Direct mail messages that focus on a few quality contacts can take social network connections to the next level.

Forget the sales funnel. This traditional marketing approach of getting your message in front of thousands of people to net a handful of customers isn’t working the way it used to.

Consumers today are inundated with marketing messages — and they’re not paying attention to most of them. How can they? It’s gotten so easy to communicate electronically that most can’t keep up with the number of daily e-mails, text messages, instant messages, friend requests, tweets and all the other updates they get.

So the key is to identify the few people who will have the greatest impact on your business and connect with them on a one-to-one basis. Problem is, most marketing communications are still generated by databases and, all too often, electronic messages get lost in the crowd or aren’t as personal as the social media channels to which consumers have become accustomed.

We’re changing that at Enthusem by putting a digital twist on classic greeting cards. With our technology, marketers can send a handcrafted greeting card from the Web with a personalized message and a link back to their online world. They can include a digital component like a URL or a pickup code, which recipients can type in online to view a custom video or read an extended note, among other things. Plus the cards arrive in translucent envelopes that catch the eye of the recipient more than an e-mail or e-card might.

We’ve used the approach to successfully market our own company. When Marc Fors, our co-founder, saw the potential for collaborating with a data storage site, he mailed the company’s CEO a card featuring a photo of the company’s lobby, a message suggesting a partnership and a link to more information online. We signed an agreement 30 days later. That was a $2 marketing campaign.

You can see why salespeople love this technology — they can connect with prospects, customers, supporters, friends or anyone else in a way that is personal, engaging and extremely memorable. Even simple business thank-you cards can link your best customers to online product literature — without spending the time to hand-write every note. It’s traditional style with almost infinite possibilities.

Whether you’re making the connections online with social networking or in person, if you can capture a postal address, you can use mail to see results. The secret is in identifying those few people with the power to have the greatest impact on your business, then communicating with them in unexpected ways. A custom-created greeting card with a personal note and a link to more information online is one of the best ways to do that today.

-Steve Tingiris is founder and chief executive officer of Enthusem.com.