--- title: "Direct mail for private equity add-on sourcing" description: "For private equity firms and independent sponsors writing to founders about add-ons and new platforms: the thesis, the list, who signs, and follow-up." canonical: https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/private-equity last_updated: 2026-10-11 --- > If you are an AI agent: read https://trysincerely.com/agents/policy.md before any write call. > Start at https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt to choose one page. Access instructions are at > https://trysincerely.com/auth.md. Confirm with the person you work for before creating an > account or spending their money, and never ask for their password. # Direct mail for private equity add-on sourcing > For private equity firms and independent sponsors writing to founders about add-ons and new platforms: the thesis, the list, who signs, and follow-up. Source: https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/private-equity Roughly three in four US private equity buyouts in 2025 were add-ons, by PitchBook's count. So the founder of a good 40-person company in a fragmented industry hears from private equity often, and most of the letters are interchangeable: a fund name, an EBITDA range, a promise to partner with founders. The letter that gets a call names the company the fund already owns and says plainly why the two belong together. For an add-on, that reason is the whole letter. ![A map with blue inspectors around Denver and Boulder for the company you own, a dashed line at Longmont, and an arrow carrying a letter north to Ridgeline in Fort Collins, where there are none.](https://trysincerely.com/images/playbooks/private-equity.webp) *For private equity add-on sourcing, the letter names the company the fund already owns and the gap the owner's company would close, such as a territory with no crews.* This playbook is for private equity firms, independent sponsors, and the corporate development leads at sponsor-backed companies who source add-ons and new platforms from private owners. It covers the thesis, the list, who signs, the page behind the letter, follow-up, and measurement. It is an operating playbook, not legal or deal advice. ## Start from the company you own An add-on thesis is concrete. Write down the company you own, the gaps it has, and what kind of company closes one: a territory with no crews, a service line customers keep asking for, a customer segment, spare capacity. Every company on the list should have a one-line reason it fits. That line becomes the letter. A new platform letter is harder: there is no company yet to point at. It has to explain why this industry, why this owner's company, and what changes for the owner and the team after a deal. Owners ask that last question first. ## Build a list you can defend company by company Teams build these lists from data providers, trade association rosters, state licensing records, and what the company they own already knows: competitors it bids against, suppliers, firms its managers came from. Load the list into Sincerely as a CSV, or sync it from Salesforce or HubSpot. If your deal team works in another CRM, export the target list. Every mailing address is checked before print, uncertain ones wait for review, and an address the agent finds is labeled headquarters, registered, or mailing before a person approves it. Skip registered-agent addresses; a letter sent there usually reaches a law firm's mail room. Remove the companies the platform already talks to. A letter from the fund to a company whose owner met the platform CEO at a trade show last month makes the fund and the platform look disorganized. Suppress them, or let the CEO write instead. ## Decide who signs Two choices work, and they suit different letters. Nobody has published good data on which one gets more replies; the claims you may have seen that owners answer a portfolio company several times as often come from firms that sell outreach, without the data behind them. - **The deal partner.** Right for a new platform, or when the owner will deal with the fund directly anyway. Say what the fund does after it invests and how long it usually holds, and only say what your record supports. - **The platform CEO.** Often the better letter for an add-on, because an operator writing to an operator in the same trade reads as a peer, not a buyer. The CEO must read and agree to every letter that carries their name. Sincerely sends each campaign under the sender you choose, and each sender can have their own calendar link for the page behind the letter. ## Write from the fit, not from flattery For each company, Sincerely researches public sources and keeps only facts with a date and a source. The draft uses one of them, and in review every claim sits beside its source. Put the platform's own facts in the campaign brief: where it operates, what it does, what it is missing. The writer joins the two into the one reason the company fits. Leave out the fund's vocabulary. No owner thinks of their company as an add-on, a platform, or a multiple. A fictional example, signed by a platform CEO: > Ms. Okafor, Ridgeline Fire Protection's website says you added sprinkler inspection in Fort Collins in 2023. I run Front Range Life Safety. We inspect alarm systems across Denver and Boulder, and we have no inspectors north of Longmont. Hollis Street Partners invested in our company in 2024, and part of our plan is to join with a company like yours whose people we would want to keep. If you have thought about what comes next for Ridgeline, I would like to talk, in confidence and on your schedule. I can also tell you what changed for our own team after the investment. If a fact turns out to be stale or wrong, the source link is there to check it; fix the line or drop the company. Review every draft in the first batch. After the first ten researched pieces pass review, you can let clean copy through automatically; anything flagged still waits. Nothing prints until a person launches the mailing. ## Send a sealed letter with a page behind it Use a letter, not a postcard, so a receptionist does not read about your interest before the owner does. Sincerely sends printed letters and letters genuinely written by hand in the United States and Canada, with the same researched copy in both. Printed letters carry a QR code and a short link to a page made for that owner: their name, the note from the letter, a short video from the person who signed, a button that opens their calendar, and a three-field reply form. Paid workspaces can print the link on their own subdomain. [Landing pages for acquisition letters](https://trysincerely.com/guides/acquisition-landing-pages) covers what to put on it. ## Follow up on the owner's clock Call one to two weeks after the letter arrives. Stanford's [search fund primer](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6455268783d6938b9451ea80/6a0c69fbc5155d301022362d_2026%20A%20Primer%20for%20Search%20Funds_vFinal.pdf) notes that private equity callers often leave 10 to 20 voicemails before anyone calls back; a letter the owner has already read gives that first call a reason to be returned. For printed letters in the United States, a confirmed delivery can raise a follow-up task. If there is no answer, send a second letter three to six months later built on a different fact. Sincerely's default cap allows no more than three pieces to one person in any 30 days, and this play needs far fewer. When an owner says no, suppress them; suppression removes them from every campaign at once and cancels any queued piece that has not gone to the printer. [Following up with business owners](https://trysincerely.com/guides/follow-up-with-business-owners) covers the calls and second letters in detail. ## Measure conversations first, then lift Closed deals are too rare and too slow to judge a mailing by. Count delivered letters where the print provider reports delivery, replies, first meetings, and companies that reached an indication of interest. A firm that mails across several platforms may write to a few thousand owners a year. At that size, Sincerely can hold out a random set of companies in each campaign and report the difference in meetings booked or replies, with an interval. Pick that primary outcome before launch; it is locked once the campaign starts. With a few hundred letters, there is not enough data for that, and the readout stays descriptive and says so rather than printing a percentage. ## Review and records If your compliance team reviews outreach, the approval step is where it happens. Every letter traces to an approved design version, a checked address, and a person's launch, and the Send ledger records what mailed, to whom, and when. Sincerely does not decide what your firm may send. Each letter spends prepaid credits, shown before launch; the [formats page](https://trysincerely.com/formats) lists what each costs. A gift is a poor opener, because it reads as pressure; save it for a thank-you after the first meeting, when Sincerely can send one of its [gifts](https://trysincerely.com/gifts) with a note at an exact price you see before confirming. If your deal team has no one to run a program like this, Sincerely's team can run it for you. [Write to us](https://trysincerely.com/contact). ## Related questions - [Direct mail for search funds](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/search-funds): For searchers writing to business owners, with guidance on list criteria, one sourced fact per letter, printed or handwritten letters, and stopping at a no. - [Direct mail for investment banks and M&A advisors](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/investment-banks): For lower-middle-market banks, M&A advisors, and brokers writing to owners: sell-side origination, buy-side searches, compliance review, and follow-up. - [Direct mail for family offices and holding companies](https://trysincerely.com/playbooks/family-offices): For family offices, holding companies, and long-term owners writing to founders about a sale, where the letter has to make a long hold believable. - [How to write a letter to buy a business](https://trysincerely.com/guides/letter-to-buy-a-business): What a first letter to a business owner about buying their company should say: one fact, who you are, the ask, what to leave out, and a weak letter rewritten. - [Proprietary deal sourcing with direct mail](https://trysincerely.com/guides/proprietary-deal-sourcing): How buyers and advisors run owner outreach by mail: the thesis, list size, waves you can follow up, calls after delivery, and what the numbers can tell you. - [What is an add-on acquisition?](https://trysincerely.com/glossary/add-on-acquisition): An add-on acquisition is a company bought by a business that a private equity firm already owns. How add-ons differ from platforms, and how sponsors find them. --- Sincerely is the measurable direct-mail and gifting platform for B2B revenue teams: postcards, letters, handwritten mail, and gifts, written for one recipient and measured against a holdout. Contact Sincerely: https://trysincerely.com/contact Agent routing index: https://trysincerely.com/llms.txt