businessinfomag.uk
magazine
28
Marketing Communications
Mixing the old with the new
In this age of email and social media,
handwritten letters are becoming
as rare as an unused Penny Black.
This makes them an increasingly
attractive medium for businesses
that want to stand out from the
crowd. Charlotte Pearce, the 24
year-old founder and CEO of Inkpact,
spotted the marketing potential of
the handwritten letter while still a
student, when she earned pocket
money by creating personalised
marketing communications for clients.
Since graduating she has expanded
her business and now employs eight
full-time staff and 50 freelance
writers. Investment in a new IT system
has given Inkpact a scalable platform
to support growth plans, which for
2016 include a doubling of the writing
team to 100 and expansion overseas.
Business Info
spoke to Charlotte
about mixing the old with the new.
Business Info (BI):
So what exactly
does Inkpact do?What services do
you provide?
Charlotte Pearce (CP)
:
We bring
together technology, pens, paper and
ink with underutilised and sometimes
disadvantaged communities to enable
companies to send personalised, luxurious
communications written specifically for
their clients. To stand out in this digital
age is quite difficult.We help companies
do that in a really personal way with
physically hand-written notes, letters and
cards.We have a whole team of writers
across the UK who are trained by us and
work from home.We do everything for
the client, from supplying the stationery
to writing and posting the letters. Our
technology platform lets us handle huge
volumes, from 50 to 50,000 items.
BI
:
What sort of businesses use your
service?
CP:
We work with a whole range of
companies – normally B2B, but more
recently we’ve ventured into B2C
customer service campaigns.We’ve
worked a lot with IT service companies
who want clients to come back every
year.We’ve also done quite a lot with
high-end luxury brands to help convey
a luxury image, and also with start-
ups to help them get their message
across to companies that don’t know
they exist.We can tailor our services to
lots of different customer needs. Every
company has an 80:20 rule; we help
companies retain the 20% of customers
that bring in 80% of the revenue.
BI:
What is it about handwriting that
these companies like?
CP:
The main thing is that it stops
their message from getting lost in an
inbox. It’s easy to ignore an email, but
if something comes to you in the post
you always open it, so your message
gets read 100% of the time.With email
and online communications you can’t
assume that. Simply by increasing the
open rate, a handwritten envelope will
normally increase the response rate.
There is also the psychological
dimension. If someone has taken the
time to write to you by hand, you feel
you owe them something in return.
If they are inviting you to visit their
website, you might think ‘They have
taken the time to write to me, so I
should reciprocate’. The response-
to-action rate with hand written
communications is often significantly
higher, even though it is more difficult
to click through from a piece of paper
than it is from an email.
There is a social media angle, too.
We find that when someone receives
something physical they often take a
photo of it and put it online because a
handwritten letter is so rare. The brand
effect of that is important to companies.
BI:
When did you set the company up?
CP:
I set it up two years ago with a small
group of writers, initially as a part-time
business. I did the marketing for one-
to-one business coaches who wanted
to develop a really personal relationship
with clients. There was no technology
then, it was just writing and delivering
handwritten marketing. As we got more
customers, we realised that to scale up
we would need a technology platform
that would enable writers to log into our
system from anywhere.
BI:
Please tell me a bit more about the
technology platform.
CP:
It works in a similar way to an
email system like MailChimp. The client
uploads a .csv or database file of the
people they want to communicate with;
they select the stationery they want;
upload their logo or corporate branding;
submit the text they want us to write;
and then pick the date it should be sent.
Our writers, anywhere in the country, can
see that a job has been posted on the
system and can volunteer to do it.We
send the stationery they need to their
house, where they will handwrite each
one. Every time they complete a card or
letter, they take a photo and upload it
onto the system so that we can check
the quality before it is sent out on behalf
of the client.
We can also integrate our platform
with a client’s CRM system so that if
they want to send customers something
really personal, like a discount voucher
on their birthday, the customer’s details
will automatically come through to
us and we will send out the voucher.
This level of integration makes things
really easy for the client. It also works
really well for handling complaints.
For example, if you are a retailer and
your CRM registers a complaint from a
customer, we can automatically send
them a handwritten apology.
To stand out
in this digital
age is quite
difficult.
We help
companies do
that in a really
personal way
Business Info
discusses the appeal of the handwritten letter with
Charlotte Pearce, founder and CEO of Inkpact
