The situation
Letter Friend writes letters by hand, with real pens and real people in New Jersey, and sells mail programs to businesses that live on relationships: loan officers, auto shops, multi-location service companies. Most of them don't show up in the usual contact databases.
What we built
"Worth a quick chat?" became "Want me to mail you one, addressed to you?" In the first 5 days, 1,731 people got the email, 30 replied, 10 said yes, and 6 sent their street address without being asked.
Before scaling, about 1,000 emails went into each of 10 verticals and the market picked. 2 were cut with zero positive replies. The list grew from 36,546 to 63,251 companies for about $52 of scraping.
1,033,746 businesses scraped across 17,078 US towns for about $23. Then we checked the "2+ locations" list and found 58% were dealership service departments with no budget authority. Cut to 10,313 real independents.
The federal NPI registry (11.6 GB, 3.68M records, streamed in 70 seconds) was matched to clinics by phone number. It covered 77% to 89% of practices. LinkedIn-based data covered 2.6% to 6.6%.
The email
Hey first name,
opening line
We handwrite letters for loan officers. Real pen, real people in New Jersey. No fonts, no robot pens.
A loan officer mailed 2,000 homeowners this way. It turned into 50 calls, 25 applications and 11 closed loans.
Want me to mail you one, addressed to you?
Step 1 of the mortgage loan officer campaign.
Results
| Campaign | Sent | Replies | Positive | Per email |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mortgage loan officers | 37,001 | 114 | 43 | 0.116% |
| Independent auto repair | 8,772 | 31 | 15 | 0.171% |
| All 36 campaigns | 106,564 | 311 | 86 | 0.081% |
What changed because of it
A small, physical ask got more yeses than a call ever did. It also created a manual follow-up loop on the client's side, so later campaigns offer a call or 10 free letters instead. The newest campaign, aimed at 51 to 500 employee consumer brands, got its first yes from the CEO of a 49-location fitness group 6 minutes after the first email went out.
