For the next couple of weeks, I’m going to explore a lost art. It’s the art of communication. The real kind. The engaging kind. The kind many marketers don’t make the time for.

Have you noticed that we’ve become addicted to our technology? We e-mail co-workers who are 10 steps away from us. We know exactly the right time to make a call, so we can leave a voice mail rather than speak to a live human. Our customer. The person we spend thousands of dollars trying to attract! We step further and further back from the world we say we’re trying to connect with.

I think one of the reasons technology has seeped into the very depths of our being is that we’re on constant overload. There’s too much information all the time. 24/7. We’re bombarded by it. Ironically, the very technology we turn to as a solution for getting more done faster is what’s putting us in the bind in the first place!

We convince ourselves we don’t have time to visit customers. Or even talk to them on the phone. We also can slash expenses by only sending out e-mail communications or condensing everything we do into what I call the USA Today mentality of a few bullet points and a chart. You cannot touch someone’s emotions with a bullet point. You cannot help them visualize their own situation in a graph.

Are e-mails, voice mails, bullet points and graphics evil? Of course not. They’re very effective tools. I’m not advocating we stop using them. But I am advocating that we stop depending on them as our sole vehicles of communication.

If you keep your customers at arm’s length and don’t engage them, someone else will. Next week, we’ll begin to explore how to right the balance.

Drew McLellan is Top Dog at McLellan Marketing Group and the author of “99.3 Random Acts of Marketing.” He can be reached at Drew@MclellanMarketing.com.

© Drew McLellan