autopenaustralia.com
Handwritten direct mail · Australia
Handwritten. At scale.
Handwritten letters, cards and envelopes for Australian businesses, written out with a real pen on real paper - a hundred times, or fifty thousand times. It is direct mail that arrives looking like something a person sat down and wrote, because in every way that matters to the customer opening it, it is.
Indicative pricing in seconds, no email required. Samples are free and posted, with no obligation.
The letterbox is the last uncontested channel
An inbox gets hundreds of messages a day and a phone gets hundreds of notifications. A letterbox gets a handful of things, and most of them are obviously machine-produced - window-faced, barcoded, printed in a typeface nobody chose.
A handwritten envelope in that stack is a different object. It gets picked up first, it gets opened, and what is inside gets read rather than scanned. The problem has never been whether handwriting works. The problem is that nobody can sit down and write four thousand letters.
That is the entire job we do. You supply the message and the list; we write it out, one piece at a time, with a pen.
96%of direct mail prompts a physical interaction
Real pen. Real paper. Much harder to ignore.
Autopen Australia is an Australian direct-mail service that writes letters, cards and envelopes in bulk with a real pen held by a writing machine, so businesses can send genuinely handwritten mail at campaign volumes.
What we write
Four formats. Most campaigns use two of them together.
Handwritten letters
A full letter written with a real pen, personalised from your data, from 100 to 50,000.
Read moreHandwritten envelopes
The cheapest change you can make to a mail campaign - and the one that decides whether it gets opened.
Read moreHandwritten cards
Thank-you notes, welcome cards, milestones and invitations, sent in the volumes a business actually sends.
Read moreHandwritten direct mail
A complete campaign - letter, envelope, personalisation and lodgement - designed not to look like direct mail.
Read moreSee all services, including signatures and variable-data personalisation
See the handwriting style
A handwritten note makes the message feel personal.
Written with a real pen, using several drawn forms of each letter and deliberate variation in spacing and baseline, so the writing does not settle into the repeating pattern a handwriting font produces. How the writing is made.
See what the handwriting looks like, or ask us to post you a written sample.
What will it cost?
Most quotes in this category start with “it depends”. Here is the number first, and the conversation second.
Estimate your campaign
Move the sliders or type a number. No email required - the answer appears as you go.
The slider is logarithmic so both ends stay usable. Minimum order is 100 pieces.
A standard letter. Most campaigns land around here.
Indicative estimate
$2.85
per piece, all in
$3,137
total for 1,000 pieces
| Item | Per piece | Total |
|---|---|---|
| Handwriting - 120 words | $1.90 | $1,905 |
| Handwritten envelope | $0.78 | $782 |
| Campaign setup (one-off) | $0.17 | $165 |
| Subtotal, excluding GST | $2.85 | $2,852 |
| GST | - | $285 |
| Total, including GST | $3.14 | $3,137 |
At 1,500 pieces (500 more) the rate drops to $2.76 per piece.
Planning a campaign? Get an exact quote.
Get an exact quoteYour selections carry across to the form. It takes about a minute.
Indicative only, and not an offer. Prices exclude GST until the total line. How this is calculated.
Why handwritten mail behaves differently
It survives the bin test
Sorting the day’s post is a two-second decision made at the bin. Handwriting is the strongest signal a piece of mail can carry that a person, not a system, addressed it.
It is genuinely scarce
Digital channels got cheaper and louder. Physical mail got quieter. Scarcity is doing a lot of the work here, and it is the reason a letter can outperform an email that costs a fraction as much.
It holds up on the desk
A handwritten card gets kept and propped up. An email gets archived in four seconds. Physical presence buys you a second and third impression you never paid for.
Published figures vary enormously by industry, list and offer, so treat any headline number as the shape of the thing rather than a forecast of your result. What we will do is help you structure a split test, so the number you end up quoting is your own. How to test it properly.
Who sends handwritten mail
The campaigns differ, but the trigger is nearly always the same: a list of people worth more than the cost of a stamp.
How a campaign runs
You send the brief
The message, the list, and what you want it to achieve. A spreadsheet and a paragraph is enough to start.
We quote and confirm
An exact price, the stationery and envelope treatment, and a production window we can hold, all agreed with you before anything is produced.
It gets written
Each piece is written individually, with your merge fields written in as part of the sentence rather than dropped in afterwards.
It goes out
Checked, packed and either delivered to you to lodge, or lodged with Australia Post on your behalf.
From 100 to 50,000 pieces, written, collated into envelopes and lodged with Australia Post. You send a spreadsheet; the merge fields, the addressing, the stuffing and the lodgement paperwork are ours. Above that, or for an ongoing programme, talk to us - the pricing conversation is different.
Straight answers
Is this actually handwriting, or a font?
It is a real ballpoint pen held by a writing machine, moving across real paper. The ink sits in the fibres, the pressure varies, and the letterforms differ slightly every time. It is not a handwriting font printed by an inkjet or laser, which lays a flat, identical image on the surface of the page.
What does a handwritten campaign cost?
Price per piece falls as volume rises. A 1,000-piece campaign with a 120-word message and a handwritten envelope works out around $2.85 per piece before postage. The calculator on this page gives an indicative figure for any combination, and volume pricing is available above that.
What is the minimum order?
100 pieces. Below that the setup cost dominates and you would be better off writing them yourself.
Can you personalise each letter?
Yes. Merge fields are written into the body of the letter in the same hand as the rest of it - first name, suburb, property address, last purchase, renewal date, whatever your data holds. There is no visual join between the personalised part and the rest of the sentence.
Do you post the campaign, or send it back to us?
Either. We can deliver the finished, packed campaign to one address for you to lodge, or lodge it with Australia Post on your behalf. Postage is quoted separately because it depends on weight, format and which lodgement option your volume qualifies for.
What do you need from us to get started?
The message you want written, your recipient list as a spreadsheet, and a decision on stationery and envelopes. We will confirm the final production details with you before we begin.
Tell us about your campaign
Send us the shape of it - how many, how long, envelopes or not, when you need it - and we will come back with an exact quote. Or ask for a sample first: we will write one and post it, free, before you commit to anything.