The internet has given birth to electronic mail, more popularly known as e-mail. E-mail opened new avenues to the world of communication. In the beginning, e-mail was only used as another means of communicating with other people for personal or business related matters. Now people of every age group have an e-mail address. Over the past few years, its potential for marketing has been exploited to its maximum both in good and as well as bad. At the same time, who can disregard the services of direct mail which has been operating for nearly two centuries? It is still the preferred method of communication for many people.
E-mail is the cheapest method of communicating available as of now. The advantage with email is that you can send email to many people at the same time with the click of a mouse. Where as in the case of direct mails, one has to go through putting letters in envelopes for each and every person, make different address labels, mail it and also has to bear the cost of mailing. Time is money and e-mail marketing saves a lot of time.
While e-mail marketing might look easy, comparing the net results of the story is totally different. When you are marketing through e-mail, you need to make sure that you are e-mailing the right person otherwise the e-mail is going to end up in the junk folder. Also you need to be careful that you don’t miss the subject or the body of the e-mail otherwise the result is going to be the same. In this age of spamming, spammers use a variety of subjects, so you have to title the subject keeping in mind that it wouldn’t send your e-mail to the spam folder again. In contrast, the direct mail method gets better treatment. Studies show that direct mail is more efficient and has better success than e-mail.
First, it is not as easy to block direct mail as junk e-mail and secondly the process of blocking mail itself is not automated like e-mail. The other reason why people hate e-mail marketing is due to the constant bombarding of e-mails from spammers and illegal marketers from Nigerian money scams to porn to online prescription drugs to stock quotes to what not. In addition to that, you also get promotional offers from big companies. People have developed a negative perception about e-mail marketing and they simply delete or spam the e-mail if they do not identify it as their regular e-mail. In contrast direct mail is seen with respect and people pick through their mail as a daily routine and open them with a priority.
Direct mail has a personal feel attached to it, one of the reasons why people prefer mail greetings over an electronic greeting. It takes time to personalize a direct mail where as an e-mail is instant and the fate of e-mail is also instant i.e. immediate deletion. Researchers are constantly puzzled by the mystery surrounding why people are so enthusiastic about direct mail. But no worries this only good news for the marketers that they have something in their tool kit that works. So marketers have the mailing list of potential customers handy and send some nicely composed letters to them about your company and its products.
Snail mail has the potential of going through the hands of gatekeepers and administrative assistants before actually going to their boss which can end up being thrown in the trash. The survival chances are rare unless the subject is business oriented and has some sort of important information. But e-mail wins in this regard, as it directly reaches the person to which it is intended to go, after that its fate is left to the person whether to read or send it to spam folder.
A more scientific explanation of why direct mail is more effective than e-mail is the sensory perception of people. Direct mail uses three of the four senses of a person i.e. visual, verbal, listening and touching where as e-mail does not use the senses of listening or touching. But this can be achieved by adding appealing graphics, text reading ability and streaming audio to the e-mail.
Statistics show that direct mail has not died and in fact the volume has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few decades. A typical example is the fact that we receive more magazines, journals, mails from universities, DVDs etc. than we used to receive few years ago. This leaves the marketers with a dilemma about which method to use. The answer is simple, use email to contact only those people who you know and use direct mail for the people who don’t know you.
Has e-mail taken control of your life? As a small business owner, I know e-mail rules my day. The first thing I do in the morning is check my e-mail and the last thing I do before I go to sleep is check my e-mail. In between, I am monitoring my e-mail like an air-traffic controller. I'm always watching for new mail and will stop what I'm working on when I receive a notice that new mail has arrived. This is just plain sick! Do they have a 12-step program for e-mail addicts?
E-Mail Wastes Time
The need to read e-mail throughout the day has become a big time-waster for companies. Most people have two or three e-mail accounts so that double or triples the time spent checking e-mails. A survey by America Online and Opinion Research discovered that 61% of people check their personal e-mail an average of three times a day while at work. Add in the time spent reading company e-mail and you've quadrupled the time spent with e-mail.
E-mail has taken over our lives at home and at work because it is not just a matter of reading the e-mails; we also need to respond to the e-mails. Sure we can delete the abundance of SPAM that clogs our in-boxes, but then we are left with the e-mail that demands a response. We have to take the time to slowly read the message, understand the message and then organize our thoughts to write a reply. This takes even more time.
E-Mail Miscommunication
Here's where things take a free-fall and really eat up your time. If someone was standing in front of you and you were having a conversation, it would be easy to say what you wanted to say. You'd watch the body language, listen to the tone of voice and quickly know what to say and how to say it. But e-mail is just words; no body language and no voice tone. It's actually one of the most difficult methods of communication because only 7% of a message is understood from the words we use; 93% of the understanding is from body language and voice tone.
So, not only is it difficult to figure out WHAT to say in an e-mail, it's difficult to figure out HOW to say it right and not cause a miscommunication. You have no idea what the mindset will be of the person who will be reading your e-mail. He or she could have just had an argument or an incident of road rage before arriving to work and then starts reading your e-mail. What you thought was "constructive criticism" is now interpreted as a vicious remark to them personally. You're in trouble now.
Let me replay this situation and imagine you chose to phone this individual rather than send an e-mail. As soon as he answered the phone you would hear in his voice something was wrong and the warning bells would go off in your head. There is no way you would offer your "constructive criticism" at this point. You'd choose another time when things were calm.
With e-mail you don't get any "do-overs." Once that message is sent, you are doomed. If there's a miscommunication, you are stuck trying to make things right and wasting more time!
Get A Handle on E-Mail
Compare e-mail to a garage with tools laying around. You can't park your car in the garage and you can barely walk through the garage without tripping. But, if you hang up the tools on the walls you can easily find the tools and what was chaos is now organized. Every tool has its place and you know where to find it.
You need to look at e-mail the same way. E-mail is a tool for communication; nothing more, nothing less. It's not the sharpest tool in the toolbox, but it usually gets the job done. However, it's not the only tool. Take a look at your other communication tools and see if they would do a better job.
Here are some guidelines to help you make better communication choices and prevent e-mail from being such a time-waster:
*If you are angry or if you think your message will make your reader angry or upset, don't use e-mail. Use the phone or physically meet with the person. You want the advantage of body language and voice tone.
*Be sure to include all the information your reader needs to make a decision in your e-mail reply. Think about things from their perspective and imagine what they need to know. The more information you include, the less likely there will be miscommunication.
*Set aside specific times of the day to deal with your e-mail. If you want to deal with all your e-mail at the end of the day, consider setting up an autoresponder that tells people that's what you do and that they can expect a response at the end of the day. If it is important they can phone you.
*Only handle an e-mail once. Open it up, read it, reply and file it into a specific folder. If you wait to get back to an e-mail you may have hundreds of e-mails to look through or even worse; not be able to find the right e-mail.
E-mail is a love-hate relationship that is here to stay. Although e-mail is our primary tool for business communication, it wastes time and can cause miscommunication. On the other hand, e-mail is a quick, easy way to communicate our message and I'd bet very few of us are willing to give up our addiction to it.
Both T. Detty & Michelle Howe are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.