Social media is causing a fundamental shift in the way businesses engage and communicate with prospects and customers.

The traditional marketing approach where you get your message in front of thousands of people to net a handful of customers isn’t working the way it used to. The funnel – as this approach is often referred to - is broken.

The funnel is broken for two reasons. First, we all get too many electronic messages. Over the past decade it’s gotten so easy to communicate electronically and our social networks have grow so much that most can’t keep up with the number of daily emails, text messages, instant messages, direct message and all the other messages we get.

The second reason the marketing funnel approach is broken is that social media is reminding us that we prefer to communicate with real people on a one-to-one basis. However, most marketing communications are still generated by databases and aren’t able to measure up to the truly personal nature of social media.

So for marketing, sales and business development professionals the challenge is to figure out how to stand out from the all the electronic messages being sent and how to make a personal connection.

By Steve Tingiris

Article originally posted at http://www.findandconvert.com/old-school-approach-social-networking/

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Enthusem makes sending personalized PRINTED greeting cards as easy as sending an email and you can learn everything you need to know to get the most out of the system in less than 30 minutes! This training session will cover:

AppVita, "Discovers web apps that just make life easier" and today they discovered Enthusem! We were very excited to see that we received 5 stars.

"On the front page of the Enthusem site is the claim “greeting cards reinvented.” That’s a tall claim, especially with so many e-card sites available on the web. But Enthusem is not a traditional web-based greeting card site, where you send a greeting card to someone’s email address. Instead, Enthusem is a web-based app that sends physical greeting cards to a person’s postal mail address."

Read more

Genius Idea: Enthusem places a digital twist on the classic greeting card. Unlike e-cards, enthusem actually has a physical greeting card that it prints and sends to whoever you want - friends, family, coworkers, etc. The card can be designed with custom language, photos, and images. It even comes in a nifty translucent envelope so that the recipient is immediately interested.

That’s not where Enthusem’s strength lies, though. Enthusem includes the ability to add a digital component to the card, using a URL and a pickup code, which the recipient can type in online to see a custom video, read an extended note, or listen to a meaningful mp3 that you uploaded. The intent is to catch the eye and the attention of the recipient more than a simple email or e-card could do...

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Is the goal of your online social networking efforts to grow your business? If so, at some point your followers, friends or fans will need to know you as more than just another one of their many online “peeps.” The challenge is the average person is bombarded daily by electronic messages from literally hundreds of people who are part of their ever growing online network of contacts.

Now, I’m no Guy Kawasaki – not by a long shot. But even still I recently counted over 173 electronic messages that I received in a single day. Even worse, I only counted emails, text messages, twitter DMs and replies, Facebook messages and Linkedin group communications. Beyond that there are blog replies, voice mails and various messages from other online networks that I’m a part of. Now, again, I’m no Guy Kawasaki and chances are you aren’t either. However, I’m betting you’re facing the same barrage of online communications. Am I right? Consider it for a second. How many electronic messages do you get a day?

Now let me ask another question. How many personal messages do you get via postal mail? You remember postal mail right? It’s the printed stuff that’s sent with a stamp. Now for the purposes of my question I’m talking about truly personal postal mail. Communications that were written and sent by a person you know or know of – database driven direct mail with your name on it doesn’t count. How many of those are you going to have to sift through today? I’m sure you got as many personal postal messages as you did online ones right? <sarcasm>  No? OK than, how many pieces of personal postal mail did you receive this month or this year?

Just in case it’s not totally obvious where I’m going with this I’ll spell it out for you in this paragraph. The average person today gets less than a dozen (yea that’s 12) personal postal messages in an ENTIRE YEAR. By contrast, the average person gets dozens, and in many cases hundreds of electronic messages DAILY. If your hope is that you’ll be able to truly capture the attention and differentiate yourself with another electronic message (and you’re not Guy Kawasaki) the odds are stacked against you in a big way. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible to make a personal connection with an electronic message. However, if you got a personal printed note mailed to you from one of your Twitter followers is there any chance that might stand out more so than say a Twitter direct message? Of course it would because it’s rare and unique.

Now, this isn’t just a theory. I’ve been sending thank you cards and printed notes to contacts I’ve made online for some time and the response has been nothing short of astounding. How astounding? Well, when I take the time to send a truly personal message better than 60% of the recipients respond. Also, for the record, the first time I mail someone it’s usually just after I’ve connected with them online for the first time.  So, initially these aren’t close contacts. For example, I’ll commonly send an “I’m following you on Twitter” card to people that I follow on Twitter that I’d like to connect with off-line.

I suppose if everyone starts doing what I’m doing my postal messages may not work as well in the future. But for now, using personal postal mail to communicate with online contacts is extremely effective and MUST be considered if you’re serious about your social networking strategy.

Enthusem makes sending personalized PRINTED greeting cards as easy as sending an email and you can learn everything you need to know to get the most out of the system in less than 30 minutes! This training session will cover:

• sending a single card
• viewing your mailing history
• previewing/canceling cards
• changing account info
• sending to groups
• uploading your own custom images

Tuesday, April 7, 2009 at 3:00 pm (eastern) Register

Tampa Florida - Enthusem.com’s new breakthrough web application for printed postal mailers is now available to more than 2 million Box.net users, instantly accessible from your Box.net account or anywhere on the web that you choose to display your Box files, such as on your Linkedin Profile page.

Simply login to your Box account and add Enthusem as a service and you will be able to send printed postal mail that same day using your online files.

Marc Fors, co-founder of Enthusem, says:  “We were inspired to establish a partnership with Box because of their unique approach to online collaboration – it’s all about sharing, usability and access – essentially giving users the power to do more with their data. Enthusem is just one of the newest services that makes Box so exciting.  Now you can use your online files to create a printed postal mailer in under 30 seconds – a single piece going to a friend, a sales lead, a customer, or a series of mailers sent to an entire group – automatically printed and mailed for you by Enthusem. Being able to send high-quality mail from the web to one person at a time is novel, but what really makes enthusem relevant today, is that each mailer can have online attachments - just like an email – and when those attachments are viewed, you get an instant email alert. It’s just like having your own personal response marketing system.”

“Box.net is excited to provide Enthusem’s custom printed cards to our business users via our Open Box platform.  The ability to generate thank you notes, invitations and other tailored communications is a perfect addition to Box, and the thousands of sales and marketing professionals on Box will certainly embrace this new tool” said Karen Appleton, Box.net’s VP of Business Development.

Steve Tingiris, Founder and CEO says, “Enthusem is uniquely positioned to instigate and aggregate print events across the web and the social media space.  We have long believed that print is the original social media and is now being rediscovered by a whole new segment as an effective way to market. Enthusem has not only made it easy to create high quality mail in a few clicks, but through the online attachment and response feature, Enthusem has connected traditional printed postal mail to the online world of social media. We like to say that we have reinvented the greeting card – that Enthusem’s features and functionality have breathed new life into print – a proven effective marketing method. We have an open API for the developer community and more partnerships are in the works that should transform and expand how print is accessed and produced in today’s social media sector.”

About Enthusem.com
Enthusem makes sending personalized PRINTED greeting cards as easy as sending an email. Even better, like an email, enthusem cards can include attachments. That’s right; you can attach electronic files like videos, PDFs or web pages to printed greeting cards – and get email alerts when the files are viewed. If that’s not enough, you can also use any image you want for the front of the card, you can write your own personalized message, you can buy and send cards one-at-a-time and you can try Enthusem for free.

About Box.net
Founded in 2005, Box.net (box.net) now serves more than 50,000 companies from small businesses to Fortune 1000 that look to Box for collaboration tools that simplify online content management, accelerate team productivity and connect employees with a familiar interface that anyone can use. Box.net is a privately held company headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, and is backed by venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and U.S. Venture Partners.

For more information contact:
Angela Medlar Phone: (800) 709-1755
E-mail: angela@enthusem.com