SUBSCRIBERS RULE!

The Why and How of SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS

ExactTarget launched the “Digital Morning,” the first in a series of six research briefs from our SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS project.

This is probably the most aggressive research project I have ever been involved in. It’s also the most exciting. The approach we employed from the start reflects our Subscribers Rule! philosophy—namely that the customer comes first. The key to making your customers happy is to understand what motivates them to do what they do. It’s not enough to know simply WHAT they do, we need to understand WHY.

Most research of this kind starts and ends with a survey. In this case, researchers (such as myself) decide which questions we should ask. We decide what is important. This has the unintended consequence of limiting what we can learn. The questions we ask are the greatest limitation of our knowledge. This project represents an attempt to break free of those limits.

SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS started with a simple question, “What are the differences in how consumers use email, Facebook, and Twitter to interact with brands?”

We started with interviews and focus groups. These were conducted in March 2010. We asked why people use email? Why they use Facebook? Why Twitter? What is good about each tool? What are the problems with each tool? We asked how consumers want to interact with brands. What are the differences in how they perceive brands through email, Facebook, and Twitter? Every part of this project stems from those core questions and the detailed and, often, heartfelt responses we heard. These interviews and focus groups gave us more than 400 pages of qualitative content that would inform our survey.

The goal of the survey was simply to quantify the sentiments we heard in the focus groups. There were people who said their email usage dropped sharply as they started using Facebook and Twitter. Others said their email use went up since they had reconnected with old friends. The survey helped us put numbers to these experiences.

Digital Morning addresses a seemingly simple question, “Where’s the first place you go online when you wake up?” As it turns out, this tells us a lot about how people approach the Internet in general. The majority starts their day with email (58%), followed by Search (20%) and Facebook (11%). ‘Email-first’ consumers tend to be more interested in consuming information online. Yes, they participate in social media. They use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, write blogs, upload pictures, etc. but they use these tools differently than people who start their day on Facebook. Facebook-first people are more, well, social in their approach to the Internet. The Internet to them is about interaction first and consuming information second.

Check out the report for yourself to get this first glimpse and stay tuned ‘cause we are just getting started!

Addressing the problem of relevance

According to this short clip from consumer data wiz Andreas Weigend, former Chief Scientist for Amazon, the answer does not lie in smarter algorithms—he believes we have reached the ceiling there. Instead, Weigend believes the answer lies in smart incentives to encourage people to provide information about themselves. That by providing critical information that allows companies to help address questions the consumer has they allow those companies to serve them better. This allows companies to reward the attention of their consumers more richly and disappoint them less.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see how this philosophy has been baked into Amazon’s platform. For those concerned about privacy—this is only an issue when it is used inappropriately. If data collection is transparent and used in clearly relevant ways, then it becomes the basis for customer loyalty. Moreover, the loyalty is not based on rewards systems that cost the company money, it is based on the fact that customer’s are prone to transact more with the companies that serve them best!

Subscribers Speak: “How would you like marketers to communicate with you?”

In July, we sent a group of 12 ExactTarget to the streets of cities around the midwest to ask them how they wanted marketers to communicate with them. Here’s a video showing some of what we heard:

Interested in more on this topic? Check out the Marketing Preferences Research Bundle featuring Customer Knowledge is Marketer Power, a commissioned study on marketers approach to mulitchannel marketing conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of ExactTarget, and the 2009 Channel Preferences Study, ExactTarget’s proprietary study on the communication preferences of subscribers.

Inbox Insanity: The Future of Email

After three weeks on the road at conferences (OMS and eec) and speaking engagements (MIMA), it’s good to be back home — and back behind the SR! blog machine.  All the travel has provided ample fuel for thought which I hope to share at least somewhat coherently here one the pages of SUBSCRIBERS RULE!.

Today, I want to start by sharing the deck from my Wednesday morning presentation to MIMA.  I don’t know what they put in the water up there in Minnesota, but it makes for an amazingly interactive crowd for 8:00AM in the morning.  Seriously — if your regional interactive marketing association is looking for inspiration, look no further than MIMA.  They have built something special up there.

But I digress…MIMA was kind enough to invite me to do a presentation called, “Inbox Insanity: The Future of Email.”  For longtime readers of SR!, you’ll recognize the title as being partly drawn from a post I wrote back in October 2008 called “Inbox Insanity or Why 23 May Be Enough.”

The thesis of the presentation is pretty simple: the future of marketing is the future of email marketing.  I base this on the following observations:

• Social media is not new.
• Every communication advance over the past 15 million years yielded a new “social” media.
• Email is a social media — indeed, it is the most utilized social media in the world.
• The social media explosion has led to inbox fragmentation.
• As a result, I have over 23 inboxes that I check with varying regularity (email, VM, FB, Twitter, etc.).
• This inbox explosion is not sustainable because time is a precious resource.
• Therefore, consolidation of multimedia messaging into a single dashboard is quite likely.
• In a way, such”dashboards” already exist — just look at the iPhone or Yahoo’s  beta Social Inbox where email, VM, SMS, IM, and social updates commingle.
• The social inbox gives consumers more control and marketers less control (if they ever had it).
• Accordingly, marketing communications increasingly exist by consumer invitation.
• And all such invitations are easily revoked.
• As a result, all marketing is increasingly going to be governed by the same consumer attitude that surrounds email marketing today — namely, if you send something irrelevant, unrequested or untimely, you will be considered a spammer.
• Therefore, all marketers would be wise to embrace the SR! philosophy regardless of the medium in which they work.

For an outside perspective on my presentation, check out Interactive Snack’s overview of the session.

While I probably raised more questions than I answered, I think that’s probably a good thing.  We all need to distrust anyone who says they have the answers right now.  We don’t live in a period of answers — we live in a time of creative destruction, rapid evolution, and downright confusion.

Through it all, however, there is one thing of which I am sure.  Making your marketing communications more relevant, timely, and personal — regardless of medium — can only improve your results.

Thanks again to the great folks I met up in Minneapolis.  I hope to be back soon with more things to ponder (and yes, perhaps a few answers too!).

MySpace Entering the Social Inbox Fray?

MySpace webmail on the horizon?

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington reported last week that MySpace has been building a new webmail offering on the down-low for the past several months.

According to the article:

The first hint of the new service was a reassignment of some MySpace employee email addresses to [name]@myspace-inc.com, which people have noticed. This is a sign that they are preparing to assign MySpace.com email addresses to users, which is exactly how Yahoo handled the transition when they launched Yahoo Mail in 1997 - Yahoo employees moved to yahoo-inc.com email addresses. We’ve subsequently confirmed that MySpace is currently building a webmail product.

If and when MySpace enters the webmail fray, it will instantly become the web’s third largest webmail provider at 125M users, trailing only Microsoft’s Hotmail (284M users) and Yahoo (277M users).  Gmail, however, will have something to say about that as it currently claims 118M users and is growing faster than any other major webmail provider.

What this means for email marketers remains to be seen; however, it is yet one more bit of evidence that the social inbox arms race is on.  Can an open Facebook webmail client be far behind?  Stay tuned.

Email Flashback to 1997!

I am admittedly fascinated by all that is going on in the realm of social media these days. While not the most devoted Tweeter nor am I addicted to updating my Facebook status, I do check in every day to see what is going on, who’s saying what, etc.

Yesterday, amidst tweeting, emailing, texting, blogging, and cell phone calling it occured to me that I was only using one of these technologies 10 years ago–”e-mail” (thankfully the spelling has evolved in the past 10 years too). So I started digging around and stumbled on some old footage of a computer show from 1997 all about eee–mail and how to use it. I pulled out a short clip and posted it to YouTube today. Enjoy the walk down memory lane and see if you pick up on the same nostalgia I did. My list is below.

Thinks that take me back to 1997:

1. “Explain the concept… so you mean this is really an email account inside a website?”
2. “How do I actually DO web-based email?”
3. 640 x 480 screen resolution
4. Email in the example inbox with the subject line: “FW: VIRUS ALERT!!!!!” (You gotta look close to see this… just trust me, its there)
5. The next email on the list that says, “NEVERMIND….. VIRUS IS A HOAX!” (hehe)
6. “…and the picture actually shows up in my email box!” (OMG!!!! I remember that!!! Pictures used to show up!)
7. “CompuServe” (nuff said)

There are plenty more observations to be made, I’m sure. As we speculate on the future of email, it’s fun to look back and see how far we have come, how we have regressed, and how much still needs to evolve. I’d love to hear if you pick up on anything else.

A Day of Email Marketing Rants

Rant All You Want, Just Please Leave the Hubcaps

There must be something in the water today because some bright email marketing folks are dabbling in some good, ol’ fashioned rants against worst-practice emailers.

First up, the cuddly curmudgeon of email marketing himself, the Honorable Ken Magill.  In his article for DIRECT Magazine today, he declares that “Opt-In Is Dead,” and then proceeds to unleash a tsunami of wisdom on those who proclaim to honor permission when they do anything but. According to Ken:

The term opt-in has become utterly meaningless. And marketers made it that way. Everyone who’s got an e-mail list says it’s opted-in no matter how their file was built. These days, the term rolls off marketers’ tongues like “best-of-breed,” “core competency” and “paradigm shift.”

But Ken doesn’t stop there:

What’s more, “opt-in e-mail list” should be redundant. A company shouldn’t have to claim its list is permission based. It simply should be.

Amen, brother!  Your SUBSCRIBERS RULE! foam hand is in the mail.

The other rant that caught my attention today came from long-time FoET (Friend of ExactTarget), Jason Baer, the CEO of Convince & Convert out in Phoenix.  In his post, “Is Email Killing Your Company,” Jason rails against marketers who view email as a short-term rather than long-term investment.

I know your boss or your client is starting to freak out, and is prodding you to hit the email list again and again in a withering attempt to generate some sort of revenue in an historically bleak period.

But email isn’t a short-term tactic. It’s a forever tactic. Like a butcher in a small town, you need to use your email program to create customers for life, not for this week. In combination with your customer experience, your email and social media programs can turn transactional customers into brand ambassadors. But too many companies are squandering years of email goodwill that they may never recapture.

Double amen!  Don’t use the current economic climate as an excuse to squander subscriber relations.  Now’s the time to become more subscriber-centric, not less.  After all, those subscribers are the ones who will likely help your company weather the storm.

For more from Ken Magill, be sure to subscribe to his Magilla Marketing column.  For more from Jason Baer, be sure to follow him on Twitter (@jaybaer) and subscribe to the Convince & Convert blog.  I’m sure there are more insightful and inspirational rants to come from both.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Social Inbox Concept

Fear Not, Brave Email Marketers!

In the course of my career, I’ve come to realize that email marketers carry a disproportional amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt) compared to marketers in other disciplines.

I’m no psychoanalyst, but I’m guessing it’s due to the fact that email marketers exist at the whim of the ISPs and the myriad of ways in which they render, filter, and block emails.  I also suspect that despite the medium’s unassailable ROI, we all have a little bit of a complex because the cost-effective nature of email means that we command less of the marketing budget (and therefore, in-house respect) than our counterparts who wield large advertising budgets.

The FUD cloud that hangs over email marketing becomes all the more evident when you stand us side-by-side with the social media crowd.  Talk about extroverted!  Those folks love to talk, link, share, and pontificate — and they do so despite the fact that social media is struggling itself to command more of the overall marketing budget.  My colleague Morgan Stewart summed it up perfectly in his article for MediaPost’s Email Insider this week when he stated:

Social media folks understand authentic interactions with customers, they get customer relationships, they just haven’t figured out how to make money! Contrarily, email marketers know how to make money, but too many of us consider a deliverable email address a “relationship.” Let’s face it, we are socially retarded.

If only we could create that X-Filesque alien/human hybrid — the best of the email marketer and the social media guru — we might have an unstoppable force in the marketing department.

Well, guess what.  It’s happening.  As I discussed earlier this week, thanks to Yahoo, Microsoft, Gmail, and even AOL’s Bebo, 2009 stands a good chance to be the year that delviers us a viable social inbox — a space that brings all of our email and social interactions together in one place.

With email and social merged for consumers, email marketers and social media gurus will have no choice but to collaborate.

While this sounds wonderful to some, email marketers will have to fight off their FUD instincts.  It’s easy to see how social inbox features (such as the “From Connections” view in Yahoo’s social inbox beta) will strike fear in the hearts of email marketers who seek to sell rather than serve subscribers.

My firm belief, however, is that the social inbox holds great promise for email marketers.  Here’s why:

1. It’s an Inbox. Who in the online marketing world understand the inbox better than email marketers?  Our understanding and respect for the inbox environment should prove to be a tremendous asset as we seek to increase consumer engagement and response no matter the medium.
2. More integration means more use. The more communication tools that the social inbox can integrate into a single dashboard (email, IM, SMS, Twitter, social networks, etc.), the more consumers will remain in the inbox, and the more responsive they will become to relevant, timely messaging of all types.
3. Email’s strengths will shine. Email supports images, attachments, archiving, search, multiple recipients, and messages more than 140 characters.  The social networks depend on email to drive engagement, send account notices, and alert you as to new friends and followers.  In the social inbox, email’s strengths will shine as part of the expanded suite of communication tools that users have at their disposal.
4. Relationships will rule. The social inbox will reinforce the importance of relationships.  As a result, companies who take the time to understand and serve their email subscribers needs will be rewarded with above average response and an opportunity to extend those relationships into the social media (or vice versa).

While the social inbox will bring change, it will also bring opportunities to those who remain focused on the “four rights” — sending the right message, to the right person, at the right time, through the right medium.  So, set aside the FUD fellow email marketers, and focus on the fundamentals.  Subscribers will still reign supreme as the year of the social inbox unfolds.

The Beta “From Connections” View & You

Having dubbed 2009 “The Year of the Social Inbox” yesterday, I’d like to spend some time this week digging into what that might mean for reputable email marketers — i.e., those who follow the SUBSCRIBERS RULE! philosophy.

Let me begin with a simple acknowledgment.  The features of the social inbox will undoubtedly vary greatly by provider.  For all the differences of the soon-to-be-evolved Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Live Hotmail and Google Gmail, they will also share the goal of aggregating online communications in a manner that puts the consumer in charge (not marketers).

With this in mind, I’d like to take a look at the potential ramifications of a very simple feature found in the limited beta of Yahoo’s Social Inbox.  The feature, the “From Connections” mail view, is described in this video, and you can see the feature in the screenshots below:

"All" Email View in Yahoo's Social Inbox Beta

"From Connections" Email View in Yahoo's Social Inbox Beta

In the top, “All” default view, the inbox is unchanged from its current state.  The user sees all of their messages including permission-based emails from the New York Times, The Cheesecake Factory, Yahoo, and Chili’s.

In the bottom, “From Connections” optional view, however, the user sees only those emails from people with whom they have “connected” via Yahoo’s connection process.  According to this video, your connections need not be Yahoo users, just people who have confirmed your connection.

As Yahoo proclaims in the image callout above, it envisions that the “From Connections” tab will be used to “cut through the clutter.”  With one click, users can see all their emails from connected friends.

The flip side, of course, is that with that one click, the “All” view is hidden, and so too are all of the emails in there whether they are transactional, permssion-based or even personal inquiries from people outside of the users “Connections.”  For those keeping score at home, that’s what Yahoo means by “clutter.”

Putting on my consumer hat, I think I’ll love this feature.  Just as on Facebook, I decide who are my Friends/Connections, and that enables their messages to get preferential treatment in my inbox.

Putting on my marketing hat, the “From Connections” email view in Yahoo’s beta raises the spectre of a new round of “Add to Address Book” mania.  I can see the email headers now — “Add Us to Your Connections,” “Add Us as a Friend,” “Seriously, add us — we’re cool,” etc.

The issue here, however, is a bit different.  The “Add to Address Book” effort was largely a creature to ensure email deliverability before the evolution of sender verification.

The potential “From Connections” view issue is one of visibility and response, not deliverability.  Your message still gets delivered — but unless you’re a “Connection” your message will only appear in the “All” view of the email inbox.  Whether this makes the “All” view a new form of email purgatory akin to the Junk Mail folder — only time will tell.

One thing is for sure, however — it has never been more clear that email marketers have a stake in the world of social media.  So if you’ve been putting off dabbling in Facebook and tweeting on Twitter, better make a quick resolution to do so in 2009.  The knowledge you gain may help you navigate the new twists and turns of the social email inboxes to come.

Tune in tomrorow as I’ll make the case that the social inbox is the best thing to happen to email in a long time (even with the “From Connections” view).

The Year of the Social Inbox

With the clean slate of 2009 upon us, an endless parade of pundits, publications, and politicians are dusting off their crystal balls in hopes of proclaiming what 2009 will be “the year of.”  Today alone, I’ve read that 2009 will be the year of the subject line, the “naycation,” thoughtful consumerism, and the ox.

Whatever 2009 will be, it will, for the most part, be unexpected.  Taking this into consideration, I am prepared to make my prediction:

Microsoft and Yahoo will help make 2009 the “Year of the Social Inbox.”

After the failed merger of these Internet titans in 2008, I can understand fully if my prediction is met with skepticism.  Each company, however, has been working hard behind the scenes to evolve their respective email inbox offerings in such a way that they fuse the best parts of the email inbox with the immediacy, control, and serendipity of social networking applications like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. If they succeed, they bring their millions of “old school” Internet users into the social media mix in new and extremely interesting ways.

According to a recent article in Ars Technica (”Yahoo begins rolling out social, extensible e-mail inbox“),  Yahoo’s social inbox is already in limited beta and its features include:

• “My Connections” — Akin to friends on Facebook or people in your Address book, these folks get top placement within the Yahoo Social Inbox main page
• “Updates from My Connections” — Akin to FriendFeed, this sidebar aggregates updates from your Connections across a number of social media applications like Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.
• A new Yahoo home page that eschews banner ads in favor of your more personalized updates from your Connections

I plan to explore what “The Year of the Social Inbox” could mean for email marketers all of this week.  As homework for tomorrow’s post, be sure to watch the following videos from Yahoo:

• Yahoo Mail: Understanding the New Smarter Inbox in Yahoo Mail
• Yahoo Mail: Getting to Know Your Smarter Inbox

In so doing, keep an eye out for the “From Connections” option within the inbox.  Should email marketers be concerned?  More tomorrow…

The Yahoo Social Inbox - In Limited Beta Now

Mobile email burnout, already?

I had an interesting discussion with one of my wife’s close friends today who has shut off her mobile email service recently. A technically savvy, stay-at-home mom, much like the “Young Homemakers” group that we outlined in the Messaging Behaviors, Preferences, and Personas Whitepaper ExactTarget put out last month.

Basically she said, “Why pay for a service to get email on my phone? Once I realized how much it cost to get interrupted all day, I decided to get rid of it. It’s not that urgent!”

She's got junk mail sorting skilz!

While this represents one person’s opinion, it encapsulates the attitude we saw in our research. Email may be urgent for business people, for email marketers, but for many consumers, they don’t want the interruptions. They want to be in control when they look at their inboxes. As lowly as it may sound, email offers may simply be simply a digital form of direct mail where they wade through the “junk mail” they receive one day (or week) at-a-time. (Disclaimer: in our home, we wade through the prior weeks junk mail on the weekends).

Some email subscribers are quick hitters (like us marketers) where the trend toward immediate dialogue and social marketing is going to get played out. To be relevant, speed and immediacy will be at the core. For this group, it is about interaction in addition to information.

Others subscribers will be like this mom who wants to go through her inbox in a single sitting. That requires a different approach. Interaction is less important because they aren’t constantly waiting to respond. For this group, it is about finding the right information when they want it.

I see a divergence coming in email strategy around how we facilitate responses… and you guessed it, SR! is at the core!

“Express Consent” Requirement for Behavioral Targeting?

I wondered why my Spidey-like, recovering attorney sense was tingling the other day.  It turns out that legislators, regulators, and now, even the courts, are taking a look at the legality of behavioral targeting in advertising and whether current practices may violate the law.

According to an article in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily,

“[The NeuAd lawsuit] could be a landmark case,” said attorney Bennet Kelley, founder of the Internet Law Center in Santa Monica, Calif. and former privacy director at ValueClick. He added that a victory for the plaintiffs could mean that broadband providers will be left with no choice but to seek users’ affirmative consent before selling information about people’s Web activity to ad companies.

If Congress, regulators or the courts chose to act, very soon ISPs and others may need express consent not unlike an email opt-in from consumers in order use their data to trigger behaviorally targeted ads.  Frankly, the logistics of how this might be implemented make my head spin; however, one thing is clear — opt-in isn’t just for email anymore.  It becoming the lingua franca of ethical marketing practices across a number of fronts.

So, don’t be surprised in the coming months if the brand advertising folks start poking around, asking your email marketing team questions about permission and opt-in best practices.  It may just be that they are gearing up for the inevitable march of the SR! philosophy into their turf.