This episode of the DevReady Podcast, features Greg Smith, Founder & CEO, of Send Handwritten along with the hosts Andrew Romeo and Anthony Sapountzis. Greg is a Customer Experience Expert and in this episode, he shares with us all how a remarkable and memorable marketing campaign is designed and delivered to tell the customer that you care.
Greg’s got a wealth of experience in the marketing space but for anyone who has had the chance to listen to him talk, it would be hard to tell that he in fact worked as an experiential educator for 20 odd years and not in ‘marketing’ per se. How was ‘Send Handwritten’ born then, one might wonder. The bridge, Greg says, is in his experience. After having sold his experiential education businesses to an international not-for-profit, it was heart wrenching for him to see it be destroyed. He realized that the company had done everything right except for the customer experience piece and that it where the downfall began. Greg nurtured relationships with his clients for twenty odd years while the acquiring company did not care about those customers as much as he had and they were soon to be shown the door for that reason. He calls creating a ‘Wow’ experience for the customers, the purpose of his ‘Send Handwritten’ venture because to him it’s all about treating the human being as best as what we can possibly muster the energy for; it’s all about caring for the customer. Doing so not only gains one the trust of the existing clients but also helps one get referrals for future clients—two clients at the cost of one really!
Customers want a tool that is the most cost-effective, easy to understand, and simple to implement so that it can be implemented the day before and ROI gotten on the coming day. Having understood that, his company offers a ‘Memorable Marketing Blueprint’ with the following unique features/services:
1. A strategist that works consistently with you during the course of the campaign to make sure that you get the result that you are looking for
2. A creative director that is allocated to you to iterate and improve and change and pivot as your campaign moves forward
3. Work that is hand written by real human beings, hand addressed and wax sealed with your logo embossed in the wax seal
4. Anything other than a white envelope
5. A data team that supports that work
6. Appointment setters that support you and help you script non-sales sounding like appointment pitches on your behalf
7. Conversion of your work to stuff that will turn up via social media and email and that will mimic that design
8. A LinkedIn Concierge Service that integrates that creative work into a series of LinkedIn Messages
9. A LinkedIn Pod that nurtures you to get 10x the number of views that you get off the work that you post in LinkedIn
10. Somebody that helps bring all of that ecosystem of work together on your behalf and with you into what is called the ‘Memorable Marketing Blueprint’ so that you show up in a memorable and systematized way across all those channels
The idea, Greg says, is being able to stand out in the sea of sameness. And his company makes that work easy for the client. He adds that it is neither a card selling business nor just marketing, Instead, it’s a sophisticated ecosystem that they work on behalf of the clients. Saying that pivoting is important, he shares how the company did well doing the covid times:
1. By creating a new service called pre-call service
2. By iterating to audio digi-cards (Even getting Morgan Freeman on the team narrating some of the work!)
People remember experiences and that’s what the company provides. Saying that modern marketing is all about building a community, his advice is:
1. Build long term relationships by creating long-term value
2. Build networks in your preferred space by investing time and resources into it
Topics Covered
· How to Stand Out in the Crowd
· Using Humor to Create Impact
· How to Retain Customers and Generate Leads
· The Memorable Marketing Blueprint
· Know When to Iterate and Pivot
· Build Human Relationships
Key Quotes (Time Stamps)
“And it turns out that what that organization got right was everything. They were awesome. They are an international not for profit with a spectacular reputation in the experiential education field. The one thing that they got wrong was the customer experience piece.” (2:44 – 3:01)
· “What human beings crave is a five or even a six-star experience and that is all about humanity. It’s all about treating the human being as best as what we can possibly muster—the emotional labor to deliver. It’s about caring.” (5:17 – 5:38)
· “When all else is the same, the only defining factor that we have left, at our disposal, as entrepreneurs, is to up our customer experience. Which means upping our humanity. So, being empathetic, being appreciative, creating ‘wow’ experiences that velcro your clients to whatever it is that you do.” (5:45 – 6:09)
· “There was a set of questions that just kept coming at me and the questions, when I condensed them, were, ‘Greg, what is the most cost-effective, easy to understand, simple to implement tool that I can implement yesterday and get a return on investment on tomorrow?’” (7:47 – 8:06)
· “We know that 80% of business leaders are of the opinion that their clients love them. Turns out that only 8% of those same clients agree.” (8:14 – 8:23)
· “Once that client really knows, likes and trusts you, then you are in a position to proactively ask them for a referral. Then, you are getting two for the price of one.” (21:50 – 22:03)
· “The WHY that is so driven that is behind Send Handwritten is I have an assertion and my assertion is this planet will be a better place if we connect with and appreciate the human beings that we have privilege to interact with while we are on this mortal world.” (24:43 – 25:04)
· “We design a campaign and you know—it might be gifts and it might be cards, and it might be audio-digi stuff, and it could be any ecosystem—that simply says, ‘we see you; we recognize you; we want to name you as somebody important in our world and here’s how we are choosing to express that at this moment in time’.” (28:04 – 28:24)
· “Be very clear that modern marketing is about building long term relationships. It’s about community.” (44:07 – 44:15)
Social Media Clips (Time Stamps)
· Importance of Customer Care (1:31 – 3:36)
· An Interesting Analogy (4:08 – 6:09)
· A success Story for Send Handwritten (10:01 – 11:48)
· Creative Ways of Dealing with the Impacts of Covid (16:48 – 18:43)
· Customer Retention Strategies (20:01 – 22:09)
· Give the Client that Differentiator (29:09 – 33:06)
· Unique Features of The Memorable Marketing Blueprint (34:18 – 36:44)
· Advice on How to Develop Delightful Marketing (44:07 – 47:11)
Quick Links:
Connect with Andrew Romeo
Connect with Greg Smith
Connect with Anthony Sapountzis
Visit Send Handwritten
