Written in Stone: How and Why to Implement Personalization

Keepsakes, momentos, treasures, heirlooms — whatever you call them, everyone has certain things that they hold dear. For many people, hand-written notes fall into that category. In a world filled with 240-character tweets, rapid-fire text messages, and a stuffed email inbox, getting a hand-written note means more than ever. Even if it comes from a brand.   

Personalization is one of the buzziest words in ecommerce, and every business is trying to find a way to give its customers the best, most personal experience possible. David Wachs is helping them with that.

David is the CEO of Handwrytten, which uses robots to send personal, hand-written notes, which have a 300% higher open rate than other types of communication. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, David explains why personalization is the way of the future. Plus, he dives into the thinking behind subscription-based services and what it takes for your subscription to stand out to investors. David also shares the advice that he received from Conan O’Brien that has stayed with him his entire life. 

Main Takeaways:

• This is Getting Personal: Over the last few years, consumers have started seeking more personalized experiences. There are many ways to create those experiences in-store and online, but ecomm businesses have a personalization advantage due to the data they have access to. Brands that can tap into that data and then follow through are the ones that stand out.   
• Subscribe Here: Subscription services are popping up everywhere. When done correctly, subscription services provide a recurring revenue model, which is something most investors look for. However, creating the right model takes time, effort, and experimentation, and it’s important to be willing to put in that work to find the model that is best for you and your customers. 
• Here’s Some Advice: When one piece of advice sticks with you 20 years later, that’s something worth paying attention to. Tune in to hear what words of wisdom from Conan O’Brien have inspired David every step of his journey.

For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.

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Transcript:

Stephanie:

Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today on the show, we have David Wachs, the CEO of Handwrytten, spelled with a Y. David, welcome.

David:

Thank you so much for having me.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on the show. I just went down a great wormhole of watching your robots write letters. I think that's a great starting point to hear how you came to be at Handwrytten. What brought you to found it?

David:

Yeah, so this is actually my second venture. My first one was in the text messaging space. So, I started that one before the iPhone came out. We rode the wave of mobile technology with the iPhone and all that. By the end, we were sending millions of messages a day on behalf of major brands, like Toys R Us, a lot of brands that are now bankrupt, but no fault of ours, but Toys R Us, Sam's Club, OfficeMax, Abercrombie & Fitch, etc.

David:

What we did was we helped them connect with their customers through text messages. And then we also did iPhone apps and Android apps and all that, but our core was really text messages. What we found was, it really, really worked. I mean, these were not spam messages. These were people opted in, so they actually wanted to receive Abercrombie & Fitch offers, etc, straight to their cell phone. When we sent out those offers, they'd have literally lines out the door.

David:

We worked with Tropical Smoothie Cafe, which is a big smoothie shop chain. Every time they sent out an offer, I'd walk into a Tropical Smoothie. I'd say, "How's this mobile thing working?" They didn't know who I was, and they'd say, "Oh, my gosh. Every time we do it, we have to staff up, because we sell so many smoothies." So, I knew we had something good. But at the same time, I helped create a monster, because everybody nowadays is getting inundated with probably 50 text messages a day from family and commercial texts and right now, political texts, several hundred emails a day.

David:

I think the average office workers receives about 150 emails a day and spends 28% of their time sorting through all that email. And then you add stuff like Twitter and Facebook and Slack and all the Instagram, all these other electronic forms of communication. Maybe I'm just old, but for me, it all just becomes noise.

Stephanie:

It's very noisy right now, especially with the political texts that I'm getting.

David:

Oh, my God.

Stephanie:

I'm getting like five a day. Stop it. I don't want that anywhere.

David:

I know, I know. It all just becomes noise. The average 35 to 44-year-old receives nearly 1,600 texts a month. The average 18 to 24-year-old receives 4,000 a month. So, what I know and what you know is no matter how personalized that email or that text looks... Hey, David, thank you so much for your purchase of this coffee grinder or whatever. ... that text was automated or that email was automated. We immediately discount the value of it, right?

David:

Half of them or way more than half, I never even read, because you just know it's automated junk. And then junk mail, the slick stuff that comes in your mailbox goes directly to your trash can. But what I realized right before leaving, my last company, is handwritten notes not only do they get opened, but they get treasured. I have a bookshelf behind me at my last job that had the handwritten notes I received. My salespeople had all the handwritten notes they received. What I wanted to do was when I sold my last company is I wanted to send handwritten thank you notes to my employees and send handwritten thank you notes to my best clients, thanking them for helping me build up this company and sell it and all the rest.

David:

I started doing that. I sat down with the best intentions. Very quickly, my hand got sore or I ran out of stamps or I screwed up a card and I had to get another one. I just realized there had to be a better way. So, that's a long explanation on how I ended up with Handwrytten, which is what we have today. What Handwrytten is a combination of software on the front end and then robots on the back end. So, you visit handwrytten.com or use our iPhone app, Android app, Zapier, Salesforce.com Integration, which is a big integration for us, and I know a sponsor of the show, HubSpot integration, all these ways to get your handwritten notes into the system.

David:

And then we use robots, real robots that we have a patent pending on and I can get into how we develop those, but they're custom robots we built, robots holding real ballpoint pens that actually then write out the notes and mail them on your behalf. The end result is completely indistinguishable from a human.

David:

We're doing this for large brands and small brands and individuals. Consumers can go on and send their mother a birthday card, for example, all the way up to major brands.

Stephanie:

Though your mom might know. She'd be like, "That's not your handwriting, Stephanie." Do you guys have any tech that maybe could mimic handwriting, where I could go in there and write up a couple words, and then your robots come in and write it similar to my handwriting?

David:

So, not exactly. What we do is if you really want your handwriting recreated, we have worksheets for you. It's like you're back in middle school. You have to fill in all the letters and all the numbers multiple times, because we need multiple variations, and we need ligature combinations. So, like two Os together, two Ls together. Do you cross your two Ts with one crossbar or two? We take all that into account. We create a very robust handwriting just for you, but it's an expensive onetime thing. So, pay for it once, it's yours. It's in the system. You can use it as much as you want, no additional charge. So, yeah, but most of our clients or businesses not you sending to your mother. So, for them, it doesn't really matter as much.

David:

Honestly, I dissuade people from creating their handwriting style, because it is so expensive.

Stephanie:

Very cool. So, tell me a little bit about maybe some case studies or the ROI that some of your clients are seeing when they send out a note that looks personalized versus just a typical letter, something that's written up by a computer and is very obvious?

David:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have a bunch of stats here, but I don't want to constantly give you footnotes on the stats. So, if I say any st