How do I send a batch of handwritten cards?
No code needed
A campaign is a batch of cards you build and schedule yourself. The wizard is seven steps — occasion, recipients, design, message, schedule, review, confirm — and nothing is charged and no credits are held until you schedule the run on step 6.
On this page
#The seven steps
Pick an occasion
Team birthdays, client thank-yous, holiday cards, new-hire welcome, neighbourhood farming, or Something else for a blank start. The choice pre-fills a suggested message, the merge fields that suit it and the kind of card that fits. Everything stays editable.
Add the recipients
Paste a block straight out of a spreadsheet, upload a CSV, or type a few in by hand. A campaign cannot point at a saved contact list yet, so bring the people in as data each time.
You then confirm the column mapping against a preview of real parsed rows, and 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.
Choose the card and the handwriting
Both live on one screen, because they are one decision to a buyer. Handwriting samples are rendered in the real letterforms.
To use your own artwork, set it up under Designs first and it appears here.
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 preview cycles through real recipients from your list, including the awkward ones: the blank first name, the very long company name.
When you continue, every single row is checked server-side, not just the ones you looked at.
You’ll know it worked when The preflight passes with no rows missing a merge value, and the fill meter stays under 100% on the longest message in the batch.
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.
Review, then schedule
Three 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.
You can also ask for a physical proof — a real card, actually written and posted to you, before the run goes out. Worth it before four thousand cards, absurd before forty.
Scheduling is the commitment. Credits are held at this point.
You’ll know it worked when Step 7 states the production start date, the posting date, the arrival window and the exact deadline for cancelling.
#Changing your mind
A campaign can be edited or cancelled right up until the first pen touches paper, which is 9am on the production start date. Cancelling 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.
| Status | Meaning | Can you still cancel? |
|---|---|---|
| Draft | Being built. No credits held. | Nothing to cancel. |
| Pending approval | Over your organisation's approval threshold, waiting on an owner or admin. | Yes. |
| Scheduled | Committed. Credits held, production not started. | Yes, until 9am on the production start date. |
| In production | Cards are being written. | Only unwritten cards. |
| Partially sent | Some cards are posted, some are still in production. | Only unwritten cards. |
| Completed | Every card is posted. | No. |
| Cancelled | Stopped before production. Held credits returned. | — |
#Common questions
- Are credits charged when I build a campaign?
- No. Building costs nothing. Credits are held when you schedule the campaign on step 6, and are only actually spent when each card enters production. A cancelled campaign returns every held credit.
- Can I send a campaign to one person as a test?
- Yes, and it is the right way to see a card before committing. Build the campaign with a single recipient, schedule it, and look at what arrives. You can also ask for a physical proof on the review step of the real batch.
- What happens to recipients with a bad address?
- They are flagged during import so you can fix them before anything is scheduled. Anything that slips through and cannot be addressed lands as Held rather than being written, and a held card is not charged.
- How many cards can one campaign have?
- Up to 10,000 credits can be bought in a single purchase, and campaigns are built against your balance. Very large runs take proportionally longer on the machines, which the schedule step accounts for.
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