THE PROBLEM WITH MAILING SERVICES

Every time I bring up the importance of hand-written thank you notes and staying in touch with your prospects and customers, a few subscribers will tell me about a service that does this for you at a very affordable cost. They will even scan your handwriting and produce a custom font so they can print up cards that look like you wrote them, or you can use their standard font selection.

While I am personally not a big fan of the concept, it is better than doing nothing.

The problem with mailing services is that you risk duplication. And if you do the same thing other people are doing, you cease to be remarkable.

No doubt that seems a far-fetched concern. After all, what’s the chance that two different people would send the same card using the same font on the same day to the same person?

I don’t know what the odds are, but I do know it happened to me yesterday. Really. Same card, same font, same day, but different senders.

Don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate the thought. And I am truly grateful for the “green mermaid” gift card that was enclosed in one of them (thank you Fred!).

But they are just not the same as the hand-written thank you notes I received from two people who were my guests at a big awards event last week.

You can be remarkable. You can take shortcuts.

You may not be able to do both.