SUBSCRIBERS RULE!

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.

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.

Better Subscribers, Better Relationships - Papa John’s

Normally, when the phones aren’t ringing at a pizza place on a Friday night, it’s a bad thing.  At Papa John’s, however, it’s a sign of the times.

As one of the first pizza delivery chains to fully embrace online and text-based ordering, Papa John’s has been quick to test the power of emerging one-to-one channels both to promote its products and to enable customers to place orders.  The result?  Earlier this year, the company reported that it had eclipsed the $1B sales mark from online ordering alone.

While at Connections ‘08, we caught up with Nigel Travis, Papa John’s CEO, and Bob Ford, Interactive Marketing Manager, to learn how their efforts line-up with the SUBSCRIBERS RULE! philosophy and why they are bullish on turning over more control of email marketing messages to their franchisees.

The resulting interview may leave more than a few email marketers wishing that they had a CEO as engaged and aware of the individual subscriber’s value as Nigel Travis.

Subscribers on the Street #4

You want to know what ticks subscribers off?  Selling their email addresses to third parties.  Bad, bad, bad.

You know what subject divides subscribers?  The use of text messaging for marketing messages.  Those with unlimited text plans like it.  Those who pay by the drink, don’t.  And both camps don’t like any SMS marketing without their permission.

To learn more, check out this week’s installment of SotS.