Snail Mail In an age where the Internet, email, and social media play such huge roles in our personal and business communications, many have taken the view that postal mail, or “snail mail,” is all but dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m extremely tech savvy, and I’ve grown up with the Internet from its early dial-up days and prior. Yet, despite this background, or perhaps because of it, I regard “snail mail” as one of the most important and underutilized forms of marketing media. When it comes to your media strategy, you should understand that email doesn’t replace postal mail, it complements it. We love the speed and efficiency of all things virtual; however, it would be a mistake to underestimate the power of physical objects when it comes to moving people emotionally. And, moving people emotionally towards a desired action is what marketing is all about. Imagine a man sending his wife an “I love you” text or email on their anniversary versus the same message communicated on a handwritten card with a bunch of her favorite flowers. There’s a world of difference between the virtual and physical equivalents of the same message. Have you ever received one of those Google AdWords coupon postcards in the mail? It’s instructive that the poster child for the digital age, Google, uses postal mail as part of its small business marketing strategy. Postal mail has a much longer lifespan and requires effort to dispose of. It’s not uncommon for people to treasure and keep postal letters from significant people in their lives for decades. The same would rarely be the case for emails, which are ephemeral—in your inbox one moment, deleted and forgotten the next. Another important point about postal mail is that it has become significantly less cluttered over the past few years, which from a marketer’s perspective is a dream come true. Clutter is the enemy of message cut through and having a media that has actually become less cluttered makes it all the more compelling. Conversely, email has become orders of magnitude more cluttered. The noise within email inboxes has gotten to ridiculous proportions, and even someone who is good at sorting it approaches it with a completely different frame of mind to postal mail. People handle their email with a finger hovering over the delete key. Anything that isn’t immediately actionable gets deleted, forwarded or forgotten in an inbox archive. Until we figure out how to teleport physical objects from one location to another like they do on Star Trek, we’re reliant on couriers and the postal service to transport postal mail and physical objects for us. Without a doubt, postal mail is a powerful media channel. However, as with all media, it’s important not to get hung up or tied to a single channel. Your goal is to figure out how to get a good return on your media investment whether that be postal mail or anything else. Credit: 1-Page Marketing Plan. Do share your feedback with me DM/Follow @digitalentrepreneur247 on Instagram. Download QuikMeet, do instant video conferences with your family, friends, and colleagues.

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