Ninety-eight percent sounds like a made-up marketing number, so let’s unpack where it comes from and what it means for the campaigns you’re running.
Where the number comes from
Email marketing treats a 20% open rate as respectable. Printed bulk mail is lucky to get truly read by a third of recipients. A handwritten envelope is a different story: it’s such a rare object in the modern mailbox that curiosity almost always wins. Across campaigns, our letters see open rates as high as 98% — and the reason is simple and physical: a handwritten envelope with a real stamp is nearly always opened, and a genuine letter is nearly always read.
Delivery, then attention, then response
Every outreach campaign is a funnel: delivered → opened → read → acted on. Most spending goes to widening the top (bigger lists, more sends) while the middle of the funnel silently leaks. Handwriting fixes the middle. When nearly every letter is opened and read, your message finally has its real chance to work — so the copy and the offer carry the weight, not the format.
What a 98% open rate does to your numbers
Imagine two campaigns to 500 high-value prospects. The printed piece gets glanced by maybe a third; the handwritten letter gets read by nearly all. Same list, same offer — but one campaign tripled its chances to persuade. For high-value outcomes (a listing, a returning patient, a reactivated client), that multiplier is the whole game.
The catch (there’s always one)
A 98% open rate guarantees attention, not action. The letters that perform best read like a person wrote them — short, warm, specific — because the reader already believes they’re real. Keep the humanity in the message, and the format does the rest.
Try your first letters → and watch what happens when everything actually gets opened. New here? Start with how it works.
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