Email Vs Paper, from banner stands to horse insurance
Email is a wonderful thing. It’s existence has completely changes how businesses work and run over the last 5 years. An office without a computer and with no email access just couldn’t compete in today’s market. Email is fast, email is efficient, and as this website has always said – email really is the future. However, now that this site is several years too old, the future is now and email has become so important in everyone’s day to day lives that it has become mundane, the revelation that this blog first came out with that “it’s the future” is just no longer much of a revelation at all.
So with email having secured its place as a necessity within modern life, where does traditional paper communication still hold strong?
Well perhaps one place is within the marketing industry. Printed material still has a lot going for it. People like to hold something tangible; it makes them trust the company that they are buying from – something which a website or an email does not inspire. Even putting trust aside for a moment, depending on what you are marketing you may still be more successful “off line” as it were. Take banner stands and exhibition graphics for example. If you are trying to sell printed material, of course you can bring people to your website, and of course you can do mail shots to people on your mailing lists. These are all good marketing activities. However, if you trying to offer something like banner stands, people are really going to want to be able to flick through a catalogue or a magazine. They are going to want to see examples of your skill as printers, and more than anything else they are going to want to see the product itself – the actual banner stand – before spending large amounts of money on it. Backing things up with emails, using the web to your best advantage can increase your potential customers exponentially, but making them into actual clients will require more than just a good online presence.
On the flip side of this take a different business model completely – let’s talk about insurance. If you were selling horse insurance for example, again you could use emails and good web presence in just as effective a way as if you were selling banner stands. You could use good email marketing software to send out multiple targeted mail shots out, and you could make sure that your site converted well. This is the same as above. Would you need paper though… in this case perhaps not. If you are selling horse insurance, that is all people want, insurance. It is not something they see, it is not something they have to handle. Customers are used to buying it over the phone and online directly, and do not need to have something in their hands before handing their money over to you. Yes, having actual physical mail outs to send to people may help, but you would have to look at the cost of doing this verses the profit you would make from the extra customers.
So, yes email does rule supreme, but in some cases it is still well worth remembering where the post office is.