Software makes personal touch easier

Software brings handwritten notes into the digital age.
MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL STAR TRIBUNE
For 25 years, Mike Severance's financial planning clients never received a Christmas card or a thank-you note in the mail. With 700 clients, sending out notes written in his all-caps scrawl was "too time-consuming," he said.
Yet in September, his "A" clients -- the ones most likely to bring him new business through referrals -- started receiving personalized monthly postcards. He said some clients were so surprised to see these handwritten notes in the mail that they called "asking if anything's wrong."
On the contrary. Thanks to a new tool developed by HOARD Clients System Inc. of Rochester, Minn., Severance can send out hundreds of seemingly personalized, handwritten notes in minutes without signing his name or licking a stamp.
HOARD is not the first company to turn handwriting into a font. Several companies are getting into the business, trying to give time-strapped professionals -- even harried homemakers with too long a holiday card list -- a way to fake going the extra mile with a handwritten greeting rather than an e-mailed one, or none at all.
HOARD President Michael Kaselnak, a former financial adviser, got into the business after spending hours writing brief notes to customers, who "need to know you care about them as an individual, not a meal ticket," he said.
He said his company produces a higher-quality, more realistic result than many of his competitors thanks to a particular purple-blue ink that resembles the ink of a blue ballpoint pen.
How this works
Advisers write the alphabet and scribble an assortment of messages to clients using a pen with an embedded computer chip. The company uploads your greetings and fills in only client names and addresses on cards using your script-generated alphabet, figuring that the human eye will figure out it's a font if each a, b and c is identical. They've even had to send the pen back to clients with incredibly neat handwriting, telling them to "mess it up a bit," Kaselnak said.
While fake-handwriting services will take anyone's money, Kaselnak and others are targeting financial advisers, real estate agents and other professionals intent on capturing customers in a competitive market and making them repeat customers.
For financial advisers, loyalty equals big bucks. A yearlong study of affluent investors commissioned for financial services consulting firm CEG Worldwide found loyal customers each gave an average of 376,000 for their advisers to manage compared with 17,000 for moderately satisfied clients. They also refer more than five times more prospects to the adviser.
Yet only one in seven clients considers himself loyal. Loyal customers are contacted about twice a month by their advisers, according to the same study. Merely satisfied customers hear from their advisers about twice a year.
Kaselnak said that despite the research, most of his former peers refuse to spend the time to send notes.
That reluctance is what planted the seed for HOARD, which technically stands for Hands Off Automatic Referral Driver but also signifies the hope that the system will help advisers hoard clients.
Kaselnak launched the system six months ago, after investing close to 1 million of his own money.
Getting customers
A marketing e-mail sent to 150,000 advisers netted 350 clients -- including a handful of real estate agents, nonprofits and a restaurant owner -- who pay a monthly 9.95 fee and are charged a la carte for cards. In 2007, the company will market the notes to real estate professionals and launch a similar service designed for small businesses.
Hooked advisers claim that clients can't tell the difference between a truly handwritten note and a computer-generated one. Even if they could, they say clients wouldn't care.
"They appreciate the contact," said Dan Hunt of Hunt and Strom Financial in Bloomington, Minn., who says the notes already have helped grow his client list. He said that switching from two hours of note-writing per month to spending 15 minutes with HOARD is well worth the cost, considering he estimates his time is worth 500 to 1000 per hour.
John Bowen, chief executive of CEG, said clients may give advisers credit for trying to send pseudo-personalized notes. Yet he struggles with the integrity of passing off mass-produced, printed notes as individualized handwritten ones in a business where integrity is highly valued.
He prefers using e-mail services that match news stories with client interests instead. Though there is the risk that e-mails could get lost in a sea of spam, Bowen said this approach shows clients "I really did think of you and I know what your interests are," leaving them with "a much warmer, fuzzier feeling" despite the use of technology to connect.
Kaselnak said he'd hope that in a perfect world where professionals didn't need to compete for clients and time were no object, his service wouldn't exist. But in the real world, these notes are a "tiny little step to giving people what they want -- which is more contact."