Client and business letters
Annual review invitations
Review invitations get ignored because they ask for an hour and offer a meeting. The ones that get answered say what will be covered, say how long it will take, and give the client a reason the timing matters this year rather than in general.
Written by Autopen Australia · Updated
The standard invitation
[FIRST NAME],
Time for this year’s review. Three things on the agenda: [ITEM ONE], [ITEM TWO], and whether anything has changed at your end that we should know about.
Forty minutes, in person or by phone, and you do not need to prepare anything.
I have pencilled in [DAY] at [TIME]. If that does not work, ring [CONTACT] on [NUMBER] and we will move it rather than leaving it to drift.
[NAME]
Where something has genuinely changed
The version that gets booked. A specific reason beats a calendar reminder every time.
[FIRST NAME],
Worth doing this year’s review a little earlier than usual. [CHANGE] takes effect from [DATE] and it affects how we have things arranged for you.
It is not urgent and it is not bad news. It is the kind of thing that is much easier to deal with in [MONTH] than in [LATER MONTH].
Forty minutes. Ring [CONTACT] on [NUMBER] and pick a time.
[NAME]
To a client who has skipped the last two
[FIRST NAME],
We have not sat down since [YEAR], which is my fault as much as anybody’s.
No lecture attached. Things will have changed at your end in two years and the arrangements we made then were built for the situation you were in then.
Half an hour, by phone if that is easier. [CONTACT] on [NUMBER].
[NAME]
Getting it right
- What to mention. Two or three specific things you will go through. The actual duration. A concrete way to book that is not an invitation to reply at leisure.
- What to leave out. "It is time for your annual review", which frames it as your process rather than their benefit. An open-ended "let me know when suits", which is how a review slips a quarter.
- How long. 70 to 120 words.
- How personal. Practical. A review letter is an administrative letter and dressing it up makes it sound like there is bad news in it.
Personalising more than a handful
The fields that earn their place here: [FIRST NAME], [ITEM ONE], [DAY], [TIME], [CONTACT], [YEAR].
A pencilled-in time is what makes this letter work and what makes it fail. Merging an appointment slot from a diary that is not actually blocked produces a client who rings to confirm and finds the time gone, which is worse than never offering one.
Before any run, read the piece with the longest value in your data, the shortest, and the empty one. If all three read as English the merge is sound. Personalising direct mail at scale covers the rest.
Sending these at volume
Reviews are scheduled across the whole year by design, so the invitations go out in small weekly batches rather than one run, and that is the shape that defeats a person doing it between appointments.
Autopen Australia writes each piece individually with a real ballpoint, personalises every piece from your list, written into the sentence rather than dropped into a gap, hand-addresses the envelopes, prints your supplied letter or artwork before it is written on and inserts, collates and seals.
Reviews slipping because the invitations never go out? Set up a weekly batch
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