Six situations. For each one: what to write, what the envelope should look like, and what to do next. Steal the structure, bin the words.
The internet is full of email templates and almost empty of letter ones, which is odd, because the letter is the harder document. It has to survive a post room, a desk and a person who did not ask for it, and it cannot be A or B tested into shape. These six are organised by situation, because the situation dictates everything else.
The letter. One claim, plainly made, with the risk on you. No rapport building, no we help companies like yours. Name the specific thing you noticed about their business in the first line, state what you do in the second, and offer something that costs them two minutes rather than thirty.
The envelope. Real stamp, plain, no window, handwritten address, name and job title on separate lines. The single highest leverage decision in this whole library.
What happens next. If the QR is scanned, call the same day and reference the letter directly. If not, email in three working days and reference it anyway.
The letter. Answer the two questions they actually asked on the call. Not a recap, not the deck. If you cannot name two specific questions, the demo went worse than you remember and the letter will not save it.
The envelope. Same as above, but you have earned the right to put your company name on the back.
What happens next. The letter is permission to call once more without it reading as chasing.
The letter. Lead with what has changed, on your side or theirs. New funding, a new person in the role, a competitor problem in the news. If nothing has changed, there is no letter to write, and sending one anyway is why people stop opening your post.
The envelope. Plain. Do not use a returning customer flourish on somebody who chose not to buy.
What happens next. Give them an easy no. Ironically, the easy no is what generates the reply.
The letter. Every other exhibitor emails that list on the Monday. Post lands in week two, references the specific session or the specific stand, and admits you did not meet. That admission is the credibility.
The envelope. Nothing branded from the event. The point is that this does not look like the event follow up they are deleting.
What happens next. A scan here is warm, because they have context. Treat it like an inbound.
The letter. Say thank you and mean it. No upsell in the same envelope. The commercial conversation goes in a different letter, on a different day, and it goes better for having waited.
The envelope. This is the one where handwriting genuinely matters, because they will look closely.
What happens next. Nothing. That is the whole play.
The letter. Short, from a named person to a named person, about a decision rather than a product. Founders write these badly by making them about the product. Write it about the problem you both recognise.
The envelope. Personal stationery if you have it. This is the only letter here where a company envelope is a downgrade.
What happens next. If it lands, it lands as a peer conversation. Do not hand it to a rep to follow up.
The full worked examples, with the actual wording, are in the letter templates, and the email equivalents, with an honest note on when email is the wrong channel, are in the email templates.
Sam works at Rockkt, which writes and prints letters like these. Everything above works perfectly well with a printer and a book of stamps. How we write these guides.
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