Printed letters

The letter channel sends a real printed letter through a print-and-post service on your own account, at roughly €1, £1 or $1 a letter including postage, billed by the provider. It works anywhere as a high-attention opener.

Setting it up

Switch on Letter (real printed post) under Settings → Change setup → Outreach channels and choose Who prints and posts them? Setup walks you through connecting the print-and-post service's account, and Help in the app has the details for each one.

Setup also asks for the Publishable key from your database. The claim page each letter links to uses it to record a claim, which is all it can do on a Klaudius database, so it's safe on a public page.

How a letter works

• One letter per business, ever. There are no follow-up letters.
• Replies come through the site. The letter carries a screenshot of the site you built, a QR code and a short printed link to a claim page on that site. When the owner leaves their name and an email or phone number there, and ticks that you may contact them about the website, the business moves to replied, you're notified, and the conversation continues on the channel they gave.
• Only the owner can open their site. While letters are your first channel and outreach sends automatically, each letter client's site opens only with a code printed on their letter. The QR code carries the code, so a scan opens the site straight away; anyone typing the address is asked for the code once. The code comes off at the first deploy after the client buys. To let anyone with the address open new letter sites, switch off Letter sites open with their code in Settings → Pipeline settings; a site whose letter has already gone out keeps its code. Each locked client shows its Letter code in Pipeline, and the app's own links to the site carry it.
• A dated deadline. The letter says the preview stays online until a date about four weeks out. A letter unclaimed after 28 days is proposed as lapsed in your next follow-up round. Keep the site live at the same address until then: a dead link on paper can't be fixed.
• Returns are checked. Follow-up rounds ask the provider about unclaimed letters, and suggest another way to reach a business whose letter couldn't be delivered.

Before anything is posted

Every mistake costs real postage, so Klaudius refuses letters with an incomplete street address, checks that the claim page loads, checks that a locked site really asks for its code and that the letter prints it, and looks over the finished letter: the address inside the envelope window, nothing overlapping, nothing left unfilled. If Send outreach automatically is off in Settings → Pipeline settings, it shows you the finished letter and submits nothing.

Klaudius never sends letters to Spain, because it can't check Spain's Lista Robinson exclusion register. Rules differ by country and change, so confirm your own position with a local professional before your first letter.

Letters go by economy post. For a faster service at a little more per letter, ask Klaudius to switch to priority post.

What every letter carries

• Who it's from: your full name, and your registered company name and number if you have one, with a complete postal address.
• That it's not a bill: a plain statement that it's a free, no-obligation preview, with no invoice numbers, payment terms or urgent stamps.
• In the EU: a data-protection notice (where their address came from, why you're writing, how long the data is kept, their rights and how to have it deleted) and a line on how to object to marketing. EU law requires this when you write to an address taken from a public directory.
• In the UK: a line marking the letter as a marketing communication from you, and one saying how to receive nothing further.
• In the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand: a line saying how to be removed from your mailing list.

Klaudius writes these to the standard shape for each destination. It isn't legal advice: if you have concerns about the wording, check it with a local professional.

Anyone who asks not to receive advertising, through the claim page, by email, by phone or any other way, is marked do not contact and never approached again on any channel, even if a later search finds them. They get no confirmation message.