Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Direct Mail vs. SPAM E-mail

One of the first things I do in the morning is to check my e-mail. I have two primary e-mail accounts with an additional three e-mail accounts that get forwarded to my primary personal e-mail. That means I have a total of five e-mail accounts for just one person. I have a pretty good SPAM filter that eliminates a lot of junk e-mail but I still have to go through about 25 to 30 junk e-mails every morning. I never even read them. I look at who sent them and maybe the title or subject before clicking the delete button. When I do bother to look at what is in my SPAM folder, there are generally 200 to 300 daily messages that I don't ever even see.

As this week is my son's high school graduation, I am working from home for a couple of days. I just got the mail from the mailbox and noticed there was some junk mail there as well. Unlike my e-mail, I at least looked at the pictures and glanced over the postcards and letters. I also went through every page of a department store catalog advertising Father's Day gifts.

I'm sure that I am not unique. There is an added value to something tangible even if it is a printed piece of paper or postcard. Now did I purchase anything based off SPAM e-mail or junk mail from my physical mailbox? No, but at least with physical mail, I got some piece of the message that was sent.

Technology is like a pendulum in that one year everyone is looking at technology as a huge benefit. Then the pendulum swings and we realize that the original technology wasn't as huge a benefit as we all thought it would be and either move to a new technology or go back to how we were doing things before. Judging from my physical mailbox today, direct mail is making a comeback.

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