Handwritten notes: a secret business weapon
Here’s an environmentally-incorrect confession: I love paper. I live in a little house, we have one car, I ride my bike to work, I’m a vegetarian, and we don’t have a clothes dryer. But I’m clinging to paper with all I’ve got: the little house is full of paper magazines and books, I take meeting notes on paper, and I love sending and receiving paper cards in the mail. Let’s look at some ways to use handwritten notes as a secret weapon in your freelance business.
Handwritten notes are appealing for obvious reasons:
- They stand out amid the flood of e-mail that we all receive.
- They show that you’re willing to take the time to send something truly personal.
- Who gets anything interesting in the mail anymore? At my house, it’s 98.7% ads and bills. A personal card makes an impression.
- They are clearly not generated by a spambot. This is sad, but it’s getting hard to differentiate legitimate fan e-mail (“Hey Corinne! I love your blog!”) from fan e-mail that is automatically generated. Handwritten notes circumvent that problem.
- You can enclose things like a business card in them.
- You don’t need the person’s e-mail address to send them.
- They are a gift that doesn’t cost anything, so doesn’t seem like overkill. When someone does a favor for you, and you want to express appreciation but it might seem odd to offer to pay them, a handwritten card can split the difference.
- They are another way to ping a client without being annoying. Without sending yet another, “Got any work for me yet???” e-mail.
You can use handwritten notes in various situations.
- I send every client a handwritten note after they pay me for the first project; I think it gives a more personal tone to the relationship and shows them that I appreciate working with them.
- In the early years of my freelance business, when I was actively looking for agency clients, I made copious use of handwritten notes. If I received any response from the agency, even, “Don’t need you right now but we’ll keep your information on file,” I sent a card. It said something like, “Thank you so much for responding to my inquiry about French to English translation work with your agency. I really appreciate your time, and hope to collaborate with you soon.” Then I popped a business card in it and sent it. Interestingly enough, those business cards kicked around people’s offices for a while, and I received several inquiries years later, still based on those initial cards.
- I send cards to colleagues who refer me for substantial jobs.
- I send cards to people who give presentations or classes that I really enjoy.
- Lately I’ve been experimenting with cards as an actual marketing technique: sending them to prospective clients. This offers the added bonus that you don’t need the person’s e-mail address, only their name and the company’s mailing address.
- I would definitely recommend handwritten notes if you’re aggressively trying to build up your agency client base. Agencies get so many unsolicited applications, and many of them are spam. Even if the agency doesn’t respond at all, send a card saying, “I recently applied for English to German translation work via your website. I’m looking forward to the next steps in the application process and hope to collaborate with you soon.” Enclose a business card.
Closing tip:
Give some thought to the actual cards. If you live in a distinctive place, that’s a good start. I have a former student from Alaska who sends out “Northern Lights” cards that are very representative of where she lives. If I’m sending the card to someone I know, I might go for something whimsical, like these zoo animals doing yoga. But don’t send an elephant in crow pose to a potential client, unless perhaps you translate for yoga retreat centers! For most prospective clients, go with a high-quality, conservative card and write with a nice pen.
Readers, any other examples of how you use handwritten cards?
As a fellow paper fiend who still has bags of letters (sadly all pre-1998, my electronic watershed), I love this. The local postal system here is so dire it would be quicker to walk the 50km to the city on my knees (literally, the last paper invoice I sent took 3 weeks). But then the kind of notes you are talking about don’t need to be speedy, so I’m going to try it (I’ve switched to the government’s digital invoicing system, as time does matter there.) You know, when I read the title of the post I thought it was going to be about notes of the planning/listmaking variety, which I make huge amounts of, always on paper. As Stever Robbins says in defense of it, you need something “portable and ‘instant on’ when it’s used. You’ll want high resolution with rapid data entry, preferably handwriting recognition, capable of storing sketches and little drawings, and I like color compatability for highlighting.” Technology so intuitive even a 2-year-old can master it. Let’s hope actual letters make a comeback some day.
Thanks, Victoria! If you have clients or prospective clients in the US, you might also consider writing a bunch of notes at once, then sending them *all together* to someone you know in the US. Then that person can stamp and send them from within the US. At least then you’re dependent only on one thing arriving. Glad you enjoyed the post!
A very timely post for me as I sent my first batch of cards last week. I found a quote by Nabokov about how different things are easier/more difficult to translate into English and Russian, which seemed just the ticket! Got a couple of responses via email, wondering whether the rest of the cards might have got lost in the post!
Thanks, Yulia! Great to hear that you got some responses!
After every birthday, after every get-together, after every holiday, my Ma would always pull out (from her massive pile in the dresser!) a stack of thank-you cards and leave them on the kitchen table, with the expectation that we write a personalized message to every person who attended. I absolutely loathed it.
And now, many years later, the habit has still stuck. Even if it’s just a simple card, I find that friends and colleagues take notice. They appreciate the thought, and notice it now more than ever in the age of e-mail and text messages. I now appreciate her getting me into the habit 🙂
Thanks, Kyle! That is such a great story. And wow, your mom is even more of a thank you note junkie than I am…go mom!
Thanks, Very useful post as we have lost the handwriting culture and turned towards keyboards, as mentioned above hand written card and letter it holds a place in the hearts of people.
Hi Corinne
I love this idea – unfortunately, my handwriting says more “illiterate serial killer” than “awesome translator”, which I blame on growing up left-handed in less enlightened times. I’m struggling to think of ways of achieving the same heartwarming effect without exposing clients to my childlike scrawl. Other than getting someone else to wield the pen, do you have any suggestions?
Thanks, Nick! Now that’s a dilemma!! Couple of thoughts: a) the clients don’t know your handwriting, so getting someone else to write it wouldn’t betray you; b) you could type and print the message and paste it into the card (maybe cut the edges with pinking shears or something, to make it look deliberately artsy rather than like a ransom note?; c) you could order some cards (not very expensive via online printers) that have a pre-printed message, “Thank you so much for the recent opportunity to work together; I look forward to collaborating again in the future!” and then sign it; d) you could just go full-on ransom note and cut letters out of magazines (kidding…unless you work for creative types who would appreciate that). Thanks for your comment.
Great ideas! Thanks! Maybe the ransom note would work for payment reminders…
Corinne,
I’m so excited to see this post. I’m a relatively new freelance translator who has seen excellent returns on hand-written notes. Per your advice in How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator I’ve sent resumes to hundreds of agencies over the past 8 months. Incidentally, the handful of agencies for whom I now work are the very ones who also received a hand-written thank you (in response to their oh-so-brief reply to my email inquiry). Several of the agency contacts even took time to gush over how lovely it was to receive a personal (and beautiful) piece of mail. You are so right about how well a personal note stands out. Thank you!
Awesome, that’s so great to hear!
Yes, but what if you have atrocious handwriting? Perhaps I could outsource this task to someone with a fair hand (in much the way that male nineteenth-century writers would give their manuscripts to their wives or sisters in order to produce the fair copy)?
In all serious I have sent printed letters to clients as a way of distinguishing myself. It has been an effective alternative to electronic communications, though perhaps it is not as personal as handwriting. Indeed, in one case there was a client who had ignored my e-mail query but responded to my letter, and that led to a year’s worth of work.
Only stumbled upon this blog some months later, but found myself nodding along as well.
I am also a big fan of sending cards, but for different occasions: if I attend a conference abroad, I often try to send cards to existing customers who aren’t there (and bring a small and fitting souvenir from my home city to existing clients who are). It works to let my clients know that I keep up to date, and that I think of them. And if a conference topic seems to be interesting for them, I’ll announce on the card that I look forward to sharing the insights I gathered.
Other occasions: a colleague who refers a client to me when they are too busy themselves, a PM coming back to the office after parental leave, an engineer who shared some cool CAT tricks that come in handy at least once a month… And the one really outstanding PM who will always remember me for sending a box of chocolates, that she got to open in front of her boss, who was extremely impressed that she apparently inspired that kind of appreciation.
On that note: who said that freelancers don’t deal with office politics? What you put on the card will often be seen by the recipient’s colleagues and managers. “Thank you” is already great, but “I know you put in as much weekend work as I did on that technical project, and I really appreciated your Sunday morning expertise – if you ever get one of these kamikaze jobs again, I’m on board”. Double points: the boss gets the message on skills and dedication, and the colleagues know you’re up for challenging stuff.
Thinking about it, I mostly use cards to maintain and strengthen existing client relationships, rarely for acquision. Though if a prospective client seems particularly promising, I’ll send a card to the PM team after I’ve jumped through all the hoops with their vendor manager, so that my name rings a bell if they see it in their database when one of their regular translators isn’t available.
Oh and @Nick: a simple “PS. sorry for the handwriting” will probably do the trick. You are not the only one who struggles on that account, and one of the nice things about cards is that they’re so very human in a digital age!
Fabulous ideas here, thanks Susan!!
Hi Corinne, Good Day!
It was nice to read and motivating towards traditional marketing style, as all of the markets depends on emails and computers, handwritten notes give much more value and I personally wish to keep my very important contacts and information of my life and business on handwritten notes. as it can’t be destroyed or changed or hacked. Great and everlasting notes are handwritten notes. Even today I am getting handwritten Arabic text translation.