Thoughtbot

About Thoughtbot

thoughtbot is a design and development consultancy that brings digital product ideas to life.  They’ve been producing top quality user driven applications for hundreds of clients, for over 15 years.  Their customers include everyone from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, universities, and non-profits.

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The Challenge: How to retain clients and generate more repeat business

As a consultancy, thoughtbot wanted to spend its time and effort focused on its craft: delivering high value digital products to companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises.

Prior to engaging with IgnitePOST, thoughtbot had been reaching out to past clients and customers digitally, but was not seeing the level of engagement and repeat business of which they knew they were capable.

To solve this problem, thoughtbot turned to IgnitePOST’s personalized direct mail outreach service.

Personalized direct mail is known to be effective, however due to the time-consuming nature it is usually deemed as a less-viable option for companies with smaller marketing teams.

The goal with IgnitePOST was to grow sales and revenue by increasing repeat business from their existing client base using a personalized direct mail outreach campaign.  More importantly, IgnitePOST's service was selected because it completely removed the workload from thoughtbot’s team.

Want to see the IgnitePOST Product Catalog so you can follow along with the various techniques we’re describing? Click the following button to download the overview and follow along:

DOWNLOAD THE PRODUCT OVERVIEW CATALOG & FOLLOW ALONG

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The Strategy: Personalized handwritten messages to get desired response

The strategy was to use IgnitePOST to provide a touchpoint with past clients on a monthly basis. The team at thoughtbot wanted to ensure they were top of mind with past clients so that any time a potential project came up, their clients instantly thought of them.

To track results, each IgnitePOST delivery had a personalized message along with a call to action asking the client to reach out and contact thoughtbot if they needed help with any upcoming projects. The campaign was set up as a drip stream, with the messaging varying slightly from one month to the next.  In addition to notes reminding clients that thoughtbot was available to help on any upcoming project, there were also notes that asked clients to provide a referral or testimonial if they were happy with past work.

By taking this approach, IgnitePOST was able to create a highly personalized, physical mail campaign that inspired past thoughtbot clients to take the desired calls to action.

More importantly, by using this approach there was no work required on thoughtbot’s side after the initial account set up.  IgnitePOST handled all fulfillment, printing, and shipping on behalf of the thoughtbot team.  The team received notifications from the IgnitePOST platform when letters were about to be delivered, and was able to view their campaign right from their IgnitePOST dashboard.

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The Results: Consistent inbound requests and reactivating clients

After just three months of using IgnitePOST, thoughtbot was seeing consistent INBOUND requests!  The goal was to retain current clients as well as get repeat business from existing clients whom had completed projects … the IgnitePOST campaign proved effective on both accounts.

In addition to the campaign being effective in driving new business from existing customers, an added bonus (and one of the biggest advantages) was that it didn’t add anything extra to thoughtbot’s workload at all.

Here are some of the highlights:

• Quick account set up, with no work required on an ongoing basis … just answer inbound requests
• 14% of clients in the IgnitePOST campaign reached out and engaged thoughtbot in open dialog, resulting in conversations that lead to multiple proposals
• Clients who had not initiated contact for more than a year proactively responded to the IgnitePOST campaign about engaging thoughtbot for a future project

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In their own words:

“We had customers who hadn’t contacted us in years reach out and request a proposal! All without any work on our part. How can you get better results than that?!”

— Josh C., Managing Director

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“For teams looking to increase sales and be top of mind year-round, IgnitePOST is the best way to deliver results with minimal effort. It’s super effective at getting you in front of your target recipient in an on-brand way and really cutting through the noise.”

— Lindsey C., VP of Marketing

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About IgnitePOST

IgnitePOST helps brands create magic moments for their customers. Our real pen and ink handwritten notes cut through the digital noise to surprise and delight customers exactly where they are in their shopping journeys.

Our intelligent software integrates with existing systems for easy set up and our robotics work at massive scale using ballpoint pens to give warmth to each note.

This software-hardware combination generates perfectly timed and crafted moments that drive customers to action as proven by our above industry average conversion rates.

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Contact us

For more information, or if you have any questions, please contact us! We want to hear from you: hello@ignitepost.com

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