Handwritten Post
If you’ve ever Googled handwritten post in the UK and then had a small financial wobble at the prices, you’re not alone. Daniella Paolozzi is proud to be a female leader of her handwritten marketing business. Choosing to market using handwritten post does not have to be a luxury beyond your marketing budget. Tune into this podcast to find out why it might be just the best decision you take in 2026!
Summary of Podcast
Introductions and Handwritten Direct Mail
Graham and Kevin introduce their guest Daniella Paolozzi, who describes herself as a “marketing nerd, website whisperer, and pen written direct mail enthusiast.” They discuss Daniella’s background in marketing and her transition to focusing on handwritten direct mail, which has proven to be a highly effective strategy for her clients across various industries.
The Power of Handwritten MailÂ
Daniella explains how handwritten direct mail stands out in an increasingly digital world, evoking a more personal and emotional response from recipients. She shares examples of impressive results her clients have achieved, such as a builder receiving £68,000 in new business from a 5,000-piece handwritten mail campaign. The group discusses how handwritten mail can be more cost-effective than email marketing due to its higher response rates.
Personalisation and Customisation
Daniella emphasises the importance of personalisation and customisation in her handwritten direct mail approach. She explains how her team uses technology to scale the process while maintaining a personal touch, avoiding a robotic or generic appearance. The group explores how this level of personalisation and attention to detail can help build trust and engagement with recipients.
Daniella’s Personal Journey
Daniella shares her personal story, including her battle with cancer at a young age during the COVID-19 pandemic. She discusses how this experience has shaped her perspective and drive to make a positive impact through her business and charitable work, including using sustainable materials and giving back to the community.
Podcast Insights and Opportunities
The group discusses the challenges of podcast growth and engagement in the current landscape, as well as the potential benefits of transcribing podcast episodes to improve search engine optimization and discoverability. They explore ideas for incorporating the transcript into the podcast distribution and leveraging it for additional content opportunities.
Clips from the Podcast
Daniella’s Background
Hand Written Direct Mail
First Big Campaign
Hard Times
Testimonial
The Next 100 Days Podcast Co-Hosts
Graham Arrowsmith
Graham founded Finely Fettled in 2014 to provide data from The UK High Net Worth Database to marketers targeting affluent and high-net-worth customers. He’s the founder of MicroYES, a Partner for MeclabsAI, creating lead generation AI Agents & Workflows and introducing the MeclabsAI Platform. Graham also provides an Answer Engine Optimisation solution to get your website in shape to be found by LLMs.
Kevin Appleby
Kevin specialises in finance transformation and implementing business change. He’s the COO of GrowCFO, which provides both community and CPD-accredited training designed to grow the next generation of finance leaders. You can find Kevin on LinkedIn and at kevinappleby.com
Transcript of the Podcast
@10:51 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
But it was a problem with the guest. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no, it was it was definitely me. Everybody else sounded loud and it’s me being.
everybody else right? OK. Thank Yeah. Not like me. Right. So in three, two, one. Hello and welcome to the next 100 days podcast.
@11:08 – Kevin Appleby
My name is Graham Arrowsmith. And my name is Kevin Appleby. So today, Graham, we’ve got a guest who describes herself as part marketing nerd, part website whisperer and part pen written direct mail enthusiast.
I think this is going to be an interesting podcast.
@11:24 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Three. Yeah. Three parts. I suspect there’s a lot more parts to this. We have got, I’m going to butcher Daniela’s surname, but we’ve got Daniela Paolozzi.
Paolozzi.
@11:36 – daniellapaolozzi
You didn’t do too bad, actually. I’ve had a lot worse.
@11:39 – Kevin Appleby
Yeah. That’s a shame. That’s what I haven’t got for the outtakes reel.
@11:42 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Oh, yeah. I butcher everybody’s name, especially once, because, you know, when you have two Zs, it’s a particular sound.
@11:51 – daniellapaolozzi
And if you have one Z, it’s a different sound, isn’t it? So it’s, I don’t I think that’s correct.
I’m like the worst Italian ever. I’m Northwest London through and through.
@11:58 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Everyone expects me to be. I’m able to speak Italian, but I think I’ve got my surname down. Yeah, no, you have.
And welcome to the podcast. But one of the things, I’ve only recently met you, probably a couple of months ago, and basically one of the things about you that immediately, and I’ve said it to your face, so basically, it’s almost like I knew you for ages.
@12:22 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah.
@12:23 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
You’re one of those people that just, you get on with immediately. And I think that’s the case. And it seemed to me that we needed to get you on the podcast and hope our listeners are going to enjoy your story.
But given that you’ve got an Italian name, you’re from Northwest London, tell us a little bit about your backstory and kind of what’s got you to here.
Nothing really about the red hair and all that kind of stuff.
@12:52 – daniellapaolozzi
But you can tell, you can tell us a bit about that if you want. Yeah, happy to do that.
Yeah. So, well, I’ve been… I’ve for a long while. I’ve always been super, super creative. I ran an agency which I started when I was 27 after a bit of a career in marketing, working for other agencies, working in-house as well as a marketing director.
So, yeah, just a love of strategy, a love of creativity. And yeah, just thinking a little bit outside the box, hence the, it’s kind of purple at the moment.
@13:30 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
It’s a bit of a purple mohawk, but it does change. Well, Kevin could probably get away with one of those, but not me.
Unless, of course, I’ve got one of those wigs. I suppose I’d put a wig on of that colour.
@13:40 – daniellapaolozzi
Get one.
@13:41 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Fabulous.
@13:41 – Kevin Appleby
You could be a new person every day. I think either of us could get away with it, They’d think I was a they or them, and I’m not having that.
@13:48 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
But, you know, last time we had one of those on, Kevin really butchered it. mean, whatever you do, don’t call him a he.
Don’t, yeah, I’ve just done it now. dear. And it took Kevin about five seconds. So what can I say?
One of those things. Okay, so lots of marketing experience. Marketing director, run your own agency, very young. Where you are now is you’ve got another agency.
basically, you help bring handwritten, direct mail to the world. I love that. Kevin knows that I’m a big direct mail fan.
I’ve spent a bit of time in my career doing all of that. Tell us a little bit why you got into handwritten, direct mail.
@14:32 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah, it’s so random from someone that’s been doing ads and digital and all of that sort of stuff. Like I never kind of saw it coming, but I think from running the agency, one of the things that I noticed over time was that it was getting increasingly harder to be able to get through to people.
And I think that the problem that we’ve got now, well, the problem is a good thing and a bad thing, I guess.
But AI is amazing, right? We can get so many messages out so much quicker than we ever have before, but at the same time, we’re also, I think, experiencing this complete digital overwhelm, and it’s like, I mean, during this, I’ve got my phone on silent, I think, but the amount of notifications I’m going to have on that phone after I come off of here is going to be crazy, let alone your inbox, you’ve got WhatsApp kicking off, you’ve got all sorts of things, project management apps, and I think that before, I always saw direct mail, I was a little bit old school, like, I remember my parents would have loads of junk mail come through the letterbox, and then it would get thrown away, and one of the things that I noticed over time is that the inboxes were getting fuller, but not much stuff was coming through, and I actually had a handwritten letter sent to me, and I thought, what is this?
And I’m looking at it thinking, what is this trickery? Someone’s surely not written this, and it caught my attention, it was actually for an event, and I thought,
That’s really clever. There’s something in this. And it’s not reinventing the wheel. People have been writing letters for how long?
Like forever. But in this day and age where it’s easy to send an email out to 10,000 people, you know, the people are not considering this.
And I started to start to test it with some of my clients. Right. And I started kind of local and thinking, oh, OK, you like builders and stuff like that.
They’re the state agents and things. And we sent out a trial of 5,000 handwritten letters for this builder. 68 grand he got.
I was like, OK, this is doing really well here. So I started to sort of expand that a little bit more with other local businesses.
And then I was like, national, can this work on a national level? And our first one was a tricky one.
And I was kind of bricking it a little bit, I have to say. But I did sort of say, you know, we got.
I can’t predict any results here. This is what, what I’ve got from these local businesses. And normally we sort of say, send about a thousand, you know, give a good representative sample.
They ignored me and they went for 800. No, no, they went for 700. Sorry. That’s a lie. That’s not lie on the podcast, Daniella.
@17:19 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
And we had- Well, I’ll make it first. I mean, Kevin’s lying every time. Oh, not as much as you, Arrowsmith.
That’s true. That’s true. But truth, truth tell us we’re not. But no, seriously, no, we are. But okay. So they did 800, 700.
@17:36 – daniellapaolozzi
700. So, and their target audience, the reason why I was a bit like, oh, I hope, you know, let’s be honest about this here, because I never want to sort of deceive anyone into anything, is that their target audience was C-suite level, companies over 500 employees.
Do you know how many people are going to be targeting that audience to try and get that contract?
@17:56 – Kevin Appleby
It’s going to be quite difficult. Yeah, a lot.
@18:01 – daniellapaolozzi
So we did it. And out of the 700, we had 56 responses, which I thought was bloody marvellous.
@18:10 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yes, no, is. Kevin’s working out the maths now, but to get that kind of response, it’s something like, I don’t know, five times at least bigger than you would probably expect from ordinary direct mail.
I don’t think, I think, I don’t think direct mail is ordinary anyway. I think this is just extra ordinary.
I think that the beauty of direct mail, I think, is it is different. I was talking to somebody yesterday, I think, yesterday, and he was, and he was making the point that direct mail in the last, this is a good marketer.
He’s been around for a long while. And it was just saying direct mail in the last sort of six months or so has really come off a bit.
And he’s finding it harder and harder and harder to make, from a lead generation point of view, make it work.
%uh. And. I’m, I’m. I’m. I’m. If you like, this whole thing is in the area of opening up a dialogue, how do you do that?
I mean, some people say, oh, pile it up, send as many as you can and see what hits. Well, it’s defeating the whole channel.
And I think emails has to be somehow different. But what you’ve done with direct mail, making it handwritten, is quite compelling.
And people just don’t receive it that way. They don’t expect it. They don’t expect it. You’re right. But what do your clients say back to you?
Maybe before you send it. All right. OK. Do they have a different view or they’re just waiting for the results?
@19:49 – daniellapaolozzi
I mean, I don’t know. They are so surprised. Now, one of the things that I wasn’t expecting, because I’ve sent hundreds of thousands of emails and been told to go off.
@20:00 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yeah, if you need to about a million times on email.
@20:04 – daniellapaolozzi
But when people receive a letter, the amount of people that we get complimenting it saying, thank you so much for your letter.
And obviously, if that’s happening, because obviously, I use it for my own marketing as well. It’s a fantastic tool.
But also my clients that we’re writing the letters for, like they’ll send me little screenshots. I’ve got quite a few, actually, I can send them to you after this if you want to incorporate them.
But, you know, just just people sort of saying it really stood out for So we’ve had some, I won’t necessarily speak about the sector because it’s quite big for us at the moment, but they’ve had some, some messages just saying we don’t normally respond to these types of things.
But you’ve clearly taken the time here and it stood out for us for sure. So yeah, it’s working pretty well for them.
@20:49 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
And it’s somehow, it seems to me that in in this whole area of, we call it fancifully lead generation, but basically, basically, you’re
Really, what you’re saying is, I don’t know you, and I’ve got something that you might be interested in. How do I take that thing and make it appeal to you enough for you to have a dialogue with me?
And I think that whole area, there’s so much work that’s gone into that. And I know that I spend a lot of my time in that field.
But this is why I’m attracted to what you’re doing, because it enters that sort of, I don’t know, arena.
And it becomes a bit of a champion, but it’s not cheap, is it?
@21:36 – daniellapaolozzi
Well, it’s not as cheap as email, I guess, if you’re sending out lots and lots of emails. But then it’s cheap when it comes to the amount of conversions that you’re going to get from that.
Because, I mean, we’re talking about the end result, the letter here. But that’s not just, it’s not just the angle of, OK, I’m going to send a letter.
I’m not for once suggesting that you say, hey, chat GPT, write me a letter. It’s that. That’s not how it works here.
So the first thing, obviously, from being a marketer is understanding the audience. Once you’ve got your audience down, you know what their wants are, their desires, you know what their problems are, then it’s crafting the perfect message.
But also, one of the things that I do with my clients, and I’m always advising them on is this level of humanisation that I think we’re missing in this era.
And I think that being able to customise that with, an opening paragraph, which is totally about them, mean, don’t get me wrong, if you’re doing it at scale, you might want to, yeah, there’s lots of ways that you can do it.
But I think speaking like a normal human and not a corporate bot, like, we all want to, and I think that’s why we got on as well, Graham, is because we’re talking like real humans, you know, we’re not talking like, um, you’re not from corporate anymore.
@22:56 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
And for me, I find it difficult sometimes to I have to sort of talk in a way that isn’t corporate.
have to get my ideas out, and they don’t always come out in a really cogent, very sort of linear way, and it’s the ability to listen to the sort of nuances that people are talking about.
And that’s what, you know, Kevin’s more of, I suppose, although he is quite right-brained, but he’s more left-brained because of the kind of training that he’s had and so forth.
But, and I just think there’s, what you’re doing is you are giving people a reason to respond, but because they have enjoyed the experience of receiving something.
And I, forgive my question earlier, when I talked about it’s not cheap, and I used to sell Lego bricks, and people say in the toy shops when I was there, this is back in the eighties, and basically they said, well, that’s not cheap, and so how long have you had yours?
Oh, we’ve it for 15 years or whatever. So how cheap do you want it to be? You know, at the end of the day, it’s an investment in your child’s development, and in your case, it’s an investment in the opportunity of getting more response, and therefore it isn’t expensive, but it’s an investment that you’ve got to be, you know, sure about.
@24:25 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah, obviously stamps are the price of stamps, aren’t they? We can’t change that. But with regards to pricing, one of the things that’s really important to me as well is that you’ve got to price ethically, because there are some companies that are charging a fortune, but aren’t necessarily giving that extra value.
So, yeah, I mean, you know, you’ve always got to consider that, don’t you? The ROI is the end goal, and you’re only as good as your past reviews.
Yeah.
@24:52 – Kevin Appleby
But I think what attracts me here is that you’re thinking about the process.
@24:59 – daniellapaolozzi
Oh.
@25:02 – Kevin Appleby
Email, we can quite happily establish an email list of thousands of people and bombard those people with the same email, customised for name, company name, and so on.
Step to direct mail, it’s per unit more expensive, so you’re a little bit more selective about who you send it to.
@25:24 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah, people are doing their lists extra thoroughly for us. Sorry to interrupt you.
@25:29 – Kevin Appleby
Yeah, step into handwritten mail. Not only is it the extra cost of it, but it’s the time, if you’re going to write each one of these, my pen, individually, there’s a big time overhead, isn’t there?
So you really are going to home in on who is my target customer here. Really thinking about that, which then I suppose the next step is to personalise this to the individual that you’re writing to, then isn’t that big a leap further?
@25:58 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah Mythos Oh, well. Yeah. mean, I could stand here and go, yeah, my wrists are killing me. I’ve written thousands today.
But I think obviously being a marketeer, I know that you need to have a good representative sample size. And, you know, there’s some people that I know that do literally handwrite them and they are extremely targeted.
But one of the things for me is looking at some of the options that are available on the market for handwritten direct mail, because this is where I started off.
I was sort of, you know, putting it through those companies. And there are companies that can do printing that looks like handwritten direct mail, but there are other ways.
So we heavily focused on different writing styles and decided to program heavily, heavily customized and CNC machines and program them to hold the pen so that we can write at scale.
So we’ve got a whole load of machinery here that just kind of holds it and writes thousands of these letters per day.
However, there’s nothing currently on the market. Exactly like what we’re doing, I think, because one of the things that you don’t want to do is have something that looks robotic, that looks like a font.
Otherwise, you know, what’s the point? You want to build that trust. And that trust is there. You know, I go through each of my contacts and I’ll write a personalised message for each of them, put them into a spreadsheet, upload it.
So where we can make tech work for us in different ways, my idea is to give it that heart and soul on the spreadsheet, but then just let that do the heavy lifting, rather than developing early onset arthritis.
@27:35 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I mean, the work that you’re doing, I think is, if you look at emails, you are right. I mean, people pile them up and they send them.
And they have such low expectations of, of, of, of of a big outcome. Just it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s rare.
@27:54 – daniellapaolozzi
It really is.
@27:55 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I have to say, I’m not blowing me on trumpet, but we did some recently, but it was only two.
Oh, I want to say four or five hundred. It was literally a relative. In our game, that’s quite small, certainly for a year.
And it was getting significantly high open rates. So as in between 50 to 100 and literally had 100% open rate.
And but the click throughs were also pretty good so that you get lucky sometimes. But I think the problem that I that I see with with email marketing is is that the users of email marketing have trained the recipients to ignore it.
And I think the thing is about direct mail is always ever since email came along, is always had a higher trust factor.
@28:48 – daniellapaolozzi
Always.
@28:49 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
So direct mail itself has a higher trust factor. People would if you’ve put all the effort and spent the money, as you said, Daniella.
They’re on postal, whether that’s. A Porsche’s Paid Impression, which you can effectively buy for lower than the price of a stamp, but in your case, you put a stamp on it.
@29:07 – daniellapaolozzi
Real stamp, yeah.
@29:09 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
It’s a real stamp. And we all know in the industry, if you do that, it just has a different impact on the recipient.
It does. not, you know, generic. This is meant for me. I’m going to open it and, oh, it’s handwritten.
So it’s very much, it’s, I don’t know, you’re getting right to the core of that kind of, will I give this person a chance to have a conversation with me?
And I think that’s the thing that you’ve got absolutely right. You understand. And I think that the problems that email marketers have got is that they have to make it work.
They’re going to struggle to make it work extremely well, whereas I think you can get yours, even on an off day, to outperform as any day.
And that’s the, that’s the, that’s the thing that I’m impressed by, uh, the work that you’re doing.
@30:06 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah. I mean, I want it to look like, has my nan written me a letter? Like what’s going on here?
Who has sent me this handwritten letter? Because people are intrigued by it. And I did actually look at some studies, um, and they were saying that when you receive an email, it releases a cortisol response, which is obviously the stress hormone.
@30:26 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
But when you receive a handwritten letter, you get that lovely little serotonin feeling.
@30:32 – daniellapaolozzi
And that’s really important to me, both as a person and, you know, as a marketeer, I want people to feel good with what we do, not like they’re just being bombarded.
Um, so yeah, I think it makes a huge difference.
@30:45 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I, I, I’m so impressed. And you work across lots of different, I mean, you talked earlier on about tradespeople, et cetera.
@30:52 – daniellapaolozzi
Do you still look after some of those tradespeople? Oh yeah, they spend a fortune with us now.
@30:56 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
What, 68 grand on the first 5,000? Yeah, all right, Or I’ll do it again then, if I have to.
But no, honestly, but you’ve got charities, luxury brands and estate agents, hospitals. It kind of works everywhere. The issue, the issue is, I like the idea that you’re spending time with, I’ll use a term initial customer profile or ideal customer profile, you’re spending time figuring out exactly who you’re going to write to.
And then maybe what the offer is to those people. And then maybe what the value proposition that your client has got.
That, that crafts that offer. So for me, that kind of strategic overview is exactly what I’m doing in my market as well.
So I’m, I’m, I’m really impressed that you’re doing that, but you’re doing it with so many different markets.
@31:43 – daniellapaolozzi
So I’m quite impressed by that. You know, obviously, you know, the companies do need to let us know exactly what it is that their clients like.
They’re the experts. We can’t presume that we’re going to know every single industry. It would just be arrogant to do.
But I think by asking the right questions. I questions. Yeah, you can certainly get something that’s going to be quite compelling, and yeah, I know there’s a lot that I can learn from you as well, Graham, blimey, you’ve been doing this.
@32:11 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I don’t know about that. I mean, we’ll muck along together, because I think we’ve both got a certain amount of experience.
And, you know, from anybody of my clients listening to this, I’m definitely working with Daniella going forward, because there’s so much you can bring to my market.
And, you know, because it is that initial, a lot of people come to me and, you know, they’re looking for, in my case, high net worth individuals or affluent individuals, and getting through to those guys, very, very difficult sometimes.
And I think, you know, having something that’s different is really important.
@32:44 – Kevin Appleby
Yeah, and I think as soon as you have franked mail on it, they automatically just dismiss it.
@32:49 – daniellapaolozzi
And also, one other little trick is to include it in, like, a gift card type envelope as well, because the second I get a DL size envelope, I’m like, oh, no, here we go.
@33:00 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Or, or it’s, or it’s a warning letter.
@33:02 – Kevin Appleby
I got one.
@33:02 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I literally got one earlier today, Kevin or a summons. I dropped, um, uh, Pfizer off down at Heathrow and I had, um, um, you know, that, that zone where you drop them off and they go off to, she went off to him.
She’s in India right now. And basically it’s basically, there was this thing that said I had to pay six pound 50 or whatever it was.
And, and it had this thing on the, and I just got so panicked. What is something to do with an app?
I don’t want to download an app, you know? And of course I thought I’d, between us, I thought we’d done it.
So I drove off and today I’ve got the, well, it’s 80 pounds or if you want to pay early, it’s 40 pounds.
And it’s like, and the pictures of my car and you think, yeah, probably I didn’t pay, did I? And, uh, and then I met, I was made to feel a lot better because my daughter Sophie’s married to Adam, who’s, um, clearly worse than me because he’s racked up thousands in these nonsense, uh, He just forgets.
He drives. He all over with his business, but basically he just racks up these things. She’s there writing checks for hundreds of pounds, et cetera.
Different Gail. So basically, yeah, the type of envelope that something comes in and the look of it does affect your…
That research that you did, Danielle, or the research that you looked at, fascinating. That one gives you stress, if you like, and one gives you hope.
@34:28 – daniellapaolozzi
That’s what marketing is, isn’t it? It’s about being able to convey something that people actually care about. So in order to do that, we have to get the emotions wheel out and say, how do we want people to feel?
So yeah, the fact that just the medium of communication can change things, but it’s the same with if somebody calls you, like I’m not a huge fan of cold calling, but if someone calls me and they’ve got something unique about them, they’ve got something to say, and they’ve got some interesting patter, I might entertain it, but if you get someone that’s just…
On a script like this, it’s not going to keep you, is it, you know?
@35:03 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Especially when they use the word mate. I mean, if somebody rings you up, Kevin, and they say, mate, at any stage in the conversation, what do you normally do?
@35:13 – Kevin Appleby
Put the phone down.
@35:16 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
It’s not difficult. It’s really not difficult.
@35:19 – Kevin Appleby
I do not know you, you are therefore not my mate.
@35:21 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yeah, no, I don’t like that phrase anyway. I, you know, I mean, love, if say love in Yorkshire, it’s fine, it’s all right, even to a man.
But, Danielle, you didn’t always have it easy, did you?
@35:34 – daniellapaolozzi
You went through a bit of a time some years back.
@35:38 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
indeed.
@35:39 – daniellapaolozzi
was my favourite time, no.
@35:41 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
No, but it’s obviously, you’ve got, just give us an outline of what happened and look at you now.
@35:46 – daniellapaolozzi
dive in. That’s cool, that’s cool. So, yeah, 2019, travelling the world, having the best time, and then it got to the stage in 2020 when the whole world went bloody mental.
So whilst all that was going on, and we found out that it was going to be a lockdown, I found out that I had cancer at the age of 32, so yeah, it was a very blurry time, I was rushed in for major operation, there was a lot of recovery time, thankfully everyone else was locked down, and so no one else could enjoy themselves, so that was good.
So I didn’t miss out on too much, I think FOMO would have been worse than chemo for me, but what can I say, I like to be here, there, and everywhere, but yeah, I think it would have been really upsetting seeing all my friends at festivals, and me being stuck at home, but…
@36:47 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
You know, you say you came from London, and who’s that famous nan who talks a bit kind of in your face, do you remember, I don’t know, is it one of the characters of a comedian?
And, uh… Yeah. Thank And it’s like Nan, and she comes on, and…
@37:03 – daniellapaolozzi
Oh, Katherine Tate?
@37:04 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yeah, you know, I think your grandmother is Nan. I mean, I think that’s where you get it from. But Katherine Tate, that’s the word.
@37:12 – daniellapaolozzi
My Nan is the most amazing person in the world, actually, and she’s much better spoken than me.
@37:18 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
That’s all right. So you went through hell then around Covid, apart from Covid, but basically you had your own moment.
And stuff going on. Yeah, it went my favourite time.
@37:32 – daniellapaolozzi
But, you know, these things have to make you stronger, otherwise they just eat you up inside, right? And I think that although it was bloody awful what happened, and I sort of found comfort in speaking to other people that were having similar experiences, some of which, you know, aren’t here, which is really upsetting.
But you have to keep on going and also appreciate the fact that you’ve been given this extra chance, you know?
And… Some of the people I was speaking to, they’re not here anymore to be able to live that, so you’ve got to be able to make the most of it, right?
@38:09 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yeah, and well, and the nice thing is you’re now back in Finefettle, and basically you’re…
@38:16 – daniellapaolozzi
Five years, baby!
@38:17 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I know, that’s very good, that’s very good. But did you always have brightly coloured hair?
@38:24 – daniellapaolozzi
I want to know. No, actually. I was, I feel like it was false advertising, to be honest, because I feel this is much more me.
People know what to expect when they see this, but no, I have really, really long brown hair. It was kind of just above my bum, actually.
So yeah, it was quite normal, but then I think it was a new lease of life, because I would have just kept that, because it’s like, it was just long and brown and, you know, that’s just what it was.
But this allowed me to be playful, and I remember when it first started to fall out after I’d had, I think it was…
I think it was… Second round of chemo that I did. And I sort of went to the bathroom and there’s loads of it there.
And I just went, this, not having it. And then I’ve got the shaver thing, much like yourself. I went, right, this is me now.
That’s it. And then once I did actually have a lot of fun with wigs, highly recommend it. So I had like, I had all different colours.
I had long mermaid ones. And I was, you know, it’s just I got to be someone else. And every time I put on a different wig, it was great.
@39:31 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yeah. I just love the fact that you, you had this, I don’t know, horrible thing that we, we, we must all think about it.
You know, in my family, it was my mother and I, and she got away with it and then she didn’t.
And so basically there was quite a few years in between, which helped bring us up. And, but, but for me, you’ve, I don’t know, you just see seem to be a person that’s.
Absolutely grasping hold of life, but you’re also doing good for others as well through just through the medium of your business.
@40:08 – daniellapaolozzi
And I think that’s, you know, you should be commended for that. Thank you. I mean, that’s how this business kind of came about as well, to be honest, because when I was told, OK, you’ve got to have this operation, there’s a chance you might die.
Like, that’s really weird when you’re 32 and it’s like, hang on, just come back from Thailand. I’ve got all these plans.
And I think when I started to think about it and I started to process it, I was like, what am I going to leave behind here if something goes wrong?
And I started to, the first port of call was I started to do a lot of charity work. So I sponsored a little girl in, gosh, she’s over in Ethiopia and got a family, bed, she didn’t even have a bed, like the amount of horrible things that are going on in this world.
And I was like, I want to do some good. I want to do as much as I can. So.
I did a bit of charity work and then I started to think, I’m doing all this, but how many pop up banners have I got in landfill at the moment, like, and I watched this program about consumption and how much, how much rubbish we’re putting into the world and what’s ending up on the beaches and I certainly saw it for myself when I was in Indonesia, I’m going across this stunning beach, and I can see all of this waste there and I’m like, we’re doing this, this is awful.
So, yeah, it was like, my conscience was just like, this is not okay. So I wanted to use, because I’ve been playing about with direct mail for a little bit before that, but what we do is we use sustainable materials, so recycled paper and also making sure we’re actually giving back.
So, we plant about 2,400-ish trees a year, depending on how things are going sales wise, and that will just increase.
We give to awesome charities. We called Tree Sisters that give women in various places in third world countries a fair wage for sort of replanting the rainforests and things like that.
So I think that this idea kind of came from that, but combined what I’d seen work for my customers, because obviously, you know, I want them to be happy, I want them to have, you know, clients and a good experience with me.
But yeah, also being able to do some good. So I make sure that we continue to donate to cancer research and to donate to these sustainable charities and using things like cotton paper, craft paper.
We’ve even got some cannabis paper that doesn’t smell like cannabis. It’s the first thing I did when I when it arrived.
But yeah, it’s a really lovely texture.
@42:51 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Who’d have thought? Well, we’ve had people talk about cannabis on this show as well, haven’t we, Kevin?
@42:57 – Kevin Appleby
So basically, we’ve we’ve we’ve talked about everybody. about We’ve We’ve know. Remember that cannabis isn’t just the plant that you use for drugs.
If you go back to the early part of the last century before nylon was invented, well, the cannabis plant was the plant that produced hemp.
@43:14 – daniellapaolozzi
And hemp was the main product going to rope.
@43:17 – Kevin Appleby
And I guess it’s the hemp that’s going to be making the paper.
@43:20 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we don’t make the paper ourselves, of course. But yeah, I think it can be used for all sorts of things.
And I think it’s becoming more mainstream as well. For example, CBD gummies. They’re everywhere at the moment.
@43:34 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I take them myself. They’re brilliant.
@43:36 – daniellapaolozzi
And certainly with my history as well, there’s some quite compelling evidence of that working. So yeah, CBD me up.
@43:45 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
If you pitch yourself at the horizon, and you say to yourself, yeah, okay, I’m still in my 30s. And you know, bully for you.
That’s all I can say. But you know, bloody 30s. Kevin and I left them a long while ago.
@43:59 – Kevin Appleby
You know, actually, It was, people were dressed differently when we That’s second thirties, Graham.
@44:04 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yeah. I mean, God, I mean, it’s a long time ago. Anyway, the thing is, you probably have an idea of what you’d like to achieve.
I mean, even if it’s sort of five years out, which probably seems like a long time to you, but even if you had to go out a little bit further, what is it that you would most like to achieve?
So you can then say, well, Danie Allen made a bit of a difference.
@44:31 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah, totally. Well, obviously I’d love to help businesses that have got the right ethics about them to be able to scale and know that I’ve done some good there.
But ultimately, you know, if the business takes off, as I hope that it will, and it has done pretty well over the past two years, but hopefully that will continue to grow and then I can, you know, work with so many more charity projects.
I think that’s the ultimate goal is to, you know, when the time comes, whenever that may be, you want to be able to…
The say, you know what, I played a good round, do you know what I mean, it’s, it is really important to me and just being able to sleep at night knowing that you’ve done the right thing, that’s the most important thing to me.
@45:11 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Kevin, if you had to ask Daniella a single question that you know she’s not going to be able to answer, have a go, have a go, go on.
@45:20 – Kevin Appleby
A single question I know she’s not going to be able to answer.
@45:23 – daniellapaolozzi
It’s a hard one, isn’t it?
@45:25 – Kevin Appleby
It’s a very hard one because I reckon I’d get an answer on just about anything from Daniella.
@45:30 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Try it, go on, try it.
@45:32 – daniellapaolozzi
Steady, where’s this going?
@45:33 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Try it, try it, something I do with our accountancy, she’s probably lousy at that, we ever know.
@45:39 – Kevin Appleby
I suppose, Daniella, you’ve got all this experience of handwritten email, okay, which is clearly going to a very small community, it’s quite personalised.
Now, flip that around to a situation where you possibly haven’t got the luxury of being able to write to people.
What lousy. lessons would you then feed back to somebody who still needed to use email marketing as their main way of communicating?
@46:09 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah, sure. mean, email marketing is not dead. That’s not the thing here. I think that it needs to be used in combination with handwritten direct mail in order to get the best results.
And I certainly still use it for my own. But I think even in the email marketing that I do, I would always say be personal, because if we start to look at, you know, that have been sent out, the ones that get the most response, at least in my own experience, is the ones that have got bases on, but also aren’t necessarily a corporate newsletter.
So I would say, you know, write it as if it’s come from your Gmail account rather than trying to make it too flashy.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This is just for cold outreach. I think that if you are if you are, I don’t know, say an estate agent and somebody signed up with you, they want to see those beautiful for
There’s a time and a place for each method, I think, yeah, just make it personable, make it useful as well.
Don’t waffle on about any old nonsense and just the features of your product. know, at the end of the day, you’re trying to reach out to people that are trying to solve their problems.
So try and do that as much as possible.
@47:23 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
I work with a guy, you probably know this anyway, a guy called Dr. Flint McLaughlin, and basically Flint was the guy who spent an awful lot of time on websites figuring out how they could actually improve them.
And his whole game for the last 30 years has been about how can I get more people to say yes.
So, and one of the things that he talks about when it comes to email marketing is that it’s only got one goal, which is to get a click.
So if you, if, and we’re back into that conversation we kind of started with. So it’s, it’s a really good question, Kevin, but what, what do you do?
Take from handwritten direct mail, real mail that goes through a letterbox, and then advise the email marketer, who probably is, I don’t know, slightly anti, and they’ve got a particular view about it, maybe because somebody else has told them about that at their, you know, college, sixth form college, probably, and basically they’ve come away with a view that says, now this is old, it doesn’t work, and all the rest of that.
The brightest direct marketers in the world will tell you that it still works, and it works extremely well, and you’ve got one of them on the program right now, but for direct, for email marketing, I think you’re absolutely, you’ve nailed it, Daniella, you definitely want to have personalization, you definitely want to have focus on that one outcome, because if, you know, you’re not going to get an award, I’m not going to get an award that I’ve got so many opens, I’m not, it’s not going to put anything into my bank, account, but if those people who open the email
And then subsequently click it, there’s a chance that they might go on and buy the product. So basically, that’s the thing, that they have to be very laser-focused on getting that click.
And I think, you know, I’m not sure that some people are. I think it’s sometimes, this is why I advise a lot of my clients to go for the text email rather than the HTML email, which HTML email is where you’ve got pictures and so forth.
And that works for some people, I get you, but more often, we found that a text email, like a short written email with a link to the next step, is how to do it.
Yeah. You know, I don’t know. I know enough to be dangerous on this subject, but you, on the other hand, know an awful lot about handwritten mail.
How do people get in touch with you?
@49:54 – daniellapaolozzi
Yeah, so we’ve got our website, which is www.penwrittenpost.co.uk. Okay. There’s a little WhatsApp widget on there where you can contact us, you can email us, but you can LinkedIn us.
There’s so many ways at the moment, isn’t there, to get in touch. But yeah, no, we’d love to hear.
But also, Graham, I want to know how you got such an amazing open rate, because I want to learn something here, because the spam filters and the promo tabs are a nemesis.
@50:24 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
It, we were, we were really, we were, it was just one campaign after another, after another, that we were getting really, really high open rates.
@50:30 – daniellapaolozzi
cold, right?
@50:32 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Now, the one thing I thought, was, and this is, I got it wrong. I was thinking, it was what I was writing in the, in the, in the actual email itself.
Okay. Up to a point, I think that could be true, but actually, it’s the subject line. And the subject line is actually thing that will get you the open.
So if you’ve got a lousy subject line, then you’ve got a problem. And, and. there are ways in which you can improve the subject line to actually to get that and think and but you it’s back to what you were saying earlier is to do with making sure that resonates with the people that you’re writing to.
And so we thought we, but I don’t know, I think there may be some metrics with emails where you can actually see the body of the email.
Right before it’s classed as an open, before it’s classed as an open. So I’m not, I’m not 100% sure I’m not an email master.
But basically, I think there’s no question, I’ll show you that I’ll show you the stats. But when we have our next one on one, but basically, you, you have been an amazing guest with a remarkable.
Thanks for having me. No, and the only thing that’s really disappointing is that red hair. You could have had a yellow, blue and white hair.
But what can I say?
@51:55 – daniellapaolozzi
change it. I think it bored easy. So you never know what you’re going to get.
@51:59 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Yeah. Well, could be, if it was for Newcastle, could have half white, half, half black, that sort of, sort of.
@52:07 – daniellapaolozzi
I look like Cruella de Vil, blind.
@52:09 – Graham Arrowsmith (finelyfettled@gmail.com)
Well, I know. So you don’t want that, do you? So basically you could have yellow, blue and white, and therefore you’d be welcomed at Eleanor by everybody there.
Apparently we’ve got the best atmosphere in the country when it comes to football grounds. So there you are. Excellent.
Anyway, by and by, that’s another story. But Daniella, you have been a first class guest. Thank you for joining Kevin and I on the next 100 Days Podcast.
Now, at this moment, I’m going to ask you for a quick testimonial because we do this and we put them together.
Of course. So what we’re going to say is, what was it like being on the next 100 Days Podcast?
And then you share. So in three, two, one.
@52:47 – daniellapaolozzi
So Daniella, what was it like being on the next 100 Days Podcast? I love it. It’s always a pleasure to speak to you, Graham.
You know, I love talking to you. And, yeah, it was just a nice, nice way to do things. And we call this. work!
