Using bespoke handwritten postcards for your next direct mail campaign will be a very smart idea to make your message stand out. With millions of marketing experts competing against each other for the limelight, it is vital to follow a unique strategy. Your message needs to stand out in order to be remembered. Sending handwritten postcards instead of cheap printed postcards is a very smart choice. This expression of appreciation has a price that few are able to pay. And it is precisely this difference that all recipients recognize at first glance.
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Now that the holidays are in the rearview mirror, we can reflect on the fourth quarter and important lessons learned. One important business lesson may come from our personal lives. The holidays are a time when people reaffirm social connections through the medium of handwritten postcards.
How did you feel when you received a holiday card? Was holding a physical sentiment meaningful to you? This is a concept that businesses can leverage throughout the entire year.
Despite the electronic revolution in communication, most people still continue to feel most valued after receiving handwritten postcards and handwritten letters.
It’s a general feeling that some forms of communication are more genuine than others. How can we use this information and translate it into business practices? Something as simple handwritten birthday cards can make a huge difference in terms of customer satisfaction and retention.
Translating personal gratitude into professional gratitude
One obstacle most businesses face is finding the balance between spending money on new customer acquisition and improving the client lifetime value. It’s expensive to generate new leads, but if a business keeps its customers long enough, the investment will pay off.
This equation makes customer retention invaluable. In order to improve client lifetime value, a business must work tirelessly to make their customers loyal to a brand. Brand loyalty comes from customers that have a great experience. And, to ensure a customer has a great experience, a business must actively communicate and cater to their clients.
So, ask yourself. When is the last time you genuinely thanked your customers for doing business with you? After all, they’ve chosen you over your competitors, which is the first step toward customer loyalty.
Using handwritten postcards may seem like an outdated or seasonal practice, but it can be a fantastic opportunity for you to express your gratitude and improve brand loyalty.
Revisiting handwritten postcards is a huge opportunity
Even as cold email marketing is illegal in many countries, subscription-based email marketing is rising at an exponential rate. It’s cheap and available to almost all businesses.
The drawback of its availability is that email marketing creates a lot of noise. As a result, those who initially subscribed to marketing campaigns are quick to either unsubscribe or filter messages.
According to a survey done by TechnologyAdvice in 2017, 46% of survey respondents mark emails from marketing campaigns as spam due to the frequency of emails. According to MarketingLand, 1.47 million emails are sent per month in the U.S. Globally, the average is 1.38 million per month.
On the other hand, from 2000 to 2010 the United States Postal Service reported a drop of 10 billion letters in the past 20 years.
But, a study conducted by Gallup, shows that over 90% of Americans say they have a very positive or positive reaction when receiving handwritten postcards and letters through the mail.
So, the form of communication that makes your customers feel good is decreasing, and the form that is burdensome to your customers is rising.
This makes the rarer form of communication, handwritten postcards, more valuable to your customers.
Adding the personal touch of a handwritten postcards drives profitability
Adding a personal touch to your marketing campaign shows that your customers are more than just an entry in a spreadsheet. Sending a handwritten note with thoughtful comments shows that you care enough to make a little more effort.
That extra bit of effort shows you genuinely value your customers.
Something as simple as sending a thank you note can have a huge commercial impact. One Fortune 500 company found that a simple thank you note reduced their product returns by 33% and increased average monthly spend their customers.
Extending gratitude can help improve your customer retention, too. In fact, one study shows the biggest contributor to customer churn is when customers feel a brand is indifferent toward their business.
Another study shows that customers with a true emotional relationship with a brand typically buy twice as much and will stay loyal to a business for a longer period of time.
The reality is, the more you demonstrate that you value your customers, the greater chance you have of retaining them. Retention drives revenue. And, handwritten notes are the perfect way to show you value your customers.
Sending handwritten postcards makes expressing gratitude easy
The important part here is that gratitude shouldn’t be just around Christmas. It should be something done year round. Still, when we thinking about the amount of time it takes to write personalized postcards, the task may seem daunting.
Finding the words to say isn’t always easy. And, if you’re trying to personalize notes for a large number of customers, you may feel overwhelmed by the task.
If you’re looking for a scalable handwritten postcards service, PENSAKI is a great solution in Europe.
Pensaki is an automated letter service that produces handwritten postcards for your direct mail campaigns. Every handwritten postcard is written with a fountain or ballpoint pen and not simply printed. To make it scalable, and affordable, Pensaki robots write your messages and then humans take care of the quality assurance before shipping your letters.
Of course, nothing can beat a card written by you, but Pensaki provides a wide range of personalization and shipment options to make your handwritten note just as special as if you wrote it.
Customer retention isn’t some mystical secret. It’s about doing the basics right – like delivering an excellent product with great service – and showing your customers you genuinely care about them. Learn how Pensaki can help improve your customer retention today. Because one of the best ways to do that, is by showing gratitude.
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