Mills Jewelers Getting Great Results With LetterMatics

We've been busy the last few months helping jewelers win in the toughest marketplace in decades. And the results show we're making a big difference.

Mills Jewelers is one of Western New York's pre-eminent jewelers, and LetterMatics has made a big difference in their business this year.

"LetterMatics has given Mills Jewelers the ability to use our data base and use it in a very inexpensive and efficient way to grow our business. I highly recommend LetterMatics to anyone who realizes the value of personal contact but thought the task was unmanageable. With LetterMatics you can do it," says Mills Jewelers owner George Fritz.

Over the years, Lockport, NY-based Mills has built an enormous database of customers. But using effectively has proven a huge and frustrating challenge. LetterMatics has changed all that. "Mills Jewelers has a mailing list of over 10,000 legitimate customers just taking up space in our hard drive. We know their birthdays, their anniversaries, their buying patterns, and even their finger size. It cost a fortune to build this database over time. What's the point if we never use it?,' Fritz asks.

LetterMatics has changed all that. "LetterMatics allows me to put our database to use very effectively. The program helps me to reach out to these customers in a personal yet quick and easy way. The program comes with pre-written templates for every occasion and we can write our own that reflect the unique qualities of Mills Jewelers," Fritz says.

Putting LetterMatics to work has been quick and easy. "We open a template, personalize it, click a few buttons and a letter is automatically printed, stuffed, stamped and mailed. Two days later, the customer receives a targeted letter in their mailbox from me with the Mills Jewelers logo and my signature," Fritz says.

New business is walking in the door thanks to LetterMatics, Fritz says. "Customers come in with my letter in hand that includes a special offer and they make a purchase that would not have happened otherwise," he says.

That's LetterMatics: 21st Century marketing at its best.

LetterMatics Getting Serious Attention at JCK Show

Down markets present big opportunities for companies that are willing to look beyond the present into a potentially prosperous future.

Those are the kind of businesses that seem to be showing up at this year's JCK Show, the biggest trade event in the jewelry world, reports LetterMatics CEO Joe Portale. The show is running May 30-June 2.

Portale has attended past events, and he reports that he's seeing quality rather than quantity at this year's event. "Attendance is down, but the quality of the people that are here s much higher," he says. Not surprisingly, people seem to have reduced their budgets to match the state of the economy. "The buyers that are here are picky, but they're purchasing in small quantities," he says.

LetterMatics CEO Joe Portale, right, talks with jewelers at the JCK Show.

Those buyers that are present seem to be the ones with the greatest resources and the biggest commitment to expanding their companies, Portale says. Though the total number of people stopping by the booth is down significantly, those showing up tend to understand the potential of next generation marketing technology and are willing to put in the effort needed to make it work.

One big lesson has been the power of industry trade magazine Modern Jeweler, Portale says. Many visitors have stopped by because they saw the LetterMatics article that ran in the publication and were impressed by it. "No one should have any doubt as to the impact trade publications can have on today's marketplace," Portale says.

Extraordinary Expertise: Nancy Schuring Covers the InStore Show.

One of LetterMatics' greatest strengths is its real-world foundation. LetterMatics was created by a team of entreprenurs who have decades of small business experience between them. They know what it takes to make a business succeed and have designed LetterMatics to make that happen.

Nancy Schuring is a great example of this. She started Devon Fine Jewelry more than two decades ago working out of her home. Today the store is in the top 2%-3% of independent jewelers in the United States. Devon got to where it was because Nancy knows how to build relationships with her customers and keep them strong.

Nancy became involved with LetterMatics because she saw it as a potent tool for connecting with her clients. Few people can match her knowledge of the industry when it comes to everything from gemstones to marketing technology. One sign of the respect in which she is held is the fact that Colored Stones magazine used her as a roving correspondent at the recent InStore show.

To get some of Nancy's insights about the event and the industry, check out the story here: http://www.colored-stone.com/stories/may09/instore.cfm

LETTERMATICS: BRINGING MAIL MARKETING INTO THE ONE-TO-ONE WORLD.

LetterMatics isn’t just technology. It’s not even a system. Instead, it’s a new way to approach marketing. For many years, mass marketing dominated the marketing world. Even on a local scale, marketing tended to take a one-to-many approach, with a single message spraying across many people regardless of whether it met their needs or not.

Then the Internet began to change this. Affordable web sites and interactive capabilities meant that online, it was possible to customize messages to a greater extent than ever before. But the mailbox remained a prisoner of mass marketing strategies, approaches and technologies.

Now, LetterMatics has changed all that. Since LetterMatics allows users to send real mail from their computers with three clicks of a mouse, one-to-one marketing is suddenly possible in the real world and not just the virtual one.

What makes this even more exciting is that, with on demand printing and state of the art printing technologies, letters aren’t the only type of material that companies can customize when they want to send messages to specific targets.

LetterMatics enables users to adapt many of the marketing approaches that have proven so powerful on the Internet to the real world. It offers instant gratification and total personalization. It is an affordable, effective way to turn distant customers into close friends of your company.

Colored Stones Magazine Latest To Cover LetterMatics

In the latest breakthrough for LetterMatics, Colored Stones Magazine has profiled the technology in its highly respected newsletter.

In his introduction to the article, which can be found at , Colored Stones Editor David Federman asks "Are you a jeweler who regularly holds in-store events? Or who has built up close rapport with customers? If so, here’s a revolutionary new invitation system called LetterMatics that allows you and your sales people to revive personal postal communication between jeweler and customer—using software that costs only $189, and which pays for itself many times over with one of the very first letters it helps you compose."

Federman considers LetterMatics an important new tool for today's jewelers. He brought another thing to the party besides his words. Like any good editor, he did some research on the subject, and found a fascinating advertisement that had been published in 1956 in Scientific American.

"LetterMatic 1960?," the ad asks, predicting that "Tomorrow: You dictate! The machine types and hustles your letter to the mail. Electronics does it all."

People are using voice recognition technology to work with LetterMatics--so, 50 years later, the future is here. The ad was promoting General Motors ball bearings, which were used in the dictation equipment of the time, by the way.

InStore Show Is A Big Hit.

People are ready to buy and ready to deal.

That's the clearest message sent by the InStore Show, which is beating all expectations in terms of attendee turnout, exhibitors and general energy, excitement and overall results.

All this was certainly evident at the LetterMatics booth. Traffic was constant, and more names were collected in the first day of the event than through the entire course of other shows.

Photo number one is of LetterMatics' Luther Gatling and Susan Valeri.

Photo number two, the middle image, shows LetterMatics Joe Portale and Nancy Schuring with InStore Editor in Chief Ralf Kircher.

The bottom image is of Nancy, Susan, Joe and Luther doing the first drawing for the daily winner of the iPod Shuffle. Shuffles were awarded each day.

UNDERSTANDING THE POWER OF ON-DEMAND PRINTING

By Susan Valeri, Creative Design Director

Getting promotional printed up has always been a gamble for small and midsized businesses. Minimum press runs a high setup fees meant a significant investment was required in messages and material that might quickly grow out of date.

New technology and breakthrough business approaches mean that's no longer the case.
LetterMatics state-of-the-art printers are capable of producing commercial press quality results in runs that would have seemed minute not long ago. Just as important, everything can be done without costly setup fees.

Companies that are willing and able to take advantage of what the new systems have to offer can enter a new marketing world when it comes to printed material. Suddenly, instead of having to and adapt their to those of the printer, the printer can provide exactly what they want.

Instead of wasting an enormous amount of money and resources running off many more copies than the market demands LetterMatics, can produce a few dozen or a few hundred items. Not only can this save money—it also means that the marketing messages themselves will be much more effective, because each will be shaped to meet the needs of the specific clients who are its target.

LetterMatics research on its promotional campaigns shows that micro-targeted materials are far more effective than conventional ones. It’s yet another way you can stay on the cutting edge—and slash costs at the same time.