Good morning, Starshine!
Last week I got a handwritten letter in the mail. It arrived in one of those flimsy Air Mail envelopes—the kind my mother used decades ago to write to our relatives living abroad.
I didn't recognize the return address, the handwriting, or the international stamps. First thought: They still make these envelopes...?
It was immediately charming: the handwritten scrawl of the address. The retro vibe of the pale-blue envelope. The "By Air Mail/Par Avion" stamped in navy-blue ink in the corner.
Decades ago, I'd open the mailbox at the end of our driveway and sometimes find an envelope just like this one. I'd run with it back to the house because BIG DAY: A letter! From someplace my mother called "Overseas"!
For a long time I thought "Overseas" was actually the name of a country. I'd imagine that letter buckled into an airline seat, flying across the ocean, carrying news from a land I didn't know, about lives I could only imagine.
How weird is that... when we think about it now?
Now all letters are novelties—not just the ones from the country called Overseas. Social media keeps us all in the loop, all the time—with way more immediacy, way more detail.
This morning at home in Boston, I watched an Instagram video of my friend Cara Mackay in Dundee, Scotland. She was making sweet corn chowder. I saw the steam rise from the pot. I heard the Black Keys playing in the background.
Thirty years ago, we would be excited to get a flimsy piece of paper full of updates that read like the colorless writing of a court stenographer: "The baby has started to walk."
Then, we had to imagine baby Jerry's lurching, lunging, first-Franken-steps. Now, I can almost taste that soup Cara is having for dinner.
The letter I got last week turned out to be from my friend Paul Ince, whom I've met a few times face-to-face—once in the UK, once in San Diego—but know mostly from Instagram.
Paul was writing to invite me to present at MarketEd.Live, an event he organizes each fall in Nottingham, outside of London. He'd just watched me give a talk in San Diego—"a great mix of fun and practical advice," he said. And he wants me to bring that session to the UK.
Paul doesn't have a massive budget. The audience is small. And it's a hike from Boston. He knows it's a big ask. Which is why he said:
I thought I'd go old school with a letter. Then I decided it really
should go air-mail, mainly for the exoticism.
Takeaway: When you have a big ask, ask in a big way.
"Big" doesn't mean "budget." "Big" means "heart."
Paul didn't send me a box of puppies. He didn't drop-ship me a unicorn. He wrote a letter, which cost him maybe 15 minutes and a few bucks to mail.
Or a few pounds. Or whatever. I don't really know how much it cost.. but let's say it was less than drop-shipping a unicorn.
What if Paul had sent me an email vs. an actual letter? Would it have captured my attention quite in the same way? (Answer: Heck no.)
What if he'd sent me a present? Would that have been as charming? (Again: No.)
It was something about the letter itself that felt magical.
How does this apply to your business?
Last week I visited my friend Corey O'Loughlin in West Palm Beach, Florida. Corey and I used to work together at MarketingProfs; she left 3 years ago to focus on her own business, PrepObsessed.com.
It's grown like crazy: PrepO ships 300-400 orders a day from a 12,000-sq-ft warehouse. It runs a retail store. It has 400,000 Facebook fans. 16 employees.
I feel braggy about my friend because I'm very proud of her and what she and her business partner Nina have built.
It's a volume retail business: PrepO lives and dies by the number of orders per day.
But Corey does the most unscalable thing Every. Single. Day:
She writes at least a handful of cards to PrepO customers.
The focus is not to sell, but to acknowledge something important that happened in that person's life that the person shared in the PrepO Facebook group.
Every.
Day.
The 2 minutes Corey spends writing a card to a customer will maybe translate into a bigger order. Or maybe it won't.
But it does create long-term love. It does create an experience for the customer and a direct relationship that no other retailer can match in exactly the same way.
"It's taking the extra step, the extra few minutes to make it personal," Corey said. "Our customers feel a deep loyalty to us because we show up for them and demonstrate that we truly care."
Over to you
Letters aren't magical because of the writing. They are magical because they stuff more than words into their envelopes:
Heart. Effort. Caring. That's really what the post office delivers.
We hear a lot about "breaking through the noise" with marketing—about creating something that will make prospects or customers sit up and notice you.
One way to do that is to be everywhere, do everything. Make a big splash with a big budget. Make some noise.
But maybe another way is to slow down. Slow waaaaay down. Like snail-mail slow. Like Paul. Like Corey.
Or to create a moment in time that feels special to just one person when it matters most.
* * *
🐢 INTRODUCING THE 100 DAYS OF ASAP (AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE) CHALLENGE.
As Slow As Possible (ASAP) means doing work that delivers long-term (like writing a letter when it matters most). The 100-day challenge aims to help you be a more effective, more fulfilled marketer... ASAP.
100 DAYS OF ASAP CHALLENGE #1: Write & send a letter to a prospect, customer, client to acknowledge something important in their lives. Here's an example of what Corey recently sent to a customer undergoing cancer treatment:
Notice how Corey never uses the word "I" or "we"? But she uses a version of "you" three times. She makes it about the individual... the "you" reading this letter.
Are you in on the 100 Day ASAP Challenge? Want to be part of the #TeamTurtle movement? Hit reply and let me know.
* * *
Here are five things worth sharing this week:
1
The Empathy Within
We all know we need to develop more empathy for our customers, prospects, readers. But how?
2
Morning, Story!
3
How to Write Something Useful
There are 7 simple ways to write something useful to others, Josh Spector says.
My favorite is #5: "Don't Write About Your Experiences—Write About What You LEARNED From Them." He says:
Personal stories are powerful.... But a story's value isn't in its narrative—it's in the lessons learned from it.
4
Everybody Writes Tip of the Week: Grumpy Old Pen
Taking notes by hand might seem hopelessly old-school. But if you want to be a stronger writer, put away your keyboard and use your pen—at least during the research and interviewing phase.
Why? Because research has proven that taking notes by hand is better than taking notes on a laptop for remembering and distilling concepts and ideas.
I started by career as a journalist covering town meetings for the local newspaper, where I learned this lesson first-hand. I shared my story this past week with a room full of writers (my people!).
Here's the science to back it up.
5
Keep Going
She's written all of her 179 books on a manual typewriter named Ollie. She sleeps 4 hours a night. I've never read a Danielle Steel novel, and her work habits sound insane to me. But she's the 4th best-selling author of all time, and I'm not... so what do I know? 🤔
Anyway, here's the most relevant thing author Danielle Steel says in this interview about her writing process. When we're stuck:
You're better off pushing through and ending up with 30 dead pages you can correct later than just sitting there with nothing.
DEPARTMENT OF SHENANIGANS
Fanny-packs for Crocs are ridiculous. But they're also a reason why the divisive shoe brand is thriving. 🐊
TOOLS
Two writing/marketing tools I used this week.
🔎
Creative Commons Search is now out of beta (hooray!), making it a rich central source for images for you. Search more than 300 million images indexed from 19 collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, and graphics and images from Behance, DeviantArt, Flickr, Thingiverse.
#OnetoBookmark
🍅
Tomato Timers is based on The Pomodoro Technique, a time-management method developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. It uses a timer shaped like a tomato to break down work into a set of sprint/rest intervals to increase productivity. You can find a lot of these timers online; this one is my favorite. (I
wrote this newsletter in 3 tomatoes, BTW.)
👉 ANTI-PROCRASTINATION TIP: Write based on time, not word count.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
LOVE LETTERS
Thanks for reading this far. Thanks for your kindness and generosity. See you on June 2!
XOXO,
