy box is sitting there waiting for me to open.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I rip it open, I grab that dog toy out and I throw away everything in the box without seeing that there's a handwritten note in there.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's that's one reason I would recommend sending it as a separate piece.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you send it as a separate piece, you're also eating the cost of writing an envelope and the cost of postage, which is up to 73 cents from the good old USPS.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to you have to factor those things in.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you're doing, if you don't want to write in the person's name or you can't.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: For example, if you're dealing with Amazon and you're doing Amazon fulfillment, or you're a large warehouse, three you're you're in a 3PL and you can't risk them writing in the names or whatever, we could create personal notes that are not personalized.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what I mean by that is let's say Will, it's your dog toy.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you take a piece of paper, scroll?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh usually when people use our service, they type in their note, we we we convert that into handwriting and we write it.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, what we're gonna do is you're going to scroll a note across a piece of paper and draw a picture of the dog and join the dog toy.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: We will then replicate that at scale, along with maybe 10 or 20 other scrolls you do, and randomly shuffle them so that you can send them to your 3PL fulfillment center, or you could just drop them in the boxes yourself, so that if I order three of these dog toys, I get three different notes that look a thousand percent organic and they're each surprise and delight.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we do for major mattress, um uh boxed mattress companies, that type of thing.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and while it's not personalized, it doesn't say dear will on it.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's very personal because it has a little drawing you did, and it you know, you know what I mean?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: So those have been very, very successful for that situation.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: By and large, though, what people will do, especially for Shopify, is they will um just on micro-trigger notes to go out after every sale or every X sale, and then maybe two or three additional touch points of uh during the year, such as holiday is a big touch point.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have their birthday information, you could do a birthday, or you know, if it's something anniversary related, you could just do anniversary of purchase.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of assume that it's you know, like if it's a wedding ring, you could do an anniversary purchase.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, send a happy anniversary.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then uh yeah, those are kind of the major touch points.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: The final one would be just a middle of the year additional sale offer type thing.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there, for instance, we work with a bespoke suit company out of Canada.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, what you will do is you'll go on their website, um, you'll put in measurements, and then they'll have a suit made for you in China and shipped to your door.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's actually funny.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: When they became a client, I wore one of their suits to my wedding.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it was it was cool to uh have them as a client.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um but with them, every year they send a coupon to their most loyal customers, and those coupons they send with the handwritten note get a 16.5% redemption rate, which is about three times greater than every other coupon they send out.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, they're they're effective from a couponing perspective as well.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I like your language too.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: Surprise and delight, spoken like a true marketer, and that that really is a differentiator uh in terms of like what other companies are not doing and what you could be doing in order to enhance that experience and create a memorable experience, especially if you're you know you're not uh going after price, you're not the cheapest product or your premium product.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: This shows um a nice white glove approach.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: And on the note, just to dive a little deeper, what are your recommendations for e-commerce brands?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so I'm a dog toy, you know, thousand units, like I mentioned.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, would you recommend like typically what would be best practices?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Should I send it right when it goes out?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Should I wait two weeks to send a second one?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, every six months to a year, obviously depends on repurchase rate.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: But like, what do you see leads to the most success leveraging the handwritten technology?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would say uh, you know, use it sparingly.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: I would say two to three um touches a year.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: So on their first purchase, send a handwritten note.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you can send it right away because the post office builds in a nice delay for you of four to six days as they slow walk the snail mail to the person's house.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: So you can trigger it in our system.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: It will take a day to go out from us, and then four to six days for the post office to deliver it, um, which is a great secondary.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, the person has to remember to check their mail.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a great secondary touch point.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then, you know, did the product arrive yet?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we're very excited, excited to hear what you think.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Please rate and review us, you know, that type of thing.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the secondary touch point would be that offer, that mid-year, mid-cycle offer.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then the third would be holiday.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I assume you don't have birthday information, so you could layer in more, but I would say no more than four touches a year with handwritten notes.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other use case, and I failed to mention this, but it's probably my favorite to talk about.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: We work with a snack box company, and they, you know, they do these snacks for offices, and um, we use them at our office, and it's like nuts and dried fruit, that type of thing.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: If they screw up on your snack box, which could be they send you the wrong items, something was damaged, or it was delayed, um, they will send you a handwritten note saying, We're so sorry for the mistake.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here's an extra box of snacks to make up make it up for you.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: What they found was those that received that handwritten note win back.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's not all just the handwritten note, it's the extra swag they send you to.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: But those that received that handwritten note win back actually have a higher lifetime value than if they were never screwed up with in the first place.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: And they never had that great buyback win back experience.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the next natural step for this brand was to screw up with everybody and then get everybody to go through that win back to therefore raise lifetime value of all of all customers.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really brilliant case study.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what I love most about this, and being in human services myself, um, what I've learned is when a team member makes a mistake, you not only have to rectify this mistake because that just brings you even.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: You need to do even more in order to like really be in their good graces.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And hearing something like that, it's like, wow, the proof's in the pudding.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, no wonder that increases lifetime value and that that customer feels like, hey, this company gets me and they really care.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really great story.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: On that note, so you you mentioned lifetime value, you mentioned retention.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I would love to know what type of KPIs do you have the ability to track and what are some of the mechanisms you use to get these KPIs that are, of course, most relevant to e-commerce sellers?
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so coupon codes are out of band for us.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is um I said you use our service to send out coupon codes or insert physical coupons with the orders.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Handwritten's not going to know about it.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: All I'm gonna know, all handwritten's gonna know is that you keep doing that through us.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it must be working.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, QR codes, we now have the ability at handwritten, so so we run our own digital, in addition to the robots and all that, we have digital presses for printing the cards.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this dog food uh dog toy brand, you could go on our website, design a beautiful folded or flat dog toy card, and then include a QR code in that.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then when we print that, it's it's actually quite complicated, but um when you if you send out 10,000 of these cards to your customers, and maybe 10% or 5% or 1% clicks that QR code, we will be able to tell you which card was clicked, meaning the card to Will was, the card to David was not.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um now, I I'm not a huge fan of QR codes.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, um at South by Southwest back in 2013, I gave a whole talk about how QR codes suck.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot has changed between now and then, and the public is very used to them.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, so but just because you have a QR code does not necessarily mean something will work or it doesn't.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you include a QR code, I would also say include a URL or a tiny URL or something in there too, for those that don't use QR codes.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for those people that do scan the QR code, we can track it for you.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you could go on our website and and view all the beautiful tracking.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you can do that.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um A B testing is probably the most frequent, you know, people that had a win back.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Experience, people that didn't have a win back experience, which one, which one really was more successful?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: So those are really the ways.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what I can also tell you is a lot of people compare us to print, you know, so maybe not so much for E-Tail, but we work with a lot of car dealerships, for example, and they're very they send a lot of print mail.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: When they replace this print mail with handwritten notes, they see about a 27 times greater response rate to the handwritten note versus print.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then, you know, it's obviously more expensive, um, but they still get about a 7x greater ROI compared to print.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, I mean, that's really kind of you know, store traffic.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: We have other brands that use us when they have a store opening, they'll send out handwritten notes to everybody in their database that might be impacted by that new store opening.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I don't, you know, a lot of that tracking is out of band for us, unfortunately.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Furthermore, none of our clients let us mention that we send handwritten notes for them because nobody wants to be seen as a disingenuous handwritten note sender.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: That makes a ton of sense.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it does sound like there are some workarounds, a QR code, why uh it might not be your preferred method.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: There is a way to track it.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And to your point, the short the bit.ly URLs is a great way to at least tie it to a specific campaign.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, as an e-commerce seller, if you're wondering how much engagement is it getting, um am I driving traffic or getting responses?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I I I'm willing to go out on a limb and say, I bet if somebody got a handwritten note, there you're probably gonna see something like that potentially in a review.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, I know because we work on Amazon, we end up with a lot of uh photographs of good products or happy customers, and they they end up in reviews on the site.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I'd imagine you might see some spill over there.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we work uh one client.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um we work with a record box.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um these hipsters, you know, the kids today, they they want to receive um vinyl records instead of mp3s or whatever.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So um this vinyl record company includes a handwritten note because it goes along with the brand, you know, tactical, um, old school solution.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And those handwritten notes often get posted to Instagram or uh Twitter um because people are so excited for that old-fashioned touch.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's and then that makes sense.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not gonna lie, I've gotten swag packages from affiliates and stuff.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And when there's a handwritten note, I set it up really nice.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: I take a picture for LinkedIn because I'm a B2B guy and I give a shout out.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I can totally see why that works so well.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, kind of diving in a little deeper.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to know like, what are some common mistakes you see brands make when they're starting to do the handwritten notes?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Whether it's a mistake you've seen competitors do or just like somebody who's new getting into the space and maybe they're a little too excited and they want to send uh a hundred cards a year.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I'd love to hear some of the lessons you learned and what to look out for for uh sellers that might be considering this as a solution.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think uh number one is too small of a test.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, oh, we're gonna test this with 50 people.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I don't know if you're gonna have a statistically significant sample size one way or the other.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's one thing.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Two, over call to actioning it.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if I have something and it just reads like a total advertisement, people are gonna throw it away and dismiss it.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: So oftentimes with those QR codes, we'll just put it in the corner or we'll put it on the back of the card or something and and and and underplay the upsell and just overplay the thank you.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer in full stop thank yous, meaning I say thank you to you, Will, for having me on your podcast.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't say don't forget to refer me to a friend, or please go back to our site and rate us or whatever.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just thank you.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because so many people nowadays have an entitlement mentality where they just think, of course you're gonna buy from me, or of course you want to be on my podcast when, you know, or you know, in course, of course you want me on your podcast when that's not necessarily the the fact.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's unlimited people as podcast guests or limited dog toys or whatever.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you really need to be grateful for that opportunity to serve somebody.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think that, but then again, you could on the back of the card say, get ten dollars off your next order, you know, and have that part printed so that it doesn't um interfere with a sincere message.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, those are kind of uh two of them.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: The third one would be making your message too long.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people come to us and they say, I want to do handwritten letters, like nine by you know, eight by ten letters, and and we say, well, we can do that.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they're gonna be expensive because we have to charge based on time on robot, and the robots are rather slow.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, also, are people gonna believe it that you sat down and wrote you know uh the Declaration of Independence?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so you know, and then fourth, are people gonna read it?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, we live in the Twitter age of 160 characters or whatever it is.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, people don't want to read six or eight hundred characters.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I say keep it short, keep it on a uh five by seven card or or folded uh greeting card and uh get to the point that way, and and people will read it.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Also, handwritten notes if they're um on folded stationery will literally stand up on your desk.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh nine uh eight eight and a half nine uh eight by ten or nine and a half by eleven sheet will get thrown away or you know, tossed in the junk mail pile.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's beautiful.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I I gotta quote you.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: You just had like uh a brilliant one-liner, uh, underplay the upsell, overplay, the thank you.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hopefully I said that the right.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: That was well said.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and that I think it speaks a lot to what you're trying to do and handwritten, but also what this marketing strategy means for the customer, the end user who gets this delight and surprise of a handwritten note.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not in my upstairs office, I'm in my downstairs office, but I have tons of thank you cards from volunteer work or being a guest on other people's podcasts that uh I'm lame.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I save those.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh hopefully none of them are written by a robot, but if they are, they totally fooled me.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's the idea.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, I mean, I I often get asked the question what's the ROI of a thank you note?
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And uh between you and me and your listeners, I think that's a sad, sorry state of affairs when you have to ask the ROI on a thank you note.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because as Albert Einstein put it, and I'm paraphrasing, not everything that uh matters can be measured, and not everything that can be measured matters.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, maybe I have it flipped, but uh you know, measuring the value of a thank you note, yeah, you know, so what?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: You should be thanking people.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we need to return to an age of personalization and gratitude.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, quite frankly, and we've seen it a handwritten, as AI has continued down this course, um, nothing, everybody discounts everything as being impersonal, but a handwritten note um people don't realize can be automated, and it and it really makes a difference that people think you were personal and you took the time to send somebody something.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's beautiful.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And uh before I jump in to learn a little bit more about handwritten, is there anything else for our listeners that maybe I didn't ask or didn't mention that you think would be uh relevant to the handwritten note experience?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um beyond, you know, what I would say is if you have a team of people and you task the team with writing the handwritten notes, um, that'll work for the first month.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: But beyond that, people are going to stop doing it, um, even if it's using handwritten or a solution like handwritten to do that.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: You really need to automate it uh because everybody gets too busy, even the act of uploading a spreadsheet to our website becomes um onerous.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you really want to try your best to automate the solution, and we integrate um with most platforms to make that easy.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And now just to talk a little bit about handwritten, we got a lot of information from from just your this conversation about tactics and strategies and your experience.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: But what sets handwritten apart from other customer engagement tools on the market and how does it uniquely address the the needs of e-commerce sellers?
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think handwritten notes um are the unique point, not handwritten with a why, but handwritten with an I.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't use handwritten with a why, use handwritten with an I.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sit down and write customers' handwritten notes.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that alone will set you apart from pretty much every other um uh company in your space because of the thoughtfulness and lack of a call to action and lack of measurability and lack of scale, that will really set you apart.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, the average consumer only gets about one to three handwritten pieces of mail a month, and they get 135 emails a day.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: So do you want to be in the pile of three or the pile of whatever that is, three thousand, four thousand, right?
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um it really is kind of when when others zig, you zag.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I don't know if that answered it, but but that's what I would say.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: That totally answered it.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't agree more.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just the act of the handwritten note um goes a long way.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a differentiator, that to your point, that pile of three.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't what I usually get in the mail is bills and people uh, you know, wanting my vote or all that other stuff.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: So uh a handwritten note really goes a long way.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: And for our listeners and e-commerce sellers, uh, this is definitely a tactic that's worth experimenting with, and it's definitely something that should be considered uh in my early heydays of e-commerce when I would do uh sell some of my own products uh at a much smaller scale.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: Myself and um a partner at the time, we did a lot of handwritten notes and they led to a lot of really positive reviews and nice feedback for us as like really young sellers trying to figure out where we we fall in this uh in this e-commerce journey.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then as as far, just real quick to give the handwritten with a wide pitch.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, when you call handwritten, I think it's important that, you know, there's us and there are a handful of other competitors, but when you call handwritten, I think it's important.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: I do not answer the phone.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you want to have a team there to support you, not one guy running around operating some off-the-shelf handwriting robots.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, what you have with handwritten is a team, customer service reps, account managers, programmers.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have 10 years of experience, um, and then all the integrations that come with it the Shopify integration, Salesforce, Zapier, Make.com, all the rest.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we're market leading for that reason.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: We're a real company with the real experience and the scale to assist you.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well said, David.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: On that note, we have a little tradition on the show.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: We pick all our guest brains on the future of e-commerce and technology.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: And you being as innovative as you are, I'm sure you're gonna have awesome insights.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: My question for you is how do you see the role of personalized touch points such as handwritten notes evolving in the future of e-commerce?
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what innovations do you anticipate will further enhance customer loyalty and retention?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you said I think it's personalization, it's just ensuring that every interaction is personal and surprising and delighting that customer throughout their journey.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I really think it's as simple as that.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think also, uh, and I've been preaching this for 10 years, but communication preference centers.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know, does your customer want to receive a text message?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do they want to receive push notifications, emails, handwritten notes, phone calls?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Really catering your whole strategy to that customer, I think is really important.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, I would say those are kind of the big ones.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um I'm not doing anything too innovative here.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're sending handwritten notes.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I might be the wrong guy, but I think people are sensory deprived, meaning everything has gone digital.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you're using one sense, um, you know, visual and having that handwritten note that you can hold, uh, potentially, you know, who knows, smell it or whatever.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I think people really appreciate the using all senses.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that could be, you know, with luxury, they they sent the um tissue paper that's included with the um the high-end purse or whatever.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, really kind of returning to uh the five senses, I think is important.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really interesting take.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I think you're very innovative.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: The fact you're able to do this handwritten notes on scale says a lot about the technology and the team that you built.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: David, this was very insightful.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: I know myself personally, I took a lot away from this episode, uh, relevant to e-commerce, but also relevant to just being an agency owner.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, before we wrapped up, uh, I'd love to just uh where can our audience find you?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Where should they look out?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: And do you have anything else you'd like to share?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, uh please visit handwritten with a Y.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: So H-A-N-D-W-R-Y-TEN.com.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know if your listeners can hear it, but it is storming here now, so I apologize for that background noise.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you can click business at the top and request free samples, and we'll send you a whole sample kit.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you want to try the service out, just visit handwritten, sign up, and use uh the sign-up code podcast, and that'll give you enough to send yourself a card and kind of experience the handwritten um user interface and and and all that stuff.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can even design your own card and send it to yourself.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as far as me, you can find me on LinkedIn, just look for David at handwritten, but I'm not on anything else saying anything interesting at all.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not that I'm I'm too busy raising my kids and and dogs and all that.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh just the company is what matters.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: And you can follow the company on YouTube and all that stuff.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: All that's at the bottom of handwritten.com.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: David, well, thanks for being here.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: All the links and notes will be uh in the show notes below.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: David, thanks for being on here and sharing your journey with us.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Will.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Selling On Giants.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you found our conversation with David Wax insightful and inspiring.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: David's innovative approach with handwritten provides valuable strategies for enhancing customer engagement and building lasting loyalty.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to like, follow, and subscribe to wherever you're tuning in.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Your support helps us continue bringing you the best insights and strategies from industry leaders.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, this is Mr.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: Will signing off.