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!

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!).

SUBSCRIBERS RULE! Philosophy Part 1: Love Thy Subscriber

With February, the month of love (pronounced “luv”) upon us, it strikes me as the perfect time for a quick refresher on why marketers should love their subscribers.

Love Thy Subscriber!

First, a word on what I mean by “subscriber.”  You see, in this digitally fragmented age, a subscriber is anyone who gives you permission to communicate with them via specific one-to-one channels.  The most obvious and productive of these channels is email.  I don’t just say this because ExactTarget pays the bills.  I say it because the research says so.

Marketers can also acquire subscribers through channels other than email such as RSS, SMS (text messaging), Facebook (”friends”), and Twitter (”followers”).  While the nuances of each medium differ both in terms of what you can send and how you send it, they each share a common reality — subscribers, not marketers, rule.  In other words, the subscriber controls the relationship’s beginning as well as its end (the dreaded “unsubscribe”).

Thanks to the economy, the shrinking efficacy of traditional marketing channels, and the increasing cost of direct mail, subscribers are now much more than a “nice to have” — they are a core asset of every company’s marketing program.  The reasons are simple:

1. Subscribers want to hear from you.
2. Subscribers are often your best customers.
3. It is much less expensive to email. text, update & tweet to subscribers than it is to reach strangers via third-party advertising.
4. You can reach subscribers instantly.

Clearly, there’s a lot to love about subscribers.  So why do so many companies treat them like an afterthought rather than an asset?  Why do so many marketers “batch & blast” subscribers rather than build relationships with them?  What can we do to elevate subscriber to their rightful place of honor atop the marketing food chain?

At ExactTarget, we answered this question by launching the SUBSCRIBERS RULE! philosophy — three simple tenets that, if followed, can help any company build better, more profitable relationships with their subscribers.  The three tenets are:

• Serve the individual
• Honor each individual’s unique preferences with regard to communication, content, frequency, and channel
• Deliver subscribers timely, relevant content that improves their lives

For those who attended our Connections User Conference last year, this is a bit of review.  Heck, you even got a music video to nail home the point.

For those who are new to the SR! Philosophy, however, I will be digging deeper into each tenet means to your email, SMS, and social media marketing efforts in the days to come.

There’s simply no time like the present, however, to show your subscribers that you love them — and there’s no better way to do that then working hard to ensure that their preferences are honored and their needs met by each and every one of your one-to-one communications.

The Super Bowl’s Email Afterthought

If you were one of the 90+ million Americans who watched the Super Bowl this past weekend, you were not only treated to a great game but also a number of great commercials from Doritos.  What you might not have known is that two of those commercials were produced by regular Joes and selected as the winner and runner-up of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest.

The contest, which ran for weeks prior to the Super Bowl, allowed people to vote on their favorite consumer-generated Doritos commercials until only five remained.  The finalists were then subjected to a final round of consumer voting, and the winning commercial, “Free Doritos!“, was shown during the 1st quarter (personal aside — the runner up, “ATM“, was created by a friend of mine, but that back story is best told over drinks at this week’s Online Marketing Summit).

The campaign generated a ton of buzz for Doritos, and both ads garnered positive comments from many Super Bowl ad reviewers.

So imagine my surprise as a Crash the Super Bowl voter when I received the following email from Doritos yesterday (Tuesday).

An opportunity missed of Super Bowl proportions.

What a missed opportunity!  The email didn’t contain any branding, any offer or any call to action to become a subscriber to Doritos future email communications.  My guess is that email was an afterthought in this campaign — a line item that had to be checked off before the books could be closed on this year’s “Crash the Super Bowl” party.

And what a shame that is.  Doritos had my post-Super Bowl attention.  They could have sent me a coupon to try a new flavor or opt-in to their continuing communications.  That way, the 30 seconds of attention they garnered around the Big Game would create value throughout the year as they grew their email subscriber base exponentially overnight.

Doritos certainly isn’t alone in treating ad campaign emails as an afterthought.  One hopes, however, that the belt-tightening of 2009 will force agencies and companies to capitalize on the power of email — and subscribers — to produce far greater ROI than any single television commercial.

The Email Append Debate

Thinking of email append? Not so fast.

In today’s ClickZ, Derek Harding has a great overview of The Dangers of Email Append that highlights his problems with the practice.  According to Harding:

Many marketers want [email append] to succeed, especially those who come from a print direct marketing background. However, for many in the e-mail marketing industry, especially deliverability professionals, the problems and shortcomings of e-mail append are an open secret.

Personally, I think there are far better places to invest your time and money to grow your subscriber base.  In fact, I’ll be discussing several of them in today’s webinar with MarketingSherpa (”Building the Perfect Subscriber: Email Growth Strategies and Superior Segmentation Techniques,” Thursday, January 22 @ 2:00PM EST).

That said, I do think it is important to understand that there are different shades of email append:

1. Opt-Out Append without Notice.  Three words: bad, bad, bad.  You add subscribers without their consent or advance notice.  They just start receiving your messages, and you start receiving spam complaints.  Nothing gets our Email Deliverability Guru, Al Iverson, more incensed.
2. Opt-Out Append with Notice. A distinction without a difference from #1 in my book.  Appended subscribers receive a notice that you will now be sending them email.  In so doing, you shift the burden to them to opt-out.  Look for complaints to spike and deliverability to tank.  You know what happens when you assume…
3. Opt-In Append. The only type of append that can actually serve consumer interests.  In this model, you send only one message to the receipient informing them of their opportunity to opt-into your future email communications.  If they don’t opt-in, you stop sending.

The bottom line is that email append is fraught with issues–and it raises a ton of concerns from an SR! perspective.  If you haven’t optimized your subscriber acquisition methods, my recommendation is to start there–such a strategic, long-term approach will always result in happier, more engaged subscribers.

50 People. One Question.

A fundamental element of the SUBSCRIBERS RULE! philosophy is the notion that people are individuals, and that marketers need to leverage technology to treat them as such.  Accordingly, I love it when I stumble across items that have absolutely nothing to do with email marketing but help hammer home the point that we all have different hopes, dreams, wants, and needs.

Previously in the pages of SR!, we’ve linked to videos from Microsoft, The Atlantic, and yes, even ExactTarget, that tap into the power of individuality.  Today’s video comes from Fifty People One Question, a project of creative shop Crush+Lovely, in which they ask fifty people the same question:

Where would you wish to wake up tomorrow.

As you might imagine, the answers are varied, thought-provoking, and often inspirational.  Take a look for yourself:

A big hat tip to David Mead (@DavidMead) for sharing the video.

And for the record, my wish would be to wake up with my family and a day of nothing to do but play outside.  Of course, that could be the Cleveland winter shut-in in me talking!

Feel free to share your wishes in the comments.

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.

Ammo for Email List Rental Skeptics

Today’s ClickZ Email Marketing Experts column is a must-read (and save) for anyone considering an email list rental campaign.  In the article entitled Email List Rentals: Red Flags & Results, Jeanne Jennings shares the first-hand experience of her client who was bound and determined to test out email list rental.

To say the results were disappointing would be an understatement.  The client made few sales, and a majority of the emails sent by the list rental company were blocked as spam.

Dealing with a boss who wants to test the email list rental waters? Read the column and take to heart Jeanne’s #1 piece of advice:

• Buyer beware when it comes to third-party e-mail lists.

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.