hand mailed!

i received this letter yesterday in the mail & i thought it'd be interesting to share it. it is a solicitation from a local mortgage company. the first thing you'd probably notice about it is that it is written in chinese. i get tons of mail like this all the time from companies who have a chinese rep who will send me solicitations in chinese. i also get phone calls all the time, mostly from phone or cable companies who immediately begin speaking to me in mandarin. it is interesting to me how they determine that i might be fluent in chinese! it makes me wonder how companies group people together based on their last names... how many people will get letters from this company in spanish or hebrew or french or german or korean or japanese or another language? it kind of boggles the mind. this kind of solicitation probably works great if you have just moved to this country & can barely speak a lick of english! too bad i am not in that demographic.

anyway, i can speak mandarin but my reading & writing are pretty bad. i am pretty sure the letter is wishing me a happy (chinese) new year & telling me about their awesome financing plans that are great for (chinese) people.

what really impressed me about this letter though & the main reason i chose to share it is that the signature is HAND WRITTEN! holy cow! how often do you see that in a cold solicitation? i always closely inspect the signature & at best it is usually a printed signature in color. it is rarely, if ever, done by hand. i wonder if this person is hanging by the telephone wondering if i'm going to call. a hand signed solicitation really makes that much of a difference to me as a consumer. it shows that time went into what you are getting. if i needed a mortgage & was on the fence about this company & another i'd probably go with this one based solely on that. i'm sold!

i am a firm believer in the personal touch... i will personalize pretty much every order i get in my online shop. i'm not trying to get people to take loans out or sell them houses, i just think it is important to let someone know that you really appreciate their business & you really love what you are doing which i do. i usually try to spruce up mail i am sending to friends too. i am always proud of the packages i mail out just like, as silly as it sounds, i bet this loan officer must be proud that he signed his letters by hand. you can always see me beaming in line at the post office with my pile of decorated packages. if you order something from me i want it to be a pleasant experience... a nice decorated package to be waiting for you at home after a long day at work & what you ordered along with a nice note inside instead of a plain package with an invoice inside. there's a time & a place for that & it's certainly not from buying stuff from me. i try to throw something extra in, usually a button, but sometimes i'm in a bind & getting your package in transit sooner trumps getting a little trinket with your package which might arrive a little later.

this is getting harder & harder every year as i get more & more orders. i am planning on begining to screen print standard designs on my envelopes & print stickers for my mailing tubes instead of decorating them one by one by hand. i know this isn't the same as doing everything by hand but i hope it doesn't take too much away! they'll be hand printed! however, i don't think i'll ever stop writing handwritten notes... i guess this is the first step in going corporate, huh?