Ask HN: Handwritten Letters? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Handwritten Letters?

6 pointsdangrossman3 comments

Are there any startups sending handwritten letters to customers?

Something like welcome notes to new signups, or thank you notes to long-time customers or people who have referred other customers?

Something simple but personal, with handwritten envelopes and a notecard on good paper inside.

It seems like one of those "things that don't scale" I might be able to add to my routine that might be too labor-intensive for bigger businesses. My goal is to have Improvely stand out with a little surprise and make customers feel appreciated, which they are. Would it still be welcome in 2016? Or is it too over-the-top for an internet company to mail you something after signing up?

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I agree that hand written letters don't scale. I also agree that a hand written letter could elicit positive perceptions of the company.

I'd say the reason to do something that doesn't scale is that the rewards for doing it don't scale either. Sitting face to face with a user makes sense when it provides better feedback than A/B UI tests on the homepage. A phone call makes sense because when it opens a dialog that is difficult to approximate via bulk email.

My gut says that a hand written letter probably creates a higher threshold for bi-directional communication: the friction in the channel that makes a hand written letter standout makes it socially difficult for the customer to respond in a less "romantic" channel...I mean, an email response to a hand written letter feels a bit tacky...

...at least with someone I don't know well. Which leads me to think that a hand written letter might be the sort of non-scaling thing appropriate when a company is large and the relationship with the user is non-trivial.

Finally, I know that if I was thinking it was a good idea it would probably be because I'd rather write a letter than make a phone call or in person appearance. That's just my personality favoring something psychologically more comfortable than the risk of rejection.

Good luck.

Since the effort to send an email, even a "personalized one" is rapidly approaching zero, sending a handwritten note is a very personal touch. If you want, you can send postcards if you place them inside an envelope. I would not do it for new customers, unless the note was a brief typed note with a signature. Try your best to find unusual stamps - nothing says boring like a postal mark meter. Above all - make your notes sincere. That means for new customers, something short like "Thank you" because they just joined and for longer customers, a more personal note - "Thank you for being our customer for 2 years and one of our most helpful beta feature testers. Your feedback on X... (this assumes this is the customer's actual relationship). Good luck!

Not exactly the same, but Beanstalk (the SVN hosting service) mailed me a T-shirt with a thank you note after being a customer for a year. (They did ask for my shirt size via email first.) I thought it was a really nice gesture.

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