It’s rough out there. For every consumer, there’s a freakin tidal wave of stuff coming at them all day long…everyday…24/7.

Whether it’s television, radio, mail, text messages, billboards, pop-ups, email, internet banners, flyers, or whatever else, the amount of marketing clutter people have to slosh through is incredible!

All of this marketing has led to more savvy consumers and businesses. People today get how marketers are trying to lure them into opening their wallets. So they arm themselves with an enormous marketing shield to deflect what’s comin at ‘em.

Consider some of these statistics:

• 13.6 % — This is the average open rate for all email newsletters sent via AWeber in March 2009 (wow…almost 85% did NOT get opened!)
• 1% to 3% — Average conversion rate for a single postcard campaign (yes…really)
• 5.8% - Lowest average click-through rate for the 4th quarter in 2008 according to Epsilon (yep, less than 6% of people actually click through to the offer)

You may even be getting lower percentages with your own campaigns. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say something like, “Postcards (or insert any other marketing medium) just don’t work!”

And you know…a lot of marketing doesn’t work as well as it could. People get these funny ideas in their heads that putting up a huge picture of themselves with a catchy slogan will set their phones on fire.

C…that’s called image-based marketing and it doesn’t work. It does nothing for the prospect and that’s where most marketing pieces fail. But more on this later…