I was always convinced direct mail would work.
I was always convinced direct mail and personal correspondence were going to work. The trouble was, it just took so long.
The enrichment was so laborious. To personalise each letter, each email, each call — by the time you'd done the research, the moment had passed. Back in the day we tried everything. Spray and pray. Ten thousand emails out, one back. Some days we did one or two emails. One. Or two. It was extraordinary how slow it was. It was, honestly, terrible.
Then the models started coming together. The data got richer. Everyone got a LinkedIn profile, then a second one. Suddenly we could synthesise — orchestrate the sources, reconcile the truth, get really deep, wonderful data on a person and a company in one call. I built it for the companies I was founding. And one day I thought, I'll put it together properly and give it to everyone else. This has been a labour of love. There isn't much money in it. It's mostly the cost of the tokens.
We're at a point now where everything is so AI. So in your face. So fast. I thought we'd go retro for a minute and try to say something different. That everything that is old is new again. That the craft still matters — the right note, to the right person, at the right moment — and the technology should hide behind it, not stand on top of it. The handwritten letter is the destination. abm.dev is what gets you there.
The handwritten letter is the destination. The API is what gets you there.
If you've ever known a list cold — every name, every angle, every quarter — this is for you. If you've never had the time to do it properly, this is for you too. Five dollars on the meter buys you twenty-two enrichments. Run a real campaign. Then decide.
— Stuart