One Doesn’t Necessarily Exclude the Other

As postal rates have been increasing, I have found myself with a growing aversion to mailing. Call me cheap, but when stamps hit $.41, I encountered price resistance within my head to mailing. Once the price of a stamp passed the $.40 mark, my mind leaped ahead and tagged mailing an envelope as half a dollar. Of course, this is not accurate, but it is my perception and, thus, my reality.

My price resistance to postage has prompted me to turn to e-mail. This is a savings in more ways than money. By e-mailing, I save paper, becoming more green, and I save time, offering me the opportunity to do something else. Since finding someone who does not have an e-mail address is rare today, e-mail has become a more versatile and acceptable option than it was a few years ago. Thus, I have taken the replacement of e-mail for mail into areas that I heretofore would never have considered.

One of these areas is contracts. Now, I .pdf contracts and attach them to a brief e-mail message. I also .pdf invoices and e-mail them. A couple of Insights ago, I mentioned how I am using e-mail sale messages to promote Monarch Tree Publishing’s books and CDs. These are all good examples of how I have become open to e-mail as an alternative to mail. Whenever I think of communicating, I now weigh whether I can accomplish my goal with e-mail.

Other companies appear to be headed in the same direction. Have you noticed that your junk snail mail has decreased? Mine has. Conversely, my spam and junk e-mail have grown dramatically. I suspect that you have noticed this, too. We now grapple with the annoyance of junk e-mail rather than junk snail mail.

As junk e-mails increase, we are left with the challenge of using our e-mail communications wisely. When communicating via e-mail, we must know the person being contacted. We must have that person’s permission to send him or her an e-mail. If this is a first-time contact, we must send a personal introductory e-mail. We must be extremely considerate and responsible about contacting someone via e-mail. This is critical not only to get past the spam filters but also to have your message opened and read by the receiver.

I’m not saying this to discourage you from using e-mail. As I stated earlier, I am using it more than ever. If you use it well , you may keep in touch very easily and quickly with e-mail, just as I do with these Insights. I highly recommend using e-mail more than ever and in more ways than you have ever done.

On the other hand, recently I have gone back to snail mail for some very direct, highly targeted communications. A couple of days ago, I found it interesting to read in an e-mail from another marketer that she was making a similar effort. She said that she had found contacting a highly targeted list of customers via mail gave her greater results in filling her seminars. I, too, have found a high response rate to my targeted snail mails.

That brings me to the point of this Insight. When new technologies are developed, we have a tendency to drop the old and use solely the new. We could easily not use snail mail at all and make all communications via e-mail. As I and the marketer that I mentioned have both found, this may not be wise. There is a uniqueness to a snail mail piece personally addressed in your handwriting that stands out. The person receiving your mailed piece subconsciously recognizes your extra effort and appreciates it. Perhaps that is why these snail mails get good response. Perhaps with the decreased junk snail mail, your personalized letter has less competition. Perhaps the recipient likes the personal attention of a person snail mail letter. Whatever the reason, personalized, highly targeted snail mail works, as does e-mail.

One doesn’t necessarily exclude the other. Use both and use them wisely.