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.

Jaffe on Twitter “Shiny Object Syndrome”

I’ve been woefully remiss in posting to SR! lately, but the absence hasn’t been so much due to a lack of things to say as it has been a desire for time to think.

Too often in today’s social media saturated world, the multitude of outlets at our disposal — IM, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. — call upon interactive marketers to talk and opine constantly rather than listen and process thoughtfully.  This is problematic because interactive marketing demands strategy, and strategy demands more than knee-jerk emotionality.  It demands experience, analysis, and time to develop great ideas into beneficial actions.

With that in mind, I was pleased to see that Joseph Jaffe focused this week’s edition of JJTV on why the collective hysteria about Twitter might not be a good thing for interactive marketers.  Twitter is, after all, but one tactic among the myriad of internet-based marketing tools that can help companies connect with customers.

Much like email, Twitter’s value depends on the relevance and attentiveness of your followers (i.e., subscribers).  However, as Joseph points out, because of the temporal nature of Twitter posts, he’d be surprised if his followers had read more than 10% of his total tweets.

If that’s the case, Joseph wonders, aren’t we all putting a disproportionate amount of emphasis on Twitter’s importance — especially when most of us have yet to fully optimize the performance of channels such as email and search?

Here are Joseph’s thoughts — feel free to share yours via the comments link above and to the right.

The Twouble with Twitters

Current TV’s “SuperNews!” just did the definitive animated send up of the Twitter-sphere.

Yes, there are two sides to every story.  But this side is the funniest and the most likely to bring a smile to my SR! blogging co-hort’s face.

And yes, Morgan Stewart, this one’s for you.  Enjoy!

The Twouble with Twitters

The Spam Logic of @GuyKawasaki

Guy Kawasaki. Twitter Evangelist or Social Media Spammer?

As I write this, I am perhaps as disturbed as I have ever been as an interactive marketer thanks to Guy Kawasaki’s keynote at Search Engine Strategies NYC.  If you’re not familiar with Guy, give his Wikipedia bio a quick read for background.

Let me begin by saying that Guy is always an engaging speaker–and for the speaking fee he commands, he should be.  It is amazing what he has accomplished at Apple, through his various ventures (including Alltop), and on Twitter (building 91K+ followers is no small feat).  However, today’s address to the SES NYC (#sesnyc) attendees was less of a keynote than it was a classroom session on how to spam a new channel — Twitter.  My favorite, oft-recycled Guy quote trotted out yet again today:

“If I do it, it’s clever marketing. If it’s done to me, it’s spam.”

I don’t care if we’re talking email, search marketing or social media — such self-serving logic is what has clogged our inboxes with junk mail, filled the Google results with irrelevant MFA (Made for Adwords) sites, and frankly, what will soon cause Twitter to collapse under its own weight.

Guy can get away with such statements because he is an extremely likeable (ahem) guy.  But the reality is that the strategy that he is espousing to gain Twitter dominance is nearly identical to that of a common email spammer or black hat SEO — the ends justify the means.  His use of services that search Twitter for relevant phrases and then pimp (”Twimp”?) Alltop’s content in direct replies is spam, plain and simple.  The recipient didn’t ask for the content and yes, while a small percentage of recipients may appreciate the Alltop link, the vast majority find it to be noise.

Isn’t that the very definition of spam or are we too blinded by the social media buzz to get that?

Guy seems unphased because his strategy has propelled him to a level of Twitter celebrity the likes of which few know (which makes his claim that there are no A-listers on Twitter pretty laughable).  But what if EVERYONE followed his advice?  What if EVERYONE auto-followed, bot-tweeted, and republished tweets through 3rd party accounts?

The answer is that Twitter will become a calamitous cacophony of noise — and the noise-to-signal ratio would genuinuely threaten its usefulness as a mass communication, one-to-one communication or search tool.  Just ask Google’s search spam guru Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) . The black hat marketers will find & exploit Twitter’s every crack & cranny, and Guy Kawasaki is giving them a roadmap to do so.

At the end of the day, Guy is right.  Subscribers do rule even on Twitter.  You and I have the right to follow or unfollow anyone we want.  After today’s session, I’ve decided to unfollow @guykawasaki because frankly, his is not the type of marketing philosophy that I want to support — let alone follow.

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.

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