The reality was somewhat different. I don’t actually get much mail. The odd bill from companies with whom I haven’t yet switched to e-billing; car and home insurance quotes; seasonal offerings from direct wine clubs and a few balance transfer offers.

Once upon not long ago I was regularly enticed to peruse the latest model from well-known car marques. Not anymore. Whisky mailings have, like the angel’s share they always mention (well, the ones I wrote did) evaporated. No more inducements to travel, exhortations to donate or invitations to subscribe.

Not even your standard letter/brochure/flyer/app form, VAT-free packs suggesting I take out a loan or a new credit card. My wife gets more mail because, in her hurry to complete online transactions, she forgets to tick the opt-out box. So we’re inundated with catalogues, but nothing that I would denote as traditional direct mail.

“It’s not environmentally friendly.” “It’s too expensive.” “No one reads it anymore.” “People don’t have the time.” I’ve heard all the arguments, as have you. But in our rush to embrace the digital is easier, quicker, cheaper route to market, I believe we’ve well and truly thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

It’s undeniably true that creating, producing and delivering a mail pack takes time and considerably more money than producing an email. But then so does producing a TV commercial. However the industry doesn’t seem to have abandoned that medium with the same gusto as direct mail.

But snail mail is in (probably terminal) decline not just because of its apparently expensive cost, but equally because direct marketers confuse getting to exactly the same people, with the exactly the same message (for a fraction of the price) with getting the real outcome you want.

“What about the results or the true and long term impact on the brand?” I say, like a sad old man in the corner. No one seems to care. Just ping out another email. And then another.

So, I want to use this piece to remind us that while mail may not be as efficient as digital media, it can be so much more effective. And that’s because it is real. Remember…

It really is real; you can interact with it through touch, even smell and taste – more powerful human senses than sight and sound. It arrives in your real world, when you genuinely may have time to consider a well-targeted and crafted proposition.

It can have longevity – whilst it is easy to scrunch up a mailer and bin it, it’s even easier to delete an email. It can be shown and shared, in person, in real time not impersonally forwarded on.

It can be taken with you to be read when and where you want to: the reason Amazon’s Kindle is so successful is because it resembles so closely those attributes we like about books - weight, shape and size-wise obviously - but also their portability.

And things really look gorgeous in print. They can, too, digitally as David Hockney’s iPad creations demonstrate. But even the work that his Brushes App generates would, ultimately, have a bigger impact printed, possibly framed, but definitely hanging on a real wall.

It’s a new year: perhaps, whilst the future of marketing will develop ever more digitally, we should sometimes rekindle our oldest medium?

Neil Francis is a creative partner at SFW London.