By Kim Leary
The short version
- Automation made outreach cheap, so everyone does it, and buyers have learned to ignore it.
- One agency owner we spoke to sends handwritten black cards with a single line on them: your competitors hope you don’t read this.
- In a small market, every message that gets ignored costs you more than the last.
- Most teams respond to falling replies by sending more.
- Send fewer, better introductions, to the right person at the right moment, and make each one feel like it was meant for them.
- The right channel depends on whether they already know you.
If your market is a few dozen key buyers, you can’t afford for them to ignore you. And yet the channels most teams rely on have never been noisier. LinkedIn feels like an echo chamber. Inboxes are full of sequences. One marketing director told us LinkedIn has become meaningless to him, while word of mouth and physical letters are outperforming his digital channels.
He’s not alone. Several people we’ve spoken to this year said the same thing, without being asked.
Why it happens
Automation made outreach cheap, so everyone does it, and buyers have learned to ignore it.
A nine-step email sequence costs almost nothing to send, which is exactly why there are so many of them. Your buyer can spot one in a second. A handwritten note or a well-designed letter, sent to one person for a real reason, takes effort. That effort is the message.
What a letter that works looks like
One agency owner we spoke to sends handwritten black cards with a single line on them: your competitors hope you don’t read this.
She gets responses. It works because it’s unexpected, it’s clearly from a person, and it says one thing.
It also looks like her. A letter on a generic template gets the same treatment as a generic email. The ones that get read are short, sent for a reason, and unmistakably from the business that sent them.
That’s the difference between direct mail and junk mail. Junk mail is sent to a list. A letter is sent to a person.
What it’s costing you
In a small market, every message that gets ignored costs you more than the last.
What doesn’t fix it
Most teams respond to falling replies by sending more.
“Add more steps to the sequence.” More follow-ups to someone who’s already ignored you.
“Post more on LinkedIn.” The feed is already full, and your buyers are scrolling past it.
“Physical mail is old-fashioned.” That’s why it gets opened.
“Personal doesn’t scale.” With a small market, it doesn’t need to. And with the right system, the research behind it does.
What fixes it
Send fewer, better introductions, to the right person at the right moment, and make each one feel like it was meant for them.
Prospecting systems does the research automatically: it spots the moment a business needs you, finds the right person and checks their details. Then it makes a personal introduction, by letter, LinkedIn or email, and hands over to your team when they respond. £2,800 for the day, build quoted separately.
A letter only works if it looks like it came from you. Brand assets and design systems gives you the templates and assets to make every letter, card and follow-up unmistakably yours.
Letter, LinkedIn or email: which one?
The right channel depends on whether they already know you.
Send a letter if:
- They’ve never heard of you, and you have a real reason to write now.
- Your market is a few dozen buyers, and each one matters.
- A new customer is worth enough to justify the effort.
Send a personal email if:
- They already know you: past clients, people you’ve met, people who open what you send.
- You’re following up a conversation that has already started.
Connect on LinkedIn if:
- Your letter has arrived and you want to make replying easy.
- They’re active there, and you have something specific to say.
A business coach gave us the same advice: start with the people who already have you in their inbox, and write to them personally instead of sending another newsletter. A prospecting system can introduce you by letter, LinkedIn or email, and hands over when they respond.
Keep reading
- The best prospects are the ones nobody has time to find
- A list of names isn’t a lead
- Content without an opinion is just more of the same
Questions about direct mail for B2B
For a small number of important buyers, it often outperforms email, because so few businesses send it and it shows real effort.
Automate the research: spotting the right moment, finding the right person and checking their details. Keep the message itself personal.
Usually because they look automated, arrive at the wrong time or go to the wrong person. Fewer, better-timed, personal introductions get far more replies.
As one part of it, yes. A connection request from someone whose letter has already arrived is very different from a cold message in a crowded inbox, because they know who you are.
Fewer than you think. Each one should go to the right person at a business where something has just changed, so there are only a few of them.
Per message, yes, and that’s part of why it works: the effort is the message. In a small market, one reply from the right buyer is worth more than a hundred emails nobody opens.
Free resource
Build the business case. Work out what a handful of well-chosen introductions are worth before you ask the MD for the budget.
The one thing to do next
Prospecting systems
The system spots the moment a business needs you, finds the right person and makes a personal introduction. Your team picks it up at the conversation. £2,800 for the day, build quoted separately.
