Manhattan Marketing Maven

Off to 13th anniversary dinner. Fern is amazing.

OLX.com Aims for the Global Classified Listings Crown

French born Princetonian Fabrice Grinda built hiscareer as a serial entrepreneur by taking online business concepts developed in the US to global audiences. Now as Co-CEO of OLX.com he aspires to offer the best free global listings site on the web; "a Craigslist 2.0 for the world with functionalityy as good or better than listings on vertical subject sites."

With online marketing experience in southern and eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin Americaand $23 million in venture capital from the likes of General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, OLX.com is operating in 39 languages and countless dialects providing strong competition for newspapers all over the world.  

The global recession, eBay's consistent missteps with sellers and Craiglist's move to charge for high value listing categories all give Fabrice reason to believe he can build a consistent growth business on the back of this universal transactional utility. By asking for just an e-mail address, providing cross-site AJAX search tools and enhanced tagging, a fast WAP application that circumvents limited infrastructure in many countries and empowers zillions of cell phone users and by keeping everything free to both buyers and sellers, he expects to take share from the US leaders even though OLX is hardly known in the US. Simultaneously he is expanding the reach of his classified sites to under-served and under-penetrated geographies. His strategy of PPC-driven growth combined with seven acquisitions in places like Spain, Denmark, China, Argentina, Italy and Russia, position OLX to exploit emerging markets and take on established western European classified leaders.

The business model is hedged by providing white label listings applications to as many as 20 social networks around the globe. OLX is behind classified listings on Friendster.com and Sonico.com;the Facebook of Latin America. Using these tactics and revenue streams the site expects to break even by early 2010.

From the search-and-find perspective humans are "shockinglysimilar globally when it comes to using classified sites," Fabrice says.  And while there are local differences among categories and different kinds of merchandise or services are more active in different areas, the utility model offers scale at predicable operating costs and margins. Bad times accelerate the number of listings and the number of searches in selected categories; especially jobs and real estate. But the biggest challenge or complication is digital security to ward off endless attempts at spam and scams. On a global basis OLX deletes 66 percent of the 2 million listing attempts made each week and uses a wide array of security tools and tactics to protect users and escape hackers. 

The bottom line?

To be a successful entrepreneur you don't have to invent or re-invent the wheel. Sometimes you just have to expose it to people who haven't seen it yet or can't get or make one themselves. 

An Email Marketing "Best Practices" Checklist

E-mail is the go-to device for everyone attempting to deal with these tough economic times. For retailers, each e-mail blast is a predictable ka-ching; one that gets addictive quickly when sales at the cash-wrap desk, the 800 number or through the catalog fall off. E-mail response, like postal mail, degrades with repetitive re-mails which also prompt predictable numbers of opt-outs and complaints. To use e-mail for optimum effect, marketers need to factor in strategic and tactical considerations and link these directly to the business objectives of each campaign.

 

Strategic Elements

 

Scope the Program. Everything starts with the end result. What do you want the recipients of your e-mail to feel, think or do?  If this is a one-off effort it will need to work differently than if its part of a newsletter, club or continuity program. If this is going to a specific segment or a house list, it will be received differently than if it’s a wide scale mass acquisition effort. If it’s a new product or service launch versus a special offer on a well known brand, response will vary greatly. The scope will reflect the goals – who, what, when, how often and what needs to be accomplished and measured. Clarity on the front end will make measurement and analysis much easier on the back end.

 

Build/Align the Channels. An e-mail is the front end of a multi-dimensional response system. Before you blast out e-mails you must decide where you will direct the response, usually expressed as clicks or calls, and what experience the responder will have immediately after making a click or a call. This involves designing landing pages, embedding additional links, video, audio, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, 800 numbers and measurement tools. It also demands that you anticipate the most likely emotional and rational responses to your message and prepare the requisite answers and materials.

 

An e-mail starts a hoped-for chain reaction. At the outset of a program, you must anticipate each step in that chain and marshal the creative, technical and analytic resources necessary to capitalize on those clicks.  If you mail before these are in-place and tested you squander the effort. If you do this smartly, you are rewarded with the results you desire.

 

Work on the List.  Who you address directly influences what happens. Every list is flawed. Assume that 20-30 percent of the names on any list you buy will bounce. And assume that most house lists, even those carefully maintained, will lose 3-5 percent of address after each mailing. The provenance of the lists is also a key indicator for response. Names carefully opted-in by brand loyalists will perform much better than random names gathered by lead generation sites or list compilers. Smart players, and virtually all bulk e-mail programs and services, offer list cleaning, merge/purge and integrity tools that everybody should use. In this market, negotiate a “net name” deal which will give you credit for the names you buy that can’t be delivered.  

 

Craft a Compelling Offer. We have trained everyone to expect a deal in an e-mail. Your offer has to speak directly to your target audience and present something that they have to do right now. Limited quantities, discount prices or time limitations drive some urgency but most of us can discern a real value from a passing promo offer in a nanosecond. So think long and hard about what you are offering. How sensible is it your customers and how can you make it feel like something they must have right away? Also think about how the offer will impact subsequent brand perceptions. Will the offer cement your relationship with customers or could it signal that the brand is slipping in quality or customer focus?

 

Embed Tests. There are no fixed success formulas for e-mail marketing. We test everything by splitting the list and trying different tactics against different customer or prospect sets. Ideally we test one element at a time so that we can get a clean read on the relationship between any single element and response.

 

The e-mail game rests on getting the e-mail delivered to a valid inbox and getting it opened If its not opened and read … game over … you tilt out the campaign. Three key factors determine open rates. First is the technical dimension. Is your e-mail sufficiently short, formatted properly, free of words, images or embedded elements that will trigger spam filters or send the e-mail immediately to the “junk” box?

 

The second key dimension is the “To” line. Is the e-mail coming from a real, credible and known source? They might not know you personally, but if they’ve never heard of you, your brand or your company name; don’t expect much action. The third factor is the subject line. The best results come from a short phrase that instantly conveys user benefit. Subtlety is lost in subject lines and teasers usually fall flat. Words that direct action work well. You must communicate the idea that opening equals something immediately good for you.

 

Subject lines are the most frequently tested element in e-mail marketing. Smart players always test at least 2 simultaneous subject lines. The smartest players frequently test a small batch of names, get results in 48 hours then incorporate the results in a larger roll-out mailing or campaign, which also includes a follow-on test cell. Test-and-learn is the e-mail marketers mantra.  

 

Tighten Content   Short directive copy works best. Many e-mails are read without fully opening the browser frame and increasingly read partially and quickly on mobile devices, so there is a big premium in loading the core idea and the crux of the offer into the opening paragraph. Graphics should be used sparingly since they tend to complicate the underlying technology and/or trigger spam filters. Customers or prospects should be given a limited number of response choices, never more than three, which generally are --buy now, sign-up for future communications, or get more product or service information. The more choices you offer, the less response you get. Similarly on landing pages, the more navigational options, the smaller and more diffuse the response.

 

The objective is to imagine what you want recipients to feel and do and then offer clear, well-marked ways to do it. Don’t be afraid to make clickable or colorful links bigger or float them between paragraphs in plenty of white space. Use big colorful buttons centered in white space to cue customers what to do. Look at the page and ask yourself, what elements need to pop out to direct someone reading or scanning this quickly?

 

Also remember that people focus on their own names first. If you personalize, you’ve got to get the names and the form of address right. Remember that people buy from people, so a credible and real name “signing” the e-mail gives customers and prospects another reason to believe.

 

Be CAN SPAM compliant. Every legit e-mail has to show the recipients who it came from, including a postal address, and offer an opt-out mechanism. This has become an easy, automatic and expected practice. Most vendors can walk you through the steps. There is absolutely nothing worse that being a spammer, not too mention regulatory scrutiny is increasing consistently.    

 

Measure & Tweak. The 4 most important things you want to know about an e-mail campaign are: 1) did the mail get to target recipients, 2) how many opened the e-mail, 3) how many took the desired action and 4) did we achieve the desired business result? These four numbers are commonly considered in making return on investment (ROI) calculations. These are the critical effectiveness measures.

 

Everything else speaks to the efficiency of the e-mail marketing process, which can be improved over time, assuming the campaign did well enough to justify going again. There are a surprisingly large number of things that can be counted and measured to optimize the time, energy and cash spent in e-mail marketing. Examine the measurement factors that have the most relevance to your business goals. Just because we have a number doesn’t make it necessarily meaningful. 

 

Tactical Concerns

To optimize e-mail marketing, in this environment, you need to stand out from the loud, growing and frequent crowd and take concerted action to get attention for your brand and your message. Try these tactics:

1. Create a distinctive look or feel. Experiment with subject lines and with Personal URL's in the subject line. Use the same template or color palette and be sure it instantly cues brand recognition.

2. Build a Consistent Delivery Schedule. Train your customers to expect certain messages at certain times (Tuesday = Bargain day). Consider a value-oriented TO address to re-inforce the content or the value implicit in a consistent series of offers.

3. Segment and Target Customers. Test the criteria that suit your marketing objective. Communicate the criteria in the subject line. Be sure the value-add is apparent in the subject line.

4. Send Less Better. Rather than do one blast of a million names, do 5 blasts of 200,000 names. Make each segment a different offer or relate the offer to something you know about the behavior of customers in that segment. Focus on behavior it’s the only reliable predictor of future action. Forget demographics or psychographics, they won't help you target anything other than brand awareness; a task much better suited to other channels.

5. RFM Rules. Peg e-mail blasts to frequency of action. People who take a desired action are much more likely to do it again and much sooner than someone who blithely signed up and rarely responds.   

 

 

 

 

Are Focus Groups Finished?

Four significant brands -- Tropicana,. Motrin, Facebook and the SciFi Channel -- made serious missteps recently; moves clearly the result of flawed customer research. Journalist Cathy Taylor and creative executive George Parker see this as evidence that focus groups --the dominant customer insight tool used by ad agencies -- are dead.

As a stand alone or dominant tool I agree. As part of a multi-dimensional research or brand planning matrix I'm not so sure.

The premise behind focus groups is to gather target customers and carefully probe their feelings, their  allegiances and their loyalty to the brand. Often sitting behind the one-way mirror you can glimpse the branding process at work. Frequently you can hear the language and the emotions that brand loyalists and those completely unaware of brands use to describe your product or service. 

We've known that these groups are inherently limited for years. There are significant challenges in recruiting that even $100 bucks and a steak dinner can't overcome not to mention the groupthink dynamic that can easily set in with a strong personality or an uncontrollable blabber in the room. Yet there are still very few tools that enable us to see, hear and watch our target customers as they interact with the brand and each other. 

Part of the over reliance on focus groups is a by product of the fact that traditional agency planners have little real training in survey techniques or interrogation methods and even less understanding about how online surveys, social media and guided web surfing can round out a picture of how customers and prospects perceive or interact with a brand. In a 24/7 cyber world no one in their right mind would rely on small numbers of self-selected subjects sitting in a small dark room to determine what a brand should say or how to say it. 

In too many cases focus groups were the stick or the carrot wielded against agency creatives. Groups often determined which execution was recommended but more often substituted for the absent backbone of creative directors. Today in hours, we can A/B test and almost limitless number of creative executions online and get thousands of gut reactions from any number of customer subsets that are statistically valid.  Relying on focus groups even fto intimidate creatives is folly.

Effective brand planning is dramatically more complex and must account not only for an exploding number of customer touchpoints; it also has to understand and mine the customer experience to have any validity. The idea that ads are the brand is ancient, even if far too many brands and too many agencies still believe it. The artificial reaction of small numbers of customers, advocates or prospects is way too unstable a sample to risk significant media investment or brand exposure. Focus groups are flogged by those who lack the skills or the imagination to create more robust insight for brands. So in this regard, focus groups are finished.

In conducting research and undertaking brand planning, you must consider and/or include most of these eight dimensions to get a fair understanding of your customer base or the audience you wish to influence.

1. Purchase histories and CRM data

2. Web analytics and online behavior or click streams

3. Customer service themes and frequent issues

4. Data from standing or ad hoc online survey panels or fan/club sites

5. Traditional media metrics -- ratings, page views, 800 number volumes, time spent data

6. Guided web interviews and task-oriented surfing, eye-tracking, heat-mapping

7. In-depth 1-on-1 high value customer interviews

8. Focus groups composed of carefully defined audience segments reflect the brand's geographic and psycho-demographic reach

To fall back on flawed focus groups as the bedrock brand insight tool is the prescription for getting it seriously wrong.

    

Seeking Answers in Search Results

Frustrated at trying to find a list of the top 10 all-time best selling women's fragrances on Google, it dawned on me that increasingly we are looking for specific answers to specific questions rather than a trove of documents on a particular topic. It forced me to think about the changing nature of search and how quickly search has become an almost automatic reflex.

And while we often focus on the accuracy of using search to target customers, we don't really spend much time analyzing the accuracy of search results. After all Google has set our baseline expectations with "good enough" search that's fast and free. So who are we to question how they get results? In fact, most of us are so focused on the instant gratification that we don't really know or care how it came about. But as search becomes completely integrated into our thinking process differences in the way data is found and the immediate relevance of the data presented will become more important to us. It seems like a natural developmental path; that as we use and understand the tool we want more from it and want it to be even better. 

Maybe this is the implication of  new research from Hitwise that indicates that longer search queries are growing fastest. Search queries of 6 words or more increased between 8 and 20 percent over the last year while one and two word searches posted slight declines. To some extent this has to reflect increased understanding of how to search. It also suggests that people are using more words in an attempt to refine or better define the query in the hope of getting more accurate results faster. Its a yearning for the answer; not for the source documents. As we get used to the idea that vast amounts of knowledge are available, we want our clicks to zero-in and present the answer to us. We want search engines to go the last mile for us.

It's not just that we are greedy or ungrateful. This idea of fishing out the answer has intrigued computer scientists forever. It has led Kosmix to build complex taxonomies to sort through and cluster data. It has driven the creation of high powered math to mine and organize relational databases that underlie Freebase, Powerset and Hakia. And it promises to leverage the promise of semantic search in the forthcoming Wolfram Alpha tool which is being hyped as the super-searchable digital library of Alexandria on steroids. Yet in spite of all this promise, search still needs to discern instantly what millions of people using the same vocabulary and syntax actually mean and actually want. 

To that end, all this philosophizing suggests a few concrete things marketers should be doing in designing SEO or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

Compile Answers. Look at your business and develop a list of the most frequently sought answers. Build the answers into your sites, press releases, videos, etc in ways that can expedite search.  In many cases these will be obvious and are probably already there in some form but not necessarily served up succinctly. Consider simplifying and expanding your FAQs.

Test Longer Search Phrases. Analyze your traffic and mirror customer and prospect search behavior. Experiment with longer, alternative ways to describe or explain your goods or services. Test different words and word sequences to see if they return more relevant results.Longer phrases might also be cheaper than shorter phrases especially in categories dominated by generic or name brand terms, at least until everyone catches on.

Use Terms that Impact Sales. For most things there are predictable sales stages and inflection points. If you think carefully about these stages/points and buy or embed the phrases that reflect them you can more directly influence the awareness-consideration-conversion sequence. Maybe more descriptive, more accurate or more complex phrases can bring prospects through the pipeline faster. 

Getting Online Video Right

 

Online video has captured the attention and imagination of everyone on the Web. It engages hundreds of millions weekly and sustains every marketer’s fantasy of launching a viral video seen by everyone on the planet. But getting from fantasy to reality requires marketers to finesse a battery of technical, strategy and business challenges in order to harness this channel and use it to the best advantage.

 

Currently most online videos are passive. You can watch them, maybe comment on them and pass them along. Yet the difference between TV and the Web is that viewers expect to be able to lean in and click, respond, request, download and act on the things they see or hear. Controlling interactivity and selling access on CPM terms is the principal business of leading video sites, like YouTube. Yet increasingly brands and marketers are looking for options and tools to craft, customize and distribute the online video experience in ways that achieve brand marketing and business objectives.

 

Enter Scott Broomfield, co-founder of Veeple.com, a Palo-Alto based video services provider with a platform, a process and a plan. Launched in October, Veeple has attracted more than 700 clients with large concentrations in the agency world, entertainment, gaming and training & education on the strength of its well-priced and easy-to-use software-as-service platform which prepares videos for widespread Web distribution and embeds clickable elements and a travel-along viewer into the bit stream.

 

Web video isn’t as easy or as automatic as it seems. The web isn’t just a place to get extra mileage from video shot for other purposes, bloopers or outtakes. Using web video requires insight, planning, savvy and luck. Increasingly brands are creating video assets with web viewer segments and specific site placements in mind. In some ways the Web presents new creative challenges, even for those skilled in creating consumer TV ads or B2B video tools.

 

On the technical side video has to be processed so that it can be transmitted, received and clearly viewed in a wide array of players and a wide array of browser configurations and settings. In terms of targeting, 97 percent of all websites get less than 10,000 page views so finding the right size audience isn’t guaranteed. And if you can find the right sites among the 130,000 that attract more than 10,000 views, expect to lose half your audience in the first 40 seconds of viewing. Evidently we’ve been conditioned by 30-second TV spots to expect concise messages and abbreviated story lines.

 

Here are tips on making online video work effectively for your brand gleaned from my conversation with Scott. You can find a treasure trove of additional online video resources here.

 

Think Through the Video Experience. Start by deciding what you want viewers to see, feel and do. Then structure the content and the points of interaction to deliver against that vision.  The experience necessary to create a hot lead is different than the experience needed to introduce a brand. Structure the sensations to take advantage of the senses and the functionality of the Web.  

 

Place Nothing Further Away Than Two Clicks. Make every interaction no more than 2 clicks away.  Viewers want instant gratification and access. Give it to them. Keep the interactions simple, easy and intuitive. These are conversation starters not the whole megilla. Make each interaction the next logical step in the persuasion or sales process.

 

Observe the Two Icon Limit. When you dangle cues for clicking, limit them to two. Given too many choices viewers either get stumped and abandon the experience or get so involved with clicking they abandon the experience. Keep in mind that some icons are more powerful than others. Adobe has, over 20 years, trained all of us to click on the PDF icon like Pavlov’s dogs.  So if you offer a PDF remember that whatever else you set out as a click lure will have super strong competition. Link these choices to the branding or the sales process. The next click should advance the story, the experience, the relationship or the sale. If it doesn’t don’t distract your viewer.      

 

Aim to Get On Base. If the average online video captures viewers’ attention for 84 seconds and half the audience bails after 40 seconds, you have to think short and punchy.  Each 20 seconds has to tell a story and sell the viewer on watching the next 20 seconds. Your creative must engage and get to the point quickly and your first click of interactivity has to punctuate the story early on. Aim to get on base, don't swing for the fences.

 

Creative has to focus on your intended viewers and anticipate their interests, needs and mindset. There’s no time for gratuitous images, words or music. Online video has to get on point and stay on point in a concentrated way.  After all, only a select audience has chosen to watch it, so you start with a target rich by finicky audience. If you do it right you might achieve the 22.4% average click-thru-rate that Veeple clients have earned.   

 

Planning Integrated Campaigns

Digital and social media can extend the use, reach and efficiency of offline messages and campaigns, if we plan them properly. Speaking with classic agency guys recently, it occurred to me in the course of conversation that they still think a spot is just a spot. For big agency types, the notion of integrated messaging has more to do with an inter-agency scrum than with how we can get to and persuade target audiences.

 

If you don’t believe me, consider the case of the Super Bowl where national advertisers spend millions per spot and most still do very little to extend the reach, the echo or the efficiency of this spend into cyberspace. According to the post-game scorecard analysis by Reprise Media, thirty-one percent of Super Bowl advertisers didn’t buy pay-per-click terms to support their TV ads, only 1 in 5 included a call to action in their $3 million dollar spots and just 1 in 4 linked videos or landing pages featuring their creative to social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. This lack of foresight squandered a considerable tailwind from massive traditional Super Bowl publicity and hype plus the expectation that the national championship football game is also the Super Bowl of advertising.    

 

It’s a mindset thing.

 

To optimize the value of a significant creative investment you have to think through all the different ways audiences can access the message and all the different techniques to give the message added legs both to reach additional prospects and to achieve ROI objectives. It helps if you envision what you want the audience to see, feel, think and do and then build out the pathways and channels to let nature take its course.

 

This requires a baseline acceptance of the Web and of social media as genuine vehicles for reach, expression and persuasion. It also demands that marketers look to leverage their investments and wring as much value out of each dollar spent as possible. This task is not only for the media guys; it requires input from everyone to maximize impact.

 

Consider three critical planning steps.

 

Anticipate Audience Response. Ask yourself at the outset -- how will audiences react to the message and what do you want them to do about it? We know that dramatic creative provokes comment, chat, pass-along , blogging and all kinds of sharing. Plan to leverage this by preparing versions in the right formats, seeding the campaign on video and vertical-interest sites, previewing the message for influential journalists and bloggers, cue fan groups and alert brand loyalists. Then buy enough key words for a fixed time period surrounding the flight to help anyone interested find you quickly and easily. If it’s a direct response effort put the URL and the 800 number in prominent positions, build a series of landing pages and make a clear, compelling offer.

 

Use Extenders. Think of pay-per-click, blogs, PR and social media as “Hamburger Helper” for your campaign. These tactics extend the experience beyond the flight, add experiential dimensions for the brand, create buzz and make it easy to find and engage the brand. Their relative cost is minimal compared to the incremental reach and impact they deliver or the momentum they can sustain. Costs can be carefully parsed with smart scheduling and analytics.

 

Consider Context. Every campaign is a surge period. Yet every brand is out there constantly affecting target customers and prospects. If you think of a particular message in this context, you’ll see the value of surrounding and enhancing a campaign with tentacles into social networks, blogs, search, free media and online communities because they provide context and continuity both for brand loyalists and for those you seek to attract to the franchise. Emerging digital media also give you a ready reaction or recovery tool in the event that your audience doesn’t respond as expected or in rare cases when the message doesn’t align with the audience.

 

A spot is no longer just a spot. A campaign no longer stands alone as a point in time.

Real integrated planning requires a different perspective and planning horizon across platforms and media to harness more elements in service to faster, deeper and more effective brand awareness, preference and loyalty building.    

 

Direct Mail Redux: Return of the Personal Letter

Direct mail volume is down. Big traditional mailers are departing the scene. Costs are up. And a postal rate hike is imminent on May 11th. But highly targeted and personalized direct mail can be an effective break-thru media during this spiraling recession.

Here's why ...

1. We're inundated with opt-in and spam e-mail. There's no magic, no anticipation and few new tricks to surprise us and to prompt more, better opens. E-mail has become institutionalized and with broad scale acceptance and use come response rate plateaus.

2. Nobody gets personal mail any more.  Of the 199.4 billion pieces of mail that the post office delivers less than 3.8 percent is actual personal relevant human to human content. Mail is an underused channel to connect directly with people, even though our mailboxes are full of stuff. Deliver Magazine has a very cool graphic illustrating the breakdown of what ends up in your mailbox in its March issue.

The clear implication (at least to me) is that if you write somebody a personal letter -- one that looks, feels and smells like a personal letter not an ad in an envelope -- using personal, individualized information -- you have a shot a genuinely touching and communicating with a customer or prospect. It's a rare chance to capitalize on the unexpected.

3. Refined creative tactics exist. Direct mail creatives have tested and refined an array of techniques to optimize opens and response -- the twin moments of truth. We have a corpus of knowledge on the size, shape, texture, color, fonts, forms of address, key words, tone and which authorial voice to use in which circumstances to address which audiences. The trick is to blend this expertise with purchase history or behavioral data to create a compelling, relevant, personal, maybe even intimate form of communication. The technology to do this, and still make it look private, individual and personal, is widely available.

4. Mail enables small batch laser targeting. While the big volume mailers and carpet bombers are cutting back and scrambling to survive, according to the Winterberry Group, returning to the basic letter format gives marketers a perfect platform for targeting and testing. Even with a medium that costs 10 times more than e-mail, even small firms can afford to word process and mail  hundreds or thousands of carefully selected and targeted names. Whether the focus is acquisition, retention, loyalty or usage stimulation a personal letter can cost effectively move the needle.

5. There's a first mover advantage to be had. Because so many direct marketers are bombing customers and prospects with self-mailers, double-sided postcards, snap-packs, letter packages that scream "I'm an ad" on the envelope, coupons, flyers, catalogs,circulars, postcards, faux invitations, faux greeting cards, faux bills, faux official documents and all kinds of other printed SPAM, the personal letter won't work if everybody does it. The victory will go to the first mover who does it right because it will be so different and unexpected.

6. You can leverage remembered joy. As children we all were surprised and delighted by something special that came to us in the mail from someone special far away. The memory and the feelings of that moment are stored and carried around by millions of people. A well crafted personal letter taps the reservoir of good will and belief that these memories represent. Mail, more than pixels, carry embedded emotions. These impulses and sentiments can be directed your way.