You may have noticed the new Chrysler ads using former CEO Lee Iacocca. The company revived the 1980s ad campaign because it was so effective at the time. However, it takes an especially charismatic company leader to make a television pitch pay off. However, through email, all it takes is a good copywriter, a striking graphic or two, and an interesting message.

You have to be careful not to overuse this technique, but once a year or so, an email from the CEO/President could be an effective relationship-builder and marketing technique.

For example, today we received a message from the CEO of Network Solutions, the original domain-name registrar (click on the inset for a closeup). We've received hundreds of message from the company over the years, but don't recall one from the CEO before. It got our attention and we looked at it long enough to determine it was selling services we weren't interested in.

But the first goal of direct marketing is to gain attention, and this technique is a sure-fire method to do that.

--JB