A personal touch

In today's ClickZ branding report, Martin Lindstrom echoes my desire to bring communication back from the machine realm to the human realm (at least in part):

When did you last receive a letter? You know, paper folded into an "envelope" with a "stamp" signifying payment for transportation to the destination. A handwritten letter, sent to you, personally. Apart from Christmas greetings, I can't recall the last time I received a real letter. Whenever it was, I'm certain it was the event of the day.

Ironically, technology we've nurtured to enable faster, more effective, cheaper communication is experiencing a backslash. Not long ago, e-mail was hailed as the discovery of the century. Any organization with a modicum of interest in innovation began offering cheap, instant communications. We've been swept along, busily transferring the conventions of traditional letter-writing to e-mail composition.

Stop! Consider: E-mail may no longer be it. While everyone competes for consumer attention with direct e-mail, we don't see the technique may no longer work. I'm willing to bet a campaign aimed at getting people to buy is more effectively conducted offline.

In the long run, you're better off posting a letter. Spend the money making your communication tactile. Perhaps include a real signature or, better yet, write the letter by hand. Your message would be delivered with 1,000 times more potency. The cost would be only marginally higher than an e-mailed version.

This is only part of the story. Aside from selling products, such a tactile approach would build your brand, too. Recipients would remember the letter; they're unlikely to remember one e-mail out of who-knows-how-many per day. Can you name the last five commercial e-mail messages you received? Can you remember even one of them?

I'm not telling you to dispense with e-mail altogether. But think about combining channels more. Be less focused on the short-term attraction of cost savings made possible by the ability to send millions of e-mail messages free of charge. Think about the fact that, although we can send millions of free e-mail messages, hardly any will be opened. There are just too many of them. Many arrive with the perceived risk of a virus. Direct e-mail messages are more likely to be deleted in fear than greeted with cheer.

There's a company here in Dallas that helps companies retain customers by sending hand-written letters and calling just to see how things are going. They don't try to sell the customers anything; the intent is to make human contact. And it's working. Their business is growing and retention rates are increasing dramatically (and if I can find this company's name and URL, I'll repost with that info!). Bottom line, electronic personalization is ok, but the human touch is even better.

Comments

[David Young]

I'm not sure if this is the company you were trying to remember...I blogged this story from Fast Company a few days ago. They found the story here... http://www.courier-journal.com/business/news2004/02/18/biz-front-hand18-8670.html

It says the company moved from Texas to Louisville in 1998.

I enjoy your blog. Keep up the good work.
I've put a link to your blog on mine.

[Rob Paterson]

I agree with John on the chalk talk aspect in meetings. I find power point very helpful for me as an internal mechanism to talk to myself and to get ideas down pictorally (is there such a word?) but I have found that PRESENTING with it shuts down the audience. I think that PP is in reality a barrier between the presnter and the audience in that it sets up that relationship of "push". I have found that only a conversation can be heard well. Talking with people in the room and expanding the ideas on the board is a conversation where ideas are co ceated.

So when I draw in front of some one, they can see how my thoughts expand about an idea. Conversely, it is my experience that if the drawing is presented complete, the listener cannot participate in its growth.

Increasingy I go into many meetings not knowing how it will turn out - I have an objective but not in any detail. I find that this way "we" find some truly common ground and I have not "sold" some one something. It enables me to listen and respond rather than push again. We all know when we are being sold to and it doesn't feel good.

I would love to send out more letters BUT my hand writing is amongst the worst that I have encountered. Not even I can read it. Even so, it is such a personal thing and so rare today. Especially poignant is a letter from the grave - I treasure the few letters that I have kept from my father. There is a power in knowing that the words were writen by his hand - all that I have left that was truly his.

A letter of thanks need only be a few lines - but how often we we get them? Because they take effort, they have more power than any electronic form which are cheap to send energetically.

Finally is there anything more wonderful than to receive a love letter? Some how a 'love email' doesn't do it. Love letters can be savored and kept. Brought out on bad days - even passed on to your children- see Mum and Dad were not so stuffy as you thought.

[john dumbrille]

Interesting blog. It seems many people are moving back from electronic communications "tools" that in practice usually serve as barriers. For instance, 'chalk talk' has replaced powerpoint in many organizations. The idea there being... stand in front of a chalk board and really communicate. Beats showing a bunch or awful slides with graphic motifs and bullets.
Email and powerpoint are easy targets, as they have become conveyance systems for spam, intended and otherwise.
I think that the lessons of radical marketing show that nothing replaces immersion in the market category/ customer domain and a hands-on approach. I think that most new tools have their use , but all new confections,like peanut butter and Parkay, tend to lose their charm after indescriminate use.