Automated Handwriting to Personalize Your Marketing and Sales feat. Rick Elmore

Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the off systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis 0:31
Welcome everybody to another episode of The all systems go podcast where we invite interview startup founders and digital marketers to discuss strategies and software’s used to build automated marketing and sales systems at scale. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder of automation bridge. And on this episode, we get to interview Rick Elmore, who is the he’s an entrepreneur sales and marketing expert, and a former college and professional football athletes. So needless to say, competition is no stranger to Rick. And as the founder of CEO, and I’m the founder and CEO of simply noted, Rick developed a proprietary technology that puts real pink real pen and ink to paper, to scale, hand written communication, helping businesses of all industry scale, this unique marketing platform to stand out from their competition, and build meaningful relationships with clients, customers and employees. And the reason why this is important for us is this gives you all my digital marketing audience as well as you founders and CEOs that are looking to personalize your marketing that much more, we now have, we now have an additional tool to be able to do that. So Rick is going to come on and show us how do we expand our personalization? And how do we blend traditional and digital marketing to achieve that, Rick, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Rick Elmore 2:10
Thanks so much for having me here, Chris. I really appreciate it.

Chris Davis 2:13
Yes, I’m looking forward to this. Rick. Before before we got to record I had the opportunity to give you feedback on your on your website. You all here will have the link to the website in in a moment. But it’s one of those websites where you go to and you need literally no comprehension or at no time to comprehend what you do. You land on it and you see what’s happened and you’re like, oh, notes robots. Oh, what’s this? So I want to get into it. But tell us a little bit about your founders journey. Rick? Yes, very interesting. Professional Football, debt company, handwritten notes. And somewhere in there, you’ve got sales and marketing just help us piece it piece it all together?

Rick Elmore 3:00
Yeah, it’s great question. So um, my background is in athletics, I do have a twin brother, we grew up playing sports together. We were very lucky to get scholarships together to go to the University of Arizona played football there had a pretty good career was drafted and played in the NFL for three years. Got done a lot sooner than I thought it would I thought I was gonna play until I was 30. And you know, have the money to go just open a gym or something. But talk to a lot of the guys who had that crossover journey from athlete to you know, life after sport. And a lot of people got into medical device sales. So I got into medical device sales, you know, as did everything that I didn’t in athletics for a long time just competed self starter, resilience, perseverance, you know, push through, and just became pretty successful med device sales. After about five years, I was think I was an associate for one year as President’s Club every single year as a as a sales rep. When I when I carried my own bag, just I was looking for something else. I just knew like, I didn’t want to be like a career sales guy. Like I wanted to do something bigger. I wanted to build something bigger. Both my parents were small business owners, medical biller and a contractor, you know, just but it just gave them the freedom to go do what they want to do. You know, they didn’t have like crazy, huge, large businesses. But it just gave them the freedom to go to our practices go to our games be available. They’ll be the type of parent I wanted to be someday. But I went back into my MBA in 2017. And we had to do a project for class and I was just, you know, going to school trying to take all this knowledge I was learning when I was doing my MBA. And you know, I was in sales. I was like, Hey, how can I apply what I’m learning, you know, in school, so when I’m doing and I was always looking for ways to stand out, you know, be better scale my sales. You know, if I did a million in sales a year before I wanted to do 2 million the next year. How is that going to Do it. And I had to start this little project. And I always had this little interest in this company that is no longer around. They’re called bond. And bond, what they did was they did handwritten notes, but for the wedding sector, like the wedding market, which is, I thought was the absolute worst idea. Because if you’ve ever been married, or if you’ve ever, you know, you know, talk to a bride or bride to be like, it is just the most hectic stressful 12 months of planning your wedding, things are changing all the time, it takes forever to get anything done. I just thought that would work a lot better in business. So had to start this project, I thought, hey, you know, for can do for school, I’m gonna try to focus on the business market, because they have the budget, they have the software. You know, nobody’s doing handwritten notes in business right now. Everybody’s doing the same thing. Everyone’s doing email, everybody’s knocking on doors, everybody’s cold calling. And so what I did is I worked with some mailing houses here in Phoenix, Arizona. But this really bad writing robot from China. And, but really tried to make it work because I had no money, I had no budget, I was like, Hey, I have like $500 to start this company, how can I do it. But it was a really, really painful process. But what we did is we got this little robot that we bought, put it together, had it right 500 notes to doctors that were in my territory. This is a real robot, by the way, it was a three axis plotter. So I don’t have I haven’t still here, you know, when you make your first dollar in a business, you need to save it. I still have that first robot in our office, it’s in our warehouse. But it’s been it’s, it’s, it’s grown a lot more since then. But I sent out 500 handwritten notes just trying to book an appointment with some doctors I’ve never been able to reach. And 32 of them called me back. And out of those 32 I got $280,000 in new business and my monthly like, number was like, like $35,000 My whole, like, my whole company was like freaking out like Rick, what are you doing? What’s working? And I was just like, This is it. I’m gonna do this, like, I’m gonna turn this into a business. I knew it would work. And from then on, I mean, from like, end of 2017 I just started really researching this. How is that going to make the transition from w two, medical employee to entrepreneur starting a robotic pendant note business? Yeah,

Chris Davis 7:27
yeah. And that’s, uh, it’s interesting, because would you say that your current job at the time? Was your funding for your business? You know?

Rick Elmore 7:39
Yeah, I think in med device, I mean, it’s a good career, if you ever, if you’re good at building relationships, you’re responsible. You work hard. I mean, it can be a really good career. And yeah, I think I did fund it for sure. But I’m just wasn’t wasn’t enough. You know, it wasn’t a money thing. I just, it was a intrinsic value fulfilling of the human spirit thing. And it just wasn’t doing it for me.

Chris Davis 8:05
Yeah. And Rick, I’ll say this. Life is funny like that. Because we often don’t know what’s in us, right? Got hints and clues, you look at parents, and then you get exposed to things and have experiences and some experiences, you say, Hey, I like that. And other ones are like, I could do without that. Every up every situation or every experience, pull something out of you, or identify helps you identify something that’s in you. And it sounds like when you’re doing this, this medical device job, it really awakened the fact that wait a minute, I’m not too bad at sales, marketing, this stuff actually makes sense to me, hold on, you know, and start to awaken. You know,

Rick Elmore 8:52
you know, I think, to be an entrepreneur, you either gotta follow your passion, or you got to, you gotta, like you just said, like, a part of the journey is what’s going to pull that out of you. And that’s what the MBA was, for me. It’s like, you know, I was the first person to go to like, a four year school in my family and then for MBA was the I was the first person to do it as well. But that’s what I wanted them out of my MBA, I wanted to find something else, I wanted to find something more. And that’s exactly what it was, what it did, and that’s what I would recommend to any any person within their journey because we’re all on our own personal journeys in our lives, is just to keep going right? And if something happens, right if something if there’s a detour you have to pivot just keep going don’t stop because a lot of people just they just shut down and they they stop progressing or you know, analysis paralysis prevents them from progress. And it’s just like, just keep moving. Just keep going. Keep trying. And those answers will reveal themselves to you.

Chris Davis 9:45
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you’ve got the first the first investment into the robot. You do your your your MVP, send out these these these letters. You have this great sponsz Now you’re trying to figure out okay, how do I how do I make this into a real thing? I’ll fast forward to the point where you realize that okay, we’ve got something you leave your job, you’re running this company? What? How would you explain that experience your first year, going off of the corporate milk and eating your own meals? And saying, Wow, wait a minute, what did it match your expectations? Were it was it a rough transition? Just how was that for you?

Rick Elmore 10:33
So I think you have to understand your personality. Like, what is your pain threshold? Because a lot of people you know, they like they like, the comfort. I mean, medical devices. Great. You had a car loan set a corporate card. Good base, Great Commission, right. But I think a lot of high performing athletes have a glutton for punishment. And when things start getting too easy, you know, you get uncomfortable. And that first year for me, I was more excited, even though it’s the hardest. No, those first two or three years are the hardest. I mean, building this company has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I don’t have a technical background, a software background, an engineering background, all I have is sales and marketing. And yeah, but my passion for this project, my passion for personal growth, my passion for proving to myself that I could do it was just way stronger than any type of you know, fear, or anxiety, or even the amounts of stress that come with building this company. So I think my relentlessness no matter what’s going to, you know, provide progress and success down the line is just it may take longer than it did when I was in medical device sales. Yep,

Chris Davis 11:53
yep. It, it sounds like it also tapped into that competitive nature. But instead of extrinsic, right, external, it was more internal. It’s like you’re now competing against the version of you yesterday. Yeah, in this day, it’s got to be better. And then yesterday’s gone today, it’s got to be better. And just making those incremental improvements and progressions man, I can see how even if you were unaware or aware, doesn’t matter, but how that could be a driving force and, and you talk about threshold of pain. Your linebacker is one of the most aggressive positions in football. I mean, yeah, you can’t not so elebrate pain,

Rick Elmore 12:41
I think that’s a great. I never thought of it like that. But I mean, when I was young, I had this internal like, anger rage. I just needed to get out. And that’s why football was so good for me. But I think, you know, as you get older, you can’t do that anymore, right? You can’t hit people for a living. You know, unless like, you’re still like, doing UFC or something. But being able to push yourself physically, emotionally and mentally. You know, the ways that entrepreneurship does, I think that you really filled that void.

Chris Davis 13:10
Yeah, yeah, it sounds like it. So so thank you for sharing that, that journey. So we’re, we’ll get caught up to now. And handwritten notes. So here’s one of the things that I struggle with, when I’m teaching marketing or mentoring. And it’s really one it’s about automation, is that people want to they want to replace as much as you’ve got two hands. One hand, people want to replace as much as possible and do the least amount of work ever. On the other hand, people are terrified for robots to run their company. They don’t want to lose the personal touch. And often tell them it’s a it’s a blend, it’s like an orchestra. How do we get both of them to work in sync in synchronous in synchronicity, with a fine tune that everything looks good? Sounds good? Yeah. And usually, it’s a struggle of understanding how can I leverage this technology to personalize the journey? I think that it’s simple to understand that having a handwritten note is personalized. Right. But how do we do it in a way where when someone receives it because there are some may this some mail that I receive that I can tell, okay, you this is not handwritten, and then it’s something I’m just like, This is really good. I don’t know if they wrote it or not. Usually it’s in the real estate market. But what are some areas outside of that, that you’re seeing really strong performance with handwritten notes?

Rick Elmore 14:44
Yeah, so you know, a lot of people like using us for like, you know, in real estate off like off market like property, like development, try to find like off market deals, or some you know, some companies, software companies, they’ll use us for just trying to like get appointments set. But what we really try to hammer home at the end of the day, it’s relationship management and development. Because at the end of the day, if your clients appreciate you, and they love you, and they like you, they’re going to stay longer with you, they’re going to spend more money with you, they’re going to leave you better reviews, they’re going to give you more referrals. And that’s really what we try to like really consult, when we talk to our clients is, hey, like, this is great as a marketing tool. We are a platform that allows you to efficiently like automate sending real handwritten notes. But you should be reaching out to your clients, you know, 123, maybe four times a year, once a quarter. And just stay top of mind, right cinema, you know, Happy New Year’s card, a fourth of July card, you know, happy anniversary. Hey, thanks for being our client for the third year in a row or holiday card. Right? And just stay top of mind because nobody, nobody’s doing that. These days, you know, the average person. I don’t believe this stat. But the average person receives 10 handwritten notes a year, eight handwritten notes a year. I think it’s less than that. Cuz everybody’s going digital nowadays. Yeah. And it’s like you just said earlier, it’s like, how can we be as hands off as possible, right, we’re already busy doing other things. How can we automate this automate that. And the great thing about our service, is that handwritten notes is really the last form of communication that people think can be automated. And I think we’re like three, maybe five years before, like, the secret’s out of the bag, where a lot of people know about these companies. I agree. But really, it’s, you know, as your market and if you can integrate into your marketing workflow. That’s great. Like, that’s where a company like us helps. But staying top of mind building that relationship. Just thank you. We appreciate you think, you know, thinking of you that is so much more valuable than sending out. And I love the the big orders of 10,000 50,000 handwritten, like prospecting projects. I love them. They’re great, they move the needle for us, but the ROI of the relationship is just so much more. It really is.

Chris Davis 17:11
Yeah, and it’s a very personalized channel. I’m one of the the type of people that I any card that I buy, if it’s a birthday, or thank you or whatever, I always write it. Always right. It’s not uncommon people who are close to me, I think everybody who’s close to me has received a handwritten note from me. So I’m still old fashioned in that and I mean, handwritten, like a piece of paper, I write on it, fold it up, and deliver it to you know, like back in a day. And you can’t, you just can’t, I can’t explain how that has a positive impact on someone. And this is just day to day, we’re not talking about any business transaction. So if we have a channel out here, and we have technology, you talked about integrations, when I go to your website, I see HubSpot integrations, Zapier integration, Shopify integration. So there’s a means of activities and events taking place in your marketing, you’re tracking it along the customer journey. I think it’s really powerful to denote when is the time to send that personal. Hello. And for me, I’ll just be honest, this is an area as you’re talking, Rick, I’m just like, Okay, I’m not doing this. So I’m just going to put it all out there on the podcast, man. I’ve got a program. I have a program. It’s a high ticket program. And it’s exhaustive learning. I mean, it covers stuff that universities are still trying to figure out how to teach right? In marketing automation. When someone enrolls, they should be receiving a handwritten note from me. Just just a, I can still create what the content says, right? It’s not like I’m just Hey, Rick, can you come up with a phrase for me? Just sit, it is still be my words. But the problem with me is I’m not trying to automate because I want robots to do everything. I know me as a human being I’m unreliable, real. reliable tool, right, that note, every single time I get an enrollment, you know, the, well,

Rick Elmore 19:21
the problem is, is we’re just so inundated nowadays, right? We’re just we’re so accessible and available right through phone calls and social platforms. And people are just, people are just grabbing our attention all the time. So even if you have the best intentions, I mean, I have this conversation every single day with people like, oh, we want to do this. I should be doing this, but it’s getting the time to set it up or like, Oh, I like we talked to people like oh, I’ll just send out these 500 handwritten notes. I know they never will. They just want like, literally sit down and write 10 handwritten notes. Like it’s just it’s almost impossible. It’s not because it’s gonna, you’re gonna start writing. It’s like, oh, what happens if I mess up? Right I’ll have To start over, or my kid, you know, is in the other room screaming, right? Or, Oh, I leave them here and I forget them, they don’t go out. Right. So, you know, I think like you just said, it’s like the handwritten note is really is worth its weight in gold. It’s just finding a systematic way to make sure it’s getting done on time. And I think there’s a lot of benefits to using robots to handwriting letters, it’s, you know, number one, you can be consistent, you can have a trackable way to make sure that you know, these are the spelling’s correct, the grammar is correct, it’s been sent and tracked, you know, versus, I talked to a real estate agent literally on Monday, like, Oh, I’m just gonna hire a VA to do it, I’m just like, you’re gonna trust somebody that you’re gonna pay five bucks an hour, to handwrite your notes to your clients, right? You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna have to proofread these, like, you’re gonna put your, you know, your reputation on the line, because you want to save 150 bucks. That’s just like, the way that some people think it’s just, I don’t know, I think if you’re gonna reach out personally to somebody, you want to put your best foot forward, you want to do it on time, you want to do it the right way. And I think, you know, a handwritten note really is the best way to do it to make a real good, impactful impression on somebody. Yeah,

Chris Davis 21:15
and I will say this, for those of you who are overwhelmed, I feel like I have a framework already. It’s what I would use, right? Rick, what I would do is this, I would sit down. And again, with my pen, I would write the note, as if I’m writing to one person, okay, on the event that take place will stick with enrollment, because that’s what I’ve been talking about. I’ll write that note. At that point, my job is done. I can then give that note to someone, they can type it up. They can log in. And now that note exists in your platform. And I can integrate it with my technology at whatever point in that journey. Yep. So I think that again, for me, I will be a little adverse to just jumping in and typing in No, I think I will have to emulate I would emulate one time, right? Do it once everybody, this is what we do in automation, right? One time capture it. Sit down, think of that, think of that best student, write that best customer and write a heartfelt like nothing, I don’t want anything cheesy. I don’t want anything that’s just kind of like, over the top capture my personality. So that when they get it, they feel it. Right. I think that that’s an easy way for people to start to start getting acclimated and in an integrated with automation. A lot of times, they just want to jump into the tools and start doing stuff. And then wonder why it feels a little rigid. Wonder why it feels a little robotic. And it’s because well, you took a robotic approach. If you just step back, just write it out. Have somebody digitize it. And then you know, you’ve got platforms to send.

Rick Elmore 22:59
Yeah, I have a I mean, you make some good points, I have a pretty good story that can go off of that we work with one of the largest add home service companies here in Arizona. And they service you know, they do bugs pools, like Windows, all that stuff. And anytime they bring on a new client, they automate sending, and when we say automate, we use Zapier API. So as long as you you know, your software can use those platforms. You can use Mail, mail, merge tags, completely customize these letters. But anytime they bring in a new client, they automate like a Hey thing like a thank you card, and we send it out for them. And then you know, they’ll use another service like four or five months later. And you know, it’s a different branded card with a different message. But if they go in, and they service that account, they go to their house, like they’ll still see the handwritten note sitting on the counter, like, like a service company, like their client receives their letter from somebody they barely known, they still keep it like, are people going to do that with your automated texts? Are people going to do your automated email? Are they going to do that with your cheap print flyer? It’s a 1,000%. No. So like, those are the types of stories when our customers tell us like it just completely verifies our, our concept or service, because I know it works. You know, it just I saw it work, you know, firsthand, four or five years ago. And our clients, you know, they tell us, so it’s this impactful has a long shelf life, people appreciate it, and it can be completely automated.

Chris Davis 24:29
Yeah. Couple of technical questions for you. When it comes to getting the handwritten font. Do you guys have the ability to perhaps I do us a sheet that prints off and I show you how I do my letters, and then you scan it in and it emulates my handwriting? Am I picking from a library of already customized and handwritten fonts?

Rick Elmore 24:54
Yeah, so that’s a good question. So we actually we have 900 Like handwriting styles, we have 29 that are available to the public. But if you want to convert your own handwriting we call it handwriting styles because they’re not really fonts. And I can talk like this is there’s developing a handwriting engine for our handwriting robots around handwriting styles is I can develop a course about this. So complicated in its own depth. But when we’re developing handwriting style, what we can do is take your handwriting, it’s, it’s literally, you know, basic, write out your letters, uppercase, lowercase, you know, we’re gonna have you write out some sentences to see like your natural handwriting styles. See, if you have like any unique like ligature combinations. ligatures are like, you know, when two letters are next to each other with two L’s look like two T’s and cross your t’s. You know, for me what’s really unique to me, it’s like when I write the, like, my dad is so unique to me, it’s like T H, E, it’s, that would be a ligature style that we would program into your, your handwriting. So our handwriting engine is an I know it is like I’ve used every, like, there’s like handwriting robots out there, that kind of work. And I’ve used every one of them before we ended up building our own. But um, we have unlimited variability within our handwriting style. So if you literally wanted 1000 A’s in your handwriting style, it’s gonna be an expensive font to build. But we literally can build you an unlimited handwriting style that has unlimited, you know, font variability. So that’s what I’m telling, you know, clients are like, Oh, these are robot handwritten, like, Yeah, but it’s still unlimited variability. And we control the kerning. We control the ligatures, we control this spacing, the horizontal jitter, we just added natural line wave. So it’s called a line level warp. So like, when it writes, it kind of writes like, I mean, it is a very in depth, complicated process. But yeah, short answer, yeah, we’d have you fill out a form. And we would create a handwriting style for you. But we also have a lot of in style or in house handwriting styles that people choose.

Chris Davis 26:55
Yeah. And this is we’re leveraging technology. You know, we’re not trying to get off the hook and fool people and trick No, I please like, log my handwriting style. Because I’m unreliable and I want to put my font or my ligature style. I think that’s what you said. I’m learning on the flyer. So when they receive it, it’s heartfelt now. And it’s authentic. Watch this. Everybody put put on your tech hats listeners, for me. Rick, you said something earlier about Zapier in mail merging. Okay, now, since my, my handwriting is in your system, I have one way of just sitting down writing out a note, okay, I want to write down, I want to write this note out. And somebody can digitize it uploaded XYZ, right? But I’m using paper. No other thing is throughout the customer journey. And this is going to get a little technical everybody, but just follow me. If you have a mail merge, that means that there’s you can send an email, whether it’s forwarded, or this is just a response to a particular inbox. And that inbox is going to look for patterns. And you can extract text, you can extract strings, and you can extract information. Yep, there’s no reason why just like we do with emails, in our personal lives, emails,

Rick Elmore 28:24
the same exact technology. Same exact what we can’t do it. So think of like, you know, MailChimp or Constant Contact, how you would like, you know, customize those emails, it’s the same exact technology for customizing handwritten notes. And as long as you have like that get input data or trigger action data, as long as that that that data is able to be triggered out of your software. So first name, last name, address, you know, birthday, whatever, and all can be automated. Yeah,

Chris Davis 28:52
yep. Yep. So there’s there it gets to, you know, I do all kinds of stuff with email, if I sometimes I can’t control the, the who’s sending me the email, but it comes in the same format. So I’ll send it through a mail parser and put, and now I have my merge fields. Other times I am the owner of the form the information comes in. Again, still, I can now merge it. My point is this. There’s no There’s no reason that anybody should be at a disadvantage saying, I don’t know how to make it personalized or I don’t know what to write. If you’ve been following this podcast, if you’ve been listening to the tutelage you know that we all do our messaging contextual. What Rick is providing us is just a another channel a another form of messaging. All of the prior stuff is still applicable. So what I teach up, when I talk about contextual copy, it’s speak to them based on what they just did. And the next step you want them to take. There’s no like, whether it’s an email A text message or a hand written note, tell me this, tell me this, Rick because I’m all about feedback and synchronizing messaging and all of that. The note the, your system will send out the note or the handwritten letter, is there any way to get feedback on when it was delivered?

Rick Elmore 30:22
There is I just, we try to keep this as authentic as possible. So using a real forever stamp, there are ways to do like barcodes or, or adding QR codes, like you can do like personalized QR QR codes. And then we’ve gotten really creative with a real estate agent where every single card had its own personalized QR code. So if if someone scanned it, like they got notified, and they know who scanned it, so then they can retarget them and re enter them into a new marketing campaign, a retargeting campaign. But yeah, there are ways you know, call tracking QR codes. There are different ways to ship stuff, but we try to keep it as authentic as possible. We do have like, we work with a luxury hat brand like E commerce Shopify website, that adds like personalized discount codes. So if they repurchase they can track you know, who’s reusing it, where it’s coming from? Yeah. So you know, it just depends on like, how, you know, marketing minded you are, because you literally can get unlimited, like, in creative in different ways. Like you can get creative with the card design, you can get creative with the the message, right, and you know, different ways of tracking it. But um, yeah, it’s just it’s a, it’s an automated, you know, tangible in some ways people think marketing piece, but, you know, we always say relationship relationship. Yeah.

Chris Davis 31:47
Absolutely. Um, final question here, and it’s in the Shopify realm. And this is just the first thing that comes to mind. Right, the first thing that comes to mind, when we talk about Shopify, we’re talking about products and online. And a lot of times, that first impression is important. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shopped with the brand. And I received a box, I’m just expecting the product, honestly. But it’s a very nice surprise when I open up the box, and it’s got like a card in there. And it’s got a little bit of fluffy stuff that can get messy and move it out. It’s just a good presentation. So I think it’s common to know when someone places their first order, maybe on anniversaries, birthdays, things of that nature. Are there any things that are on top of your mind right now that you’ve seen when it comes to like Shopify brands, or things of that nature, other unique, what unique events or ways that you’ve seen people use handwritten notes and ecommerce,

Rick Elmore 32:45
so ecommerce, I think, thresholds or repeat buyers, so there’s ways to set up those triggers? You know, because it makes sense, right? Like, oh, they just made their third purchase with us, let’s send them a handwritten note. And you can, you can say something about that, hey, thank you for making your third purchase with our company. So it shows that person that you’re sending the card that you’re paying attention to their activity, right, it shows them that it’s even more like, personalized, because you’re, you’re paying attention to them as a customer, you know, spending thresholds, you know, if they’re spending more than 500,000, whatever, you can set up all that stuff. You know, you know, larger ticket items, you know, if you’re, I always say if your clients worth more than $1,000 to you, you know, you should be sending them multiple handwritten notes here. You spend a few bucks, right? Why not spend a few bucks really, you know, build that relationship and get get those referrals, get those better reviews? Increase the lifetime value? But yeah, that’s what I was saying earlier. If you have that marketing mind, there’s unlimited ways that you can get creative to use a resource like this, but, you know, just automating a thank you card. You know, that’s that’s really the easiest way to use us.

Chris Davis 33:50
Yeah. And there’s enclosing everybody, I’ll leave you with this, gem. I was thinking about b2b, Rick. And with b2b, how nice would it be when you close that deal? Because these usually have a sales cycle that’s beyond a couple of days. Right? And there’s multiple people involved, so maybe the founder, or maybe the CTO, maybe there’s other people that you’ve used along the way? How nice would it be, once that deal is closed for everybody to get their own respective thank you card, right, instead of sending it to the whole company, and it’s just like this forever. Each, each person received their own individual thank you card. Again, if you’ve got your marketing hat on the limit, that it’s limitless, you know, what you can do and how you can do it. I think that I’ll say this, Rick, I think that that if you can just integrate a little bit of empathy and compassion into your professional day to day, it seems like with a platform like yours, it just goes a

Rick Elmore 34:56
long way. And well, it does.

Chris Davis 34:59
You Yeah, yeah, that’s, that’s what I’m thinking, Rick, thank you so much, man. If people have been listening, and they’re like, wait a minute, I need to get set up with this yesterday, I just closed a big deal. I want to send thank you cards. I want to upload my my handwritten font, my ligature style. I want to know more, where can they go,

Rick Elmore 35:19
you can just go to simplynoted.com Just how it’s spelled says, simply noted, or you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, I’m on LinkedIn all day. I’m pretty responsive there. So yeah, and also, you can go to our website and on our business page, you can request a sample kit, we do a really nice job of sending like a big full sample kit like this out to everybody. So I mean, you get a bunch of handwriting styles, you the handwriting sheet, flyers, case studies, all that stuff. So um, we do a really, we, I think we do a really good job with our sample kit that was done. Yeah,

Chris Davis 35:55
yeah. Good stuff. Love sample kits. Love that, that you have that I’m actually going to get one man. It looks really, really good. But again, thank you, we’ll have the show notes, URL in the show notes. Everyone, you can go there on your phone right now, wherever you’re listening to the web is a really nice website. Just explore. That’s all I asked that you explore. When you have again, multiple channels, we have to be thinking omni channel in our marketing and sales these days. I think we can successfully say that the days of using one channel to close all of your leads there. They’re gone. They’re gone.

Rick Elmore 36:33
And building this business over the last four years, we use every channel possible, including ours. But yeah, handwritten notes isn’t the end all it’s not the only thing you should be using whatsoever. But I completely agree. We use your phone dialers emails, you know, social, our own mail. I mean, we use everything you just have 2022 You just really do.

Chris Davis 36:56
Absolutely. So thank you for your platform. Thank you for your competition within yourself, Rick, to beat yourself every day and improve incrementally. I can’t say how refreshing it is to hear a story like that. I’m grateful for you being on the podcast, man. So thanks for joining. Thanks, Chris.

Rick Elmore 37:19
This is great. Yes, thank

Chris Davis 37:20
you have a good one man. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to, and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly. And you can access them all at allsystemsgopodcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends