While the means of communicating with consumers are changing faster and more definitively than ever before the way in which people relate with each other changes little.  Of course email is a convenient and seemingly cost effective way in which companies can put their offers and brand attributes before a mass of consumers however the fact of delivery has little relationship to consumption and consideration of the message. It seems that people are less able to consume corporate messaging than ever before as the endless tsunami of electronic demands on their time and attention lead to not only personal zoning-out but also technical means by which people can avoid having their psyche overcome by external influences.

Here's where promotional merchandise, long considered an old school means of communication and placed at the bottom of the advertising pyramid by those who see presenting a false image to the world as the best means of effecting consumer sentiment, have a natural advantage over the electronic messaging systems which have come to dominate modern communications and promotion. Recently conducted research in the USA confirms that a well designed and branded promotional gift idea, something as simple as a promotional power bank or mobile phone cover is up to 100 times more likely to have a positive impact on the actual purchasing behaviours of recipients than the most useful electronic offer or communication.

People who received the right promotional gift linked with a message were more than 10 times more likely to respond to this positively than a similar offer made electronically. While this might still sound on the surface that in an overall consideration of cost effectiveness an email which only costs a fraction of a cent to blast out to a long list of people, even with a lowered expectation of response is a far better business decision to make. But analysis itself depends on a range of other factors including more complex structural issues about the nature of your business, your relationship with your clients and the proven fact that long-term electronic messaging can damage or diminish the overall effectiveness of your client targeted communications.

Next time your company is considering looking into making an offer to a stable band of consumers consider the fact that not only are promotional products carrying your logo an adjunct to electronic messaging which act as an effectiveness multiplier , consider also that they work on multiple levels to magnify your message while also working on a range of relationship criteria which the simple use of electronic newsletters and emails can never match. Like any general conducting a military campaign, engaging the enemy on several fronts is a great way to not only identify areas in which you can break through defences, it's also a great way to win the war. In this day and age the ease of sending out an electronic campaign seems to be one of the most popular reasons for doing so. This is of course round about thinking but the fact that your opposition is using this tactic is all the more reason why you will be rewarded for taking a more nuanced and effective approach.