Are you invisible amid the clutter? Or, do you cut through it?

By George Linkletter, OutputLinks

If I had eight hours to cut down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening the axe.

  -- Abraham Lincoln

By the looks of my e-mail inbox – and certainly my Twitter account – very few marketers adhere to President Lincoln’s advice.

Instead of carefully crafting a message, and targeting it to appeal to specific recipients, the modus operandi of today’s marketers appears to be exactly the opposite: overwhelm everyone with more of the same, the faster the better. 

E-mail is clearly a dominant messaging channel today, due to its lightning-fast speed and lack of cost.  But a recent report suggests that recipients of e-mail view nearly 90 percent of it as junk.  Are daily or every-other-day reminders of an upcoming webinar, which is little more than a sales presentation anyway, meaningful to the recipient? Or are they just a nuisance and that adds to the overall clutter?

Another report showed that young adults, who are the future customers of any business, are increasingly ditching e-mail for text messaging and Facebook-style chat messaging.

As for Twitter, there are clearly useful applications of this marvelous channel -- even for multiple daily updates, such as in journalism and politics, when events are fast-moving and subtle changes, statements or reactions can make a difference. 

But in the business-to-business world, where purchases are infrequent, substantial, and subject to close review by senior managers, are multiple daily updates of the same, warmed over sales appeal via Twitter useful? Yet many marketers think otherwise and still adhere to the theory of the more impressions, the better. 

That may have been true at one time. But thanks to advancing technology, channels of communication have multiplied while the cost of electronic messaging has dropped.  And the proliferation of messaging has resulted in just more clutter. 

The real hurdle to connecting with customers today is to figure out how best to cut through the clutter, and not become a part of it.

The recent $500 million investment by Goldman Sachs in Facebook, which places an astounding $50 billion value on the enterprise, is a case in point.  Already nearly 600 million people around the globe are on Facebook. And it's phenomenal growth shows no sign of slowing.

Facebook users clearly like to connect with friends and relatives and share news, opinions, photos and videos of mutual interest. But the key word here is mutual.

Another, less-high tech example of effective communications is the simple greeting card.  Despite the lingering woes of the U.S. Postal System (which are too numerous to cover in this column), millions of Christmas and holiday cards were exchanged last month.  And I’d be willing to wager that just about everyone was opened by recipients with anticipation and interest.

Admittedly, there are poor examples of messaging even among Christmas and holiday cards.  Those that are mass-produced, and contain an impersonal, printed message, such as ‘Thanks for your business, the Acme Distribution Company,’ clearly miss the spirit of the season and the opportunity to connect.

This year nearly 40 percent of the cards I received contained a photograph or printed image of the sender or the sender’s family. The majority contained a personal message, some hand written, and in a few cases a detailed letter summarizing activities and accomplishments in the past year.

Creativity and individuality were at work in these cards. As was advance planning. And the effort paid off to making a meaningful or heartfelt connection.

Business operates in a fast-paced, multi-channel world today. But some proven successful channels, like the postal mail stream, are now overlooked and underutilized as marketers focus more on lower costs and instant delivery than the content of the message and its hoped for impact on the recipient.   

Low costs aside, does it make sense to send repeated, ordinary messages via an electronic channel when that message will become lost amid the clutter of hundreds of other, similar messages -- and may even contribute to message overload on the part of the recipient? 

Or does it make more sense to take the time to create a message that is special, custom-tailor it to recipients, and send it via a channel that is uncluttered and where it will stand out?  The growth of easy-to-use W-2-P card services, the emergence of new and innovative desktop-to-mail capabilities, and even anecdotal reports of increased demand for fine stationery and do-it-yourself card making kits suggests that consumers are taking the initiative in trying to stand out from the crowd.

Messages that are personal and meaningful yield high-impact and are well received. 

Comments? Contact georgelinkletter@charter.net.