In email, your timing is everything.

In real estate, they'll tell you that success is based on only three factors: location, location, and location. It's a simple formula, and it works every time.

But you are in marketing, not real estate. And you're looking for ideas that work.

Maybe you've thought about using emails to promote your business or service. And you should be! It's fast. It's inexpensive. It's a foundation of multi-channel marketing.

But you don't want to deploy the emails yourself because you've heard that the all-powerful ISPs could decide you are a Dreaded Spammer, and then they could yank your email privileges. That would be not good, no sirree.

On the other hand, you've read that the Marketing Sherpas say for every $1 spent on email advertising you should get $43 back in sales. Sounds good. Maybe even Great! But if you don't reach that level, are you a failure? What does it take to get to that level?

Maybe you should stick with the gal what brung ya—traditional print advertising and direct mail. Maybe you should sit this one out until you have a clearer view of what to do and where to go. Maybe you need a team of expensive twenty-somethings who were born with computer mice in their grubby little hands to help you. That's when panic and doubt set in.

Whoa, pardner! Stop a moment. Take a deep breath.

You're in marketing, right? By now you should know that there is no such thing as magic fairy dust. One person's magic fairy dust is another person's dust allergy. You need to test, record and analyze.

Timing is to email what location is to real estate. Your job as a marketer is to find the optimal time of day and day of the week to deploy your email.

So what is your "Optimal Time?" Unless you've tested, you simply don't know.

Obviously, you have to consider when your audience would be most receptive. A pizza company should do well on a Friday or Saturday night, or before the big TV football game. But a company promoting motorcycle gear might do better on a Saturday morning when people are thinking about taking a ride.

Sometimes testing leads to non-intuitive results. Poolawg.com, a Colorado-based retailer of billiard supplies, tested emails every day of the week and several times during the day. After extensive analysis, they found that late Tuesday mornings worked best for them. Their open rates soared 200% and their conversion and click-through rates tripled. Michael Feiman, president, explains "Customers are far more likely to open an email if they are already online."

However, Pittsburgh-based nonprofit SponsorChange.org found that 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. got more volunteers and more donations. Why? They reason that being first in the in-box (first in the morning, first after lunch) was their winning formula.

You're a Colorful Character! Shouldn't your marketing be, too?

Ever since our ancestors first drew antelopes on cave walls, artists have used color to arrest attention. That’s why designers create logos, photos, illustrations and charts in color. And why they use boxes, rules, underlines, tint tones, reverses, screens, duotones and the like.

Today, even paper can get in the act by being an eye-popping neon color, or just an understated off-white. Anything but “just black and white.”

As a marketer, you know color works hard for you. It stops readers, focuses their attention and gives you a millisecond longer to make your point. If you’ve written the headline well, and designed the piece convincingly, that fraction of a second may be enough to clinch the deal.

Yes indeed, color sells.

But, until recently, full color printing was expensive. So you probably had to use it judiciously to stay in budget. Digital presses lowered the price of color on your short run jobs, but long runs were still outside your budget.

Full color envelopes were a designer’s dream—and despair. More often than not, they had to be offset printed then “converted.” Converting means die cutting the envelope from the pre-printed sheet, then applying glue and finally folding. The whole process could take weeks and cost dearly.

That is so yesterday! (Want to see more envelope samples, click here?)

Today, Paul&Partners proudly announces four color envelopes. Since we can agree that color attracts attention, we propose that a smart cookie like you would like to use a full color envelope for your next mailing.

And if getting an envelope that will stand out in the mailbox isn’t enough of a great thing, we can address the envelopes at the same time we’re printing them for you. That means we save you production time and money!

Best of all, we can print these envelopes for you fast and at a cost even your accountant will love.

Caveat: Not every artist’s inspiration is a good match for this technology. Leonardo might be disappointed in our rendition of his Mona Lisa, but Picasso would be delirious with joy with what we can do with his work. It all depends.

Send us your idea and we’ll let you know if it is a candidate for full color envelope printing. We’ll even let you know how much it will cost and how long it will take to print and mailshop the job for you.

Contact us by calling 703-996-0800 or sending an email to Ellen@PaulandPartners.net.

It’s time to show the world your true colors.

Printing and Direct Mail: We're in a Growth Industry! Or you can't believe everything you hear.

Doom-and-gloomers say that print is doomed. Direct mail is a goner. What started with the ancient papyrus-wielding scribes, grew exponentially when Gutenberg discovered offset printing, is finished. Caput. Stick a fork in it, they say. It's done.

They name the internet as the one singlehanded instrument of destruction. They cite video-game-generation short-attention spans as an accomplice and falling postal usage as evidence. Those of us in the putting-ink-on-paper business might as well be selling buggy whips, they say. We're done for.

But whoa, there, guys. Not so fast!

A leading marketing research firm, the Winterberry Group, has dramatic evidence that flies in the face of these print pariahs.

Winterberry predicts that direct mail spending will grow by 5.8% this year; while direct response print will increase by a not so robust, but still sweet 2%. But Digital and the variable data printing it provides—will increase by a whopping 14%.

14%! Wow! But let's back up a bit.

2008 to 2009 was catastrophic for print-based marketers. Printing and direct mail volume declined by a staggering 16.7% in that one 12-month period, ending up the year at $43.8B sales volume. But by mid-year 2010, things were turning around. From July to December, volumes bounced back by 3.1% producing an EOY value of $45.2B.

Winterberry predicts that all signs are for 2011 to continue the rebound, increasing by 5.8% and coming in with an EOY value of $47.8B—$4B higher than we were just 2 ugly years ago. Not bad for an industry on its deathbed, eh?

So what's going on?

The great recession seems to be easing. People are spending more again, and many marketers are returning to the mail. Furthermore, the long-touted email revolution isn't panning out quite the way it had been expected to. So marketers are abandoning the electronic world for good old fashioned print again.

At the same time, USPS-enforced regulations to keep lists cleaner, and greater acceptance of detailed response analytics mean that mailers can mail smaller, but more accurately and with more highly targeted campaigns. Hence, they should see better ROI for their efforts.

The USPS is doing its part by not seeking huge postal increases for 2011.

Digital is the big winner because as marketers mail with greater specificity, their volumes drop. And as you—savvy marketer that you are—probably knows, digital is more economical at lower run lengths. Added to the digital difference is digital's ability to create custom pieces for each recipient, thus targeting the messaging even more tightly.

So before you believe the doom-and-gloomers who are predicting the end of the print world, please consider that we are in rapidly evolving times. It's happened before and it is happening today.

We're at the conflux of technological availability and economic necessity. Printing and marketing is changing; it is not going away.

Get with it. Get Social.

If you're a youngster, you may have trouble fathoming this concept, so I'm here to help you. Give your thumbs a rest for a minute or two, and read on.

In the ancient times (before the last 5 years) when you wanted to talk with someone—say, your client—you picked up the phone and you spoke to him. Now I know in this day and age that practice of actually talking to each other sounds remarkably quaint. But it worked. Communication happened.

Then came email. Forget the phone. When you wanted to talk with your client, you sent him an email. It was fast but you had to wait for his response back. His response might necessitate another query from you which also demanded a response back.

And that was the big problem with email. It could take hours to have what had been a simple 5-minute phone conversation. Worse yet, in all the back-and-forthing, misunderstandings crept in.

Some PhD candidate somewhere (I've forgotten the exact details in a senior moment) discovered that 90% of emails were misinterpreted. It was shocking! If you ran your business (or love life, for that matter) on what you thought you had said and what you thought you had heard back, 90% of the time you would be wrong. Yikes! Communications where happening, but maybe not the communications you needed. On the other hand, you could at least have a paper trail that showed where the train went off the track.

But now I'm getting off track.

Today, 79% of corporations use Social Media today to interact with consumers. They use these communications to maintain top-of-mind presence, drive sales, get feedback, and award customer-loyalty.

The Altimeter Group cites that there are 600M (600,000,000) Facebook accounts and these 600M folks spend an incredible 700B (7,000,000,000) minutes per month on Facebook. Twitter is second with 175M users sending about 95M tweets a day. My calculator can't even figure out what this comes to on a monthly basis. Anyway, LinkedIn is third at 85M users. YouTube is another social biggie, but not quite in the same way.

If you are comfortable with the technology, and have the time each day to devote to the cause, you may find sending messages and responding to what comes back a rewarding experience. You'll be in good company. Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson, Marriot CEO Bill Marriott and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz all write their own blogs and tweets.

On the other hand, if you are like many busy people today (who don't have a support staff of thousands), maybe you want to write your own material, then have a trusted associate distribute it and respond on your behalf.

In many large organizations there are entire departments of tweeters and social media mavens, sending out tweets, blogs, text messages and checking in with Friends on FaceBook and folks in various interest groups.

Why are these firms devoting so much energy and resources to this effort?

Because it works!

Properly executed, social media does indeed maintain top-of-mind presence. A well-written blog, delivered regularly, builds community. It's one of today's communication tools of choice, and communication—whether by print, phone or by blog—builds community.

Social Media does drive sales (think text messaging, or an email click here to link to our new catalog)... get feedback (PURLs, informal focus groups and surveys)...
inspire folks to act (give to earthquake recovery, sign up for a whitepaper, register for a free webinar)... and award customer-loyalty (Panera and Ruby Tuesdays are masters of rewarding customer loyalty.)

Social Media supplements—not replaces—your other marketing efforts. It can not replace direct mail letters, catalogs in the mailbox or ads on the radio. What it can do is make your audience more receptive when your direct mail letter or catalog gets in their hands.

You learned in Marketing 101 that successful marketing is about building a relationship between your company and your customer. If you first heard this sage advice in the last century, you'll remember there were fewer avenues you could use then.

It's so easy today, though the rule of relationships still applies. Social Media is the perfect tool to build relationships. It works. And yes, it can be fun.

Get with it.

Listen Up. I’m only going to tell you once…

The masters of marketing say that you have tell prospects what you are going to tell them... then you tell them... and then you remind them of what you told them. In other words, repeat your message.

So why would you think that one email or one direct mail or one tweet or one text message would be enough? Surely one of anything will pull in some business, but if there were an easy way to multiply your effectiveness wouldn't you want to do it?

You'd be an idiot not to! And yo' Momma didn't raise no idiots. Right?

But if you've read this far you already know how to create this marketing magic.

Need a hint?

Go back and read the first paragraph again. And again.

Got it now? Repeating your message is good marketing.

No, I'm not saying to robotically say the same thing over and over again until you hypnotize your audience into zombie-like group think. I'm saying to use multi-channel marketing. Mix the media, but not the message.

Need corroboration? Consider this statistical gem: Direct, targeted direct mail, combined with a same-day delivery of an email can boost response rates above 10%.

It starts with direct mail. 98% of consumers retrieve their mail the day it is delivered; and 77% of that 98% sort through it immediately. A great DM piece—well written, well designed, well presented—grabs eyeballs and attention. It probably lands in a "to do" pile, and it probably brings in a 3-8% return.

Now add a little "sweetener" in the form of a complementary email. Same message. Same graphics. Same call to action. Same day. Voila' marketing magic!

OK, usually only 10% of your email recipients open your email, and only about 10% of that 10% click through to your offer. Now that's an itsy bitsy group, but if the email and the DM appear on the same day, they exponentially reinforce each other.

Let me say it one more time:

Mix your media and repeat your message.

Then get out of the way.

Say it Ain't So! You're Too Busy to be Social?

Dearest CEO/BMOC or other overworked executive,

Don't think you have time to get involved in social media? Hmmm. Remember 15 years ago? You didn't have time to use email either. Hah! How times have changed.

Get with it.

I know you're busy. I know you are overcommitted. Spare time is precious. So I'll keep my comments to you short as well, thus respecting your time. I promise I won't take more than 2 minutes today.

Here are a few tips to help you get in the swing of things socially:

1. Write your own content. Your own voice will be more genuine than a hired hack.

2. Schedule time for social media into your day. Just 10 to 15 minutes twice a day will be enough at first to learn the ropes.

3. Don't get distracted. Remember why you're using social media. Is it to build your business, get business leads, or reinforce your web presence? Is it to keep up with your teenagers? Keep your eyes on the prize.

4. Focus on 5 or 6 relevant sites. We're taking baby steps here, remember?

5. Share information, ideas. People appreciate others who contribute to the conversation.

6. Remember, it's not just about you. When you find interesting content outside of yourself and your business, share it. Start a conversation…or add to one.

7. Showcase your expertise. Succinctly. People will learn to value your wisdom.

8. Hire a social media expert to help. You write the content, but let a "pro" distribute it. It will save you time, and keep you focused.

Think it's all just too much? If Virgin CEO Sir Richard Branson, Marriot CEO Bill Marriott and Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz can write their own blogs and tweets, so can you.

I'd say more, but I'm out of time I had allocated for this task today.

Ta Ta!

New Proof that Men are from Mars & Women are from Venus.

Like we needed any corroboration!

Ladies: If you've ever wondered if your husband/boyfriend/brother/father has tuned out in the middle of an intense discussion (and who among us can't honestly say this has happened)...

Gentlemen: If you've ever found yourself in the awkward position of seeing your boss's mouth moving, you hear angry sounds spewing forth, but you simply can't figure out what he's saying (sound familiar?)...

Then you have experienced first-hand the new scientific finding that says when men are tense, the part of their brains that reads facial expressions and emotions shuts down.

It's not their fault, really. Men are wired to respond like deer in a headlight when under this kind of social stress.

Researcher Mara Mather of the University of Southern California explains, "For men under stress, the regions of the brain used for social understanding became less coordinated with other regions, especially when looking at angry faces."

The men simply shut down. They withdraw, reacting to too much stimulation. Mather suspects hormones. Male brains with higher testosterone level allow less activity in the brain's facial-expression region.

On the other hand, she writes, "For women, those regions were more coordinated. When looking at someone showing emotion, women put themselves in the others' shoes."

Mather's conclusion? "If a man and a woman are in a stressful situation," she writes, "they may want to change their strategies for how they relate to each other."

What does this have to do with marketing?

Successful marketing requires that you understand your audience.

So if you and your spouse find yourselves discussing (ahem) who is going to walk the dog at 3:30 in the morning, my advice is "Keep the lights off!"

Your husband won't see your face, so won't freeze up. Hence you can have a lengthy, adult conversation about the situation. And when you win the argument — I mean discussion — he won't see you smirking in the dark as you roll over to go back to sleep.

Now that's successful marketing.

What Goes Around Comes Around, "Snail mail" gains new creds

Just a few years ago, when online marketing was still a twinkle in the eyes of the marketing technocrats, those same overly ambitious techies prematurely announced, “Direct Mail is Dead.” 

And while the premature announcement of DM’s demise didn’t make the cover of Time Magazine, it nonetheless shook the marketing community to its roots. 

Direct mail (DM), the long-time savior of all things marketing, became denigrated as “Snail Mail” — slower than the electron-fast e-mail marketing that was rising to prominence.  Fast was in; slow was out.  Shotguns were in; rifles were out. 

Well, that view is so... yesterday.

Today, the brilliant target-ability of direct mail has proven its worth as a tried-and-true in-the-trenches marketing success story.  Sure, DM has taken a hit from email and its electronic cousins.  Mail volume has dropped dramatically over the last 10 years, hurting both the USPS and providers of mailing services.

But consider this:  your letter/postcard/catalog/package now shares the mailbox with far fewer competing pieces of mail.  That means your recipient has longer to ponder your offer than ever before.  You get more “eyeball time,” and because there is less competition, response rates are rising again.

One retailer analyzed side-by-side marketing performance of three media:  DM, email and in-store promos.  With response up 150% from the previous year with no significant change in strategy, DM was the hands down winner over flashier new media.

So here’s the headline:  Snail mail, the so-called “obsolete marketing media,” is outperforming digital, including social media.  Who’d a-thunk it just 10 years ago?  DM is leading the new marketing wave.

The Past is Prologue.

Word.

Show me a Little Love!

Every marketer—whether working in a for-profit or not-for-profit—has one goal: Get customers, clients and donors to “Show Me the Love.” You want them to sign in, sign up, and send money.

In the dark days of yore, your options to reach these folks were limited. Direct mail; print, radio and TV advertising (or PSAs); public relations (like press releases); telephone solicitations; special events, and of course, word-of-mouth. You recognize it: It’s Marketing 101 stuff.

But today is a Brave New World, gentle people. Statistics show that each one of us is bombarded with 5,000+ advertising messages per day. That’s more than our great grandparents saw in their entire lifetimes!

Email, social media, PURLs, and text messaging has added opportunity, but has made it harder to get your message to stand out from the crowd. Figuring out where you get your donations or sales from is affecting marketers in all industries.

We are all adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Some of us simply have better life jackets than others.

So many options. So few facts.

Before you develop that fatal deer-in-the-headlight stare, consider the age of your target market. Younger folk have a variety of paths from which they get information, and no single channel predominates. Muddying the picture further, the X and Y crowd don’t seem to have developed the brand loyalty of older generations, so their allegiance is up for grabs until a clear pattern emerges. Older folks tend to stay with what they know and are comfortable with.

Here is what’s working (or not!) for a variety of marketers:

Retail. 100% of us buy retail. Just ask Safeway. But just over half of us say they have made contributions at the grocery or retail store. Most of the contributors are younger, as older folk still prefer to receive their information through direct mail, and younger people tend to spend and give more spontaneously (ie “Would you like fries with that?” “Of course!”)

Internet. Despite lingering privacy issues, most of us shop on-line today. Retailers are making great headway on the web. Non-profits are benefiting as well. 35% of the Gen Xers have gone on a charity’s web site to contribute as have 29% of the Gen Yers. But here’s the bad news: What had gotten them to that website in the first place is still TBD.

Social Media. Social Media is still largely a young person’s game. Nearly 100% of individuals under 30 use social media, with that percentage decreasing as age increases. While many of the younger users look to friends for recommendations, older users don’t. 36% of those under 30 years old have talked about a charity with friends in the past month and 29% have posted that information on their Facebook page; oldsters, not so much.

Text messaging. With near 100% cell phone market penetration, you’d think that text messaging would be huge. For instance, 77% of the public had heard about contributing to Haiti earthquake relief via their cell phones and 36% indicated willingness to contribute this way. But there is a huge generational divide. While 13-14% of the X and Yers contribute by phone, only 4% of Boomers do.

Social Events. Younger people tend to prefer social events such as 5K runs and galas. Older individuals who participate in galas tend to be gala goers, not long term prospects for donations (“I want to be seen with the right people.”) Younger people tend to give/buy spontaneously without much forethought. By comparison, older donors like to do research before they invest (think Consumer Reports and charity watchdogs), hence social events provide a bit of peer pressure to get more from younger audiences.

Direct Mail. Direct Mail is still one of the best channels for reaching people. DM earned attention—and money—from almost 100% of the Boomers, 43% of the Xers and 26% of the Yers in the last year. The age divide continues: Individuals born before 1965 voiced a strong preference for direct mail; people born after 1965 preferred web sites.

It goes on and on. Today’s multi-channel environment demands that marketers find new ways to determine response rates and ROI. We’ve figured that much out.

We haven’t figured out how to compute the value of internet vs DM (direct mail) vs WoM (word of mouth) vs text messaging vs Social Media vs special events, etc.

So many options. So few facts.

Like so many things, it used to be simpler.

Give me a hug. I need one.

Multi-Channel. Multi Bueno!

Marketing gurus who track what’s what believe that interactive marketing will climb a stellar 9.2% in 2010 while overall marketing will increase by a much more modest 0.8 percent.

It’s so obvious.

It’s elementary chemistry. Combine two basic ingredients like oxygen and hydrogen and make something even better: Water!

In marketing, combine direct mail with PURLs, emails, QR codes or text messaging to give your message multiple opportunities to attract attention, boost response rates and increase return on investment.

It’s intuitive.

Using multiple approaches increases the odds that you will be heard above the cosmic background noise that is today’s cacophonous marketplace.

If it’s true that each of us gets billions and billions of marketing messages a day (or even 5,000 which is what these marketing gurus speculate), then simply repeating your message increases your odds of success.

How much does the second touch do for you? These gurus will tell you that a second approach to the same audience can boost your response rates by as much as 15%!

If just sending out a follow-up would boost your responses by 15% don’t you agree you’d be an idiot not to send that second message?

Yet so many marketers sadly don’t get it.

Maybe the cost of the second approach is a deterrent in today’s economically-challenged marketplace. If so, it’s a case of penny-wise pound-foolish. Remember: 15%!

Maybe they don’t realize that we are in a generational transition. Old codgers like me like hard copy. Always have. Always will. But my 30-something gadget-giddy son was born with a TV remote and a computer mouse in his hand; he likes to get his information electronically.

If you only send direct mail, you’ll miss him. If you only send emails and text messages, you’re likely to miss me.

Mix it up if your audience is multi-generational. Remember, not everyone is equally conversant in all media.

Houston, we have a problem.

Need proof about where our world is heading?

92% of Americans say they get their information from multiple platforms including the internet, email, direct mail, newspapers, newsletters, radio, cell phones, text messages, social media, TV, magazines and of course, word of mouth. 46% of us get our information from four to six media. Only 7% rely on just one source.

If you use only one media you could be reaching only 7% of your potential universe!

If you can make a go of it on 7%, then keep doing what you’ve been doing. Go ahead and join the Flat Earth Society. Membership is cheap.

Employing a second—or even a third—media need not break the bank. QR codes, email and text messages, for instance, are ridiculously inexpensive when you consider what they can produce for you. Need I remind you: up to 15%!

Yes, you too can be a multi-channel marketing star. Call me.

Sometimes it shouldn’t take a rocket scientist.

Charity Begins at Home

Old timers like me are generous donors to charities. Maybe it’s because we have more available funds, maybe because it’s become an ingrained lifestyle decision honed over decades of generosity. But recent statistics show that Baby Boomers—born 1946 to 1964—give $901 a year to 5.2 groups. We're exceeded only by older siblings and parents who give an average of $1066 a year to 6.3 charities.

So what kind of role models were we to our children? The study says we did OK!

Gen Xers—born 1965 to 1980—give on average $796 to 4.2 organizations a year, and the youngsters out there, the Gen Yers—born 1981 to 1991—give $341 to 3.6 groups a year.

Hence, as people age their charitable contributions increase, as do the number of charities they support. What is also changing is the number of ways nonprofits can approach donors.

Gen X and Gen Y combined now make up more than half of the available pool of potential donors, and they don’t seem to have the “brand loyalty” that their seniors do. So figuring out how to reach these upwardly mobile donors—and keep them donating!—is critical to nonprofits.

There used to be a limited number of tried-and-true ways to reach and influence potential contributors. The explosion of social media and the internet has made that effort exponentially more difficult. Now it gets really complicated.

Retail. Just over half of all age groups say they have made contributions at the grocery or retail store, but older folk still prefer to receive their information through direct mail. Younger folk have a variety of paths from which they get information, and no single channel predominates.

Internet. 35% of the Xers had gone on a charity’s web site to make a contribution as had 29% of the Yers in the past 2 years. What had gotten them to that website in the first place is still TBD.

Social Media. 36% of those under 30 years old said they had shared information about a charity with friends in the past month and 29% posted information on a nonprofit organization on their own Facebook page.

Text messaging. Text messaging is gaining wide acceptance. 77% said they had heard about opportunities to contribute to Haiti earthquake relief via their cell phones and 36% indicated their willingness to make a cell phone contribution. But there is a generational divide. Cell phones generated contributions from 13-14% of the X and Yers, but only 4% from the Boomers.

Social Events. Younger people tend to like social events such as 5K runs and galas. They also are generous volunteers. On the other hand, they tend to give simply because they are asked to do so and without conducting much research. By comparison, older donors like to know how much of the donation goes to overhead expenses.

Direct Mail. Still a very viable tool, Direct Mail got attention —and money— from 43% of the Xers and 26% of the Yers in the last year. Individuals born before 1965 voiced a strong preference for direct mail; people born after 1965 preferred web sites.

As the number of donation avenues increases, the old metrics of nonprofit fund tracking is becoming obsolete. An individual may have first learned about a nonprofit from a friend who directed the individual to a Facebook page which got him to a website. Or it may have come from an invitation to join in a 5K, an overhead public service announcement, an ad in a newspaper or even a direct mail solicitation.

The multi-channel nature of today’s giving environment necessitates a more global perspective on response rates and specific media ROI. Nonprofits have figured that much out. Nonprofits haven’t figured out how to compute the value of various input sources: internet vs DM (direct mail) vs WoM (word of mouth) vs text messaging vs Social Media vs special events, etc.

The world is changing. If you don’t know what is working, you don’t know why it’s working and then you don’t know how you can make it better.

Like so many things, it used to be simpler.

Social Media Proves Men and Women are Different Animals

Anyone who has been married more than a year knows that it is an Undeniable Truth that men and women look at things differently. Women want to voice their needs, upsets and concerns, but men want to fix those issues.

Married women want girlfriends with whom to talk because their men don’t listen to them. On the other hand, married men who want girlfriends that aren’t looking for scintillating conversation, but that’s getting way off track.

Back to business. Social media is only reinforcing the age-old divide.

Facebook, it seems, is dominated by women. Of the 400 million+ members, 57% are women but the site attracts 46 million more women visitors than men each month. Plus female Facebookers have 8% more friends and do 62% of the sharing.

“The world’s gone social. And women are more social than men” explains Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.

Facebook is not alone in its female bias. Women are the majority users on Twitter, MySpace, Bebo and Flickr.

Why? Sociologists will tell you that girls are taught from birth to share information. It’s a skill passed down from our stone-age grandmothers who had to learn to cooperate to survive. (“You watch the kids and scare off the wolves; I’ll go forage for berries for dinner.”) That same cooperation is apparent on-line today as women query each other about toilet training, dealing with difficult bosses, and shopping preferences.

Men, on the other hand, gravitate toward Digg, YouTube and LinkedIn which are content-driven sites. Statistics show that men use YouTube 20% more than women, perhaps because the site is about finding, consuming and passing along content. It is not about conversation or sharing ideas.

Men also blog more and are more likely to comment on other blogs. (Side note: from the blog responses I’ve read, men tend to be confrontational and competitive. [“You are such an idiot!”] Women’s comments are more supportive of the writer [“That was really funny!”])

Men, it seems, see Social Media as a tool to gather information to increase their status. For in today’s society information is power.

It figures. The same sociologists will say that men are taught to be competitive from birth. Our cave-dwelling spear-wielding male ancestors probably jostled for credit for making the kill-of-the-day the way they now fight for the fastest computer or the corner office. It’s all about status within a community.

So what can a savvy marketer do to span this chasm? Retailers are figuring it out.

Getting a woman to say she prefers your brand is tremendously influential to her friends. Since twice as many women as men say they share purchasing preferences on line, some of the most successful fashion brands—Tommy Hilfiger and Urban Outfitters among them—sponsor virtual fashion shows to engage their adoring public. And not coincidentally, to sell product.

Some marketers are using games—long popular with men and growing in popularity with women—to win eyeball time, and possibly win new converts to their product line.

Similarly, both men and women respond to tweets or text messages from their favorite retailers. (“Half price burritos tonight at _______’s from 5:00 to 7:00. Bring this message with you to participate.”)

Men, however, ever looking for the competitive leg up, like to get content from articles. After all, one never knows when that new factoid can be a valuable weapon in one’s arsenal. Hence, savvy marketers are using “transactional” sites like LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to post provocative material hoping to spark manly interest.

Yes, difference in communication style is as old as gender.

Long after Thomas Edison and long before Feminism, some man somewhere asked “What are the three fastest forms of communication?”

His troglodyte friend responded “Telegraph…telephone…Tell a woman.”

Men guffawed. Women winced.

Social Media types say “Thank Goodness!”

Easy Does It! Maybe.

It’s summer again. Children—young and old—are kicking back lemonades and heading to the beach to squish sand between their toes once again.

Colorful tattoos are appearing in places that weren’t even visible two months ago. Haircuts and skirts are shorter; nylons are history and neckties aren’t far behind.

Monday-to-Friday is now Monday to Friday-ish. People start wandering out the door at noon, only to reappear on Monday with a deep tan and a zen-like air of serene relaxation about them.

Nothing is hurried. It’s too hot to rush, anyway. Everybody has gone into “vacation mode.”

But maybe there’s too much of a good thing.

Studies show that students lose two and a half months of their hard-earned math skills over the summer break which is, conveniently, two and a half months. Hmmm. How about that. A one-to-one correlation between “time away” and “information lost.”

Now translate that to marketing. A lot of the effort of marketing is simply keeping your name, your brand, your message in front of your clients, donors or prospects.

Consider McDonald’s. Mickey D spends millions of dollars a week just to remind us that they are there. They just want to keep their name in our consciousness.

Focus group of one: when I get thirsty, I head to Mickey D’s for the unsweetened ice tea. So as I was driving through the line today to get my daily tea fix, I spotted a new menu item: Real Fruit Frosties. Sounds yummy. I passed it by today, but I can almost guarantee that lunch one day next week will be a Real Fruit Frostie. I’ll be fantasizing about that frostie for days until I can’t resist any more. Their ads won’t let me forget. That’s good marketing.

Why is your business any different? If your clients/donors don’t hear from you for two and a half months, that’s a lot of time lost. You’re out of sight, out of mind. You’re losing market share simply by wearing your summertime cloak of invisibility.

Taking it easy now is fun, but do you really want to have to rebuild your business again in the fall?

Use the summer to stay in touch with a newsletter, an email or a postcard. Use social media, text messaging and PURLs to let them know what you are doing and why it is important to them.

You’ll be top of the mind, and poised for business when the time is right.

And that’s even better than a long weekend at the beach.

Dear Befuddled Customer

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to do your direct mail production. But we need a bit more clarity from you as to what you truly want.

You say you want your packages to be personalized. That’s why we’ve been inkjetting your recipient’s name and address on the envelope and on the letter. We’ve even used a blue handwriting font on the envelope occasionally to boost the personal touch.

But then you say you want to save money. So that’s why we suggested using First Class Presort, Standard, or Non-profit rates as appropriate. These presorted rates save you 10 cents, 20 cents, and 30 cents respectively per letter mailed. They do require a barcode, which we inconspicuously tuck away in the far right corner of the envelope.

You say you want your envelopes opened, so we put a live stamp on them. After all, market testing shows that stamps get opened before meters, and meters get opened before preprinted indicias. If you want more of a good thing, we can put multiple stamps on your envelope.

We can put a mailer’s cancellation over the stamps, too. You see, the post office only cancels First Class mail these days (too much volume, not enough time in the day). So any envelope arriving with a cancellation mark increases the mail’s perceived importance.

But then you say you want to save money, so you want to use a window envelope.

Here is where you’ve lost me.

Any pretense of the letter being a personalized letter goes right out the window. Literally.

If you’re going to use a window, you’re going to get a barcode, whether you like it or not IF you want a presorted class of mail. Worse yet, the barcode will be on the letter, so that it can show through the window, further diminishing your efforts at personalization.

If you’re going to use a window, forget the stamps. No one’s going to believe it is a personalized letter anyway. Anyone who sees this window package is going to know it’s a bulk mailing. So there. You don’t mail your Mother’s Birthday card in a window envelope, do you?

Yes, you’ll save money because you’ll avoid several production steps, but you’ll lose the very thing you were trying to achieve in the first place: a personal one-on-one communication with your membership.

You could flip the conversation, and include a generic, non-personalized letter in the personally addressed envelope. Then we could use all the tricks-of-the-trade available to us to get your envelopes opened. But the interior would not be recipient-specific.

So you’re between the proverbial rock and a hard spot. I can see why you’re befuddled. On one hand, you want a personalized one-to-one communication. On the other hand, you need to save money.

It sounds so straight forward, but it isn’t.

You have a lot of options, but they can be mutually exclusive. Short of changing your format to a postcard or a flyer—both of which have obvious limitations—you’ll have to compromise somewhere.

Please let me know how I can help “de-fuddle” you.

What were you thinking?

Dear Marketing Commando,

I’m so sorry that your new marketing effort was not successful. No, let’s be real. I’m sorry it bombed.

I know that it was important to your organization. Yes, I’m sure it cost a lot of money.

And yes, I feel your panic. After all, you ran the program.

But that’s jumping ahead.

Three months ago you came to us and asked what we could suggest to boost your direct mail marketing. The old #10-with-an-indicia package was getting stale. You wanted professional help to revive your marketing, so you brought it to us.

We suggested that changing your package size and shape might improve response rates as it has for others. Using a larger invitation-style envelope and a “live” stamp would differentiate your package. An elegant calligraphy font would complete the invitation look.

So far so good. But that’s when things went horribly wrong.

You decided to do the job by yourself—to “Go Commando”—to save money. I cautioned that you’d probably pay more because you did not know the postal regulations and you did not have the production expertise we could provide. But nope, you were sure you could do it.

So with the self-confidence borne of years of inexperience, you skewered yourself.

Let me cut you a bit of slack. You were new at this job; you wanted to make a big impression on your boss. And boy, did you! I guess you’ve solved part of the problem because now you’re looking for a new boss, though I bet this effort won’t be featured on your new resume’. But that’s another story for another day.

Commando Newbie, you made errors that only years of production experience or listening to someone with years of production experience could have prevented. Since you preferred to go it alone, let me share a few of the finer points that you missed.

Bad call #1.
First you called the post office for guidance. After all, their advice was free; ours had a price. Sometimes you get what you pay for.

Anyway, the Post Office will give you good information if you ask the right question. Too bad you didn’t explain exactly what you were doing. So you asked a misleading question and got wrong information in return. Chalk that up to inexperience.

Following USPS addressing protocol is important. However, while using all caps may work with Times Roman or Arial, it makes no sense at all in an ornate calligraphy font. Bet you won’t make that mistake again, eh?

Pity the poor postmen. Your envelopes were almost unreadable, but you were in compliance with postal addressing regulations. You gotta feel good about that at least.

Bad call #2.
Then you turned to another expert—your younger sister’s boyfriend who is a sophomore graphics student at the university. He gave you good graphic advice: keep the font consistent throughout the package to help “brand” your message.

So he took your copy and converted it all into the elaborate calligraphy script. The result looked like medieval monks hyped up on caffeine had prepared your letters. You gotta thank the monks for their attention to the mail merge personalization details, though. It added a lovely time-travel quality to the letter.

By the way, did you really expect your audience to read two pages of calligraphy? Apparently you did. Maybe you should have tried to read it first, though.

One more thought on this subject: Sophomores got their reputation for being sophomoric for a reason. Understand why now? You were supposed to be smarter.

Bad call #3.
You asked your brother-in law, the printer, to print this package for you in his spare time. It was a great deal; he’d charge you for the paper only. Unfortunately for you, what should have taken days to print took weeks.

Granted, it cost you next to nothing to print. And that is what it ultimately produced: next to nothing. But that’s jumping ahead a bit.

Bad call #4.
You had never considered how you were going to assemble the packages. But by now you were in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound. So you called everybody you had ever met at church, at work, on the subway on the way to work, and the nice homeless men at the corner.

Your rag tag stuffing crew took another two weeks to get the piece folded, inserted, stamped, sealed and in the mail. Unfortunately, between the food you had to provide to keep them coming back night after night, and the minimum wage they required, their efforts cost a bundle.

Bad call #5.
You tried to send the mail out at a presorted rate, but that didn’t go your way, either. You couldn’t figure out postage rules, so you ended up mailing the job at First Class just to stop the pain.

As the accused often passively say, “mistakes were made.”

I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but I warned you. Maybe direct mail is not as tricky as launching a military offensive, but there are a thousand details. Details that only years of hands-on experience can prepare you for. And quite frankly, you weren’t ready.

In a nutshell, the job failed because you, dear Commando Go-it-Alone, blew it. You grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory. You jumped into the abyss without guidance, without pre-planning, without a net. If you had listened to people who do this regularly, it might have been a better career choice.

The Final Word on Words

Please fasten your seatbelts. This is an article on words, but it takes a lot of numbers to have this conversation fully. Ready? Here we go…

The University of California in San Diego reports that Americans consumed 3.6x10²¹ bytes of data in 2008. That works out to 34 gigabytes per day per person or approximately 100,500 words for each of us.

If the average American reads 200 words a minute, that would come to 502.5 minutes a day—or 8.375 hours a day—spent in processing words. But of course, we live in an electronic world, so we’re getting a lot of these communications through our ears.

45% of the words we consume come from television. Computers eat up 26% of our word diet, with radio taking 11%, print media 9%, and phone conversations a mere 5%. Of course, this study was done before Texting and Tweeting became the Big Deals that they are today, so the 2010 figures might be significantly different.

A trade industry group, CTIA, claims that 110 billion text messages were sent in the US in 2008, up from 2 billion in 2003. In 2008, we Americans spent 23 hours a year texting ourselves, which begs the question about what we did with the other 8,737 hours that year.

But fear not. We are an ingenious, puritanical people. We certainly do not want to have 8,737 empty hours a year. We know that idle hands are the Devil’s workshop. So we have plunged wholeheartedly into texting. At least our thumbs—if not our brains—are very busy.

I can only surmise from personal observation that text messaging is growing exponentially. Case in Point: My husband and I went out to dinner recently and sat next to a 20-something couple. They never spoke during the entire meal, as each was focused entirely on his/her personal texting. I assume they were not texting each other, but I did not have the chutzpah to ask.

And I haven’t even addressed Tweeting. According to Gigatweet, the preeminent Twitter Tracker, since 2006 Americans have posted 8 trillion+ tweets.

The UCSD study did not take into consideration talking face-to-face, (aka conversation!), but a study conducted one year earlier found that both men and women speak an average of 16,000 words per day. (Hah! Take that, men! You can—and do—get a word in edgewise!)

I suspect that this study—conducted in California—did not take into account regional speech patterns. I’ve often heard people from the South say that New Yorkers “wear out their ears” because they talk so fast. Conversely, friends from New York claim to fall asleep waiting for Southerners to finish a sentence. My guess is that the New Yawkers spit out 20,000 words while drawling Southerners are slowly making their way through 12,000.

So what does this have to do with marketing?

Plenty! Words—communication—is the crux of marketing.

Since there are words flying around us all day long, make the ones you use count for something. After all, you want your message to stand out.

Here are a few ideas to help your message stand out:

• Be brief. There’s a lot of competition for attention.
• Use active verbs. They enliven your message.
• Pick the right nouns and ease up on adjectives.
• Vary the length of your sentences. Doing so changes the pace.
• Know when enough is enough. No one likes a blowhard.

Hence, my final words today are: The End.