magazine
29
01732 759725
Charlotte Pearce,
founder and CEO,
Inkpact
When I started
the company
I realised that
writing was a
great way for
people to earn
money without
having to leave
the house or
work 9 to 5.
BI:
So, customers don’t just use Inkpact
for one-off campaigns; some use it for
regular communications too.
CP:
Yes. Some companies do their
marketing with us every so often or once
a quarter; others use us every single
week for different communications.
We have one customer that uses us
to accept or reject applicants for their
coding courses. They have a big alumni
presence, which they call the Family of
Coders. Depending on whether you get
accepted or rejected for a course, you
get a really nice personalised note either
welcoming you to the Family of Coders
or encouraging you not to give up and to
try again.
BI:
Can you send out gift vouchers and
bottles of wine or is it always just a
note?
CP:
No, we always offer a bespoke option,
and work with agencies and big clients on
their campaigns.We’ve done everything
from sending chocolates and hip flasks
with notes attached, to notes with
brochures and small business cards.
BI:
Do you charge a lot of money?
CP:
It depends on what you want.We do
Christmas cards for £4.50, which includes
the card, the writing and postage. That’s
not much more than you would pay on
the High Street. Our marketing note
cards start at £5.50, including writing and
postage. They are completely branded
to your company, with a tissue-lined
envelope colour-matched to your brand.
Our letters are a bit more expensive.
The highest price is £10 for a full-page
letter on really nice writing paper with a
wax seal on the envelope. Some clients
just use us to hand address envelopes,
if they have pre-printed invitations or
want to send out a brochure but in a
more personal way. That reduces the cost
to around £2 or £3.We also do box gift
wraps and they can cost £20 upwards,
depending on what’s inside.We give
discounts for over 1,000 units, but stick
to our price code below that.
BI:
Do you use postage stamps or a
frank?
CP:
We always use first class postage
stamps. There has been a lot of research
by Royal Mail and others about the
impressions conveyed by a stamp versus
a frank. Because we are offering the
ultimate in personalised marketing and
communications, an envelope is much
better received and more likely to be
opened if it has a stamp.
BI:
Tell more about the social aspects
of your business.
CP:
When I started the company I
realised that writing was a great way for
people to earn money without having to
leave the house or work 9 to 5. Initially,
we started working with students,
because I was a student when I started
the company. Then we started working
with mothers in London who wanted
to earn some extra money (writers are
paid by unit but typically earn £8-£15
per hour depending on how quick they
are). Now, we talk with companies like
Age UK about helping elderly people to
earn extra income and keep their minds
active, andWorking Chance, which helps
women with criminal convictions find
employment.We also run workshops
that promote literacy and writing for
health and wellness reasons. A big part of
Inkpact is giving back to the community
through writing.We have a whole
community that utilises writing in a
positive way.
BI:
Do you find that young people have
sufficiently good hand-writing?
CP:
Yes, but not all of them. A lot of
people are artistic and it is natural to pick
up a pen and paper, even if they don’t
do it as much as older generations. Most
of our writers who are students have
fantastic writing, so it’s not necessarily
a generation thing, it’s just not taught
quite as much today. If they go through
our training, we can turn someone from
an OK writer into a good writer.
BI:
What proportion of your writers
are male?
CP:
Females tend to have better
handwriting than men and we struggle
to get men on board.We only have seven
male writers at the moment, but there
is a big push to recruit more because a
lot of the messages we write are from
men. Some of our female writers have a
unisex writing style and that goes down
really well with a lot of clients. But from
a gender balance point of view, we would
like to have more male writers on board.
BI:
Does it matter if the hand-writing
is different every time a business
sends out a hand written note?
CP:
We try wherever possible to keep
the handwriting the same. If a client
is doing a customer service campaign
that involves sending multiple notes to
a customer we will try to use the same
writers or at least the same style of
handwriting. If we work with a company
constantly we will assign one or two
writers for their campaigns. And we try
to match the style of writing to the
brand.We offer a range of writing styles,
including traditional, calligraphy and
modern messy, which is what many tech
companies use.
BI:
Do clients mind that the name on
letters is written rather than signed?
CP:
The biggest draw for companies is
that they don’t have to do anything
themselves. The fact that they can have
50,000 note cards handwritten for them
outweighs the fact that we write the
name rather than signing it.We do offer
to send notes back in unsealed envelopes
so that the client can sign them, but
no one ever takes us up on the offer
because signing every single one is so
time-consuming.
BI:
One of the selling points
for customers is the rarity of a
handwritten letter, but as you
expand and take on more writers,
is there a danger that handwritten
communications will become more
common and therefore less effective?
CP:
If it got to the point where everyone
in the UK was receiving a handwritten
letter all the time then we would be
a very, very, very large company. The
number of businesses out there and the
number of people in the UK, let alone
the countries we are expanding into,
means we would have to get seriously
large for that to happen.We don’t see
that as a problem.
/
