Thank you to all those who provided advice for my friends living next door to “Australia’s Next Top Model” – I will keep you informed of the situation should anything interesting occur…

I’d like to ask you a couple of questions if I may – pretend you are attending one of my seminars and virtually raise your hands to answer.

Who wants more email in their inbox? My guess is very few would like more, yet most would like to know how to make their email messages work better for them – but that’s another day.

Do you have a secretary or personal assistant? If you’re typical of my audiences of marketing executives and business owners, the majority of you no longer have that luxury.

Can you type at least 120 words per minute like a secretary can? Probably not. Can you even type efficiently – or do you do the hunt-n-peck with a couple of digits?

You probably have a smart phone or even a tablet computer on which you manage your business emails? Ironically, these are referred to as ‘productivity tools‘.

What is the latest time of night you’ve checked your email? In bed? For many of you, the answer will be like that Eric Clapton song – ‘After Midnight’.

Do you do type your own correspondence and do your own email and digital document filing? I assume most do – after all, you have nobody to delegate these tasks to any more.

So consider the situation – you are now working longer hours for your company, working at home after-hours almost every day, using a communication channel that you’d rather use less of, inefficiently typing and filing your own correspondence and yet this is supposed to be ‘productive‘.

It appears to me that this is only productive for your employer.

I’m not having a shot by the way – I’m as guilty as all of us. I’m just painting a picture.

Another question – who opens their own business mail? In most organisations and businesses, apart from those who have a mail room or a receptionist who opens the mail, individual executives now open their own mail. There’s no longer a gatekeeper. Everyone has a letter opener – now that’s a productivity tool:)

This is why there has never been a better time than the digital age to use direct mail to communicate (or ‘engage‘ to use the appropriate buzzword) with your customers and prospects.

And if you use mail with in-built web-keys like this self-mailer produced by Kyp (www.kyp.com) you will get excellent results, all measurable in real-time via a web-based dashboard.

So what does this all have to do with Google?

Well here’s another question – what brand is now one of the world’s largest users of direct mail for customer acquisition?

Hint – see the headline of this post. The answer of course is, Google. They are prolific users of direct mail, linked to specific landing pages, with different offer and format tests. Here are a couple of examples.

Google knows that if you limit yourself to online media channels (many of which are unproven) you are putting your business at risk and missing enormous opportunities that exist using the proven media channels.

The purpose of your marketing is to acquire and retain customers profitably. In the digital age many marketers have had some sort of brain snap. They have dumped channels that have always, and still, work really well – and rushed blindly to digital channels. Yet many digital channels do not work as well, or have yet to prove themselves. It’s frightening. Why follow fashion at the expense of profit?

Direct mail continues to deliver excellent results. Even more-so now, as there is less clutter in the channel. If you have stopped using direct mail and migrated all your budget to online channels and reduced the budget you allow for acquiring and keeping a customer, you may be risking your business. And that’s not good for productivity – or profitability.

So I suggest you ask yourself the question: “If Google does it, why don’t you?”

Then start using the proven channels. You can then test the online channels to see if they are worth the investment. Well, that’s what Google does.