Not that long ago, if you wanted to make a personal approach to someone, you wrote them a letter.

There’s nothing quite like a letter.  It makes you feel special.  It sounds as if it knows you, about things you’ve done, places you may have been, things you care about.  It feels authentic, civilised and stirs up warm feelings deep within.

Years ago, when the postman arrived first thing, I used to be genuinely excited to see what he’d brought.  No surprise that a whole industry sprang up with letter writing at its heart: direct mail.

As a schoolboy I learned the power of writing when I, grudgingly, penned my grandmother an inky-fingered thank you letter for her birthday fiver.  The more thank yous I sent, and the more detail I went into about what I’d used her money for, the more fivers she would send back.  Pretty soon I was milking her like a professional.  It’s no wonder that I ended up as a fundraiser.

Now, the post arrives lethargically, around midday, way after I’ve left for work, and I couldn’t be less interested.

So what’s happened?

For one thing, almost nobody under the age of 80 actually writes letters any more.  Instead we prefer email, or the blipvert style of Twitter and Facebook. The envelopes I get are filled mainly with bills, reminders, catalogues and, of course, professionally written begging letters from charities.  Far from being a personal form of communication, the letter has become about as impersonal as you can get.  Little wonder the phrase ‘junk mail’ was coined.

Oh, and those professionally written letters – well (I’m exaggerating to make the point), they all look and sound the same.  The ‘ask’ is always lodged somewhere near the top and repeated at me throughout the letter, lest I should forget what I’ve just read.  There is always a P.S. which reiterates the ‘ask’.  The cause is always urgent (and in bold).  The paper is always unpleasantly cheap and nasty to the touch (ah, the heady days of Basildon Bond).  That term ‘junk’ has been well and truly earned. As for feeling personal and authentic – do me a favour.

So why on earth do we persist in sending mail like this?

Because, surprisingly, it still works. As a method of fundraising there is nothing to beat it – save some kind of once-in-blue-moon TV extravaganza along the lines of Children in Need or Comic Relief.  I saw a mailing from the RSPCA raise over a million pounds earlier this year.  Despite the fact that online is widely understood to be killing print and that the number of letters being posted is plummeting year on year, we are still largely reliant on them as a way of raising funds.

But (there always is one!), although direct mail works, it’s working less and less well.  ROI is down year on year.  Does this mean there’s something fundamentally wrong with the letter?  Is it just because everybody is going online these days?  I don’t think so.  I think it’s us (yes, I take some responsibility).  I think the overall standard of direct mail is getting worse.  And this is driven by an industry-wide belief that the definition of success is doing things as cheaply as possible.

But (good Lord there’s another one!) isn’t Direct Mail by its very nature cheap and cheesy? Jeff Brooks, creative director at Merkle, points out in a post on the Donor Power blog: It’s a near-fatal error in your thinking when your starting point is direct mail is crappy and I wish it would go away. He points out: There’s amazing, empowering, authentic stuff happening in snail-mail every day. Millions of pieces of it. And it’s working. It’s working a lot better than the crappy stuff.

Online evangelists (and I am one) confidently predict that online fundraising will take over – but it’s not going to be a smooth transition.  Charities are going to have to fundamentally revise the way they communicate with their donors.  The whole idea that they somehow ‘own’ donors is likely to fall by the wayside eventually.

In this age of micro-attention spans, the printed word is still hanging in there.  Evidently there is still enough excitement to be gleaned from tearing open an envelope and seeing what’s inside.  Perhaps even just the few moments of peace while you take time to read it.

There’s a real dilemma in all this.  The day is approaching when people will be asked to opt in to receive the unsolicited letters we send them.  If we continue to offer our readers a rubbish diet of the same standard begging letter plus leaflet – how many will bother?

As an industry, we should be trying much harder to stir the imagination, to surprise, to move and to inform people with what we write. We need to dispose of the word ‘junk’ once and for all.  We need to be open to the possibility that spending a bit more to produce something brilliant might be worth it; genuinely worth it – because the ROI will be better, which is the real point.

We should be doing everything we can to invest our letters with pulse-quickening ideas, a sense of poetry and love of language that will make them a real joy to read, as well as trying to cadge a donation.  By the way, shouldn’t we write a little more often without asking for money (it worked wonders with my Grandma)?

Is this a strange point of view for an online zealot like me?  Shouldn’t print just be allowed to die?  I don’t think so.  Not for a second.  It would be a bleak future if there were room for only one form of communication.  After all, variety is the spice of life.