I remember Graeme McCorkell  (he started an agency called MSW long before you were born, which became MSW Rapp Collins, which became WWAV Rapp Collins, which became Rapp…) some years ago made a point that’s probably even more relevant today.

You can touch direct mail. No other medium (even then) could bring tangibility into the communications process. What did it feel like? What did the paper you printed your direct mail on say about you?

Email is cheap and sometimes cheerful, but even for emails that don’t end up mangled by your spam filter, they are on your screen for but a fleeting moment then gone forever. 

A direct mail piece, on the other hand, arrives through your letterbox and you have to touch it to open it, and unless binned instantly can last for a long time.

I did some research for a mail order business where we discovered our customers looked forward to receiving the mailings (‘letters’, they called them) and actually left them on the table until they had the time to make a cup of tea and enjoy opening the piece. You don’t get that with email.

And that’s probably the closest you’re going to get to a rational explanation of one of my favourite techniques for making direct mail work: put something ‘valuable’ in the envelope. 

We did a mailing for Laithwaites Wines where we created a voucher offering a hefty discount, and made the voucher the ‘hero’ of the mailing. It beat the control by 80% and last time I looked, it was being used around half the world.

I recently saw another mailing for a disability charity that included a card to help people who couldn’t speak point out the letters.  Pens and personalised stickers remain de rigueur for some clients, especially fundraisers.

And if you haven’t already come across Quadriga and their amazing packs (put together in China and featuring real tokens, for example) drop my production director Arno Meddleton a line and he’ll show you just far tangibility can go.

It was less vital in the old days when we had 60 grams to work with, otherwise the price shot through the roof.  All we could afford was a cheap letter and response piece (or a bit more if we had to go VAT free).

So next time you’re fed up with no-one even opening your emails and you want to go retro, think more about what physical item you can include in a mailing (even if it’s just a voucher).

A couple of years ago we did a pack that included a baling twine knot to convince farmers to remember to stop killing themselves. It was featured on BBC Breakfast TV and even ‘Private Eye’, won loads of awards and even helped save a life or two. And if that’s a definition of ‘working’, then I would be pretty happy with that.

John Watson is a managing partner of direct agency Watson Phillips Norman.