At Schomp Automotive Group’s three luxury-brand dealerships in Utah and Colorado, a handwritten letter is not a relic of a bygone period.
Prospects get customized notes — full with a common supervisor’s signature and, typically, a direct telephone quantity — a number of occasions a 12 months, together with after they buy a car, in the event that they schedule a pickup and supply for service or if their lease is coming to an finish. Schomp has despatched about 9,000 notes amongst its BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche shops over the previous 12 months.
However its salespeople haven’t got cramped fingers or ink-stained fingers. That is as a result of there is a twist: the “fingers” writing these notes belong to a military of robots in an Arizona workplace.
The automated authors are owned by Handwrytten, a 7-year-old firm that lets clients corresponding to Schomp ship messages en masse with humanlike element.
The robots really maintain writing utensils — Pilot G2 1.0 mm pens with blue ink, to be particular — and Handwrytten has a pair dozen writing types to select from. A buyer may even add a particular writing model and signature, permitting the bots to create an genuine duplicate on customized stationery.
“It is a method for us to have that form of human contact at scale,” James Kurtenbach, Schomp Automotive Group’s advertising and marketing director, advised Automotive Information. “We want we might sit down and write all these but it surely’s not a chance.”
Handwrytten has despatched greater than 3 million playing cards on behalf of some 70,000 clients for the reason that firm was based. Apart from dealerships, Handwrytten is standard amongst actual property brokers making an attempt to shut a sale, universities reaching out to alumni donors and subscription-box corporations thanking clients for his or her enterprise.
Handwrytten has 115 patent-pending robots, designed and constructed in-house. The letters are available robot-addressed envelopes and might embody area to connect a present card or loyalty card.
Though the corporate has labored with sellers up to now, this 12 months it launched an automotive-focused vertical and is hiring salespeople to develop that a part of its enterprise, in response to Jarrod McMahon, Handwrytten’s vp of gross sales who was employed this 12 months from used-vehicle subscription service Truthful. He stated the corporate has about 100 vendor clients and that many have discovered artistic makes use of for the playing cards.
Some ship them on Christmas. Others use them as a substitute for service mailers.
Final 12 months, a dealership despatched notes to its whole contact listing to thank them for his or her assist in the course of the peak of the coronavirus pandemic. Some retailers even use Handwrytten to ship birthday playing cards to their workers.
“After we launched, we thought it might simply automate a course of for what gross sales folks ought to usually do,” McMahon stated. “They’ve used it a ton of the way in comparison with what we initially thought.”
At Schomp’s shops, Kurtenbach stated the Handwrytten playing cards are largely meant to interchange generic mailers that usually get tossed within the rubbish.
“It is not, ‘Hey, get a lease fee on a 3 Sequence,’ ” Kurtenbach stated. “It is extra, ‘Hey, we all know this factor about you, we need to introduce you to this specific product or we need to introduce ourselves as a brand new retailer.’ We wish them to really feel like they’ve a greater reference to us.”
Kurtenbach stated Schomp has been working with Handwrytten for the previous 12 months however earlier than that used a now-defunct firm referred to as Bond to ship comparable letters. He stated the return on funding is tough to measure however famous the group does see an actual affect.
“When folks name, they point out the observe,” he stated. “We really feel it has a greater return than these mass mailers. I believe folks simply throw away the stuff that does not look real.”
It additionally helps that not each letter is making an attempt to promote them one thing. Kurtenbach stated among the notes are extra of a goodwill check-in to let a buyer know who to contact in the event that they want something.
“Real contact factors have a bonus proper now,” he stated. “I believe among the classical automotive direct-mail items might be form of abrasive. This offers us a chance to be on the exact opposite facet of the spectrum the place it is a considerate piece of communication.”