The Paper Letters Didn't Have A Chance

I was just paying a stack of bills and found that I was throwing out a lot of enclosed materials. Some of them were newsletters that were enclosed with the invoice. That is, enclosed along with a bunch of other pieces of advertising paper.

I simply sorted out everything that wasn't the invoice or the return envelope and dumped them in the waste basket. The newsletters were folded, so I didn't even look at the headlines. Whatever message the company wanted to get to me never reached its destination - my mind.

Now, contrast this with what would have happened if these had been enewsletters. First of all, I would have gotten some sort of a kernel of the message in the "subject" line of the email. Second, even if I don't fully open the letter, in the MSN Explorer email that I use, the opening lines of the message are displayed in the space below. This allows me to decide if I want to fully open it and read all of the message.

So, there have been two levels of attention getting - two stages of information imparted. This can give me the incentive to fully open the letter and read it.

I don't need to belabor this point, do I? Enewsletters have an attention-grabbing effect that paper letters just don't have.

Prescott "Pete" Lustig
Senior Marketing Strategist
www.loopconsulting.com