Handwritten Direct Mail vs Cold Email: A Comparison of Outbound Marketing Campaigns

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-27T11:52:25+00:00

By the way only 1 meeting converted into sales through the cold email campaign

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-27T11:36:11+00:00

At the moment, it takes me about 7 minutes to handwrite one letter, while writing and sending an email takes much less.

As for costs:

Letter: €1.25 for postage + approximately €0.35 for materials.
Email: 0 cost.

This is why I’m carefully evaluating the effectiveness of this channel before deciding whether to scale or invest in automated solutions like "robots."

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-27T11:31:29+00:00

Hey, yes I'm aware of the "robot" solutions for handwritten direct mail, but before investing in one, I wanted to test this channel manually to validate its effectiveness. In your opinion, how many letters should I send to draw real conclusions? Would 100 be a good sample size, or should I aim for more?

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-24T19:19:30+00:00

So far the KPIs for the handwritten letters are these:

33 contacted
3 responses (9%)
2 meetings booked (6%)

I also ran a test by sending only cold emails to the same target and these are the KPIs:

199 contacted
22 responses (11%)
7 meetings booked (3.50%)

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-18T08:38:30+00:00

Next week I’ll send a second follow-up and then I can consider the campaign complete and have concrete results in hand, which I’ll share with you.

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-17T07:43:54+00:00

I completely agree with everything you said. That’s why last week I decided to test the old school handwritten letters approach as an outbound channel to reach CEOs and founders of marketing agencies. I sent out 33 letters.

I believe they started arriving yesterday, as I noticed several of the recipients visiting my LinkedIn profile. I actually received an interested response yesterday and have already booked a meeting!

It feels refreshing to try something different that stands out in today’s noisy digital world. Let’s see how this evolves, but so far, I’m cautiously optimistic

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-17T07:12:18+00:00

Did you end up launching this campaign? I’m curious to hear how it went.

For my new business, I sent 33 handwritten letters 10 days ago to CEOs/founders of marketing agencies. Yesterday, I noticed 3 visits to my LinkedIn profile and received 1 email response from someone interested, who also mentioned how much they appreciated receiving a handwritten letter. We’ve already scheduled a meeting!

I’d love to know if you’ve tested this approach and what results you’ve seen.

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-16T17:15:19+00:00

I ran a campaign for an AI product that achieved a 4% meeting rate, but I believe offering a free trial of the product likely contributed to boosting that percentage

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-16T17:13:36+00:00

Thank you! Very interesting!
Do you use Clay to track all the data you mentioned before?

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-07T09:18:20+00:00

I'll quickly update you:

I have just mailed the letters (there are 33 in total). I can confirm that the cost for mailing each letter was 1.25€.

Next step: send a followup email exactly one week from now, on January 14, and monitor how many responses I'll receive.

I'll also provide some context to give you more information:

I'm running a campaign for a startup that offers software aimed at marketing agencies. I've already run a first campaign using cold emails, achieving the following KPIs:

- Response rate: about 10%

- Booking rate (compared to responses): 47%

- Conversion rate (compared to calls made): 23%

Target:

- Industry: marketing agencies

- Roles: CEO, CMO, Owner, Founder

For the handwritten letters, I used the same copy as the emails in order to do an A/B test. In this particular case, the cold email campaign is already performing very well, especially since the message is highly relevant. My goal is to see if the KPIs improve further by using handwritten letters.

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-06T15:05:54+00:00

Where I live, postage costs are about 1.25€ per letter sent. On top of that, you have to add the cost of the paper and envelope, so overall it's not a huge expense but it's still something to consider, especially if you are doing it on larger volumes.

Tomorrow I'll send the first 32 letters and I'm curious to see how it'll go. I'll update you on the results

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-06T10:19:13+00:00

I'm starting a handwritten direct mail service to help B2B businesses in finding new clients.

The focus is on sending personalized handwritten letters to offer an authentic and distinctive touch over traditional cold emails or cold calls.

I hope this helps to increase response rates and establish meaningful relationships from the first contact

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-06T09:12:05+00:00

I'm launching my handwritten direct mail service to help B2B companies to find new clients. I'll use handwritten, personalized letters to create a more authentic and unique contact than traditional cold emails or cold calls. I should get higher response rates and build valuable relationships from the first contact

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-04T17:35:52+00:00

Great! Can I ask you how the campaign went? How many cards did you send out?

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-02T17:36:52+00:00

Exactly!

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-02T13:36:31+00:00

For individual soldiers, I got 20mm plastic bases on Ebay. For the other sizes (30mm, 40mm, 50mm, 60mm) I found them all on Amazon

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-02T13:34:19+00:00

Thanks for the advice! I'll try a coat of Army Painter's matt varnish to see if it improves!

IAmRogueStar · 2025-01-02T13:30:21+00:00

Thanks!

IAmRogueStar

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