Why Handwrytten Notes Beat AI Marketing Every Time | David Wachs

Welcome to the B2B Growth Blueprint podcast, where we talk with entrepreneurs, founders, and leaders at B2B services, tech, and SaaS companies to learn the systems and processes they've used to create success for their business. We'll also learn from marketing and sales experts, uh, to provide insights to help you grow your business. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and the podcast is brought to you by Modern Revenue Strategies and their 10x ROI B2B Growth Guarantee. Schedule a free diagnostic call to learn the fastest path to double your B2B revenues in just 90 days. Hello and welcome to another episode of the B2B Growth Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host, Mark Osborne, and today I'm very excited to welcome my guest, David Wax. David is a proven entrepreneur. His latest venture, Handwritten, provides scalable robotic solutions that write your notes in pen. Used by businesses in all industries and nonprofits, Handwritten changes the way brands and people connect. Prior to Handwritten, David founded Sellit, which was a leading mobile marketing platform with clients including Abercrombie Fitch, Walmart, and More, January of 2012. And both Handwritten and Sell It were on Inc. Magazine's, uh, 500 list of fastest-growing companies. David's a speaker on marketing technology, has been featured in The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, and is a contributor to Inc. Magazine. So I'm very much looking forward to this conversation. David, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Mark, for having me. It's a pleasure.

Yeah. So, you know, as much as I want to talk about the features and the functionality of Handwritten and talk about how that fits into a marketing and sales mechanism, you know, a lot of our audience are entrepreneurs and founders themselves, and they'd love to hear a little bit of your kind of entrepreneurial story. Tell us a little bit of the twists and turns that brought you to where you are today.

Yeah. So, I was going back to 2000 and I'd say 3. I moved out to, uh, so that was 23 years ago. Yikes. I moved out to San Diego, um, to work for a venture capital firm. That ended up being a colossal epic cluster.

Oh yeah.

I, um, I was in a car accident. I got evicted from my apartment. The car accident was my fault. I take credit for the car accident. I don't take credit for being evicted from my apartment due to the owners being a, uh, in a, uh, divorce decree, and they're battling over who gets the apartment and all this baloney. Getting fired from my job from the venture capital firm— the guy was a nut. They haven't even filled that role since then, if that tells you anything. And then flooded out. So in that very short time of 4 months, I went from being kind of an entitled Ivy League kid with a venture capital job to being kicked on my ass on the street. So I didn't know. And the problem was I took all my money prior to that and I used it to pay down my huge Ivy League school debt. So I had nothing left in the nest egg when I was fired. I was tapped and I tried applying for other VC jobs, didn't get them. And I crawled back home to Phoenix, Arizona, where I grew up. And I, uh, spoke to my dad and he said, well, this is back before the iPhone, this is before Zillow. And he said, you know, it would be really great to use BlackBerrys or barcodes to get information on properties because he's a realtor.

Yeah.

And, you know, you drive by a house, the flyer box would be empty, etc. So I said, well, maybe not BlackBerrys and barcodes, although the barcode thing these days with QR codes You are, yes. Prescient. I said, but how about texting? So you could text in, you get a sign, you text in the code found on the sign, you'd get back info on the property, the realtor would get a lead. And to give you a sign of the times, you could even reply with your fax number, the fax of more info on the property. That's just to tell you what it was like 23 years ago. So, uh, started that company quickly. Decided I don't want to be a one-horse race or whatever. I want to have more skills. So I moved from just real estate to general texting for nightclubs and bars and that type of thing. And because dealing with realtors is can be tough. So did that, and then our first big client was actually Marie Claire magazine. And then we got. For Rent magazine, which at the time you'd go to a supermarket and you get these catalogs of apartments for rent. Yeah, we took our house for sale, our real estate offering, and applied it to every apartment in the magazine.

Wow.

And then we got Sam's Club, OfficeMax, Toys R Us, Abercrombie. The list just grew to the point in 2009— I'm sorry, 2014. So this was 2011. I sold, uh, 2012, I sold the company to a marketing firm called ePrize, um, when we were doing about a million texts a day just for one client alone, Abercrombie, along with everything else. Um, so sold to them, had to work for them for 2 years. They were, um, they quickly got purchased by a very large private equity firm. Uh, so I had to deal with that, uh, the troubles of dealing with private equity. And then the next day after my earnout, which is like when you got— when you get bought, you're locked in with golden handcuffs. That's called an earnout. And as soon as my earnout was over, the next day I started Handwritten. And the reason I did it is a couplefold. Number one, I didn't know what else the heck to do. Number two, when I sold Sell It, I wanted to send my customers and my employees something meaningful. So I sat down with a pad of, um, a stack of thank you cards and stamps and all that. I started writing them thank you notes. I went off moo.com, I got really nice stationery, all this stuff, and it quickly became very difficult. Uh, you know, I'm, uh, probably ADHD or whatever, and I couldn't get through the notes, and my hand cramped, and my penmanship sucked. So I thought there had to be a better way. And so with that, I thought of the idea of sending a handwritten note as easy or easier than sending an email. And that's where Handwritten came from. Um, so that's kind of the backstory on Handwritten, and I can get into what Handwritten is if you want, but it was really designed for me. Uh, and I also thought, you know, everybody, we're sending a million texts just for Abercrombie, but everybody is also re— feels like they're receiving a million texts. And at the time, they were getting 134 emails a day, spending 24% of their time just managing their inbox. You know, email was becoming a chore, not a surprise and delight. Text was overwhelming. Slack was now out. Push notifications, all these other things, Twitter. And people were just starting to feel overwhelmed in 2014 with electronic communication. And that's kind of why I thought, let's pivot the other way. So that kind of brings, brings us to Handwritten, but I don't know if you want to go deeper on the past or the future or what.

Well, so I definitely, you know, on this show we talk a lot about, you know, marketing and sales systems, not silver bullets or one-trick ponies, but really the systems that help, you know, companies accelerate deals, attract the right prospects, all of those things.

Yeah.

And so I want to talk about How— what I'm seeing in the marketplace is this swing from all digital to more analog. And this fits perfectly in there, but still with, you know, some aspects of automation. But before we dive into how it fits in to sort of an orchestrated platform, tell our audience exactly what is Handwritten. How does it work?

So, Handwritten now is the world's largest, which is, you know, understand it's a very small niche. But we are the world's largest provider of automated handwriting solutions. We are fully vertically integrated, so we build the robots, we write the software, we print the cards for sending out handwritten notes at scale. Unlike Sellit, where we were doing 100— or sorry, 1 million a day— at Handwritten, we're doing closer to 30,000 to 35,000. A day. So it's a much smaller product because it's not digital. It's not just a ping to an SMS provider. So, but with that, the way we do it is we have these 200+ robots. Each one holds a real pen. They write in 36 different handwriting styles or your own, and we have hundreds of custom styles that are locked to just their owners. So celebrities, CEOs, football stars, you name it, it's crazy. And we write out their notes on the cardstock of their choice, stuff it in an envelope, write on the envelope, and mail it for them with a real stamp. And that whole process takes about 2 days from writing the notes through the whole QA process. We've— we actually— there's no manual step. It's all automated. So We use computer vision, a computer vision system we built to read every card to make sure the vectors, the, um, the line, the strokes of the card match what they're supposed to match. And if there's a dot missing over an I, we catch it and throw it away. And then we invisibly insert that, we invisibly mark the card and insert it into a robot, or sorry, an envelope. That envelope is then put on a robot for writing out the envelope. That way there's no chance of misstuffing. You know, we will never stuff the wrong card in the wrong envelope. I mean, we have it down so much that we can detect two sheets of paper versus one in an envelope. So if by chance we stuff two cards in one envelope, we'll know that. And then we write on the envelope, stamp it with either a first class stamp or a pre-sort for. First-class stamp depending on your flavor, and then we mail it for you. So that's really handwritten in a nutshell. And we do it. You know, it's kind of it's good and it's bad that it's universally applicable. We do it for car dealerships, nonprofits, small business piano tuners. You know, like piano tuners, large department store chains, multinational luxury goods. We do it for really any anybody that feels they need a deeper relationship with their customer. And I think these days everybody does.

So— That's right.

Yeah.

So I love this because A, it's unique, but B, it really fills an important gap. And there's so many different use cases that I kind of want to just seed some so our audience can think about this because what I have seen in the marketplace is during COVID everything went very digital. So no more in-person meetings. Now everything's on Zoom.

Yeah.

But, you know, we always see pendulums swing, you know, so it became so over here. And now I'm seeing people want to sit across the table from, from others now. They, and, you know, likewise, once everyone moved to texting, you know, no longer did you even get emails anymore. You just got text messages. And now there's just this you know, overabundance of text messages and emails because there's all this AI slop out there, uh, that's just sort of churning out communications constantly and none of it has any character and none of it has any, uh, distinction. Just the form itself of using a handwritten note creates that distinction, even if you didn't send anything meaningful.

Um, yeah.

Which obviously there's the opportunity to actually send something meaningful. But I love it for so many use cases. And, you know, thinking about how this fits into, you know, an overarching approach, you know, we see people that, you know, will set up software on a website that will identify a site visitor and then go out and enrich that site visitor's IP address with their name and their title and the company they work for and then score them against Are they really my ideal customer avatar persona? And then, you know, blast them an email.

Yep.

But there's such an opportunity to take that a step further and do something like this and send a handwritten note, especially for companies that sell really high-value, highly considered solutions like consulting or tech services or all these things.

Yeah.

Likewise, so many folks, you know, are sort of hunting for ways to stay relevant with their customers instead of, you know, sending another, have you looked at my proposal yet? Where are you in your decision process? Honestly, even saying the same thing almost with a handwritten card is such a way to stand out. And, you know, we do a lot of programs with Folks where they'll identify like their dream clients that they really want to break through and break into. And, you know, they know if any of these clients, you know, could close, it could be a deal changer for them or, you know, a game changer in their business. And they're, they're using really sort of blunt instruments to try to break through that never get opened. Emails get deleted, text messages get ignored, but a handwritten note Always gets opened.

Exactly, man. I couldn't have said it better myself. You know, in sales, I'd say they call it a pattern interrupt. I don't know if you've heard that term. You know, and I haven't done too much sales training. I leave that to the salespeople. But I've sat in on some Sandler courses, and they call it a pattern interrupt where you just do something different to catch them off guard. I think I think that's what a pattern interrupt is, and a handwritten note is certainly that. So, you know, from that perspective. It works really well. And, you know, we see our clients getting, you know, post-presentation to close substantially higher success rates from that. But, you know, for clients that are looking to automate it or integrate it, if not automate it, we have an amazing Salesforce. And I don't want to pitch anybody, but we integrate with Salesforce and HubSpot and Zapier and all the rest. That make it really easy that to when a deal gets to a certain spot in the pipeline, you can send them either a fully custom handwritten note or a templated one, but they'll never know the difference. They'll just be happy you sent them a handwritten note. And let me give one example of a counterpoint to that. So a couple years ago, I received a FedEx package. It was a flat. And I opened it up and there was a card inside. And on that card, when I opened the card, there was a digital screen that started playing an advertisement. It was like a little, you know, 3-inch screen or 2-inch screen that started playing a video about some SEO company. It was such corporate drivel that I couldn't get through the stupid ad.

Oh no.

And there was nothing written on the card. It was just somebody took the the programmed card stuck in the mail, sent it to me. I said— and then it came with instructions, fortunately, for, um, recycling or sending back, which, you know. So what, what that card did for me when I got it, all I wanted to— A, I said this is a gimmick. B, all I wanted to know is how it worked because I'm an engineer. I'm an engineer, so I wanted to know how it worked. And then C, I thought, gee, this thing must be super Their services must be super high margin if they're willing to FedEx out these packages to everybody with these electronic doodads in them, um, to prospecting. So I thought, so they're going to make a fortune off me. That's right.

They're way overcharging.

Yeah. I don't want anybody to make a fortune off me. Right. I was just trading emails with my accountant for the same thing. So, um, I sent it back and I said, you know, had you thought about just sending a handwritten note? It would be either you do it yourself or you hire somebody like us to do it. It would be cheaper. It would be more authentic. It would have a higher likelihood to have the message read, not viewed, but read. It wouldn't create this impression of you're going to make me a lot of money. And it wouldn't be distracting, you know. So, but everybody is always looking for the next, you know, gizmo, the next little cheat code thing, when sometimes it's just sitting right in front of them. It's just a handwritten note, you know, write it your damn self. So that's— it's really interesting. But on the working side, I'll give you a story. I mentioned a piano tuner. We do have a piano tuner in Pittsburgh, I believe, and he tunes your piano. He then doesn't see you for a year because your piano only needs to be tuned once a year. When he returns to your— he sends you an automated thank you note. He's hooked us up through Zapier. A year later, when he returns to tune your piano a second time, he often sees that handwritten note standing up on the piano. So not only was it opened, not only was it read, it was kept. And where was it kept? It was kept on their most prized possession in the home, the piano. And the space on that piano is often reserved for graduation announcements and family photos, right? Like, you as a marketer— and all businesses are marketers in some way— cannot buy that real estate. You just can't. But a handwritten note, because it connotes something different, is able to break through. And it's really unique that way. And I know You're not— your listenership is probably not a lot of piano tuners, but the same thing goes for everything. I mean, behind me, I know I'm on a green screen. I have all sorts of cards from—

That's right.

You know, from my family and friends and everybody else. And people keep these things. So, you know, when we call somebody after sending a handwritten note, we say, you know, we'd use it for prospecting. We say, did you receive my handwritten note? If we say, did you receive my email? They'd say, uh, let me check, and they'd search. But, but if you say, did you receive my handwritten note? They'd say, yes, I did, it's sitting right here. And then you say, let's sign you up, right? Because if it's sitting right there, it worked, even if they don't realize it worked. So, um, that's, you know, that's the power of the handwritten note.

Yeah, well, and we love to suggest things like this as part of an integrated program of, you know, you Have something that maybe drives people to the website, and then you identify site visitors. If they're of a high enough value because they looked at the page that's the most expensive thing you've got to sell, send them a note. Or you've sent them an email and they didn't respond. And, you know, maybe you did a LinkedIn connection and they didn't respond, but you know that if you could break in there, they'd be a really valuable solution. Now you trigger the handwritten note.

Yeah.

Then you, when you send the next email, it's following up on that handwritten note. The next connection on LinkedIn is following up on that handwritten note, which cuts through the clutter so much better. And I love that things like this, you can in many ways set it and forget it because you were talking about, you know, your piano tuner that, you know, you, he's got a, an annual sort of relationship with them. He can put in the date that they signed up and then.

Yeah.

3 months in advance of having it come out and have 'em, you know, send another note or whatever it might be. And we see where people that have, you know, really high-value clients, they'll put in their birthdays or their anniversaries or other things like that that gives them an opportunity to really stand out in that marketplace and really deepen those relationships.

Yeah. And, you know, again, I don't wanna make this about handwritten with a Y. I wanna talk about handwritten with an I. actual note. But within our platform, you can obviously set up birthday card campaigns and all that stuff. So, um, yeah, that's, that's a very useful— and you can include gift cards to Starbucks or Amazon, um, that type of thing. So it all— that, that's, you know, this is, again, this was made for me to use. And, uh, I was like, gee, wouldn't it be cool to have gift cards? And boy, did I not— you know, it's what I call a classic brain fart for me, because next thing you know, we have bit— we have gift cards stacked up and we have fraud issues because People from Africa are trying to buy the gift cards to— anyway, but we now have that solution. So you can go on our website and include gift cards with your projects.

Well, David, you've obviously built something really interesting and have a lot of expertise, and we could talk about it all day, but I got to be mindful of your time. But sort of give us the pitch, like for those folks that are listening, And they're thinking like, maybe this is for me. Like, who gets the most benefit from this type of solution and how do you really help them? Yeah.

So, if you're looking to improve the value of your clients, not— I wouldn't say so much prospecting, but maybe during that sales cycle or after they purchase from you, you know, the most expensive thing is customer churn. So, if you want to improve the relationships with your customers, drive more loyalty, more durability, then you should start sending them a handwritten note. And that can start with an I, sit down and write it yourself. But then when you can't do it anymore and you want to scale it, then come to a company like Handwritten. We are not the cheapest solution. There's cheaper things out there, but we've seen what the cheaper solutions do. And, you know, you have to think about your brand reputation. And do you want it to actually look handwritten, or do you want it to look like a bad phony that, that ruins your reputation?

Right.

So we are there as the largest, the best, the one with all the technology, the fastest, the most accurate, the safest, because we have all those QA steps thrown in to provide the best experience. And that takes a lot of people behind the scenes to do. Um, that said, you know, cards are $1.29 if you sign up for a business plan. And then postage is extra. So all in, it's about $2. So if you're doing a business project, you know, what's $2? And this allows you to really create impressions and durable relationships at scale. It's all your cardstock, so you can upload a beautiful card design. It can either be a folded card, either folded portrait or landscape. Or a flat card, whatever you want, and then we print it, write it, mail mail it for you within two business days. So feel free to check out handwritten.com, H-A-N-W-R-Y-T-T-E-N.com. Go to the businesses tab, and then when you go there, you can request free samples. But a lot of people ask, does it look real? And what I'll say is, if you're not looking, if you're not saying, "Gee, was this note written by a robot?" Like if you get our sample kit, you're going to be scrutinizing the hell out of it. But if you send it to somebody, they're not going to do that. And we've really perfected the art of imperfection. So we've made things, you know, not 2 different letters look different. Line spacing varies, left margin varies line by line. We do all these things to make sure that your note looks perfectly imperfect. Um, and, uh, that's what we've gotten quite good at over the years.

I love it. Well, David, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Handwritten with a Y. And, uh, talk to you again soon.

Thank you very much.

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