326 – A Classy Way to Nurture Customer Relationships with David Wachs of Handwrytten

Gift biz unwrapped episode 326.

When somebody would take the time to send you a handwritten

note. Not only did you read it,

but you kept it and you put it on display Attentive,

gifters bakers,

crafters, and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one.

Now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode,

packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow.

Your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there.

Welcome to Midsummer Edition of the podcast.

Hopefully you're taking the time to enjoy this weather.

And I know for many,

it's been a season to get back out to farmer's markets

and craft shows.

Yay. These shows offer great opportunities for social media content.

We talked about this in one of our tips and talk

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And I bring this up because you've told me you're discouraged.

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moving the needle on your sales.

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access. Right now,

I'm also excited because just a couple of weeks from now,

I will be back on the road for conferences and trade

shows. First up the gift designers conference in Phoenix,

it's going to be super hot there.

I don't know,

110, 115,

but I will be doing a meetup while I'm there.

So if you're in the area and are interested DME over

in Instagram at gift biz unwrapped,

and I'll give you all the details,

you don't have to be attending this conference to come to

the meetup.

I'm actually taking some time on either side of the conference

to do some other things while I'm there.

The meetup being one of them,

getting together in person to me is absolutely the best.

And honestly,

this is totally a coincidence,

but our guest today is right in the area as well.

I always find it so crazy when things work out like

that, David's going to share with us a way that you

can stand out from the crowd.

It's almost like putting a blinking arrow directly pointing at you,

instead of all of the other businesses that compete for attention.

The truth is you don't get a chance to make a

sale unless you've got your customer's attention and made a positive

impression, interested in hearing more.

Let's do this today.

I am so excited to introduce you to David wax of

handwritten handwritten provides scalable robotic solutions that write your notes in

pen and changes the way brands and people connect prior to

handwritten. David founded sell it a leading mobile marketing platform,

servicing customers such as Abercrombie and Fitch and Walmart,

both handwritten and sell it.

We're on Inc.

Magazine's 500 list of fastest growing companies.

Today. David speaks on marketing technology has been featured in the

Washington post and wall street journal and is a contributor to

Inc magazine.

David, welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

Thank you for having me Sue.

This is super Cool.

I know I'm really excited to get into this handwritten product.

I have lots of questions for you,

but before we do that,

I have a traditional question that I ask everybody.

So you're going to have to go with me here.

And that is to have you describe yourself by way of

a motivational candle.

So if you were to envision a candle that really resonates

with you,

what would it look like by color?

And some type of a quote that would be on the

candle? So it would be a tall,

almost like one of those large Catholic,

those tall candles.

It would be an orange.

So let's just say it's pumpkin scented and the quote would

be always get in over your head.

And the reason for this is 20 gosh,

almost 30 years ago,

25 years ago,

when I was in college,

I had the opportunity to meet Conan O'Brien.

He came to my school and gave a talk in private.

He told the little group of us that brought him to

campus. If he had any words of advice for us,

it would be always get in over your head.

You get a lot of advice over the years,

but that advice has really stuck with me and resonated.

So the tall orange candle to symbolize Conan O'Brien,

but really just always get in there.

Oh, I love it.

And I obviously have never heard that before.

So how many times would you say you've gotten in over

your head in your life?

Since you've heard that My first company definitely was sell it.

I mean,

there's a whole backstory,

maybe told best over beers and stuff like that.

When I come to Phoenix,

we'll do that.

When you come to Phoenix.

Yeah. I mean,

in the end I was working for a crazy man in

San Diego.

I got fired from that job without cause and was kind

of out on my rump.

Didn't know what to do.

So I moved home to Arizona and I thought about Conan

O'Brien and I started this text messaging company that grew rather

quickly, much faster than handwritten during that entire time.

You always doubt yourself and you think,

gee, can I do this?

Can I create something out of nothing?

Like you've done with your label,

printers, your ribbon printer in your businesses.

You know,

when you create something out of nothing you are getting in

over your head or most people are.

And when you get in over your head,

that forces you to grow,

you're out of your comfort zone,

you're doing things you didn't think were possible.

And that's really the only way to grow and achieve anything

bigger than who you are.

I think there was years of self doubt is selling,

gonna make it,

am I going to be able to pay my bills?

Can I move back to Chicago to be with my girlfriend,

all those things.

And then the business does eventually take off and I was

able to do that.

And then pretty much the next day after finalizing the sale

of sell it to this marketing company,

I'd worked for them for two years,

which was miserable.

But after that was over the next day,

I started handwritten and I'm getting in over my head technically

and operationally much more than with sell it.

But financially I'm not,

thankfully from the first company I made a little money.

So wasn't basically destitute.

Like I was the first go round,

but just running this new company,

we've got robots we build and I can get into all

that. And then stationary and all this other stuff it's operationally

and technically definitely getting in over my Head.

Well, we're going to get into some of that.

I'm sure.

Depending on where the conversation takes us,

as you're speaking,

I'm just thinking,

you know,

we're in great company because people who are listening,

even if they're at a point where they really know a

lot about the product that they're making,

it's that jump over to turning it into a business that,

and I'll use your words where they're feeling like they're going

to get over their head.

And the fact is,

yeah, you probably are,

but that's exciting too.

It might be uncomfortable,

but this is how you grow and you learn and you

figure it out along the way.

And the really cool thing is that so many people won't

do that.

That the further you go,

it's like people fall off on the side,

right? And you just keep going forward.

So the longer you stay in it,

the more things you figure out,

the more you create and refine,

whatever it is you're doing,

I'll say the less noise you have with other people on

the sides,

because there are so many people who will just say,

can't do it.

Yeah. There's So many people and finding those people,

even if they're not going to start their own company,

but to get them on your team,

there's this thing called the figure it out.

Gene, I don't know where it is in the gene sequencing,

but there's some people that haven't and some people that just

don't, and it's not that they're not capable of it.

They just throw up their hands and walk away.

And people like Youssou.

That's done it a few times.

You clearly have the figure it out gene.

And it's so important to have that and to have the

confidence in yourself,

they'll be able to figure it out and get through it

all. I mean,

that's huge.

And then also kind of just the grit and the sticktuitiveness.

I hate that term,

but just not giving up right away.

And in the game of entrepreneurship,

you only lose when you leave the field,

when you call it a day until then,

if you can figure out how to stick it out.

I mean,

there's nobody keeping Time.

Right? And the other thing I'd say is this whole entrepreneurial

thing isn't for everybody.

And that's okay.

You know,

if you just,

if it just doesn't feel,

I'm not saying uncomfortable,

but if it doesn't feel good to you and you're not

energized by figuring it out,

Marie Forleo is everything is figureoutable right.

If it doesn't energize and excite you and you have the

vision of what could be,

but you're doing this because someone told you,

you should,

or you're just doing it for the money.

It's probably not the right thing for you to be doing.

And I only say that because there's nothing wrong with people

who want to work for other people,

shoot, come work for us.

You know,

like you and me David,

because I'm sure you're like me with the people who are

working for you.

You want them to learn and do things also without taking

as much of the risk,

like innovating,

creating new ideas,

figuring things out.

We've been talking about this whole time.

So there are a lot of different ways to do it.

You don't always have to be the one who's starting.

It. There's a place for everybody.

Let's go with that.

And sometimes I've been asked before on other podcasts,

you know,

what's advice where you go.

I say,

well, if you're going to start a company started today because

tomorrow you're going to have even more obligations usually,

unless maybe you've already had your family.

And you know,

your family is off at college or whatever else.

But you know,

with me,

I've got young kids now.

And I don't know if I was just starting as an

entrepreneur today and I have three mouths to feed my wife

and my two kids.

I don't know if I could do it right now.

So I would be that,

figuring it out employee for somebody else.

And I've learned from that experience,

nothing makes me happier than developing employees.

And when they eventually leave working with me and they say,

you know,

I've learned so much in this job.

And it's really defined who I am as a person.

I mean,

nothing is greater than that.

So there is absolutely something to be said for being a

COO of a company or a CFO of a company or

a great account manager,

Cod I've,

you know,

in my past two jobs,

I'm thrilled by the account managers I've built,

they have these technical skills.

They never thought they'd have.

And all of that is just very gratifying for them.

And it's incredibly gratifying for me.

Absolutely. And people who start something as a sideline are still

learning from their employer.

They're serving their employer,

doing what they're supposed to be doing,

but they're also learning things that they can then apply later.

Absolutely. Yeah.

It can benefit in a number of ways.

I want to move on to handwritten cause I can't wait

any longer.

I've been in suspense about this.

That was a pretty quick jump from when you sold sell

it to all of a sudden then automatically going into handwritten,

where did you come up with the idea Sell?

It was one of the larger text messaging providers.

And I want to be very clear.

We didn't spam.

Everything we did was opt in and people would join and

they get texts from Abercrombie and Fitch.

And we do like millions of them a day.

But what I realized,

and I knew this kind of going in that texting was

kind of a stop gap technology and there'd be other technologies

out there.

I didn't know what they would be,

but I knew there'd be other things instead of texting and

for info on houses because it was real estate.

Yeah. I initially started with real estate and then we got

into kind of full CRM systems for Abercrombie and Marie Claire

and all these other systems.

So I kind of thought it was a stopgap technology and

I built it to sell it.

Hence the name,

sell it.

When it came time to sell,

I realized that I was kind of part of the problem

when I left the company,

the average office workers getting 140 emails a day,

they spend 25% of their time just managing their inbox.

And then you add the Facebook messages,

the Twitter tweets back then we didn't really have slack and

teams, but you add Telegraph and slack and teams and all

these other electronic forms of communication.

What year are we talking right now?

2014. But we did have texting,

which was the average person would get like a thousand texts

a month.

Something like that.

Everybody's overwhelmed and overloaded by electronic communication,

right? At the same time,

print communication turned to junk mail.

It was all just flimsy.

Slick pieces sent to you.

Nothing really had a personal impact to it.

But what I noticed was when I went by my employee's

desks and my own desk and my own house,

what really stood out,

were handwritten notes.

When somebody would take the time to send you a handwritten

note, not only did you read it,

but you kept it and you put it on display or

at least I did.

So when I left sell it,

I wanted to send all my employees handwritten notes.

I wanted to send handwritten notes to all my great clients

for sticking with me over the years.

And I sat down and I started doing it and sure

enough, my hand cramped and I ran out of stamps and

I ran out of paper and I'd screw up the page

and I'd have to start over.

And it was very frustrating to me.

And I thought there had to be a better way.

I thought if I could create a system that made sending

handwritten notes,

as easy as sending an email,

and automateable where you could just plug it into your system.

Like we did with text messaging,

there would be something there to allow businesses to really communicate

on a very perceived personal level.

And that's what we've been doing for the last seven years.

Got it.

It's really targeted for businesses,

right? Yeah.

I mean,

When we first started,

we had a much more of a consumer,

not a focus.

We always wanted to go after businesses,

but we'd focus more on consumers than we do now that

consumer can still go on our website and send their mom

a mother's day card or a birthday card and include a

gift card to Amazon or whatever with it.

But our target is really businesses ranging from a lot of

realtors. We do have several gift basket companies and I can

talk about that luxury brands,

online mattress companies,

perfume brands,

they really just runs the gamut.

I think this would be a good thing for us to

talk about.

At some point is the different purposes of why people would

send a handmade card.

But I think it applies to every single person who's listening,

who has a business,

because even if you're doing cards that,

you know,

depending on your price point,

probably so that you make sure that it works properly for

however you onboard a new customer or get them acquainted and

potential for additional sales,

like all of that type of things.

It all goes back to the numbers at some point.

But I think it could be for anybody like a brand

new client,

anybody really,

I was thinking,

as you were talking through the story of I'll do handmade

cards for certain people who like joined certain classes and such,

and I have the cards printed up and then I write

on them in the back with their name.

And I do customize the message a little bit for each

person, but dang it.

If I don't spell something wrong or skip a word or

something like that.

And then I have to throw away the whole card because

I'm not going to scratch it out.

That doesn't look good.

And when I do that,

I get so,

so I already see the advantage in that way for what

you're doing here.

But anyway,

I'd love to hear before we get into a little more

about how we could apply the technology,

share just a little bit about how this evolved.

So you had the idea,

but then how do you get to the point where you

have robots and how does the system work if someone's using

it and share all that angle of handwritten for us To

get really kind of geeky.

When I started the company,

I always wanted to be a platform,

not a website.

What I mean by that is I wanted people to be

able to integrate us in every system they have and not

just have to visit a website.

So I had the system,

I started with an iPhone app and not a website.

The reason being is it created what's called a separation of

concerns and it allowed me to then create a website using

the same technology as the app.

And then I created all these platform integrations,

like we integrate with Shopify and all these other systems.

Now, Zapier,

I saw exactly Zapier and Integra that integrate with like all

these systems HubSpot.

That was all very intentional.

So that was how the software side,

we started with this kind of very consumery app,

just to kind of help us architect ourselves appropriately and on

the, how do we actually write the notes?

We started with these off the shelf,

writing machines called auto pens,

which you can buy from this company in Virginia.

And they were good enough to get us started,

but their product was very frustrating to use and the machines

would write on themselves and run out of ink and keep

writing and they'd jam.

And like it was just a disaster.

And also they were very expensive and the company was very

difficult to work with the company that made those.

And so I said,

you know,

there has to be a better way.

And we spent years developing these robots,

which I'm very proud of.

I mean,

they're not perfect.

They still jam and do all that stuff too.

But the writing quality is a level above the ease of

using these is easier and they cost us much less than

buying from a third party.

And we can build as many of them as we want

because we build them all.

In-house using all this crazy 3d printing and laser cutting and

oh, wow.

Yeah, it's all.

I love giving tours.

So when you're in town or your listeners want to see

how we do it,

come to the handwritten office and we give tours all the

time because it's like modern day manufacturing.

It's crazy.

So we started on this path that took us like three

years, two to three years to get our first version of

the robot done.

I actually programmed the robot to make it right.

And all that.

I ended up bringing in two rounds of mechanical engineers to

build the first one.

And now we're on revision like four or five of this

thing. And we have 115 robots currently.

And we're planning on adding 85 more to get to 200

by the end,

the year.

So David,

this is my vision.

So I envision a room where the hands,

cause it's not a full person,

obviously it's a hand or however the robot is at its

little workstation,

whatever that looks like.

And then it's just robot,

almost like a classroom robot after robot after robot.

Is that what it looks like pretty Much,

except they're racked up too high.

Oh, we have like a,

you know,

just to maximize space,

Like a bunk bed,

robots, Bunk bed robots.

Yeah. And then we have people that run around,

filling the robots,

replacing pens and replacing paper.

And then we have other robots doing the envelopes,

the same type of thing.

And then all notes and envelopes.

If the notes,

if the notes are mailed,

go through,

and then we also operate our own digital press.

This business has gotten so complicated.

So we have a full digital press to print the stationary.

The stationary goes into the robots and then we quality check

everything using artificial intelligence technology,

all sorts of craziness.

And then it gets put in a real envelope with a

real stamp and send out the door within one business day.

So that's kind of the system overall.

And we do about 5,000

to 10,000

pieces a day right now.

That's incredible.

All right.

I already told you I'm going to be in Phoenix the

first week of August.

So come on over.

I got to figure out a way to come on over.

And I know some of the people who are listening right

now are also going to be in Phoenix with me.

So you just never know.

Yeah, please.

I mean,

our office isn't in the best part of town,

but there's some good restaurants nearby.

Happy to take you.

Y'all out to lunch too.

And you know,

show you the whole thing.

It's amazing to me.

I never thought I'd be doing this.

I never thought I'd have a company with machinery and lasers

and you know,

it's cool stuff,

but what's crazy is it's like robots building robots.

These laser cutters are building these handwriting robots.

And then the end result of the handwriting robot is a

very personal note that it's a piece of art kind of,

and it's cherished.

I mean,

we have a piano tuner in Pennsylvania,

the only needed tune a piano once a year,

I've learned.

And after tuning a piano,

he sends you a handwritten note a year later when he

returns to your house to tune your piano.

Again, that handwritten note is still sitting on the piano,

standing up on the piano.

You're not going to do that with an email.

You're not going to take a screenshot of a text message

and print it out.

And then not only is it kept for a year,

but it's kept on your family's most prized possession,

your piano.

So it just blows me away.

The impact is no tab there.

It's just completely different than an email or anything else.

So yeah,

I Mean,

talk about standing out from a crowd,

right? Because,

and again,

like, I always like to relate this back to everyone who's

listening, but we have people who are candlemakers or they make

pottery, or they are knitters all of that.

There are a lot of artisans out there who do the

same craft and by how everything comes together and adding personality

and all of that,

the are different.

But adding something on top of this is another way of

making yourself stand out versus everybody else,

you know,

who's doing a similar craft as you.

All right.

So let's talk about more,

the different ways we could use this for business.

So we were just talking about visibility for thanking someone for

the business,

right? So that would be one way that would be one

way is thinking.

And what does that do?

It makes you memorable.

It also,

like, I honestly think with your piano example,

David is when it's time to retune or maintain the piano,

it's almost like a classier business card because the contact information

is probably there,

or at least the guy's name,

whoever was the piano tuner.

I don't know why I'm making an assumption.

It's a guy,

but we'll just go with it.

There it is in this case.

So it's also a useful resource for the future.

Yeah. And I mean 99% of our,

or whatever,

not 99 because we have the holidays,

but 90% of our business is really thinking people.

And a lot of people say,

well, what's the ROI on that?

And I say,

well, if you're asking that question,

you're kind of missing the point because to your point,

none of us are unique.

There's other handwriting companies,

there's other knitting companies,

there's other,

whatever. Do dad gadget companies out there,

none of us are unique.

Snowflakes hate to break it to you.

So when somebody chooses you over the multitude of other businesses,

they can just Google or find on Alibaba or Etsy or

whatever else,

you know,

it's worth thinking that person for that full stop,

not looking for an ROI that said most of our clients

do get a tremendous ROI from this.

And I can give examples of all that.

But a lot of our business is thinking and thinking comes

in a lot of ways.

It could be an inbox.

Thank you.

So we work with a online mattress brand.

And when you open up that mattress box,

you get one of 12 different,

thank you notes with doodles.

So when your inbox,

it creates some logistical differences than if we send the note

after the fact via the mail.

When we send the note,

after the fact via the mail,

we can personalize it with your name,

with what products you've purchased,

all that.

But if we're in the box,

it just logistically hard to get the right box with the

right notes.

So instead we pre-print these,

but what we do is because it's not converting text to

handwriting because we know exactly how all these 12 notes are

going to look,

we duplicate doodles.

Exactly. So to give you an idea for the mattress company,

their notes say,

thank you so much.

We hope you enjoy your first night on your new mattress.

And then below that there's a picture of somebody sleeping in

a mattress hand,

drawn dreaming of a cat,

or there's a picture of the moon and the stars.

And so it's kind of like this little gift you get

in your mattress box that could easily be done in a

gift box to the hard thing with what we do is

getting a very unique handwritten note in that gift box.

We do it for a company called vinyl NYL they do

a record subscription.

And every day we write out our vinyl notes,

we overnight them to vinyl.

Each note has a order ID on it and they get

inserted, but that's logistically harder than doing kind of a cutesy

doodle note that also gets people's attention.

Right? We do those,

the inbox notes.

We do the thank you followup notes.

We do anniversary of purchase notes,

which are kind of another touch point.

So maybe six months or a year after getting a gift

basket or what have you,

we'll send a follow-up saying,

thank you so much again for your purchase last year.

We hope your recipient loved the basket of whatever that is.

And that's a great way to kind of keep the customer

engaged. And then we do some winbacks and you'll like this

example, we have a,

it's not a gift basket,

but it's a snack box that it's for offices.

So we actually have it here.

And I don't know what's going on with the company.

They keep sending us more and more snacks.

It's like,

we're swimming in it.

I hope it's good.

It's good.

It's a lot of the stuff called cracklin comet,

which is some sort of grain.

And we're eating a lot of Kimo around here now,

but anyway,

the gift box or the snack box has all these different

snacks in it.

And I guess every once in a while,

they'll screw up a client's box.

And I don't know if that means they don't send it

to them or they include the wrong items and what have

you. But when they do that,

what they find is if they send another box to them

with a handwritten note,

included, apologizing for the mistake and saying,

you know,

you're so valuable to us.

Here's another box on us.

Those customers actually have a higher lifetime value than if they

never had a screw up in the wind back experience at

all. So then what this snack box has been doing,

I'm not joking is they're actually going out,

screwing up on purpose and then sending that wind back to

res all customers experiences so that everybody goes through that win-back

experience. And everybody has a higher lifetime value.

So that is kind of a unique case,

but win-back is big for us.

And then we're also doing a little bit of intro,

like, Hey,

we're opening a store in your neighborhood,

but that can get very expensive.

And we typically don't recommend it.

Two things that come up for me with this.

I actually like the card being a separate thing than the

actual product being delivered,

because then you get another touch point there.

Exactly. And so I think that the value of the experience

is enhanced further versus whatever the package is with the product

in it,

including the card,

but the package with the product in it obviously wrapped very

beautifully with whatever branding there is,

whatever messaging it normally comes with it.

And then for special,

maybe higher tiered product,

a separate card that comes saying,

thank you.

Or maybe even includes a tip of how to take care

of the item or,

you know,

like whatever it would be just enhances the whole experience.

And then what does that,

do you talk about it?

And when you talk about it,

that could be a referral sale.

Absolutely. So I could see totally that.

And then,

you know,

like when you were saying that 99% of the reason why

people are sending cards is the category of thinking versus seasonal,

of course,

but the thinking,

I could see that being able to be tracked through what

the average lifetime value of a customer is over time.

Like if a company already knows that their average lifetime customer

value is X and they started doing some of these types

of cards and they saw their lifetime value increase and the

cards was the only variable.

Then there you go.

That's how you could track the success of a program like

this. Exactly.

Yeah. We have an other snack box for,

I guess this wasn't at the time for offices,

it was just a snack you could order online.

And what they would do is they would use this as

a followup and they would do product recommendations based off what

you purchase.

So, Hey,

Sue, thanks so much for ordering the dried pineapple rings.

We really think you'll love sweet chili pistachios.

They would do a lot of that to kind of create

a personalized face to the brand.

What's funny is online brands and catalog brands really in some

ways can do a better job of being personable than in

store brands.

I'll give you an example.

We work with a very,

very high-end perfume or guests in this case earlier cologne,

but the perfume cologne brand is in high-end department stores.

And I was walking through a mall before the pandemic with

my wife and kids.

And we saw at the Neiman Marcus or whatever,

they had this perfume and I walked up to it and

I was showing my wife and the perfume rep came over

and was talking to me.

I said,

oh no,

I'm not interested.

I couldn't afford this perfume,

but we work with you guys.

And she said,

no, you don't.

I have to write my own notes.

And I said,

oh, well,

I'm sorry.

We only do the notes for the online purchases.

And what happens is in that case,

the in-store notes never get written because that clerk is too

busy. Merchandising is too busy,

cleaning up the area is too busy,

dealing with the cash register,

all that stuff.

They never get around to the fact that they're actually supposed

to send these people handwritten notes versus on the online brand,

it's fully automateable through a company like us.

And it creates a much better relationship with the customer than

the in store.

Does we work with this high-end luxury leather company?

And there we do both in store and online.

And when we do in store,

we actually insert the name of the store clerk,

their phone number,

what store they were at.

So it's personal and it looks like that specific person sent

the note to you.

So it's very interesting how brands like your listeners kind of

have the leg up than a traditional brick and mortar.

And I will tell you,

I know for a fact that a lot of people who

make handmade products include a personalized note that they're writing in

with their boxing,

with the packaging as it goes out.

Yeah, absolutely.

Where do we fit into the whole scheme?

Like if there was,

let me pick a product,

let's just say jewelry.

Okay. So the boxes are kind of small and let's say

we're doing something that's separate from the box.

Okay. So whoever's making the jewelry is going to put it

out as they normally do,

but they wanted to do handwritten notes that they were no

longer writing for themselves.

First off,

what type of volume do you need to be running to

be able to use your business?

We're going to get more of the details on handwritten right

after a quick break to hear from our sponsor.

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Honestly, you have to kind of look at the product to

determine if you're worried about ROI.

You have to look at the product to see is this

really worth it,

but you can start with us sending one card.

I'll say one card a year,

but one card period for $3 and 25 cents plus postage.

So three 80 out the door.

Okay. But if you plan on doing a lot of these,

we offer,

you know,

I don't want to make this a sales pitch,

but, but we offer discounts.

Whether you subscribe for discount,

where you get certain credits every month,

or you prepay for a discount or you just place a

big bulk order,

it can go down to like two bucks.

And that could be completely custom.

That card could be custom.

The handwriting is if you want to use one of our

25 pre-dawn handwriting styles,

any of those and yeah,

I mean,

it's just $2 plus postage.

Gotcha. Okay.

So there is no minimum then if someone was interested and

honestly, someone who sells a product that is $300 to a

thousand dollars,

I'm thinking some of our artists or garment creators,

you know,

where the product is more expensive,

a $3 card would make sense.

$3 card probably wouldn't make sense if someone's buying one candle.

So you look at it and figure out how it would

work for your business,

but let's go with I'm back to my jewelry.

So let's say we have a jeweler.

And she has decided that when she sells pieces that are

$250 or greater,

she wants to do something additional and send a card.

And her purpose in doing that is obviously it's an additional

enhancement to the experience overall.

She could be thinking that,

well, this person who is enjoying the necklace,

either for theirself as a gift,

I have a whole price range.

So as long as she's liking working with me,

she may also be interested in less expensive earrings as gifts

or additional beautiful pieces that she's going to add to a

collection or for a gift.

So lots of just the thinking that would go on in

someone's head and at a piece that tells it $250,

even a $3,

thank you.

Note would make a whole lot of sense.

So if I were to do that,

I have this business,

it's a jewelry business and I've decided that that's my cut

point. Like anyone who's purchasing at a $250 level or greater,

I would send a card.

So now I'm going to put it back over to you.

What are the steps to being able to do something like

that with you?

So The first step is you'd want to determine what type

of car do you want to use?

One of our off the shelf non-custom cards.

That's just like a nice thank you note card.

And you know,

sometimes you might want to do that.

If you feel like if I use something branded with my

logo, that's going to look a little bit too.

Corporate-y that's really up to you.

I think for any of your brands,

you could probably easily get away with a custom card.

If you'd say,

okay, I want to do the custom card.

There's two ways to do it.

If you prepay for a bunch of them,

if you prepay for 500 cards or more with us,

which are good for a year,

there's no cost to a full custom,

full bleed,

folded card.

If you don't want to commit to that,

you can still go on our website and use what's called

the card customizer and put your logo on a five by

seven flat card.

And it comes out looking very nice.

It's just cost $3 and 75 cents because it's a little

bit more work on our end.

Versus if you want to do it in bulk,

then you're printing in bulk too.

So your costs go down also.

Exactly. Yeah,

yeah. If you're a client and maybe I'll use it,

maybe I won't,

but I want to send my first card to give it

a shot.

And I want to have my logo on one side and

a picture of my product on the other $3 75 cents

is what that would cost.

So step one,

figure out what you want to do on the card.

And then step two,

figure out what you want to write,

obviously. And then step three is how are you going to

send this card?

Are you going to just go onto our website and upload

a whole bunch of orders?

You can absolutely do that.

Or if you're using Shopify or an Etsy store or WooCommerce

or whatever else,

we can easily integrate and set up that rule of orders

over $500 or total lifetime client threshold is now over $500.

You could set up those rules and then automatically send out

the note directly without even thinking about it.

That's what I would say.

There's no additional cost on our end.

I mean,

you might have to pay for Zapier depending on the Zapier

plan. You're on,

we are actually coming out with a direct integration for Shopify,

but there's been some goofy setbacks with that.

That'll be so worth it when it happens though,

I'm a Huge Shopify fan as everybody who listens.

Yeah. Yeah.

And that plugin will basically do the same thing you could

do through Zapier.

It'll just make it more transient.

Right. And do you help with setup with any of that

or are we on our own?

No. You help.

You Have account managers that can assist you with that.

No problem.

You just set that up in Zapier or set it up

with our Shopify app,

whatever. And then those nodes just go out and set it

and forget it you'd have One message.

The note would be one message because it would trigger based

on, let's say what you were saying,

a $500 or greater sale.

Let's just do one sale,

not cumulative sales,

but one sale.

And so there would be a single message that would go

out to anybody who had that sale.

Yeah. That's typically how it works.

I mean,

you can get really creative with Zapier.

You could have it randomized messages,

you could do dynamic insertion.

So instead of saying,

thank you for your purchase,

it could say,

thank you for your purchase of the golden earrings or whatever.

That's easy to do if you want it even more control.

And you're a little nervous about the automation and how that

would all end up.

You could certainly just dump your orders on a monthly basis

to an Excel file,

go through it,

clean it up and upload it into our system.

We have other clients that do that,

but you know,

every note could be different.

It's really up to you as far as what you want

to write in it.

After we get that stationary figured out,

that's kind of the next step is what are you going

to write and how are you going to automate it if

you want to?

And is it customized deer and whatever the person's name is?

Yeah, Absolutely.

I mean,

that's kind of the brass tacks of customization is personalization of

the name.

So yeah,

that's easy to do whether through Zapier Shopify or just bulk

Up and the name can be in the salutation,

could it also be in the message?

Yeah. So you could do,

like I said,

we hope you enjoyed your,

you know,

this is,

thank you so much for your purchase as you've purchased three

times from us in the past.

I mean,

you could do whatever you want.

Just depends how creative and how savvy you are with Zapier

or yeah,

we're Going to start super easy and that's the best way

to start,

but knowing the opportunity and the potential,

especially for people who have larger businesses who are listening,

it's just good to know that the capabilities are there.

Yeah. You're In good company.

I mean,

we work with most of our clients.

There's a few that we can mention,

like vinyl,

the company I mentioned,

or there's a large solar panel installer called pro companies.

There's some companies that allow us to mention them most do

not. And we would never mention you without your permission,

but there's luxury handbag companies,

largest meal box companies.

The largest online mattress brands are all handwritten clients.

And you can just visit handwritten.com,

click the business tab at the top and order some samples

to see for yourself how it looks if you're worried about

that. Got it.

I'm kind of thinking to myself,

like if I was making a handmade product and who knows,

maybe I'll want to do this with the ribbon print company.

So all you guys who are customers,

I don't know,

maybe you'll see something,

but I'm just thinking like,

even for the holidays yeah.

To upload,

and maybe it's not every single customer or it's people who

have purchased product in the last two years or three years,

or like you,

there's ways that you can segment your customer lists to determine

who would be the right fit for this and what fits

your budget,

that type of thing.

But I'm thinking for holidays,

this could be a no-brainer,

especially for our industries,

David, because the holidays,

obviously in retail,

it's the biggest time of the year.

But also when you make a handmade product,

all that you sell,

you're making more work for yourself because you're actually making the

product. You're not just buying it from someone else and then

selling it forward.

So holidays can be super crazy for us.

Oh yeah.

For us as well.

Yeah, I'm sure.

But so this could be something that could really be helpful

in a time-saver during the time of year,

when we want to be out,

promote selling our product.

And then also of course making the product of the orders

that we've taken.

But this could be a way of handling that holiday list

for your customers versus not doing it at all.

Yeah, exactly.

To your point about the cologne counter person.

Yeah. Maybe you segment your list,

your top 10% clients,

you actually do sit down and write those notes in actual

pen from you.

And then the bottom,

the next 50% of your list,

you have us do it for you or another company that

does what we do do it for you.

That type of thing,

where you kind of say,

okay, well these are our most price clients.

We're going to actually sit down and do this.

But then we have more of a templated approach for the

next tier.

We have a client they're an online furniture brand and they

send out handwritten notes.

I think they do it to thank customers,

but I was on the phone with them and I said,

how's it going?

And this is all during COVID.

So there's definitely a COVID impact here,

but they said,

oh, it's going great.

We just had somebody call into customer support yesterday crying because

they got a handwritten note from us.

I think a lot of that is the COVID impact.

People right now are so lonely and so isolated that anything

you can do to say,

Hey, you know,

I was thinking about you.

I took the time to send you a handwritten note or

call you or a video chat or whatever that is.

That means just more than ever before.

Luckily we're getting out of COVID amen to that,

you know,

but I'm also thinking that there are companies,

some people are going back to just the way they were

before, but some have rethought.

And whether they really want all their employees coming in all

the time,

or if home-based seems to be just as productive,

but you lose that personal touch.

Right. And so I know a lot of businesses also are

not having their annual meetings.

They're still going to go online because that's such a huge

expense, you know,

flying everybody in potentially for a meeting last year.

What they've been doing is sending out boxes to people that

they'll open up during these meetings,

but you could even send out hand written notes in preparation

for a meeting,

or just to thank people in your company who are remote

that you.ca

and all the time,

that goes a long way for employee retention to now I

get that,

that doesn't have anything to do with the handmade products we're

talking about.

But I wanted to bring up that idea because as we

were talking about before,

a lot of our listeners also still work for other companies.

This could be a way that they could bring an idea

to a company that they're working for and saying,

Hey, I know about this idea.

Yeah. That's cool.

Yeah, exactly.

Riding back to making people feel valued,

appreciated thanked.

Yeah. People say,

well, is this kind of underhanded because it's not actually handwritten.

Well, how many people do you know that get a Christmas

card from the president of the United States?

And then they put that Christmas card on their refrigerator.

Now every single one of them knows that the president did

not actually take the time to sign that note.

He didn't,

they had a robot do it,

or they had a laser printer,

but it still meant something to them.

Right. Even if they know,

well, geez,

this company.

And I think most people wouldn't know,

but even if they do know that the note you sent

them, wasn't really written by a person.

They do know,

at least you took the time to do something,

to reach out and thank them for their business or follow

up with them or whatever it is.

Right. I often joke our solution is when it's almost good

enough for the very best kind of like the next tier

down, but it still makes a tremendous impact.

And to your point,

yeah. I mean,

a lot of people kind of come to us to send

a note to their mom and then they realize,

gee, I can use this for my business.

And that's how we get them in the door.

Yeah. And if you actually plan what you're doing,

watch the reactions that you get,

and then you see the value of it moving forward.

And I think you're exactly right.

Yeah. It might not be exactly handwritten,

but you already said there are what,

24, 25 different scripts.

So you can do something that's pretty close.

And I think it goes back to,

what's your message.

You know,

if your message is very rote and sterile,

right then yeah.

Maybe the card will come across just that same way.

But if message is queued and aligns with the wording that

you use for your brand,

it comes at the right time based on a purchase that

you had or totally applies to your situation.

I think it can be totally meaningful.

And again,

get people talking forward about your company,

you know,

not only did I buy this great,

beautiful necklace,

or let's say you're wearing the necklace and someone says,

oh my gosh,

that's beautiful.

And you could say,

yeah, I got it at so-and-so and you know what they

did a week afterwards,

I got this really nice card in the mail.

That's a story connected with your company.

And that goes so far in terms of repetitive sales and

spreading the word about your brand.

Oh yeah.

I mean,

these things go viral.

That vinyl company,

I mentioned the record,

a lot of people take photos of those cards and post

them to Instagram,

like, cool.

I got a card from vinyl and we have another client.

They are a pet chew toy type company.

And when it's your pet's birthday,

we send a handwritten note to your dog.

And we include a little birthday hat,

like a little paper hat.

It's creating this whole viral thing because then people take pictures

of their dogs wearing the birthday hats,

holding the notes.

And it's just like,

people get really cute with this type of stuff.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah. You can be so creative.

Yeah. So obviously then you can do multiple versions of cards.

We just have to feed you then the list of the

people that need,

which version every month,

or this apps are set up properly.

However, that would work.

Exactly. We don't have to go into the big tech end

right now.

I just want people to know the capability.

So start brainstorming because this is a great idea.

Do you have future plans for handwritten that you can secretly

fill us in on?

Well, There's a lot.

This is a very complicated business.

We're doing some things to improve the handwriting even better.

We think it's best of like right now,

you know,

no two T's look the same two L's look different than

individual L's,

you know,

and that's at the beginning of the word is different than

us at the end.

Like we randomize all the characters,

we do all that and we vary the line spacing and

the left margin so that every line doesn't start on the

same spot.

And two lines are a little closer together than another two

lines. We do all that type of stuff,

but we don't bend the text or make the words at

the beginning of the sentence,

larger than the characters at the end of the sentence,

we're starting to get into all of that type of stuff.

We're also potentially getting into kind of doodles pre-canned doodles.

You can add to envelopes and notes.

So we already offer emojis if you want to include like

hearts and all that stuff,

we do that.

But if you want to actually put like a little open

me picture on the envelope,

we're going to be offering that capability too.

Just little stuff like that.

Then there's a lot going on with just operational efficiencies and

QA happening here.

And then finally we are getting into more fulfillment.

So typically it's non-perishable fulfillment.

So we do a lot of books.

So if you're an author trying to get your word out

on your next book and you want to send 500 books

to influencers,

we would do that shipment for you.

And we'd include a handwritten note to each influencer,

that type of thing.

We're coming out with a new version of our website,

but nothing too revolutionary there.

Okay. But creativity,

abounds, and it sounds like you're expanding on the different things

that you'd be able to do on the notes.

And that's the most important for us right now.

So I love all that.

A heart would be on my notes for sure.

So I'm glad you brought that up as an example.

Yeah. You can absolutely do hearts and smileys and all that

because what happened was when we released the iPhone app,

people would use their emoji keyboard and just include all of

that. Or they would include the sideways,

the colon parenthesis face.

And then this would translate to a colon parenthesis written on

a note,

which nobody does.

So then we started doing all those little hearts and less

than threes and all that stuff.

We'd convert those appropriately.

And now you can include all those with your notes.

Nope. Oh my gosh.

That is amazing.

I'm guessing you would want people to go and look at

the website.

Is that the best place online you'd want people to go

Handwritten.com and it's H a N D w R Y T

T E n.com.

So handwritten with a Y.

And then if you go there and you click the business

tab, you can request a full sample kit sent to you

free. You will get a followup from a sales person.

So I'm warning you about that,

but tell them to buzz off.

If you don't want any more conversation with them.

And then you can also sign up and use discount code

podcast when you sign up.

So you can't sign up with Facebook or Google,

you have to actually create an account to get that discount

code. But when you do that is discount code podcasts,

get five bucks in credit,

which is enough to send one card to somebody.

That sounds amazing.

And I think everybody should send one card because you're going

to see what this can do for you.

You're going to see the reaction that's on your customers' faces,

hopefully well faces,

or they're going to call you.

And thank you.

And I loved when you were talking about the social proof

people posting on social.

That's amazing.

So just help spread the word because that's what we're always

looking for over here is how to get more people knowing

about our products,

our brand,

and handwritten sounds to me like a wonderful way to do

it. So,

David, thank you so much.

I really appreciate you spending time with me today,

telling me all the fun stories about handwritten,

how it all works.

And I am really excited.

I'm going to be checking this out for myself for sure.

Well, Thank you so much.

So it's been a absolute pleasure being on your show.

I want to thank David again for giving us an opportunity

to send out a card and try handwritten for free.

Go to the website,

sign up for an account,

select a card and message,

and then use the discount word podcast.

And I'm going to request of you that you use this

for business so you can see the true value that it

can provide.

Take your latest customer or someone who's placed a significant order

and send them a thank you.

Then watch what happens.

I need to tell you right now that you don't want

to miss next week's show.

It's a maker's story that is as heartwarming as it is

informative. Shelly is definitely a role model in the maker industry

who takes us into her world and the growth of her

very interesting business,

who is Shelly.

You ask,

ah, come back Monday and find out.

And finally,

if you've enjoyed the show and are feeling generous today,

a review over on apple podcasts would be amazing doing that

helps the show get seen by more makers.

It's a nice way to pay it forward.

Did you see the new layout in the apple podcast app?

The subscribe button is gone and now to follow a show,

you tap on the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner.

Just something new to get used to when you follow,

you have the benefit of having access to the show before

others. So it's definitely worth it follow now.

So you're one of the first to find out who Shelly

is and now be safe and well.

And I'll see you again next week on the gift biz

unwrap podcast.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift is breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and are a community

to support each other.

Got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week.

I have to say where I invite all of you to

share what you're doing to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week to get

reaction from other people and just for fun,

because we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody

in the community is making my favorite post every single week,

without doubt.

Wait, what aren't you part of the group already,

if not make sure to jump over to Facebook and search

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