How David Wachs Built Handwrytten Into the Most Personal Automation Company

Building meaningful customer relationships at scale sounds impossible—especially in an age of AI, automation, and overflowing inboxes. But what if technology could actually make marketing feel more human?

In this episode of Shopify Happy Hour, Dan sits down with David Wachs, founder and CEO of Handwrytten, the company using robotics and AI to help businesses send authentic handwritten notes at scale. From bootstrapping early startups to creating a category-defining platform used by thousands of businesses, David shares why the future of customer engagement isn't replacing human connection—it's making it easier to create.

You'll hear how David:

•  Built Handwrytten by combining robotics, software, and real pens to automate handwritten notes. 
•  Turned a simple observation about customer appreciation into a scalable SaaS business. 
•  Landed early enterprise customers by solving a problem that email couldn't. 
•  Uses automation to enhance personalization instead of replacing it. 
•  Thinks about customer retention, loyalty, and lifetime value over short-term marketing wins. 
•  Navigates the rise of AI while keeping authentic human experiences at the center of the business. 

We also get into the bigger picture:

•  Why handwritten notes consistently outperform digital messages in building customer relationships. 
•  How brands can stand out in an increasingly automated world. 
•  The difference between capturing demand and creating lasting customer loyalty. 
•  Practical ways ecommerce brands can use handwritten notes throughout the customer journey. 
•  How AI and robotics are reshaping marketing without eliminating the importance of genuine human connection. 
•  Why the highest-ROI marketing investments often aren't the easiest ones to measure. 

✉️ Whether you're an ecommerce founder, marketer, or business owner looking to build stronger customer relationships, David's insights offer a fresh perspective on blending technology with authentic human connection.

Brands & Mentions:

•  Handwrytten 
•  Shopify 
• Charleston Coffee Roasters
•  Blueland 
•  Brittany Hodak 
• Creating Superfans: How To Turn Your Customers Into Lifelong Advocates
• BBQ Guys
• Zapier
• Pilot
• Stew Leonard's

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to David Wachs & Handwrytten
02:15 The startup that inspired Handwrytten
04:27 Why handwritten notes still matter in a digital world
06:25 How Handwrytten's robots actually write with real pens
12:54 Building the business & early operations
14:30 Landing the first customers with Google Ads
17:50 Why creating demand is harder than capturing it
20:06 Marketing channels that actually work today
24:01 Personalization vs. gimmicky marketing
29:22 The best ways ecommerce brands use handwritten notes
35:58 Which brands should invest in handwritten marketing?
39:47 AI, automation, and the future of customer engagement
42:20 Speed Round
46:00 Where to connect with David Wachs

Transcript

Dan Cassidy (00:00)
Welcome to the Shopify Happy Hour. On this show, you'll hear from Shopify founders, operators, and growth experts

Dan Cassidy (00:05)
sharing marketing strategies, lessons from the trenches, and real e-commerce insights, all over a different drink each episode. Today's guest is David Wax, founder and CEO of Handwritten,

Dan Cassidy (00:16)
a Shopify integrated platform helping brands automate one of the oldest forms of marketing: handwritten notes. Handwritten enables businesses to send real pen and ink cards at scale.

Dan Cassidy (00:25)
Giving e-commerce brands a way to build stronger customer relationships through thoughtful, personalized outreach. After more than twenty years in marketing, David has built a business around a simple idea in an increasingly automated world,

Dan Cassidy (00:36)
genuine human connection is becoming one of the biggest competitive advantages. David, welcome to the Shopify Happy Hour.

David (00:42)
Thank you so much for having me on, Dan. Really appreciate it.

Dan Cassidy (00:45)
Awesome. Well let's dive in. Let's kick it off. What what are you drinking over there, good sir?

David (00:49)
I am drinking a black rifle coffee. It's called their Smoky Joe. And it's an interesting, you know, they've instead of going the ultra high-end route, they're going for gun totin military guys and ex-military guys, which I am not, but it happens to be good strong coffee and it's near my house. So it's got that going for it. And it and it, you know, I I certainly support first responders, so it's it's nice that they give back.

Dan Cassidy (01:15)
Fantastic. Checks lots of boxes, so first responders and military, but also strong and close to the house. Those are two very important things.

David (01:21)
Yep, and

David (01:23)
and

David (01:23)
differentiated. You know, it's an interesting marketing versus going the same route everybody else's, they've gone a completely different tactic. So I appreciate that.

Dan Cassidy (01:30)
Yeah, and it's it's always great when a brand comes into a crowded category and goes after a niche audience and speaks to them very well and then grows based on that. So super cool. Well, I've got some coffee as well. so it's right now in North Carolina, it is what I like to call the jungle season. It's like hundred degrees every day, insanely humid. You can't walk outside without your glasses fogging up. So I've got some coal brew from Charleston Coffee Roasters. actually get it at Costco, which is like a big old bag.

David (01:37)
huh.

Dan Cassidy (01:58)
A really good coffee that's perfect for Colbrew. So cheers to you, good sir. Thanks for coming on.

David (02:04)
Cheers to you, thank you.

Dan Cassidy (02:05)
All right. Well, now that we are getting sufficiently caffeinated, I'm on probably my fourth cup for the day. let's get into some marketing stuff. Would love to kind of walk through the journey with handwritten. So thinking back to the early days, what inspired you to build it? Why'd you why'd you build handwritten?

David (02:20)
it actually goes back further than handwritten, and I think it's important to kind of quickly run through this. Prior to handwritten, I started a text messaging company in two thousand four. So this is before the days of the iPhone. We were initially sending text messages about homes. So you'd drive by a house, you'd want info on the house, there'd be an empty flyer box. there was no Zillow at that point. So you would see a sign hanging from the

David (02:47)
s sign called a writer to the sign and it would say text home to 30364 whatever the unique part was to the number 30364. You would do that, you'd get back on your little flip phone, your Motorola flip, you get photos of the home, price of the home, contact the realtor. To date ourselves, you'd get a option to reply with your fax number to get faxed more information, which is very useful. And then the realtor would get a lead. So

David (03:16)
That business, which was called Sell It, quickly pivoted away from real estate because dealing with realtors can be a challenge. And we worked with large brands. So Marie Claire magazine, for instance, used basically the same system for information on products in their magazine. Apartments.com, or sorry, apartmentsforent.com used us for apartment information, and then we moved

David (03:42)
To general messaging. So Abercrombie and Fitch, Toys R Us, Sam's Club, Office Max, Blue Main Group, all of Broadway, the Circus, we had a Chicago Tribune. We we had a number of clients that used us for messaging. And while the text messages worked, which they absolutely did, back in 2012, I was very concerned that people would just get fatigued.

David (04:07)
by all the overwhelming numbers of text messages on top of at the time Twitter, Slack was just coming out, et cetera, and certainly email. You know, the average person receives about 135 emails a day. They have to spend 24% of their time in the office just managing their inbox. This was back in 2012. So I thought, you know, if we step away from electronic communication,

David (04:33)
I thought the least used inbox was the one at the end of their driveway. So that's why I got into handwritten notes. And it really started with me wanting to send handwritten notes to my employees and my customers because I sold the text messaging business and I wanted to thank my employees and customers for being with me during that. I hate to use the term, but journey. So I had to work for the new owners of that company through 2014.

David (04:59)
And then the next day I turned around and started handwritten. So for the past 12 years, we've grown into the largest provider of automated handwritten notes in the world. We use 200 robots located here in Tempe, Arizona. These robots hold real pens. They write out notes in long form. we then automatically QA them with machine vision systems we built, like actual AI.

David (05:24)
They're inserted in envelopes. The envelope is written in in real pen too, which is quite frankly the most important part, because people tend to open handwritten envelopes and then we put a stamp on it and mail it. So that's kind of our business. We do it about 30,000 times a day. And for

David (05:42)
hundreds of thousands of clients, maybe you know, five, five to ten thousand active clients at any given time. So

David (05:50)
That's kind of what we do in a nutshell. And what we find is that it's universally applicable. So certainly used by e-comm brands and big box retailers. We have department store chains, eyeglass chains on the big box store side. We have a number of smaller e-com brands, especially subscription boxes using us on the Shopify side. But then it's used by piano tuners to

David (06:17)
veterinarian clinics that put down animals, non profits and and and all the rest.

Dan Cassidy (06:22)
I love the breadth of use cases there. And I gotta say, I've been a client and customer for years and think it's you know fantastic. My handwriting is pretty awful in real life. So using digital robots has been a bit of a lifesaver. So I can attest to to it being fantastic software and people really love receiving the handwritten cards. So, question for you what does the so I know you mentioned that you

David (06:30)
yeah.

David (06:38)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (06:50)
have robots that are writing about 30,000 you said letters per day and they're using pens. Can you talk more about the pens? Like these aren't just big pens they're using, right? Like what is what does that look like?

David (07:02)
Actually, they they pretty much are. They're pilot G2 ballpoint pens. So the pilot pen you could pick up at any Walgreens or Office Macs. They're put in our robots, which are obviously special, and we have

David (07:15)
a hundred and eighty of those in the facility. We have a couple more in other locations throughout the country, and then we have a number of other robots. But the key robot around here is the writing robot.

David (07:25)
Those robots can write in one of 200 plus handwriting styles. There's about 35 available for for anybody off the website to choose or you know through the Shopify app or whatever. And then people come to us, whether they're a celebrity or just a person that really wants their own handwriting style and we'll create it for them. And then those are private styles. Once we create that private style, it can be written by any robot.

David (07:52)
And then we can also do like signatures, which are way cheaper than full handwriting styles because it's like creating one glyph of your signature. Or we have a number of doodles now, which you might not be aware of, Dan. So you can actually go on handwritten.com and have it draw a little picture for you of like a heart, or a house or whatever, whatever the holiday is, a turkey or a skull and bones for for Halloween, whatever that is.

David (08:17)
it can draw that on your note too. So it's getting pretty cute in that regard. but yeah, we we it it is just a regular pilot G G2 ballpoint pen. It's funny you say that I actually on my desk have this box of a very heavy box of brass pen holders because in our early days we used to require that the robot hold the pen in a very heavy pen pen casing.

David (08:42)
'Cause it would have to press down for the robot. But now the robots do the pressing themselves. So I don't know why we just bought a bunch of expensive brass pens. I think it's just kind of you know, they're they're they're awesome pens. So I don't I don't know. We give them out as gifts more than anything now. But yeah, so we have those machines, we've got the QA machines, we have a very large industrial envelope stuff stuffing machine.

David (09:09)
We are talking about actually

David (09:11)
like I just got on a meeting where we're talking about humanoid robots to carry

David (09:15)
the the partially completed letters between stations. So taking it from a robot and putting it on on a QA machine, maybe we'll have a humanoid robot do that because you can actually buy some cheap ones from China relatively inexpensively. I don't know if they're any good or not, but I thought it would be fun to try. so yeah, we've got all that.

David (09:34)
And then on top of the writing, we also operate our own three print presses. So if you want a custom card with your logo on it or a photo of your product, we we print that at full bleed on nice, thick, luxurious stock, and we will cut it down to size so it's full bleed and then write on that. And there's no additional cost for printing those cards. You could do it in in quantity one.

David (09:59)
like one of the new features we have for automotive dealers, and I know it's not really applicable here, is we will take a picture of the person standing in front of their new car and then write a card to them saying, you know, we're so glad we were able to help you with your car purchase. And that's a fully automated process. So they just scan the VIN of the of the car, they take a photo, and then the rest kind of happens. So there's some pretty cool stuff happening here at handwritten.

Dan Cassidy (10:26)
I love that you are, you know, the business is all about how to automate something that is personalized and blend them both. But blend the human element, something that is hard to scale with technology that can be much more scalable. And sounds like your entire process flow is literally doing that because you've got you've got robots doing the work with actual pens. I didn't think you'd be using actual pens, but that's fantastic. So I'm kind of stuck on this pen thing. So how many pens do you go through every day or every week? What's I mean, I imagine that's gonna be a pretty heavy cost for you.

David (10:32)
Yeah.

David (10:37)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (10:54)
Yeah.

David (10:54)
Yeah,

David (10:55)
we buy the ballpoints. So Pilot actually knows us. They actually used us last year, the year before, for a whole Christmas campaign because they're aware of us and we'd like, this is cool, you know, we'll work with our pen supplier. We don't buy directly from them. We buy from some bulk office supply store thing and we buy the pens in quantities of like some random quantity. It's like

David (11:19)
A hundred and eighty-seven. I I don't understand why. And we're not buying the pens. We're just buy at this point, we're just buying the inserts. We just use, you know, the little tubes that come in the pen. And each one lasts us, I think, a solid two days per robot. we actually keep one of the things we did early on is we started tracking pen mileage. So we know how long that pen's been writing, and then we tell the operator to swap out the pen.

David (11:47)
after a certain amount of writing. So it's not like we've got a light sensor on that pen shining through to the to see the ink levels, although we could do that, I I guess. But our s our approach is purely software based. It's just keeping track of mileage. So yeah, we we buy these pens, each box is like 200 pens in it. We buy 10 boxes at a time and we pound through them. I would say each each pen lasts like one, one to three days, depending on

David (12:13)
if it's writing letters or if it's writing cards.

Dan Cassidy (12:15)
10 mileage, I love that term.

David (12:17)
Yeah. And that's what

David (12:18)
it is. It's it's literally just how long that pen's been down rolling.

Dan Cassidy (12:22)
Awesome. Okay, so you've got at this point, you've got an army of robots. You've got tons of clients. You're obviously way past that product market fit stage where you are at scale writing tons of handwritten notes per day. So it's 2026. You mentioned you started 2014, is that right? 2014. So let's go back to those early days before you had this army of robots and all these clients and all these different use cases. Why don't you take me back to

David (12:40)
Twenty fourteen, yeah.

David (12:45)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (12:50)
how did you land your first customers? How did you prove there was demand? And how did you start operationalizing at that point?

David (12:58)
So back then, so with the previous company was Sell It, the texting company, I started that out of duress. I got fired from a company. That job's best told over beers, or that that that that story's best told over beers. When s when I sold Sell It, you know, I did pretty good. I did fine. So at that I I was no longer the programmer and I hired initially some programmers to design

David (13:25)
The iPhone app first, not the web app. And the reason at the time I did it, and things have changed now, it's been 12 years, but I wanted what's called a separation of concerns, which means when I designed the web app for my last company, the code for the design of the web app and the code for the logic of the web app were like completely mixed. There was no separation of logic and design. And because of that, it was very hard to de

David (13:53)
To separate the decouple the two to create the sell it iPhone app or the sell it, ironically, the sell we wouldn't need a sell it, well, I guess you could sell it iPhone app or whatever, the sell it voice app or whatever we wanted to do, or the sell it zappier, whatever that was. With handwritten, I wanted to be API focused to start with. So instead of designing the website, I said, let's design the iPhone app. The iPhone app will use APIs.

David (14:20)
those APIs could then be repurposed for the web app or for the Android app or Zappi or whatever else. So that's what we did. So we did a full separation of concerns at the beginning and that's what the developers did. How did I get my first clients? Honestly, it was just Google ads and it was a slow, slow burn. luckily I wasn't under the financial stress I was with the first company. That too was with the first company I had people pounding phone calls and I got a restaurant and

David (14:46)
was very excited with that. restaurant out of New York and it kind of grew from there. with this one, it was just online, people signing up online and using it and it it worked pretty well from the beginning. It it has not been a rocket ship those twelve years, I gotta tell ya. It's been more of a Toyota Camry. It's been kinda taken off slowly but surely. But but yeah, that's that's kind of how we did it.

David (15:10)
now that we have a presence, we are very much SE search engine marketing based, S S E you know, SEO, not really I'm sorry, we're very search engine optimized, not very search engine marketing, although we are bringing back search engine marketing. when we're doing search engine marketing right now, we are very attuned to the attribution because if you don't know what you're doing, you could

David (15:33)
spend your out, you know, you could you could go bankrupt spending it on Google ads and everything else. In fact, we just canceled our Instagram ads. I was excited to try Instagram, but it's too expensive at $80 a lead. So we are now back to just Google and SEO. But that's kind of been our our strategy all along. And then kind of getting back to the initial idea of making sending handwritten notes as easy or easier than sending an email

David (15:58)
It's all about the API. So we are in Zapier. We are in make.com if you're familiar with Make. We are Shopify. You can pick us up out of out of the Shopify store. We're in the App Exchange for Salesforce and the HubSpot marketplace. We're in the BlackBot, which is a nonprofit CRM system. We're in their marketplace too. So we try to be everywhere our customers are and don't depend on them to use our website.

David (16:25)
And that's given us some marketing visibility as well. I mean, there's a couple of places we need to be, that I haven't figured out how to get there yet, but we're working on it. So that's what we do.

Dan Cassidy (16:34)
Super interesting marketing strategy because the product or service, I think what you're doing kind of blends both. Is it is very innovative, but you are cap it seems like you're capturing demand that's already there for a product or service that's existing, which is interesting where typically, you know

David (16:40)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (16:53)
The way I look at a lot of marketing is you're either creating demand or capturing demand. Yes, there's some blend of both, but Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, this very visual, short form video life cycle we're in right now with marketing is very much about showcasing products and creating demand for something that wasn't around before. And then you've got search, right? Which is great for apparel and food and stuff and auto and people that and and products and services that people already know they need and now they're lower down the funnel and they are actively searching.

David (17:09)
Yeah.

David (17:12)
Yeah.

David (17:18)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (17:21)
for which product they want to purchase. So it's interesting because you've got this innovative product slash service, but you're really go like extending across all these platforms to capture demand that's there, using SEO to capture demand, using SEM to capture demand. So you're kind of extending everywhere. back in the early days, what would people typically search for to find you in order to convert? What what does that look like?

David (17:37)
Yeah.

David (17:46)
Just handwritten notes. That's handwritten notes, handwritten note service. I mean, that's pretty straight up. And that's why I think we've been a Camry, not a rocket ship, is with this business, it's a very hard business. But with this business, people don't know that this is an option. they know they need to send handwritten notes, they assume they have to sit down and do it themselves, or they don't need to know they need to send handwritten notes they never think about. So capturing demand for those

David (18:11)
Very few people that actually want to use it is fairly straightforward. It's the boiling the ocean part, the rest of the process that's very difficult. And we do use Instagram and Facebook and all the channels there on the posting side, but not on the advertising side anymore. It's just it's too expensive. So every day you'll see another video of either me or the robots on my account, you know, getting pushed out to

David (18:40)
the ether and it's it's hilarious because any any video that features my mug gets like, you know, ten percent of the videos of the views that any video that features the robot does. But hey, I'm I'm used to it at this point. But but yeah, like we we do a lot of that. You know, I I I listen to Alex Ramosy and we gotta post every day, post every day, which we do. but posting ads, I don't know, I'd love your thoughts on it because I haven't been able to drive that cost down.

David (19:07)
the cost per lead to a point where it really makes sense. I I I figure I can spend that money better elsewhere. So that's what we're doing. Now it's you know it's a lot about optimizing for for AI. And luckily we're already the market leader. But that said, we're not sitting on our loyals and laurels and we're doing stuff obviously like our G2 reviews help and and all that, but there's other stuff we're doing just for AI too that I can't talk about.

Dan Cassidy (19:35)
Well, I wouldn't be I wouldn't feel bad about not getting as much traction as your robots because that's pretty hard to compete with.

David (19:41)
Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, people

David (19:43)
see these things and it's you know, it's I guess it was to be expected when I started posting. I get a lot of rage comments and you know, I hate this, I get these all the time, blah, blah, blah. But at the same time we tend to get more quiet likes, meaning people will like the post than we do rage comments, which is good. But it's very divisive and I and I understand it. But if I were to sit down with any of those people,

David (20:09)
And I should probably make some videos about this because that nobody will watch. But I I would say, look, this isn't new. What we're doing is not new. Back in the 60s, 1960s, if you had a bad plane trip on TWA or PNAM or whatever you were on at the time, and you wrote in a complaint, you'd get a letter back from the CEO signed by the CEO, you know, saying, We're so sorry for your complaint.

David (20:35)
I'm willing to bet you that CEO did not sign that letter. He used an auto pen or his secretary wrote out that letter. if you donate to a nonprofit and you get a handwritten note back, I'm willing to bet you most of the time that note was not written by the head of development. It was written by an intern sitting in a room with a bunch of other interns or volunteers working for Greasy Pizza. And

David (20:59)
This, you know, so what's the difference between somebody working for pizza and some and a robot that's able to do your note more consistently? not identically, because we make sure there's variances, as you know, Dan, in every note, but it's more consistent, it's more reliable, it doesn't take smoke breaks, it doesn't screw up, and it doesn't drop pizza oil on the card itself. So there's a lot of benefits for using something like handwritten versus a room of nonprofit volunteers.

David (21:26)
or your secretary or hiring people in India to do it.

Dan Cassidy (21:30)
Yeah, that's great. Well, to your point about

Dan Cassidy (21:33)
Rage comments, you know, the way I look at that stuff is haters are gonna hate and it's good for it's good for the algorithm. So when we're creating content for brands, we're always looking at we're often looking to be polarizing because content that some people will love and other people will hate is great for the algorithm. It's that sort of lukewarm middle. That's the stuff that doesn't work so well. So when people hate on c hate on social posts, it's usually a good thing because it means you can get more views cheaper and get in front of more people.

David (21:37)
Yep.

David (22:02)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (22:02)
Yeah,

Dan Cassidy (22:02)
some of those people are not gonna be a fit, but for the ones who are, it's just more social proof when they do see that organic post or that paid ad. yeah, and in terms of paid strategy, something you could test is just with all the organic content you're creating, boost or amplify the outperforming content. So if we're posting you know 30 times a month.

Dan Cassidy (22:20)
Take the top five or ten that you're seeing, anything that outperforms. And then if you're looking to put some paid ad spend behind it, you'll have already have tested organically where you didn't have to waste that ad spend. And then you've already then you you know you have some confidence that the that the posts that you do amplify with paid will be better off than maybe boosting something that was a little bit of a dud. That's an old that's an old Gary V hack, so that's not me, but we use it and it definitely works. awesome.

David (22:40)
That's a great idea.

Dan Cassidy (22:47)
Okay, so you mentioned you mentioned AI, we're talking about robots, you know, in a world of AI, email, SMS, obviously you've got lots of background in, all this automation. why do handwritten notes still matter?

David (23:00)
I think one, it's a volume play. Do you want to be in the stack of, you know, a hundred and thirty-five emails a day and a million texts and tweets and slacks and teams and all that? Or do you want to be the pile of one to three handwritten notes you receive a month? So there's that. but I think at a deeper level, what a handwritten show handwritten note shows is a deeper investment in attention, personal attention that people are starving for at this point.

David (23:28)
Everybody knows that all those emails you get, it could be the most personal email in the world. They will probably have a good gut feel that that was automated. They don't have that gut feel on a handwritten note. They think it's something you sat down, you took, as you know, if you actually sit down to try to do it, it takes like three to five minutes to do, and then you gotta look up their address. You gotta find a stamp, you gotta go to the store to get the card. It's a whole process. So the fact that you took that time and you thought about somebody.

David (23:57)
To sit down and write that note, that that attention. It's not the personalization. You can get a personalized email. That handwritten note that you send could just say thanks for being a customer. But at least you're sitting down and showing that personalized attention. And I think that personalized attention is really what people gravitate towards. Of course, if you throw some things in there, like Britney Hodak, who wrote a back a book called Being Creating Superfans.

David (24:22)
She talks about in those notes, or if you have to do an email, do an email, talk about your story and your why and connect it to their story and their why. So if you sign up with handwritten and you spend a couple thousand bucks with us, you'll get a handwritten note from me explaining why I'm doing what I'm doing and and genuinely thanking them for their business. And it's funny, they know that note is handwritten with a why, not handwritten with an I, and they will still thank us for those.

David (24:50)
so it's really just taking the moment out and sharing that personal attention. And if they do think it's fake, at least you did something better than sending an email, right?

David (25:01)
speaking of SEO, about four years ago I had an SEO firm contact me and they sent me this FedExed package. So I know the package alone cost twenty dollars to send it to me, and inside was an electronic.

David (25:15)
card that on the outside was their logo. On the inside was some corporate blather video that played. So you'd open it up, there was a little screen and it would start playing this boring as hell video. I couldn't get through the video. It was too it looked like I was orient getting having an orientation at IBM or something. It was so boring. But what it did though was it made me think one, it made me realize they were trying to get my attention

David (25:43)
They took the approach of sending me this thing that was very expensive. And when I got it, I thought, gee, they must be making bank on me. If they're willing to send me this thing, they have huge margins. And I'm a cheapskate and poor. I'm not going to pay the huge margins of this thing. Had they just sent me, and it was also wasteful. You know, it's a lot of electronics with a battery that gets thrown away. And

David (26:09)
For me, because I'm an engineer and really an engineerd, it's distracting. Cause I looked at this thing and all I wanted to do was tear it apart and find the parts in it and see what made it tick, right? So had they just sent me a three dollar handwritten note, not because I run handwritten, at least I would have read the thing, you know? versus getting this this very expensive item that screamed high margin, it also screamed

David (26:38)
Distracting, wasteful, not environmentally friendly, all the rest. I I I think a lot of people are trying to get your attention and they're looking for the next whiz-bang gimmick when sending a handwritten note, real or fake, at least it's showing you're doing something. And for those that realize that's fake, at least you're doing something different. But that said, I could hand you one of our notes, and unless I say, Hey, was this note written by a robot? I don't think

David (27:07)
most pe I think ninety nine percent of people would would not guess it at all. They'd just say, thanks very much for the handwritten note. Including my wife, who is married to the robot, you know, the guy that sends more handwritten notes than anybody in the world, and she gets notes from friends. She's like, Wow, what lovely handwriting they have So it's it's kind of funny.

Dan Cassidy (27:27)
That's amazing. And I love that reference. well, I should say I like that reference that you mentioned about that company sending it to you because I believe I got the same thing. it's it's been a few years, I don't know exactly what you're talking about. Might have been a different company, but it's the same strategy. Whereas this like bulk envelope that was, you know, I obviously opened it and I saw what was inside and I thought, you know, very similar things where it was like, okay, I've never even heard of this company, but they clearly see me as a valued client for their services because

David (27:36)
Yeah.

David (27:50)
Correct.

Dan Cassidy (27:55)
They are investing so much in this thing. And as I was consuming it, I'm like, I'm actually not that interested in this. And they spent so much money to get in front of me. So I think you know, a challenge for marketers and operators, part of it is like, you just have to have you got to get in front of the person, right? That's that's number one. You could have the best message in the world, but if it gets lost in email or if or if it gets lost in a banner ad, doesn't matter what you've said because nobody sees it. So the first thing is like you have to capture that attention, you have to in front of that person.

Dan Cassidy (28:23)
Person. But once you're there, once you've earned that right, you then have to fulfill on the promise of being there. And what's nice about a handwritten note is you can be very appreciative, you can express emotion where the person feels valued. you know, I'm a I'm a big proponent of direct mail for e-commerce, basically anything where when everybody else is zigging, you can zag. And direct mail is nice because you know, to to your the stats you mentioned where people get, you over a hundred emails.

Dan Cassidy (28:50)
Emails per day. Well, they're getting tons of, we're all getting tons of digital advertising every day. And it can work incredibly well. Like we run tons of Facebook and Google ads, and the stuff can work really well. But I always like when there are there are tools that can stand out from the crowd. And what you're doing is kind of a form of very personalized direct mail that gets into the inbox pretty inexpensively, where it can be customizable. So shifting focus a

Dan Cassidy (29:17)
little bit more on Shopify brands in particular. What have you seen? Because I know you've worked with lots of different Shopify brands for handwritten. What have you seen as the best strategies Shopify brands have used with personalized handwritten notes at scale using handwritten?

David (29:35)
Yeah, so the first thing I'd like to caution is everybody looks for an immediate ROI on a handwritten note, and you're not gonna get it. It's a long game. But what we use this for is gratitude. So within the Shopify plugin for handwritten, you can set up after the first purchase or after X purchases or after they spend X amount.

David (30:02)
any of those thresholds, send a thank you note. And what I would do is what I call a full stop thank you, which is a term I coin, but whatever. It just means write a thank you, that's it. Don't say thank you and please go here and enter this code or thank you and please refer us to a friend and you know, blah blah blah. Anytime you do that, it's no longer a thank you, it's an ad. And you want to be very genuine in your thinking. What you

David (30:29)
could do if you want to include an ad in that is you're writing on a card. Why not have the back of the card have an ad or a coupon code or something on it? So it doesn't come across like you sat down to write that. You just wrote a kind note to the person explaining that you're a small business or medium-sized business and that you really appreciate their, you know, them being a client. And if they have any questions, here's the number to reach out to. That's your note.

David (30:56)
But on the back of the card or on the top flap, you know, you could have something printed that says, we appreciate our customers. Please, you know, scan this QR or enter this code, whatever that is. So that's kind of our strategy for our customers. We also say handwritten notes are not a s are not a channel you want to saturate. You know, this is two to four touch points a year. So this is

David (31:20)
After a you know, after purchase, thank you. That's typically first purchase, but again, it could be after a threshold, it's a birthday card, it's a holiday card, and then maybe one offer a year, you know. So you're at most, you're really reaching out four times a year. Then the second year, it's anniversary of purchase, birthday card, holiday card, offer. Those are kind of the the cadences you get in. I don't think you should overdo it, but that's that's really it. so

David (31:47)
That's what we see that tends to work best. Some other examples, just for giggles, we have a snack box that works with us. They provide office snacks. And they have fallen into the what's called the service recovery paradox. And the service recovery paradox is if you screw up but provide a better customer experience than you know, if you overdeliver on.

David (32:14)
fixing that screw up, then you will win a customer for life. You actually build more loyalty than if you never screwed up in the first place. So that's the paradox. So what they do was when they were screwing up with clients, they would send a follow-up box. That box would have an apologetic handwritten note in it. It would also have some swag and some other stuff in there. What they found is those customers had higher LTV than their overall customers. So just screw up with everybody.

David (32:41)
make up with everybody and raise all tides. So that's what they do. if you don't want to do that, the alternative is have cut handwritten notes go out upon resolution of customer service requests. That is a tremendous strategy. So we work with a footwear brand doing that. So if you receive the wrong shoes or they don't fit or they were delayed, whatever that is, you will from the the the CSR will send a handwritten note

David (33:07)
They'll just log into handwritten and do it. And that goes out saying, We're so glad we were able to solve this. I'm so sorry for the initial issue. That transaction really becomes surprise and delight because you assume that customer service rep one and duns you, right? Like they're you they they just move on to the next. They're not thinking about you. But when somebody takes the time to think about you post event, it's like wow. I had this happen to me personally. I bought a

David (33:33)
Barbecue, and I'm happy to mention the name of the company, Barbecue Guys. I bought the whole barbecue island. And some of the parts came b banged indented. So and it took, I mean, these are heavy grill that had to be palleted to my house. I called them, they said, we'll get you one the next day. Somehow they got me the parts the next day. And then two days later, I got a phone call from somebody saying, you know, just making sure everything is good now. And I was just like, Holy crap!

David (33:58)
You know, you took the time to make a phone call. I was super impressed. So it doesn't have to be a handwritten note, but a handwritten note is is certainly the cheap, cheap and easy way to do it. And automatable.

Dan Cassidy (34:07)
You know, as you were talking about about the snack box brand kind of intentionally screwing up a little bit, I couldn't help but think of a memory I haven't thought of in decades. But when I was a kid, I remember I wanted to go go to the circus. So for my birthday, you know, my parents were asking me what I wanted, so I told them. And so they buy me tickets and I go to the circus. And I remember there was at one point where I forget what stunt it was, they were like on the tightrope and somebody like almost fell off. So everybody was like, you know, you could

Dan Cassidy (34:33)
Hear a pin drop and then they had to send somebody up to go get the person and they got them down. And as a kid, I was like, that was the craziest thing I ever saw. My aunt heard I wanted to go to the circus, so she also got me tickets. So like a week later, I go to the same circus, and once you know, that same exact person at that same exact moment like almost fell to their death, and they had to send somebody and this, and I was so disappointed. I was just like, you know, there's something about being authentic and honesty, and I'm a I'm still a believer in that, right? And so when you can come across and say,

David (34:34)
Yeah.

David (34:46)
They didn't.

David (34:55)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (35:02)
Hey, we screwed up, but we we we will, you know, we appreciate you as a customer and we will make this right. And here's what we did, or here's what we'll do. Like there's something powerful in that. but there is that balance of not making it too hokey where it's inauthentic. So I think that's the balance that brands have to strike because I remember being a kid and being being so disappointed by that. But that's great. Okay, so so it sounds like post-purchase, as a thank you, some type of anniversary,

David (35:18)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (35:28)
VIP customer appreciation. Those are all really good ways to do

David (35:30)
yeah. Yeah, we work with a

David (35:33)
wet well, they're houseware home home home brand, but they also do wedding dresses. And after somebody buys a wedding dress, they get, you know, we're so excited to celebrate your wedding with you, send us photos of you in the dress, blah, blah, blah. So we do all that too. Absolutely. Special event. And then on the opposite side come to our special, you know, invitation events for those types of things, whether they're online or in store.

Dan Cassidy (35:57)
do you have a sense of what would you recommend for for brand owners listening to this right now? Is there a specific profile? So it sounds like AOV has to be sufficient enough or LTV has to be sufficient enough where you know you're not gonna do it for for let's say a D2C brand where it's a one time purchase for fifteen bucks and maybe not the you know, they're they're much more transactional one time. This is more for building brand loyalty. Is that is that what I'm hearing?

David (36:08)
Yeah.

David (36:19)
Right.

David (36:23)
Yeah. Yeah, but again, I you know we were just at a retail trade show. I don't know if you go to Shop Talk or ETAil or any of those. If you do, we'll grab a coffee next time. But we were giving out free handwritten cards, you know, to these retailers and they'd say, Okay, well, you know, for a test, and then they send out the handwritten notes and then you know, a month later they're like, Yeah, we didn't get a return on it.

David (36:45)
This is a long game. a handwritten note is not like a a postcard coupon. It's you're building a relationship where you become their durable brand that they go to. So for example, and and again, this isn't really a retailer example, but I think it's a good one. We work with a piano tuner in in Pittsburgh. he's only in your home once a year. He tunes your piano and then he sends you a handwritten note automatically.

David (37:11)
A year later, when he shows up at your home, a year later, because a piano only needs to be tuned once a year, he goes into your home, he often finds that handwritten note standing up on the piano. So not only was it opened and not only was it read, it is put on display on typically the most expensive thing in the home, an area that's reserved for graduation announcements and wedding photos or family photos. You cannot buy that real estate. so this is the special place handwritten notes have.

David (37:39)
It's not gonna mean they're gonna buy a second refrigerator a month later because you sent them a handwritten note. But a year later, when they when they go to buy whatever, an oven or a microwave, they will certainly think of you first. And that's kind of what it's about. So don't put this under a micro lens of ROI. You have to trust that the long-term LTV is there from these clients. But that said, yeah, I if it

David (38:06)
If it's a $25 transaction with a higher acquisition price, I wouldn't try to really try to get anything out of them if they're if if you never expect them to be a client again. But you know, a lot of people are so focused on acquiring new clients. they've got all these great HubSpot dashboards or Shopify dashboards of new client growth. They're not tracking existing clientele TV as much.

David (38:29)
And that's kind of the leaky bucket that you can really plug with a handwritten note.

Dan Cassidy (38:32)
Has there been any any clients you're aware of that have used it as a referral strategy? Cause I could see let's take the let's take the wedding dress brand where a year later or two years later, you know, some type of where there's where there's been enough room between touch points, it's we've really loved providing this experience for you. And you know, I guess that wouldn't be the full stop. It would be sort of the the if you know anybody who would appreciate our service, we love a referral. So I th but that but they serve different purposes, right?

David (38:47)
Yeah.

David (38:55)
Yeah.

Dan Cassidy (39:00)
Is the pure appreciation, brand loyalty play. But this also could be used as a little bit more direct response for brands where it's a fit where the offer makes sense and there's value. I think the balance is making sure the brand is not being too direct responsey or too sales-y, and they're treating this as a relationship, as a f as a friend, right? And every now and again, it's okay to ask your friend for something. But if every time you talk to your friend you're asking them for something, that's gonna get a little tired, right? So I think that's that's the challenge for brands, is just

David (39:03)
Yeah.

David (39:08)
Yeah.

David (39:15)
Yeah, correct.

David (39:21)
Yeah.

David (39:23)
A hundred percent.

Dan Cassidy (39:29)
balancing both of those worlds.

David (39:31)
Yeah, I just wouldn't lead with it. You're right. You know, on the very first letter you send them or handwritten or you send them, don't do that. But after that, I totally agree. I think I think you can you can kind of build that trust and and send them something after the fact for sure.

Dan Cassidy (39:46)
Love it, love it. so obviously you're pretty tech forward, you've been using robots for years, you mentioned AIO, and you're you're obviously using lots of technology at handwritten. what what trends, what tech trends are you watching most in, let's say, e-commerce specifically and retail right now?

David (40:05)
Right now it's about attribution and making handwritten note attribution, as much as I think people are kind of missing the you know, missing the trees for the forest or whatever. we are adding attribution capabilities to the platform so you could easily tag back handwritten if somebody buys something. So there that is going on, I think, overall with this you know preponderance of AI everywhere and

David (40:33)
AI emails everywhere and AI text, everything. I think handwritten notes are just gonna become more valuable. So that's that you know, we're just gonna c keep doing what we're doing. We are offering more personalization of the card itself. So, you know, the very front of the card could say, you know, on an angle across the card, hey Dan, we miss you at shop XYZ. but you know, and that would be printed.

David (40:57)
So we are doing some more customization that way, but overall our value prop is kind of staying the same. And it's just providing the best of class handwriting personalization solutions out there. but yeah, the the trends we're seeing as I think everybody's purse strings get tightened, we are really working on attribution both internally and then for our clients.

Dan Cassidy (41:17)
Fantastic. All right, so let's move on to the speed round. So each question, you know, first first answer that comes to your mind, about 30 seconds or less. what is one book that you recommend?

David (41:27)
Well, I'd have to say Brittany Hodak's creating superfans. I think she's a really cool, interesting thinker in the space of customer experience. and you know, she certainly values the handwritten notes. I I'd certainly say her.

Dan Cassidy (41:40)
What is one underrated Shopify app or piece of technology that brands should know about?

David (41:47)
Well, certainly the handwritten app, we only have like two reviews, maybe. yeah, that that that would be it. And then I think most people probably know to leverage tags as much as possible. But if you if you're a small owner and you don't leverage tags, you know, one of the things we're currently adding to the Shopify handwritten app is the ability to tag people that r have received handwritten notes. you know, it's kind of valuable. It's like a mini clavio.

Dan Cassidy (42:10)
Nice. What is an under the radar brand that you love?

David (42:13)
Blue Land.

David (42:14)
they do, and I wish it was cheaper, So instead of buying a thing of spray kitchen cleaner or bathroom cleaner or even soap, pump soap for your hands, they sell little tablets and then they sell the pump, the

David (42:32)
the empty glass pump. You put the tablet in the pump, you fill it with water, it fizzes up like an Alka seltzer, and then 30 minutes later you have soap or you have spray or whatever. So it's highly environmentally friendly. You know, one of the issues with like these little tablets that you put in your dishwasher, the little packets, is that packet has microplastics. And you're also, you know, the packets are also liquid, so you're trans transporting a bunch of water, even though

David (43:00)
it it's just like this big. So with Bluelin, they got rid of all the water. You add the water yourself. There's no microplastics. you know it is slightly cheaper than a bottle of soap, but you think you're just buying a little tablet this big. It could be it could be cheaper. So they're really they're really maximizing that. But I love the brand and what they stand for.

Dan Cassidy (43:19)
what is a favorite shopping experience online or in person?

David (43:22)
well I don't know if it's around anymore, but Stu Leonards. Are you familiar with Stu Leonard's? so Stu Leonard's is it still is

Dan Cassidy (43:28)
a b I'm a big fan of Stu Leonards. When I'm back in that area, it is still around. There's there's at least two, maybe three locations.

David (43:35)
Yeah, so Stu Leonard's is a where it's it's in the East Coast in New England basically what it is is it's a grocery store with one aisle, and you maze your way through that one aisle. So you have to go past every single product. And as you do, there's it's kind of like the a combination of a grocery store and a chucky cheese.

David (43:56)
So there's like animated cows that sing and dance and moo and and all the rest. So it really becomes a destination. there was a while, the reason I said I don't know if it's out of business, is there was a while where the managers or the owners of Stu Leonards were doing just a wee bit of tax evasion and they got sent to jail. But the product or the s the experience is tremendous. It's you know, they've completely changed a grocery store and made it very much a destination.

Dan Cassidy (44:23)
I love that answer. So yeah, my experience with Stu Leonard's is very similar where it's one aisle and the food's good, they have good high quality products, it's a lot of kind of farm market feel, but then they have all these animated, you know, like a giant animated Twinkie cowboy, Twinkie the Kid, who will talk to you, and they've got a giant cow where you press the button, it'll go move, you know, right in the milk aisle. So if you bring a kid there, they're just like loving it, and it's kind of it's kind of blending and

Dan Cassidy (44:51)
entertainment with shopping. So that's a great one. You're the first person to mention that on this podcast. And that's a really fun, really fun shopping experience. who is someone you would nominate for a future episode?

David (45:01)
I'd certainly say Brittany Hodak. I I I think what she's doing is incredibly interesting in customer experience. So if you I'm sure she'd be willing to come on your show too. So

Dan Cassidy (45:12)
Fantastic. Where can people connect with you and learn more about handwritten?

David (45:18)
So there's two places, certainly handwritten.com and it's h-a-n-d-w-r-y t-t-e-n dot com, handwritten with a Y. If you go there and click business, you can request free samples. And those so you can get a feel for the writing on your own. And then you know, feel free to sign up there. If you use the discount code podcast when you sign up, I I believe you get enough for a free card to mail to somebody.

David (45:43)
or you can connect with me on Instagram. I'm D it's a little tough. H A it's D B W A C H S. So David B Wax, D B W A C H S at D B Wax on Instagram. And you'll get every day a little either a video of the robots or a video of me talking about the power of a handwritten note type deal.

Dan Cassidy (46:03)
David, thank you for joining us today and for sharing your perspective on bringing a more personal touch back to e-commerce and business in general. And thanks so much for sharing your story and insights with us today on the Shopify Happy Hour.