You’ve Got Mail (or Do You?)!

Remember that audio prompt from the early days of AOL? Boy, how things have changed…and how e-communications have inundated the marketing mix. And it’s not just email anymore. It’s Facebook and Twitter and all the rest of social media.

But for now, at least, email still seems to reign. Not fully great or remotely tangible, yet it remains a viable advertising option…uh, somewhat.

Email is fast, cheap, and easy. Heck, in per-addressee cost, you can blast out all sorts of messaging for 1/10th a penny on the dollar, compared with traditional direct mail promotion costs.

Does it work, though? And do its social media cousins work for your business?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Depends on way too much to detail here (e.g., market, product, offer, audience, locations, et al.).

The thing is though, where’s the memorability? And more on that, where’s the “openability”?

Think about the latter.

How many emails do you get each day that if they don’t automatically go to your Junk or Spam folder you then delete without reading? If you’re like me, the answer is plenty.

Yet if you’re like too many advertisers, you don’t see the disconnect when you look at how to promote your product or business. You generally ignore all the unsolicited e-come-ons that try to cram your Inbox, but you often turn to using the same kind of uninvited emails to advertise your offerings. Do as I say, not as I do?

This then leads us to tangible advertising…and the programs that can and do make them work. And that raises the issue of “surprise” and, more importantly, “curiosity.”

Be honest here. Are you ever surprised to receive some e-pitch? And are you ever curious enough to open the email or, even worse, click on some embedded link (yep, the fear of being hacked cannot be downplayed)?

Now what if snail-mail (or FedEx or UPS) delivers an envelope or box that obviously contains something dimensional? Do you “delete” it into the circular file? Or do you open it, if only to see what the heck is inside?

And if you do open it – like the average person most certainly will – do you then toss the enclosed item in the trash bin? Or do you keep it, whether or not you care diddly about the offer, pitch, etc.?

Chances are that you keep it, even if the promo item is stupid-laughable. But you still keep it, and therein enters “memorability” for the advertiser…and memorability that derives from the openability of the mailing.

Direct marketing experts will tell you that the #1 challenge in any direct mail promotion is to get the target to open the mailer. A dimensional marketing program can get those mailings opened and, yes, remembered.

Every day 24/7, you’ve got email. Ditto for your customers and prospects, and ditto for the ease of hitting .

But an actual physical envelope that has something “lumpy” inside? Would you trash it without opening the package? Would your targets do likewise with this new-is-old-is-new-again version of “You’ve got mail”?