Sending physical letters to businesses

[The Madhatter]

Hey all,

Sending emails to businesses to get adoption is great, but from my experience physical letters by post are more effective.

I have a lot of experience with the postal system. I'd be willing to mail out professional letters to businesses around the world. If everyone chipped in to pay for the postage we'd be able to cover a lot of territory really fast.

We could even come up with the text of the letter together. I could have it professionally printed; in business "image is everything".

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[kiba]

Sending emails to businesses to get adoption is great, but from my experience physical letters by post are more effective.

The original idea behind EFF letter writing campaign is to use the limited goodwill of the bitcoin community to achieve the goal of uniting the hacker tribe under the bitcoin banner. The hope is that when and if the bitcoin community will get attacked, somebody will speak for us.

[mizerydearia]

The MadHatter: post a Bitcoin address that can be used for community to provide funds to you to support your sending of handwritten letters.  Perhaps each of us can additionally provide suggestions as to whom to write to.  I suggest preparing a list in your original post and to update it periodically.

Perhaps your can follow up with Tom's Hardware if it seems acceptable.  Also

[silverman]

No. The key to acceptance is not a slick mass-mailer. The key is to understand our market's needs, and to understand our own product. Anyone standing outside of our egos can see that we have done miserably on both jobs.

Not that Bitcoin is a bad idea, we just don't have a professional product. Let's not take it on the road until we get it right.

[S3052]

I may disagree with silverman

Silverman: can you be more specific about what your success criteria are for a "great bitcoin product"?

[The Madhatter]

I assume we can send you bitcoins to participate. Address?

Yes, my address for this cause is: 1LuxxwU3Ek5AyXDeRe2o9NKETrL8KXFLt5

What's it cost to mail a letter from canada to the states? It might be more cost effective to send them from the destination locality. I'm sure we could share a nice template with a good mail merge feature.

It costs $1 CAD to mail to the USA. Being able to split up the mailings would be great. It could bring the costs down and improve the efficiency a lot.

Perhaps noagendamarket would be willing to cover AU/NZ? *prod* I could cover Canada (and Europe unless someone else wants that). Perhaps someone would be interested in covering the USA?

We could do remote printing and mailing, or centralized printing and remailing. Whichever is best.

[The Madhatter]

No. The key to acceptance is not a slick mass-mailer. The key is to understand our market's needs, and to understand our own product. Anyone standing outside of our egos can see that we have done miserably on both jobs.

This was exactly what I was thinking. I see the main strengths of Bitcoin as: irrevocable payment, low fees, and micro-payment capabilities.

We need a solid list (5 or less, we don't want to overextend ourselves yet) of industries that could really benefit from these strengths. From this list, we build letter templates. We find businesses, categorize them into these lists, and send them a letter based on the corresponding template. That way the letters are tailored to the type of business they are operating. It has to be highly targeted to be successful.

We should start building a list somewhere. (here?)

The P2P/crypto/generation stuff is just technobabble to most business people. They could care less. We omit that stuff. Mentioning the lack of central authority might be too scary to most of them as well. (That might largely depend on the industry in question.)

The recipients should be hand-picked. The letters are addressed to them personally at their place of business. They should be written with a personal touch, and perhaps even a contact telephone number. Perhaps we need someone to pose as an agent of Bitcoin (or another org affiliated with Bitcoin?), and answer their questions over the telephone. This agent would have to have sales experience. Having an antisocial programmer answer the phone would just ruin our efforts.

Am I missing anything?

[silverman]

Yes. You will need to understand your own product before you try to sell it.

I see a problem with all three features--irrevocable payment, low fees, and micro-payment capabilities--they are all dependent on outside services. How are you going to control any of that? Should you control any of that? Should you CLAIM that you control any of that?

But that's OT. Sending letters to businesses can be a great promotional tool. I just caution you to learn from what just happened with EFF: A messy promotion of things Bitcoin doesn't even do!




 

[The Madhatter]

I see a problem with all three features--irrevocable payment, low fees, and micro-payment capabilities--they are all dependent on outside services. How are you going to control any of that? Should you control any of that? Should you CLAIM that you control any of that?

I've thought about that. No, I wouldn't claim control of any of that. The letters would be from the position of a trade organization or maybe an advocacy group. It would offer information, and optionally point interested parties to contractors who can assist them with integration of Bitcoin.

The promotion might have to be coupled with mybitcoin to be viable. Most businesses need working merchant tools.

But that's OT. Sending letters to businesses can be a great promotional tool. I just caution you to learn from what just happened with EFF: A messy promotion of things Bitcoin doesn't even do!

Yes, it seemed kind of sloppy to say the least. Also, lawyers like paper.

[Anonymous]

I assume we can send you bitcoins to participate. Address?

Yes, my address for this cause is: 1LuxxwU3Ek5AyXDeRe2o9NKETrL8KXFLt5

What's it cost to mail a letter from canada to the states? It might be more cost effective to send them from the destination locality. I'm sure we could share a nice template with a good mail merge feature.

It costs $1 CAD to mail to the USA. Being able to split up the mailings would be great. It could bring the costs down and improve the efficiency a lot.

Perhaps noagendamarket would be willing to cover AU/NZ? *prod* I could cover Canada (and Europe unless someone else wants that). Perhaps silverman (interested, pal?) would be interested in covering the USA.

It costs .50 cents AUS to send a letter all over the country here. Which businesses would be the best to target first?

[Anonymous]

I see a problem with all three features--irrevocable payment, low fees, and micro-payment capabilities--they are all dependent on outside services. How are you going to control any of that? Should you control any of that? Should you CLAIM that you control any of that?

I've thought about that. No, I wouldn't claim control of any of that. The letters would be from the position of a trade organization or maybe an advocacy group. It would offer information, and optionally point interested parties to contractors who can assist them with integration of Bitcoin.

The promotion might have to be coupled with mybitcoin to be viable. Most businesses need working merchant tools.

But that's OT. Sending letters to businesses can be a great promotional tool. I just caution you to learn from what just happened with EFF: A messy promotion of things Bitcoin doesn't even do!

Yes, it seemed kind of sloppy to say the least. Also, lawyers like paper.

My suggestion is to target libertarian enterprises first.

[The Madhatter]

Do the libertarians run online businesses with large trade velocities? Perhaps we can find a business directory somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Do the libertarians run online businesses with large trade velocities? Perhaps we can find a business directory somewhere.

The guy who founded paypal is a libertarian

Also consider businesses who advertise with sites who lean toward this world view.

http://www.freetalklive.com/

   
   
I will post some threads around the liberty blogspace to see if people can come up with something.

[The Madhatter]

The guy who founded paypal is a libertarian

Too bad PayPal's polices are not... they are so draconian.

I am going to do some more brainstorming before I post anything else today.

[BioMike]

Indie game developers?

There are already 2 who have adopted it http://www.atitd.com/ and http://www.stronggames.com/

They might even help as a reference or in some other way.

Some hint of who might be interested: http://www.wolfire.com/humble

[S3052]

Financial services!

There are many small financial advisors / analysts  who issue daily / weekly / monthly newsletters who want to sell this to retail investors. I am not talking big institutions but "1-man show" type of businesses.

I think they could accept bitcoins to grow their business.

[The Madhatter]

Okay, great.

So we have Canada, USA, and Australia covered. It costs $1.70 CAD ($1.67 USD) to mail Europe from here. Can anyone do this cheaper than I can?

[nelisky]

Okay, great.

So we have Canada, USA, and Australia covered. It costs $1.70 CAD ($1.67 USD) to mail Europe from here. Can anyone do this cheaper than I can?

Mail the physical letters? Sure, I can do that. Not as inexpensive as your in-country mails, but still much cheaper than the AUS to EUR alternative.

Now, the problem I see is with translating the letters. I can do Portuguese, I know there are Italian and spanish speaking members around and, of course, Russian too, so lets get some templates going

[S3052]

i offer to translate into German unless its hundreds of pages :-)

[The Madhatter]

Okay, great stuff nelisky.

Translations are very helpful as well.