How do I send a batch of handwritten cards?

#The six steps

1. Bring in the recipients

   Four sources: From your contacts — your whole address book or one saved list — or paste a block straight out of a spreadsheet, upload a CSV, or type a few in by hand.

   Contacts are copied into the campaign, not linked to it. So a contact who moves house in June does not change what was written on a card in May, and deleting one later never strands a card that already went out.

   Whichever source you use, you then work through anything wrong. The summary reads like 1,183 ready · 41 need attention · 16 duplicates, and each of the 41 is fixable in place or skippable. Nothing touches the database until you say the list is right — see importing a CSV for the detail.

   You’ll know it worked when The ready count matches the number of cards you expect to send.

2. Choose the card and the handwriting

   Choose a card and handwriting on the same screen. Filter cards by occasion and browse the 30 handwriting styles by category. Each style has a pen sample.

   To use your own artwork, set it up under Designs first and it appears at the top of the picker.

3. Write the message

   One message, merged per recipient. Insert merge fields by clicking the chips rather than typing braces: {{first_name}}, {{full_name}}, {{company}}, {{job_title}}, {{city}}, {{state}}, {{sender_name}}, plus any custom column from your upload.

   The card and the envelope are drawn beside the box as you type, at the real size, in the real handwriting. The preview cycles through real recipients from your list, including the awkward ones: the blank first name, the very long company name.

   The handwriting sizes itself. A short message is written large; a long one comes down a step at a time to fit. Every card in one run is written at the same size, set by the longest merged message on your list, so they match. See how big the handwriting is.

   If you have no return address on file, this step asks for it here rather than sending you to Settings.

   When you continue, every single row is checked server-side, not just the ones you looked at.

   You’ll know it worked when The check passes with no rows missing a merge value, and it reports the letter size the whole batch will be written at.

4. Choose when it lands

   Give an arrive-by date, or choose as soon as possible. Scribble works backwards and tells you the posting date plainly, because a business that only sees arrives by the 22nd cannot tell anything is wrong until it is too late to fix.

   A big batch takes several days on the machines, so the production start date moves earlier as the list grows. The posting date does not move: writing early is free, posting early is a refund.

5. Review, then schedule

   Real merged cards are shown: the shortest message in the batch, the median and the longest. Merge bugs live at the extremes, so three random rows would show you three copies of the happy path. A run of one or two shows the one or two it has.

   Scheduling is the commitment. Credits are held at this point.

   You’ll know it worked when The last step states the production start date, the posting date, the arrival window and the exact deadline for canceling.

#Changing your mind

A campaign can be edited or canceled right up until the first pen touches paper, which is 9am on the production start date. Canceling releases the held credits back to your balance in full. After production starts, individual cards can still be stopped only if they have not been written yet.