Handwritten Notes “Break the Clutter” En Route to Increased Customer Loyalty

During Tuesday’s Loyalty360 webinar titled, “Delivered: How Bond’s Handwritten Notes Drive Customer Loyalty,” presented by Bond, Matt White, director of sales for Bond, talked about the power of handwritten notes as they relate to customer engagement and customer loyalty.

“The premise of everything we do in building a service like this is thoughtfulness,” White told attendees. “It (sending handwritten notes) has a very strong impact in how we’re creating loyalty through an old method.
It can be such a clutter-buster, considering how much digital outreach we get in this day and age. Handwritten notes break the clutter.”

To achieve that goal, White noted, Bond needed to develop a couple of key things: Ease of use and authenticity.

“We don’t want our customers to change their behavior,” White said. “We’re just changing the delivery of that message and the impact that message can make.”

Bond combines tradition with technology, making it easy for businesses to send beautiful, thoughtfully crafted, handwritten notes to their customers. The company’s proprietary robotic technology takes the art of correspondence into the 21st century to help businesses deliver powerful, personalized messages that generate loyalty at scale.

“Our technology is about how someone’s handwriting can be replicated,” White said. “It’s not about changing behavior. Our clients have the intent to do something thoughtful for their consumer base. It maintains authenticity and saves them from sitting down and doing it themselves. We can turn around thousands of notes within a matter of hours. Businesses are coming to us with large lists. Often, we’re sending things overnight back to clients to fulfill packages.”

White, who said that Bond uses 120-pound stock, high-end quality stationery, shared a case study that involves one of the country’s largest home goods retailers. The goal of the project fell under the category of Amends & Retention.

“These notes aren’t just used for thank yous,” White said. “This company used the notes as an apology to its customers who might have had a poor customer experience.”

These particular handwritten notes carried unique redemption codes, which generated three times more activations than standard digital outreach.

What’s more, the University of Florida used handwritten notes for a campaign to boost sales among former season ticket-holders. Five hundred notes were sent, White said, that produced a 15 percent conversion rate.

Making emotional connections are more important than ever for brands to acquire and retain customer loyalty.

“The digitization of how we communicate with one another, whether in our personal lives or in business, has created a perceived or, in some cases, literal lack of thoughtfulness,” White said. “It’s so much easier to avoid a phone call from a loved one and opt to send a quick text. Businesses fall into that same practice of blasting impersonal and repeated messaging to consumers and those consumers know right away that they are part of some mass list…that they are not special or unique. A simple note saying, ‘thank you,’ can do far more for retention than any promo code you give them.”

Client feedback has been resoundingly positive.

“I’d be hard-pressed to find a single client of ours that has said their customers had a negative response from a handwritten note,” White said. “The loyalty we see forming from this type of communication with a customer stems from the fact that when they open their note and see a specific, personal thing about themselves called out, it strengthens their opinion of and relationship with that company or service. Again, it’s all about the fact that to even send someone one of these notes requires effort and thoughtfulness. With the range of options available to everyone when shopping for basically anything, a meaningful effort like that is a reason to keep coming back and to remain loyal to a brand.”

The handwritten notes are in real ink.

“I thought explaining the service and convincing people this is a good idea was going to be a big part of the job,” White added. “What was surprising is how many people are actually still doing this. Then we can jump right in and tell companies how we can save them time and achieve better business results.”
 

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