Rick Elmore  0:00  

And from what we’ve seen is at least seven to eight times the ROI with a handwritten note. Plus, you know, the the emotional connection of that handwritten piece, you know, you’re going to connect with your client a lot more on a deeper level that is going to stick with them for a long time. Plus people feel like a handwritten notes like a keepsake. So the shelf life of something like that doesn’t just go straight to the garbage, you know, they’ll leave it on their counter, they’ll put it in their desk, and then they’ll come back to it a couple of weeks later. So especially for the holidays, right now, you know, that’s our busiest time of the year. You know, you’re getting six to eight weeks shelf lives, you know, with a piece of content what what piece of marketing material can you think of that’s going to last for two months in someone’s house, so they’re gonna look at every single day.

Announcer  0:45  

Welcome to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast whether you are an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant we are here to learn from the experts.

J Darrin Gross  1:04  

Welcome to commercial real estate pro networks, CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J. Darrin Gross. This is the podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. 

Today’s interview is sponsored by Building Insurance and Risk. When you invest in real estate, you need to protect yourself and your investment from catastrophic loss. The experts at building insurance and risk provide you with multiple offers and a side by side coverage comparison. To learn more, go to building insurance risk calm. 

Today my guest is Rick Elmore. Rick is an entrepreneur sales and marketing expert, and former college and professional football athlete and the founder of Simply Noted, and in just a minute we’re going to speak with Rick about simply noted, it’s a proprietary technology that puts real pen ink or pen end to paper to scale handwritten communication, helping businesses of all industries scale this unique marketing platform to stand out from their competition and build meaningful relationships with clients, customers and employees. 

But first, a quick reminder, if you like our show, CRE PN Radio, there are a couple things you can do to help us out. You can like share and subscribe. And as always, we encourage you to leave a comment. We’d love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you want to see how handsome Our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can find us on YouTube at commercial real estate pro network. And while you’re there, please subscribe. With that I want to welcome my guest, Rick Elmore, welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Rick Elmore  2:59  

Thank you so much, Darrin for having me. This is great.

J Darrin Gross  3:03  

I’m looking forward to our conversation. But before we get started, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little bit about your background.

Rick Elmore  3:11  

Yeah, so my backgrounds in athletics, and then corporate medical sales. As an athlete growing up, got a scholarship to play college football, I was very fortunate to have a pretty, pretty good football career for the University of Arizona, and then got to live out my childhood dream to play in the NFL for three years. After that, I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I thought I was an employee until I was 30. But like most athletes, they still were seeking that competitive type of environment. So I got into medical sales was, again pretty fortunate to have a good career there. After about six years, I went back and did my MBA at the University of Arizona business school, eller and that’s where the idea of simply noted began. And I was sitting in a marketing class, trying to apply everything I was learning to my career at the time. And at a marketing professor going over the success rates in marketing, everything was super marginal. You know, email is like 9%. You know, direct mail was even lower, you know, cold calling, knocking on doors, and then the professor you know, half heartedly or jokingly said, Hey, guys, you know, it still works in today’s era as a good old fashioned handwritten note. You know, it almost always gets opened with that 99% open rate. And I was like, Man, that is a no brainer, you know, first the light bulb started going off and like, that’d be kind of a cool tool to use, but how can you make it more efficient? You know, how can you make it easy to do? Because I had 400 clients in my portfolio at the time was like, it’s impossible to sit down and write for him under handwritten notes. So long story short, we got to work. You know, I worked with the mailing house here locally, you know, research the world for technologies that would allow us to To put pen to paper and scale it, and there really wasn’t something that was off the shelf ready, there was something like an auto pen that the President uses, but it’s really built just to do signatures. So, over the last four years, you know, we’ve we’ve dumped over, over $800,000 almost a million dollars into the r&d of developing our own handwriting robot. And what we believe in after all, the research that we’ve done is we’ve built the best handwriting robot out there to put real pen to paper to make every single handwritten note look like as if you just did it with your real handwriting. So yeah, that’s a real high level overview of what we do over here at simply noted now got started. Wow.

J Darrin Gross  5:39  

Well, the the love the you know, in class and have an actual an opportunity to to do an assignment and actually converted into, you know, a business. I’m curious. So simply noted, is an actually a pen and roll paper, the text it done. Yeah,

Rick Elmore  5:59  

it was. So I mean, even though, you know, we’re just, you know, the, the customer sees a handwritten note, there’s, there’s so much technology behind this, we’ve actually designed our own pen casings, and pen inserts. So like, right now I’m holding awaited brass pen. This isn’t the normal weighted brass pen. But you know, the pen inserts that we designed have 300% more ink, so they just don’t run out as long. Also designing your own pen inserts will allow us to control, you know, what pen goes in there. And I get a little bit more nerdy about pen, it’s all about viscosity with the ink and you know how running, it should be how it shouldn’t how running, it shouldn’t be. Plus, you can control like the quality. So if you don’t like it, you know, it’s not working well, you can change the ink inside. But then also use a weighted pen as well. To give it more of a realistic, you know, realistic writing presents on the paper, you just don’t want something that’s super light, you want that ink to drag and really get it out on that paper. So we’ve designed our own pens, we’ve designed our own machines, we have a really cool platform that allows you to scale it online through our website or automated through API’s or software. So, you know, it’s been really interesting to build this from the ground up. And again, we have no investors, and completely self funded, the company has always paid for itself. Because the product is really unique in you know, there’s so many different use cases that people can use it for. And it works. You know, when’s the last time you received a handwritten note in the mail? I mean, most people can’t remember. And, you know, it stands out. Nobody’s competing in that mailbox. Nowadays, everybody’s competing digitally.

J Darrin Gross  7:35  

Well, I was gonna ask you the competition, because I know I’ve received things that look like they’re handwritten. But there’s it’s clearly like a printed thing? And is there a lot of competition that that uses the more the printed? A variety as opposed to a handwritten?

Rick Elmore  7:53  

Yeah, it’s a great question. So there’s a lot of like direct mail companies out there that will do that laser font type of, you know, handwriting font, but they’ll never pass the smudge test, you know, you sit there, you lick your finger, and you smudge the ink. You know, if you do that on our handwritten notes, the ink will actually smear those direct mail companies. I mean, you can tell it’s just low quality. You know, our technology was built to be as real as it possibly could be. In terms of competitors, there’s really not a lot of people in this space. There are people out there that do this on the side. So there are some real estate people or mortgage people who buy some, like, actually draw plotters and try to, you know, do this out of their house. But you know, it’s really easy to spot the those technologies, you can just see the nuances or the patterns and how it writes. But yeah, there’s only a couple like real players in this space that are doing this full time that’s made the investments in the technology to make sure it looks great.

J Darrin Gross  8:55  

I love the difference, because I’ve certainly received many of the others that, you know, yeah, I know, it’s, I can tell right off. It’s it’s trying to look like a handwritten note, but it’s not. It’s more of a, you know, printed kind of thing. And, you know, there’s, there’s, there’s a I mean, the message is there, but it’s still it’s just, you know, it lessens the message, I guess what I see it from a standpoint of knowing that it’s not a handwritten thing. Yeah, that they’re trying to mimic that. So yeah, but that’s cool. So you mentioned in the beginning that the goal of any marketing campaign is a response. And did you say with 99% of handwritten notes, get Oh, yes.

Rick Elmore  9:40  

Yeah. So I would say the first goal of any marketing campaign is at least get your client engaged get in the open it so when you think it does, I mean, we run email marketing campaigns, we run outbound campaigns, direct mail campaigns, like any business, you know, is going to have every tool in the belt, you should you gotta you got to try to, you know, go after it from every angle. But yeah, you know, handwritten notes have a 300% increase in open rate or a 99% open rate when compared to print mail. We’ve done studies or case studies with like luxury brands here locally in Phoenix, like retailers, where they’ll do a, a and b test, you know, 50% will get like a postcard that’s printed, and then 50%. Well get a handwritten note with like a little QR code to, you know, make a purchase, from what we’ve seen is at least seven to eight times the ROI with a handwritten note. Plus, you know, the the emotional connection of that handwritten piece, you know, you’re going to connect with your client a lot more on a deeper level that is going to stick with them for a long time. Plus, people feel like a handwritten note, it’s like a keepsake. So the shelf life of something like that doesn’t just go straight to the garbage, you know, they’ll leave it on the counter, they’ll put it in their desk, and then they’ll come back to it a couple of weeks later. So especially for the holidays, right now, you know, that’s our busiest time of the year, you know, you’re getting six to eight weeks shelf lives, you know, with a piece of content, what what piece of marketing material, can you think of that’s going to last for two months in someone’s house that they’re gonna look at every single day? There isn’t much out there that can do that.

J Darrin Gross  11:17  

Yeah. Especially today with just the bombardment of messages that mostly have it’s most of it, you know, consequential? Yeah. So the question I have then is it on a on a handwritten note? Typically, I’d think there’d be a shorter, is there an ideal, like a length of a note that you found that? I mean, I’m assuming based on your kind of research, and knowing the percentages that that there may be like, a sweet spot for this kind of a thing as Yeah.

Rick Elmore  11:49  

Yeah, it’s a great question. We always say short, or, you know, short and sweet is the best, we say 45 to 60. Words, I always try to recommend for anybody who’s using this for development, because I have a sales and marketing background. I know, like my mind always goes to acquisition acquisition, even though we try to sell our clients on this as a customer relation tool. And it’s make an introduction, you know, a call to action, make an asset. So who you are, you know, what can you do for them? Or why they should listen to you or the value proposition whenever you can give them that quick, you know, hook, and then they can ask, Can I buy you lunch? You know, can we set up a meeting, some short and sweet, because people’s attention spans are like 710 seconds. So you got to make sure that you’re not losing them in the fluff of all this material that they don’t care about. It’s who you are, how can help you? Can I talk to you, right? It’s quick, boom, boom, boom. And if you’re doing that, you’re dripping them with two or three or four pieces, you’re just gonna increase, you know, the odds of them responding, not only because it’s a high open rate, it’s extremely personal, and you’re catching them, you know, that engagement read rate is super high as well.

J Darrin Gross  12:55  

So, is there a particular industry that you find this has worked well, for a better four.

Rick Elmore  13:03  

So I’d say, you know, one of our biggest niches is real estate mortgage. You know, it’s just because it’s a really, you know, relationships me or everything in that industry, it’s loyalty is royalty, always talk about, you know, real estate, mortgage professionals understand the value of relationships, so they make those investments in those relationships, because, you know, they know that if they make their clients feel appreciated, they’re going to stick around longer, they’re going to refer their friends, they’re more likely to do repeat business. So handwritten notes are a great relationship tool. But we work. And that’s part of the problems of growing this business is, you just you work the whole entire gambit of all niches, no, do everything from single, you know, mom and pop shop real estate, you know, people to large enterprise companies to on tight online retailers, to home service companies, to nonprofits, to political figures, to presidents of organizations, it’s, it’s a whole, you know, we run the whole board, but the client base that we serve,

J Darrin Gross  14:07  

and that’s good for you plenty of opportunity, there’s, you’re not limited to an update or an up or down market.

Rick Elmore  14:13  

It’s a good and bad thing. Sometimes you feel like you’re drowning in opportunity. But um, you know, it’s kind of, you know, it’s a good and bad thing.

J Darrin Gross  14:22  

It’s good. So, what is someone need to have? When when coming to you? Do they have to have the messaging figured out they have to have the list or can you help with?

Rick Elmore  14:33  

Yeah, he they’re very question. So I always try to, you know, guide our clients to when they’re getting started is to not get caught in the weeds. It’s really just have an idea of exactly what you want to do, you know, don’t come here and say, Well, how can I use it? It’s, this is how I want to use it. Is it going to be a customer acquisition tool? Is it going to be a relationship tool? You know, are we just going to do a holiday campaign? Can we help set up an automated thank you card through your system? Because that’s another problem. We we can work in so many different ways with our clients. So we always say, hey, like, how do you want to use us? Great, this is what will help you walk the path of getting it done. But, you know, it really does start around data, you got to have your data. So if we’re going to do like a one off campaign, you got to have all your names and addresses in a spreadsheet. I think that’s pretty standard. But if you want to automate it, you know, we got to know what software you’re using, you know, is it Salesforce HubSpot, you know, a billing system like Stripe or square. We, we work through Zapier and API integrations to automate it for clients, but mostly in real estate and mortgage, they’re automating birthdays, they can use that tool on our website, sending thank you cards, anniversary cards, or they’re doing like prospecting to their farm, or their spear to try to really, you know, grow more business. Right?

J Darrin Gross  15:57  

So you’ve got the the data, do you guys have any resources to help somebody get a list? Or is that kind of upon them to bring the list?

Rick Elmore  16:07  

So we’ll guide you and tell you, there’s just so many different tools out there, you know, there’s, what is it prop stream or property radar leads, please are, you know, I mean, there’s so many ways to get good data for very inexpensive, we try not to do that, because we don’t want to be responsible for your list. You know, we don’t want to be responsible for pulling a list that you didn’t want. So we’ll, we’ll guide you where to go. But yeah, I mean, we’ve been doing this long enough to know, like, all the things that need to be done, you know, with our real estate investors, you know, we do help guide them like, hey, like, this is what we’ve seen work. You know, this is what we haven’t seen work, you know, we’ll clean your list, or run it through dense CoA, which is the National change of address to verify that those homes are those residents are still in those homes, you know, to optimize the delivery rate. So we really try to be an extension of your business and guide you to make sure whatever you’re trying to do, you’re successful, you’re as successful as you can be, you know, because we obviously want you to use this again, you know, tell your friends and refer us. Yeah.

J Darrin Gross  17:13  

So let me ask you, I know a little bit of marketing I’ve done is that there are those that will try a campaign doesn’t matter what it is, we’ll try it once, they won’t get a lot of response, like I see it didn’t work. What’s the frequency? Or is there any kind of ideal number of touches? Using simply noted? Or? Or is there any kind of a number of times that you’ve seen that it’s for doesn’t need to be multiple times?

Rick Elmore  17:45  

Yeah, it’s a great question. So I always say simply not, it’s a great vehicle bomb, we’re gonna get you to your end destination, but it’s always up to you to get your prospect to respond. You know, if you’re not selling a product that has a sense of urgency for them to respond, you’re not giving them, you know, a great deal or promotion, to respond, like, like, understand your product, your niche, your client, you know, and make the best decision for your business. But, you know, we’re a great vehicle, we’re gonna get you there, in the real estate world, it seems like what we see our clients do is, you know, 1000, or more, you know, is where you’re going to see the right response rates, you know, with that open rate of 99%, in normal direct mail response rates anywhere, you know, on the low end, like 1% to 4%. But with the handwritten, you know, tripling the open rate, you can see anywhere from, you know, 4% to 12%, depending on how well your list is how well it’s targeted, how will your messages, so you got to know your your, you know, from response, you know, how many meetings you’re gonna book, right? Because there’s attrition of bookings. Because not everybody who’s gonna call is gonna book or they’re going to avoid you or not follow through in the meeting, and then how you can close. But in real estate, you know, just one one deal is going to pay for our campaign 30 times. So that’s usually why, you know, we see a lot of real estate investors using our business.

J Darrin Gross  19:09  

Got it? And speaking of cost, what is I mean, I guess, kind of the range, I guess, is there a minimum number of letters? Or can you do? Can you set up to where you do a custom every time somebody has a prospect or something they can feed it to your

Rick Elmore  19:29  

house? Yeah. Yeah, great question or website is built for anybody to use. So you can go on there, design your card, and send one at a time if you’d like. We do that for a few reasons. One, we want to be a platform that anyone can use. But you know, to most most importantly people want to try before they really make an investment. And we believe that if we leave our business open to anybody that can try it not say hey, you need to make a minimum purchase of $1,000. It gives us more visibility in the market. So anybody can use it, there’s no minimums, we start at $3.25, that’s shipped with a real 60 cent forever stamp. But the price goes massively down with volume. And that’s why we, you know, we get a lot of larger orders, because you’re gonna save a lot more money. And if you’re using this, you know, as a, as a way, I think it should be intended, you know, for customer retention tool, you hate your whole client list once a year or twice a year holidays. Are you using it? Like you said, real estate? The ROI is is extremely massive, you know, because the cost per piece is so low.

J Darrin Gross  20:37  

Got it? And then what about the, the stamp from the post office? Is it coming from your address? Or is it? Well?

Rick Elmore  20:47  

It’s a great question. So if anything shifts out of Phoenix, there will be a Phoenix postmark. But for our clients that want a local postmark, all we do is we just put it in a box and dropship it to you. So you can put it in your local blue box or post office he’ll be postmarked from where you’re at. So if that’s a problem, I would say like 5% of our clients have us dropship. But you know, if it is a problem, we just put them in a box and son, and you

J Darrin Gross  21:15  

know, I just love the fact that there’s a solution, because I think that, you know, sometimes if you’re trying to give that local feel that, you know, the hit is kind of build that relationship kind of thing. And then you get one from you know, North Pole ask or something like that was like, Well, I thought you were here local, kind of thing. So, yeah, so they’re the fact that you have that opportunity to work through that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. So is there an ideal? I mean, so So once somebody’s tried it, they found a value in it? Is there a an ideal, or kind of a sweetspot number that you find more of your repeat customers as far as the size of a campaign, or you mentioned, like, 1000, those were the open rates and an ad or I guess, the feed? Campaign? Well,

Rick Elmore  22:08  

yeah, for marketing, you know, for at least in real estate, we, that’s where we just see our clients, and you know, they’re doing 1000 2000 5000, just because the response rates, booking meetings to their closing rate, that’s what makes sense for them. But, you know, I really try to talk about how this is a relationship based tool, you know, it cost on average, five times more, so 500% more to acquire a new client, than just keeping your current client happy. You know, so, why spend hundreds of dollars acquiring a new client, when you can spend $3 To make that current client feel appreciated, and build that loyalty. Because, you know, customers who feel appreciated, are five times more likely to do repeat purchases. So, you know, all you got to do is say thank you make them feel appreciated, they’re gonna continue to do business with you. You know, they’re gonna forgive you for mistakes, or slow, you know, slow orders or anything like that. They’re four times more likely to refer. And they’re seven times more likely to buy like a new product, or do you know, like, be upsell to so everybody’s always focused on like, customer acquisition, which I get it because you gotta grow your business. But, you know, by just retaining your current clients, and making them feel appreciated, your business is just going to grow organically, because that, you know, customer attrition rate is gonna go way down. Yeah,

J Darrin Gross  23:30  

no, that’s that’s point made. I know, it’s, you notice the focus long time of the new acquisition. But if you’re losing all of the, the, you know, current clients, you’re not really, I mean, you’re doing it wrong. So

Rick Elmore  23:42  

you just have a leaky bucket, you’re turning filled all the time, right? I tell our reps that are like, anytime you have a new client, like you have to get, you know, get them on the phone within 30 days. Like, ask them how when, you know, ask them what they liked what they didn’t like, and if you can’t get them on the phone within 30 days, like, you know, it’s, you’re gonna lose that client, you know, because you’re not seeing, you’re not making them feel appreciated, and you’re not, you know, we want to make them feel appreciated, make sure they, they feel that we want them to be successful, and we’re doing everything we can for them to be successful. So you gotta keep your clients engaged, or you’re gonna lose them. It’s just, it’s a fact.

J Darrin Gross  24:20  

Yep, yep, yep, no, I get it. Hey, Rick, if we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. Yeah, by day, I’m an insurance broker. And as such, I work with my clients to assess risk, and determine what to do with the risk. And there’s three strategies we typically consider the first look to see if we can avoid the risk. When that’s not an option, then we look to see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And if we cannot avoid or minimize the risk, and we look to see if there’s a way we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. And as such, I like to ask my guests, if they can look at their own situation. Could be their clients, investors, the market, political, however you’d like to frame the question, and what you identify what you consider to be the biggest risk. And again, for clarification, while I am an insurance broker, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. Yeah. And so if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Rick Elmore, what is the biggest risk?

Rick Elmore  25:29  

Yeah, it’s a great question. You know, I think I don’t know if this is a cliche answer. But I think the biggest risk is not taking the risk. You know, I was somebody, before I started this business, who was not a huge risk taker was kind of like, in my bubble, I stuck to a plan. You know, I was very regimented, scheduled, I had that athletic background where your life is just completely booked for you, and really didn’t know what was on the other side. And then being an entrepreneur, starting a business, doing anything, you know, larger than yourself takes risk. The bad thing about taking risk if you don’t learn from your mistakes, so you don’t learn from things that you failed in, in those risks, then those risks weren’t worth it. But if you’re taking risks, and you’re failing, and you’re learning and you’re growing, then those risks are worth it. And that was something that, you know, even when I first started, I really didn’t understand, but it took me about a year to where I was like, I have to get us on my comfort zone, I have to take more risks. I have to try things I don’t understand. And you know, Fast forward four years, we have 1000s of clients, we’ve built robots for building software and nothing I’ve had experience with, but it was me constantly living outside my comfort zone, taking those risks that has allowed us to scale this company to where we are today.

J Darrin Gross  26:45  

That’s awesome. I love the the notion of pre order who was with Sony, who was asking the question, I think of their kids by you know, how did you fail today? Or, you know, where did you come up short that notion like permission to to try and yeah, and recognize you’re not gonna hit a homerun every time but just to have that, that that sense? It’s okay to fail and try and learn something as you go. And the Incidentally, I want to say that your website I did go to your website while preparing for this, and I just love the the animation there of the of the robots are it’s pretty good stuff.

Rick Elmore  27:25  

Yeah, it’s like, people always ask me these really handwritten I was like, well, it kinda like they are written by pen, but they are done by robots. Yeah, you go to my LinkedIn. You can see we have videos of them. This current website was built about two years ago, and we’re rebuilding the web app right now, including the design. But um, yeah, if you go to my LinkedIn, you can see a bunch of videos that the the new robots writing, it’s pretty, pretty neat.

J Darrin Gross  27:48  

That’s awesome. Hey, Rick, where can listeners go if they’d like to learn more connect with you?

Rick Elmore  27:54  

Yeah. Yeah, great question. So I’m on LinkedIn basically all day. So on LinkedIn, just look up Rick Elmore, are simply noted in that can be found, or you can go to simplynoted.com. And you just hit request a sample and we’ll send you a bunch of information. And then myself or, you know, one of our, our sales team will reach out to you. And, but we do a really good job, we send you a really nice kit, if you can see this, but we put together a really big, you know, 10 by 13 folio with I think there’s nine writing samples, you know, case studies, flyers, pricing of a bunch of stuff in there. So do a really good job of getting you the information before you even have to make or before you even make a purchase.

J Darrin Gross  28:38  

Oh, that’s awesome. Well, Rick, I can’t say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. I have enjoyed it. I learned a lot and I look forward to doing it again soon.

Rick Elmore  28:48  

I really appreciate you allowing me to come on. Thank you so much, Darrin, you got it.

J Darrin Gross  28:52  

For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow? That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to commercial real estate pro networks. CRE PN Radio.

Announcer  29:11  

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