As everyone knows, letter-writing is dead. All that junk mail. All those bills. All that clutter landing on my doormat / in my postbox.
It’s not that we’ve lost the ability to write. Well, not totally. It’s not the constant post strikes. It’s not even that email has replaced old-fashioned letter-writing. No…writing letters is just too much trouble, time and effort.
All that contemplative, handwritten, etiquette-laden, proper paper, decent envelope, correct address details, buying-a-stamp, finding a postbox, sending it off and not knowing when it may arrive…it’s just too…too…too much like hard work. Letters are for old people. For people who don’t care about their image in the eyes of the recipient. And let’s face it, nobody reads them anyway.
Well, for a change, The Sun has news for you. And people — real and and seriously important people — do read letters. Even more amazingly, they actually respond to them!
Don’t believe me? Well take a look at some of Ross Frazer’s A-listers who got back to him with Good Luck wishes and even signed photographs when he wrote to to tell them he was getting married.
Ross sent out 300 letters and received back no fewer than 60 responses. Those who replied included Gordon Brown, Bill Clinton, Man Utd boss Sir Alex Ferguson, Harry Potter’s Daniel Radcliffe and rockers Manic Street Preachers. Jonny Wilkinson enclosed a signed pic; the Queen wished him luck. The Queen!
Now in bygone days, any self-respecting copywriter who managed to get a 20% response to a mailshot would have been applying for the ‘post’ of executive creative director and sending off an immediate awards entry detailing the campaign and its results.
Not anymore, though. Now we consider such stuff as boring and not remotely cool. Yes we want results and healthy ROI figures. But responses to direct mail campaigns are so-o-o-o-o last millennium. Click-throughs, dwell times, page views, engagement levels, hot-spots, basket size, interactivity…these are the things that matter now!
For sure they’re critical factors as more and more of our work goes online for clients. But before the snail-mail era finally meets its nemesis when the post strikes resume in the New Year and before we all jump into email heaven, just consider this: the biggest complaint in business is that there’s far too much of it already. How many times have you come back from hols to find 300 letters in your postbox? But finding 300 emails in your mailbox (if you’ve not been checking them obsessively on your BlackBerry every day) is normal! Indeed, not to have received hundreds of emails means you’re a bit of a nobody, actually.
But a recent report from Microsoft said that more than 97% of emails are spam; fewer than one in five emails are ever opened; and it may take, on average, up to 6.5 hours to ‘view’ an email message. That’s not all that far off from what it used to take to post and receive a letter. Indeed, some Helpdesk emails to well-known brands can take days to get responded to. I’ll name names if you ask me!
So where’s this all going? Texting, that’s where. Or Facebook. Or Twitter, of course. The effect of social network sites shouldn’t be underestimated. Quick, easy to set up, etiquette-free zones where content is not encumbered by formatting and responses are facilitated by ‘hit reply’ or simple check box answers. And no need for silly and gratuitous little “Save the environment — please don’t print this” messages.
So will email become the new snail-mail? I dunno. But talk to kids and Internet savvy folk who go online or onphone more than average and they’ll tell you that email sucks and their first choice of communication might be MSN or texting or Facebook or Twitter. Unless it’s for business. Easy peasy texty.
Right then… maybe I’ll be going back to fountain pens and Basildon Bond. And licking stamps and envelopes. And asking Ross Frazer for advice. Unless I’m blogging,of course.
But I won’t be expecting immediate responses to my emails ever again from more than one in five people.
