Sending your most important customers a handwritten love letter will have a very positive effect on the business relationship. Feeling appreciated alongside the quality of your products or services has an important influence on the levels of happiness of customers. Only happy customers turn into repeat customers. Therefore expressing gratitude, without any advertising, is a winning strategy in order to be positively remembered.
There is a difference between receiving a text message saying “I love you”, and a handwritten letter expressing the same sentiments. Think about the tiny flip your heart does when you find a beautiful hand addressed enveloped in your mailbox, a place normally filled with direct mail junk.
We live in a hyper-connected world. Of course, there are many benefits of instant communication, but there are also drawbacks. We often forget that digital communication is faster than emotionally relevant. We also may have forgotten what it feels like to receive handwritten letters.
Out of sight and out of mind.
Therefore, electronic messages do not receive special attention. The content is skimmed and sorted out or simply deleted in milliseconds. Out of sight and out of mind. In this way, your message can have no effect at all on the majority of recipients. Your message is simply lost in the general battle for attention.
Handwritten letters convey much more than just a message
Digital messages don’t have the same appeal as something supposedly anachronistic like a beautiful handwritten letter. Handwritten letters, of any type, evoke a different feeling than a quickly typed email or text. Someone who takes time out of their day to pick up a pen and write you considers you special. A simple printed letter can never get as much attention as a personal message written in fountain pen or ballpoint pen.
Getting attention requires an investment and creativity
The costs associated with the creation of the message immediately reveal themselves to the recipient. The cheaper, the less appreciation is expressed. The sender already saves when communicating with me as a customer. What will the rest of our business relationship look like then? The human brain answers these questions within milliseconds of touching the envelope. Those who fail here end up in the well-deserved wastebasket and pollute the environment with their message.
But it also works much more successfully. Here it is worth looking at the old familiar love letter. Gary Chapman introduced the idea of love languages in the 1990s (5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman). This concept has since become a popular reference. Essentially, the idea describes different ways to express love and commitment to your soulmate.
In Chapman’s opinion, the languages are words of:
- Words of affirmation
- Acts of service
- Receiving gifts
- Quality time
- Physical touch
Handwritten letters are unique because they satisfy each of these love languages despite distances.
Perhaps the most obvious connection is the words of affirmation which naturally come with handwritten letters. And, because of the time it takes to craft a thoughtful love letter you can also check acts of service and quality time off the “love language list”.
When the recipient receives their gift, they are able to physically touch an extension of the author—their personal thoughts in writing—which accounts for the remaining languages of love.
Handwritten love letters are the next best thing, apart from actually talking to the one you love in person. For this reason, love letters are often kept by the owner over many years, like a treasure.
The ingredients to the perfect handwritten letter
Handwritten letters play not only a special role in private correspondence. Letters can be an easier way for a person to fully express themselves, as opposed to face-to-face communication or even text messages. Every detail, from the neatness of the handwriting to addressing an envelope, tells the complete story of your letter.
There are no fixed rules for a love letter, but it’s important to be yourself. If you’re authentic while drafting it, your message will come across clearly to the recipient.
Love letters are one of the oldest genres of all, so the number of role models is great.
Old masters like Ovid or Horace, show love letters were initially a more impersonal art form. Some of their quotes like, “love forever beats its wings”, “doesn’t know door nor lock” and ” triumphs over all things,” help us think of our own love letters. Draw from this while you craft your own.
Here are a few other quotes about love we find endearing:
“I wake up full of you,” Napoléon Bonaparte 1795 begins a letter to his deified Joséphine. He concluded with the words, “Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses, but don’t give me one back, it would set my heart on fire “.
In the spring of 1929, novelist Hans Fallada wrote to his future wife, Anna Issel, “Dear girl, I hope you are very aware that a financially uncertain future awaits you, that I am not well, that you won’t have any children of mine, that I am socially declassed. “Barely a month later, they were standing in front of the altar.
In the late 1960s, guitar legend Jimi Hendrix proved in a letter to his “little girl” love letters can be short but quite emotional. “Happiness lies in you – unleash the chains on your heart, grow beyond yourself, beautiful flower that you are. I know the answer, spread your wings, fly to freedom. Love to you forever … ”
It can be difficult to write a love letter
From the self-consciousness of handwriting, spelling and the general message to simply not being able to find the time to write, creating handwritten love letters isn’t as easy as it sounds.
Fortunately, there is an adequate alternative.
Pensaki is the next best thing to writing a love letter yourself. Pensaki uses bots to personalize and send messages of love with flawless handwriting and high-quality stationery and envelopes. Ask yourself, do you owe someone a letter? Even if it’s not a love letter, an apology, a thank you, a business letter are all forms of handwritten communication that are meaningful, thoughtful and memorable.
