SUBSCRIBERS RULE!Back to the streets! In this third installment of our “Subscribers on the Street” inteview series, we give you two questions for the price of one.
We first asked folks how frequently companies should send marketing messages via email. We then followed-up and asked people to explain how their email inbox differed from their traditional, postal mailbox. The responses are as varied as the subscribers we asked. Enjoy!
While addressing ExactTarget’s Agency Partner Summit at Connections last week, author Steve Yastow did something unexpected. He dropped a little Zen knowledge on the assembled throng by explaining how the concept of “not one, not two” relates to today’s marketing environment.
According to the practitioners of Zen Buddhism:
“Not one” means that we cannot ignore differences among individuals. Each of us is unique and that’s what gives life its texture and richness. “Not two” acknowledges the unity of everything in its essential nature. The experience of unity expands our awareness and capacity for love. (Beliefnet)
In today’s marketing environment, Steve argues, we would be well advised to reflect on “not one, not two” to better understand and nurture our relationships with customers and prospects alike. On one hand, we are individuals with unique needs and interests. On the other, however, when we choose to interact, we create a “not two” entity — a third entity if you like — that exists solely because of our decision to connect with one another.
Whether that third entity — our relationship — is successful depends on a variety of factors. However, one thing is certain; it will not thrive if we view it solely from the standpoint of purely selfish needs. Steve suggestion? Chant “not two” if you must while focusing on what connects you to your customer, and what’s truly important to the relationship will become clear.
Personally, I believe a great many email marketers could benefit from this “not two” exercise. Too often, whether due to deadlines, staffing issues or business priorities, our email marketing efforts are left to focus on our selfish needs first. While this may yield short-term results, it also prevents us from evolving one-off customer transactions into long-term customer relationships — relationships that ultimately prove more profitable for everyone involved.
For more insight on how to get to the “we” relationship that email marketing affords, be sure to check out Steve’s book, “We — The Ideal Customer Relationship,” as well as his blog at www.yastrow.com.
For more on Zen Buddhist philosophy, here’s an overview from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Be warned - the contents may make your head throb with meta-physical pain enough for not one, but two, people.
Thanks to everyone who attended Connections ‘08!!!
We hope you made it back safe and are catching up on some much-needed sleep!
We received a ton of requests to post the SUBSCRIBERS RULE! music video…
So, by popular demand, the video is for your viewing pleasure. Be sure to check back in next week as we hope to post a downloadable, MP3 version so you can add the song to your iPod repertoire.
Rest assured, no foam hands, subscribers or Joel Books were injured during the making of this video.
Enjoy!
Strange things happen when you hang around Indianapolis late at night during Connections. For instance, you may bump into James Gandolfini (a.k.a. Tony Soprano) at a bar.
And then you may stalk him & get him to pose for a picture.
And then, you may photoshop a SUBSCRIBERS RULE! foam hand on his real hand.
I’m not saying any of this happened. But please…whatever you do…don’t stop believin’.
James Gandolfini in the process of offing ExactTarget co-founder Peter McCormick for reasons yet unknown.
I think there’s a rule about blogging while rushed, but I’m ignoring it to get this info in your hands. I’m pleased to announce our first-ever SUBSCRIBERS RULE! contest. Make that TWO contests. Here’s the lowdown:
Win one of two, sweet Sanyo Xactis!
CONTEST #1: Just Sayin’ T-Shirt Contest — We’ve got SUBSCRIBERS RULE! t-shirts, but we need great, subscriber-centric slogans to go on the front. Submit your best SR! t-shirt slogan to subscribersrule-at-exacttarget.com, and the entry judged the best will win a Sanyo Xacti VPC-HD1010 High Definition Video Camera. (4MP MPEG4 High Definition 1080i/1080p Camcorder with 10x Optical Zoom).
Being the proud owner of an Xacti HD1010, I can tell you that it is awesomely compact & extremely user friendly. It shoots both full HD video and high-quality stills–all to removable SD or SDHC cards (not included).
Each contest is open until Midnight EST on Friday, October 31st, 2008. If you enter, please sure to include your full name, address, phone number, and email address along with your entry. ExactTarget employees and vendors as well as their families are sadly not eligible to participate. Void where prohibited.
All images and content submitted will become the property of ExactTarget and may be used in future SUBSCRIBERS RULE!-related stuff. What stuff? Don’t know. But seriously, if you’re going to quibble about that, just don’t enter. We’d prefer to just remain friends rather than let a little thing like copyright ownership come between us. Plus–there’s two cool Xactis to be won!
So, fire up the creative juices and get goin’. Subscribers need to know that we know that they are in charge of this crazy thing called one-to-one & email marketing. This is just one small step forward in that effort.
For all you visual learners out there, I give you the following image harvested from the depths of the World Wide Web thanks to the copyright infringement fair use machine that is Google Image Search:
It's her world, we just live in it.
I have no idea who this woman is, but I trust that she was having a good time. Why? Because whatever the celebration was, it was all about her. She was probably surrounded by friends, and their sole focus was to make sure this woman — their friend — had the time of her life.
The lesson? Being a subscriber-centric, one-to-one marketer means being selfless. It means using technology to power truly personalized communications that make each subscriber feel like the focus is on them — like they are the only person in your field of vision, even if it is for that fleeting moment of engagement with your email, text or other message.
While it takes work behind the scenes to get to that level of mass personalization, the rewards come in the form of deeper relationships with customers — relationships that positively impact the bottom line.
Now, as for whether such efforts will also yield balloon hats & yard-long daiquiris…well, let’s just say that the ExactTarget Legal Department frowns on making any such guarantees.
For the second in our series of Subscribers on the Street interviews, we asked folks what their feelings were about the dreaded unsolicited commercial email, a.k.a. spam. As you might imagine, few were shy about sharing their true feelings.
Tune back in next week as we’ll be asking people their preference as to email frequency and more.
Mel Gibson knows women and the Malibu P.D., but does he know subscribers?
Back in 2000, well before he went on his well-publicized bender in Malibu, Mel Gibson helped mankind better understand What Women Want. It was Kelly Mooney’s 2003 book, The Ten Demandments, however, that helped me get a better grasp on what email subscribers want.
Apparently, I was not alone. In the September 16th edition of Email Insider from MediaPost, Lisa Harmon did a great job explaining how each of Mooney’s Ten Demandments apply to email subscribers. A personal favorite:
The Fifth Demandment: Guide me. Anticipate the needs of your subscribers, packing emails with the tools users need to interact with your brand. Include customer service information and links to FAQs, supporting subscribers as they take next steps. Live Nation totally gets this with its pre-concert Fan Advisory.
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Lisa’s entire article, Inspire Me: Email’s Ten Demandments (registration required), and click through to the examples that she provides. It’s great to see so many companies working to put their subscribers in control of one-to-one marketing communications. Now, if we could only get Mr. Gibson in another romcom, perhaps he could start working again.
God love Despair.com. Dr. E.L. Kersten’s crew comes up with some of the funniest t-shirts & lithographs in the world, and today is no exception. Their new Points of View t-shirt is a classic, and, of course, I learned about it from one of their opt-in emails.
If your eyes are going, you can check out the larger image here.
And for all you email copywriters out there who are looking for ways to connect with your subscribers, be sure to look at what Despair.com is doing. Each email builds upon their humorous, snarky persona in such a way that it demands to be read–if for nothing else than a laugh.
Granted, it’s not an approach that will work for everyone, but when you feel like a real person is behind the message, you tend to respond in ways far beyond what dry sales copy can deliver.
And yes, I am one of those who sees the glass as half full.
NIN - The Slip
So I call the Cleveland area home, and I was perusing the Plain Dealer a while back when this article about Nine Inch Nails caught my eye. In it, Trent Reznor discusses why he’s giving away the band’s new album, “The Slip,” away “for free.” His answer couldn’t be more clear:
“By giving it away, we’re amassing a database of potential fans,” said Reznor, 43.”We give it away to you for your e-mail address.”
And there you have it. Trent Reznor is an email marketer. By my math–using old-school, record industry economics–this means that Trent puts the value of one fan’s email address at around $9.99 to $17.99 (the price of full-length album download or CD).
Much like Coldplay, NIN gets it. An invitation into your fan’s inbox is worth far more than a one-time sale. After all, it’s only rock and roll.
So we hit the street and did something crazy–we asked real people their thoughts about a variety of topics email-related topics. In this first installment, we asked what type of messages folks like to receive from companies via email.
Stay tuned next week as we get subscribers’ opinions about the dreaded s-word (spam!).
A few folks have asked me what the inspiration for the SUBSCRIBERS RULE! logo was/is. Well, believe it or not, there is a method to our madness. Show ten folks a hand with the index & pinkie fingers raised with the thumb extended, and they usually tell you that it either means:
We love this dual meaning. SUBSCRIBERS RULE! exists both to say that subscribers “rock”–after all, they have raised their hands and said “communicate with me.” They also deserve our “love” as marketers. They are often our best customers, and we must work extra hard to ensure that they receive what they want, when they want it.
Now, being a former DJ (shout out, www.woxy.com), and having attended over 300 rock concerts in my life, I know that the “real” rock hand doesn’t have the thumb extended. However, I can report with confidence that the “I love you” version has gained wide acceptance. Plus, it has a much better connotation than the corna.