Ideally, we praise publicly and critcize privately. But if we all did that, there wouldn't be much in the way of interesting blog fodder.
When I was the guest on the May 26, 2009, episode of The Experience Pros Radio Show, some of what we talked about was "what not to do" with regard to behavior on social networks.
On May 29, 2009, The Church of Scientology provided by example a much more definitive response than I did on the radio show. (Article: Wikipedia Blocks Church of Scientology From Editing Pages)
Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that features content provided by...well, anybody. It's wonderful for a quick answer and quite often for some pretty darn good in-depth knowledge of a subject. Example? Here's everything you ever wanted to know about the cathode ray tube but were afraid to ask. Why the cathode ray tube? I'm watching a Simpsons nostalgia episode on TV while writing this.
For the same reason it's popular, however, Wikipedia is not considered a reliable source of information for articles or research papers. It's also frequently derided by self-defined intellectuals and pop culture critics. Here's one of my favorite Wiki passages from The Simpsons:
Bart: So Dean Martin would show up at the last minute and do everything in just one take?
Homer: That's right.
Bart: But Wikipedia said he was passionate about rehearsal!
Homer: Don't you worry about Wikipedia. We'll change it when we get home. We'll change a lot of things.
Because anybody can post anything about anything, entities of size often (should) task their PR teams with monitoring their Wikipedia site (along with other trackable web mentions). When false or incorrect information is entered, they correct it.
Okay, here's another Simpson's Wikipedia reference, but only because it's topical. My adoration of the show has only so much to do with it.
Snake: Hey, baby, listen carefully: someone's been editing my biography on Wikipedia. I want you to kill him.
Snake gives us a for-sure "what not to do" in regard to reacting to criticism on social media. So far as we know, Scientology hasn't gone this far. In fact, the nature of what the Church was doing--defending itself against criticism and providing its own point of view--wasn't the problem. It was the frequency and unforseeable end of the back-and-forth conflict an organized group of Scientologists were having with an organized group of critics on the site.
In most cases, best practice is to publicly acknowledge the already public complaint and move toward resolution. Let your entire potential market witness the fact that you care. "Win a brother over," as Experience Pro Eric Reamer puts it. In this case, "Anonymous"--the anti-Scientology group--wasn't going to get won over. Unfortunately for the Church, its mode of response overloaded Wikipedia's servers, and now they'll have to get more creative on protecting their brand.
With expenses outpacing revenues for social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter, largely due to increasing infrastructure burdens, your strategy for engaging critics must take into account the macro forces impacting the industry.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Twitter's Kicking, Not Quitting
The Beginning of "Quitter"
I recently joined a debate on Twitter...actually, it might be "the" debate on Twitter, at least in terms of the subject, because it seems many people now deem themselves ready to announce to the world their expert analysis on the network's long-term viability.
Here's a link to the article by my friend and a very intelligent, compassionate and accomplished individual: Steve Baker (who has an incredible story in a marvelous book, by the way, also available here) http://www.pushingwateruphillblog.blogspot.com/
Here is my comment to Steve's post:
Here are two of the initiatives Twitter has undertaken that set it apart:
SalesForce
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=15032
Here's my mantra to companies and organizations debating whether or not to begin and maintain a social media presence: You don't get to decide whether or not your company uses social networking. If you have a business with customers, you get to decide at what point you join the discussion about you. With SalesForce, when a customer "tweets" about your company, product or service, you know and record all available information about that customer and her comment, and immediately gain an opportunity to interface, publicly, about the concern or compliment. That's powerful stuff.
Listen, I think SalesForce offers poor training, falls short on the front end of the sales cycle, sells its very high-priced product to anyone who has the ability--and not necessarily the need--to buy it, and I know for a fact that it has lots of dissatisfied users who use the product to a fraction of its potential. I also think SalesForce, like its competitors, aggressively forwards the unconscionable myth that purchasing software will solve your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) challenges...throw money at a problem and the problem will go away. That said, it is the mac daddy of enterprise CRM software and any social network pursuing an innovative revenue model would be wise to partner up with SalesForce and bet on the come, i.e. that the company will employ its current success toward addressing the aforementioned weaknesses. Twitter has done exactly this. Twitter may, in fact, provide the vehicle by which SalesForce works with its customers to identify and resolve its own CRM issues. Talk about powerful references and testimonials--and differentiation?
ExecTweets (http://www.exectweets.com/)
Good article here http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2009/05/18/story11.html?b=1242619200%5E1829407)
ExecTweets caters to big business owners, offering itself as a communications tool for customers and employees. Given the continuing reprisals people incur from their employers stemming from their conduct on Facebook, it will be especially interesting to watch the development of the latter part of that equation. Anyway, these big shots are actually giving it a go. Twitter has seized upon a fundamental truth about guys in charge: You'll never go broke appealing to their egos.
If you can win over a corporate CEO, you have a future. Big companies are terrified of change and any technology they didn't invent or of which they don't own a piece. Plus, these people are busy and demanding--there's an understatement. Getting them to experiment, and being able to log favorable comments about your product, is a monumental accomplishment in and of itself.
Conclusion
In the mid-90's, most of us didn't "get" the Internet. In 1995 I worked for what was, at the time, the biggest cable TV company in the world and we weren't certain we should maintain a web page.
I'm not a "power Tweeter" and I don't--at the moment--have a strategy simply aimed at achieving a huge Twitter followership. But I think to be dismissive of the tool is to demonstrate a lack of research and knowledge.
I do agree that of all these social networks, Twitter is the most difficult to define and understand. I, for one, found it largely unmanageable until Bill Tamminga showed me TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com), and I think Twitter only becomes useful and manageable when used through third-party applications (you might also try http://seesmic.com/, http://www.minggl.com/, and/or http://www.twhirl.org/... but ye cats, throw a rock in any direction and you'll hit five more). This doesn't mean it's going to disappear; it means it has some challenges to address. Big difference.
And big differentiator, which makes it all the more likely that Twitter doesn't just survive, it thrives. It changes, but it thrives.
I recently joined a debate on Twitter...actually, it might be "the" debate on Twitter, at least in terms of the subject, because it seems many people now deem themselves ready to announce to the world their expert analysis on the network's long-term viability.
Here's a link to the article by my friend and a very intelligent, compassionate and accomplished individual: Steve Baker (who has an incredible story in a marvelous book, by the way, also available here) http://www.pushingwateruphillblog.blogspot.com/
Here is my comment to Steve's post:
Twitter...has recently launched some business-oriented initiatives that may cement its profit model—something with which every player in this nascent industry struggles—and move the product beyond “fad.“ In the next 24 months this industry will experience consolidation, shakeout and a move toward standardization. Twitter may change but its brand is too strong within the market to just disappear.
Here are two of the initiatives Twitter has undertaken that set it apart:
SalesForce
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=15032
Here's my mantra to companies and organizations debating whether or not to begin and maintain a social media presence: You don't get to decide whether or not your company uses social networking. If you have a business with customers, you get to decide at what point you join the discussion about you. With SalesForce, when a customer "tweets" about your company, product or service, you know and record all available information about that customer and her comment, and immediately gain an opportunity to interface, publicly, about the concern or compliment. That's powerful stuff.
Listen, I think SalesForce offers poor training, falls short on the front end of the sales cycle, sells its very high-priced product to anyone who has the ability--and not necessarily the need--to buy it, and I know for a fact that it has lots of dissatisfied users who use the product to a fraction of its potential. I also think SalesForce, like its competitors, aggressively forwards the unconscionable myth that purchasing software will solve your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) challenges...throw money at a problem and the problem will go away. That said, it is the mac daddy of enterprise CRM software and any social network pursuing an innovative revenue model would be wise to partner up with SalesForce and bet on the come, i.e. that the company will employ its current success toward addressing the aforementioned weaknesses. Twitter has done exactly this. Twitter may, in fact, provide the vehicle by which SalesForce works with its customers to identify and resolve its own CRM issues. Talk about powerful references and testimonials--and differentiation?
ExecTweets (http://www.exectweets.com/)
Good article here http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2009/05/18/story11.html?b=1242619200%5E1829407)
ExecTweets caters to big business owners, offering itself as a communications tool for customers and employees. Given the continuing reprisals people incur from their employers stemming from their conduct on Facebook, it will be especially interesting to watch the development of the latter part of that equation. Anyway, these big shots are actually giving it a go. Twitter has seized upon a fundamental truth about guys in charge: You'll never go broke appealing to their egos.
If you can win over a corporate CEO, you have a future. Big companies are terrified of change and any technology they didn't invent or of which they don't own a piece. Plus, these people are busy and demanding--there's an understatement. Getting them to experiment, and being able to log favorable comments about your product, is a monumental accomplishment in and of itself.
Conclusion
In the mid-90's, most of us didn't "get" the Internet. In 1995 I worked for what was, at the time, the biggest cable TV company in the world and we weren't certain we should maintain a web page.
I'm not a "power Tweeter" and I don't--at the moment--have a strategy simply aimed at achieving a huge Twitter followership. But I think to be dismissive of the tool is to demonstrate a lack of research and knowledge.
I do agree that of all these social networks, Twitter is the most difficult to define and understand. I, for one, found it largely unmanageable until Bill Tamminga showed me TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com), and I think Twitter only becomes useful and manageable when used through third-party applications (you might also try http://seesmic.com/, http://www.minggl.com/, and/or http://www.twhirl.org/... but ye cats, throw a rock in any direction and you'll hit five more). This doesn't mean it's going to disappear; it means it has some challenges to address. Big difference.
And big differentiator, which makes it all the more likely that Twitter doesn't just survive, it thrives. It changes, but it thrives.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
False Choices: Facebook and Four Way Stops
"What is a friend? A friend is a single soul dwelling within two bodies." - Aristotle
How to Change the Wind
My wife--my business partner, mother to my children, my reason for living--directs traffic from inside her car. She'll sit in the driver's seat with the windows up telling cars, "Okay, now you go. Now I go. Hey! Not you! You don't go yet!" I wonder at times if she actually believes she can dictate how people will move through the most mysterious and misunderstood anomaly of American suburban travel: The four-way stop.
Of course, she cannot. In fact, it may be she who doesn't know the rules. It may be that the rules are subject to individual interpretation up to the moment when a cop arrives and starts handing out tickets for doing it wrong. Of course, when the cop leaves, we're right back to the same anarchic state in which we were before he got there. Fat lot of good that did us.
So Facebook was created for young people to be silly and make nice with old friends and now people (like me) have shown up and are polluting the previously unspoiled air with business. "People I work with," I hear ad nauseum, "keep wanting to be my Facebook 'friend.' I don't want to 'friend' on Facebook with business people. That's what LinkedIn is for. How can I keep Facebook personal?"
If Only Everyone Were More Like Me
If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard this question, I'd have enough to mount a really spiffy public address system on the family vehicle so that my wife's verbal traffic directions may actually have some impact. I was once told Facebook wasn't made for business so it wasn't a good place for businesspeople to network and collaborate. I recently heard a speaker advise a group of entrepreneurs to decline business invitations on Facebook and direct them to LinkedIn.
Game that out. Doesn't work, does it? Did you tick anyone off? Did something get lost in translation? Did everyone currently or potentially in your network get the message?
Whatever these things started out to be is not what they are, nor what they will be. If you really need a place to misbehave online, there will be a social network that plays to your niche, that has intentionally poor search engine optimization and on which you can use a alias just in case. (Don't like that idea? Go to www.ning.com and start your own.) The overwhelming evidence is, however, that Facebook is being taken over by grown ups who behave online like they do in public, and who mix business with personal.
For more in-depth discussion on that matter, there are any number of blogs out there, including earlier issuances of Swift Kick.
Losing Your Lunch
Here's the converse, on which I could only buy a souped-up megaphone but that's definitely out there: "I don't care how wonderful your chicken salad sub was. I'm only on Facebook to do business. How can I filter out all the updates about how many pounds you've dropped using Wii and only get the business stuff?"
Good news: If you're not interested in other people and what matters to them, you won't have to worry about having too many customers. We connect on a personal level because we can, because we want to. We do business with people we know and understand. Don't believe me? Take a look at the "us vs them" model so prevalent in corporate America and tell me how it's doing these days. We are witnessing the end of an era; the dinosaurs who once ruled are disappearing into history. The continents of global business are drifting. We live in a world of transparency. I don't need a private eye; I have Google, LinkedIn and Facebook; and even if I don't know you I know someone who knows someone who does.
Within the next--oh, let's say two years, social media will develop content filters sophisticated enough to help you efficiently cut through this "clutter," but for now you're stuck with it. Oh, sure, you can "hide" content and we all do--I don't want to be responsible for bad language on my page,
for example, so I'll turn you off if you express yourself with naughty words--but think carefully because the same lady who likes to inform you of her satisfaction level with her pedicure might also be the same one who publicly laments her inability to find a satisfactory professional who can re-design her office interior, web page, company logo, etc., etc.
And really, I pity you. Facebook, I tell my audiences, is LinkedIn for humans. Leave yesterday's corporate behind and come be a human with the rest of us. Where did you go for lunch? Maybe I've been there. Maybe I had a funny experience. Maybe that's where Tom Brady knocked over my beer with his throwing arm the year after he won his first MVP award. Maybe that's just the beginning of a great story. Doesn't matter, really, you'll never hear it and we'll never connect on that level because you don't want to share your opinion of a chicken salad sub.
You have to operate within the culture. On LinkedIn, don't you dare talk about your lunch. On Facebook, eventually you have to. One's all business all the time, the other is where we go to let people know that maybe we are or will do business together and regardless, I care about whether or not you're doing well. That's not weakness and it's not a waste of time. It's being a person. There's not a magic formula on how much business vs how much personal you can do, but like anything else anymore be entertaining and informative or be left alone.
Separating "Me" and "Myself" from "I"
This will be quick: Are you a small business operator? Do you work for a company that has customers? Do you have accounts that you manage? If you answered "yes" to any one of these or virtually any other question about business, your personality is a large part of the product that you market. People will do business with people...(emphasize "people," pause for effect...)with whom they feel comfortable; people that they know. Want to be Zeke the buttoned-up financial analyst by day and "the Mad, Mad, Mad Zekester of Blood Underground, the best unsigned Goth/Death Metal Fusion band on the Eastern Seaboard" after dark? Sorry, um, Zekester, that ship has sailed. At least one of your multiple personalities is going to have to live "off the grid." And...well, his days are numbered, regardless. Truth finds a way.
Putting a Bow on it
Being all-powerful in any instance is not a realistic expectation. Social media is a nascent industry and it can't keep up with its own growth so some patience will be required. It will be a while until you'll be able to customize your tools to your preferred modus operandi.
You go be you. Act like your mother's watching. She might be. Act like you care and you might actually start to care.
Read Aristotle. It will make you smarter and you'll have some stuff to contribute if you're not ready to talk about culinary affairs or traffic; and it might help you come up with a creative way to get your smart, hard working, hot, sexy wife to start reading your blog.
Epilogue
- In the countries that use four-way stops, pedestrians always have priority at crosswalks – even at unmarked ones, which exist as the logical continuations of the sidewalks at every intersection with approximately right angles – unless signed or painted otherwise.
- Whichever vehicle first stops at the stop line – or before the crosswalk, if there is no stop line – has priority.
- If two vehicles stop at the same time, priority is given to the vehicle on the right.
- If three vehicles stop at the same time, priority is given to the two vehicles going in opposite directions, if possible.
- If four vehicles stop, drivers usually use gestures and other communication to establish right-of-way.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic)
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Email and Social Media
Prologue
Earlier this week I shared a Media Post article (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=105012#comments) called, Social Vs. Email: It's The Wrong Debate. This morning I read an article in my local community newspaper about business and social media that contained a tongue-in-cheek assertion that, "email is for old people. (http://coloradocommunitynewspapers.com/articles/2009/04/28/littleton_independent/news/30_hc_biz_tweet_li_ce.txt) ."
I'm a "synergy" guy. I recently sat with a client listening to an advertising proposal from a big radio outfit that included integrated use of air time and Internet. Walking away from the meeting, I was asked if the proposal had merit. It did. These guys were good. "If I could only afford one component," asked my customer, "which one should it be?" None. Your tactics should take each other into account, build on each other and mutually reinforce a consistent branding theme as part of an overarching strategy built to achieve specific goals. The National Football League just held its annual college draft. It's easy to tell who's better at it. Teams who draft a running back because its a sexy pick and one is available lose ground to competitors who target a speedy outside linebacker at a value-commensurate point in the process because they're converting from a 4-3 defense to a 3-4.
So, when small business owners start asking themselves about whether to make the financial investment in an email campaign or the time investment in social media, they're already heading down the wrong path.
Expert Analysis
Still, the question about the future of email is valid. For a perspective I haven't encountered on blogs, microblogs, Google alerts, etc., I interviewed Suzanne Norman, Director of Community Relations for Emma (http://www.myemma.com/). Emma is "an email marketing and communications service that's taken a unique approach to web-based software."
Swift Kick is not sponsored but believes in promoting its contributors. Emma on Emma:
Suzanne Norman on "the future of email:"
How is social media impacting email?
With social media, there's a new inbox. It's not just email anymore. For every social network you join, you'll have private and public messages to check and reply to. That means a couple of things for small businesses sending email.
One, we've all got more information coming at us than ever. For a small business to get their email message to stand out, it's important to have a good grasp of the best practices. That means knowing what your subscribers want from you and how often they want to hear it. It means adding a personal touch to your campaigns so they fit in alongside emails from Aunt Bernice and notifications about yet another weird high school friend who found you on Facebook. And it means offering value to your subscribers, whether it's with your own content, insider information, links to other people's stuff, a discount or a special offer. It's what consumers expect in exchange for giving you their information, not to mention their time and attention.
Second, it's a reminder that small business owners need to know where their subscribers are and join them there. If, in addition to checking email, they're spending time on social networking sites - and 67 percent of folks say it's the number one thing they do online - then it's probably worth pairing your email efforts with a social media strategy.
How can they work in synergy?
I appreciate that question. A lot of the chatter out there tries to pit email against social media in some kind of caged communication channel death match. But I think they're both at their best when they complement each other. And they do, quite nicely. Email supports notifications and alerts that drive me to the, ahem, eight social networks I'm a part of.
I see folks send an email campaign then post a link to it on Twitter to extend its reach. Just as common, I love to see companies who've added links to their Twitter & Facebook pages in their email campaigns. And I frequently see folks tweeting a link to their email signup page, asking people to go beyond the casual 140-character level commitment and get to know their message and their brand at a whole new level.
It's also important to remember that each channel has its unique strengths. Social networks help keep your messages personal, timely, short, and very sharable. Email gives you a chance to pair those messages with particular segments of your audience and gives you plenty of visual real estate to show off great design and branding.
How will I use email 1 year from now? 3 years? 5?
Email's tremendously influential, and it'll continue to be 1, 3, and 5 years from now. Whether I'm asking as a friend, colleague or marketer, I can ask for your email address knowing it's overwhelmingly like you'll have one. Habeas put out some numbers last year showing that 67 percent of folks prefer email as a communications channel over other online vehicles. And 65 percent believe it'll be that way in five years. So that's what the numbers are telling us about the general perception.
And I think the inbox is and will continue to be a place where consumers are expecting and liking promotional and marketing messages. There are some fantastic numbers from Epsilon and ROI Research showing that 84 percent of customers like getting email from companies they registered with, and half of them saved messages for review later.
As an industry, where is email/email marketing in its life cycle (introduction, growth, maturity, decline)?
You know, it depends on who you ask. We talk to plenty of small business owners who either haven't tried or aren't familiar with email marketing, so for some, there's a tremendous amount of introduction still to be made.
In terms of growth, here's a nice statistic from Datran Media. They surveyed marketing executives, and email led the list of channels they're expected to increase their spending on in 2009, with nearly 60 percent budgeting more for email.
In another sense, I think there's a lot of growth happening around a renewed sense of best practices among email marketers out there. They're understanding that their audiences are more media savvy these days, that they have more sources for information than ever. So they're forgoing the tired old "batch and blast" approach. They're starting to segment their big list and craft different messages to different groups. They're adding more personalized information, and they're doing it with a personal touch. And they're testing different versions of subject lines, creative and content to see what their subscribers respond to. It's an encouraging trend for email as a whole.
Without those smarter tactics, consumers will get tired of the same companies sending the same discounts over and over again, and email will lose a bit of its effectiveness. I'd encourage small businesses to invest in the strategy and tools that make a more refined approach to email.
Conclusion
The world of "shotgun" emails is for yesterday. Use a rifle with a scope. Target. Ready, aim, then fire. Skip or rush either of those first two steps and negate the effectiveness of the third.
Time and money are limited commodities. Do not throw a dart and hope a tactic works. Set goals, form a strategy, resesarch what tactics work with each other to yield the best results within that strategy, and move toward implementation. If you're trying to decide between social media or email, shift that thinking to how you might use both to make the whole of your campaign greater than the sum of its parts.
Earlier this week I shared a Media Post article (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=105012#comments) called, Social Vs. Email: It's The Wrong Debate. This morning I read an article in my local community newspaper about business and social media that contained a tongue-in-cheek assertion that, "email is for old people. (http://coloradocommunitynewspapers.com/articles/2009/04/28/littleton_independent/news/30_hc_biz_tweet_li_ce.txt) ."
I'm a "synergy" guy. I recently sat with a client listening to an advertising proposal from a big radio outfit that included integrated use of air time and Internet. Walking away from the meeting, I was asked if the proposal had merit. It did. These guys were good. "If I could only afford one component," asked my customer, "which one should it be?" None. Your tactics should take each other into account, build on each other and mutually reinforce a consistent branding theme as part of an overarching strategy built to achieve specific goals. The National Football League just held its annual college draft. It's easy to tell who's better at it. Teams who draft a running back because its a sexy pick and one is available lose ground to competitors who target a speedy outside linebacker at a value-commensurate point in the process because they're converting from a 4-3 defense to a 3-4.
So, when small business owners start asking themselves about whether to make the financial investment in an email campaign or the time investment in social media, they're already heading down the wrong path.
Expert Analysis
Still, the question about the future of email is valid. For a perspective I haven't encountered on blogs, microblogs, Google alerts, etc., I interviewed Suzanne Norman, Director of Community Relations for Emma (http://www.myemma.com/). Emma is "an email marketing and communications service that's taken a unique approach to web-based software."
Swift Kick is not sponsored but believes in promoting its contributors. Emma on Emma:
We think it should be easy to use (goodbye, cluttered interface). It should be made for you (farewell, generic templates). And it should even be fun (see ya around, support phone queue). It's all about email marketing in style, and it's why 20,000 small and midsize businesses, non-profits and agencies have chosen Emma to power their email newsletters and campaigns.
Suzanne Norman on "the future of email:"
How is social media impacting email?
With social media, there's a new inbox. It's not just email anymore. For every social network you join, you'll have private and public messages to check and reply to. That means a couple of things for small businesses sending email.
One, we've all got more information coming at us than ever. For a small business to get their email message to stand out, it's important to have a good grasp of the best practices. That means knowing what your subscribers want from you and how often they want to hear it. It means adding a personal touch to your campaigns so they fit in alongside emails from Aunt Bernice and notifications about yet another weird high school friend who found you on Facebook. And it means offering value to your subscribers, whether it's with your own content, insider information, links to other people's stuff, a discount or a special offer. It's what consumers expect in exchange for giving you their information, not to mention their time and attention.
Second, it's a reminder that small business owners need to know where their subscribers are and join them there. If, in addition to checking email, they're spending time on social networking sites - and 67 percent of folks say it's the number one thing they do online - then it's probably worth pairing your email efforts with a social media strategy.
How can they work in synergy?
I appreciate that question. A lot of the chatter out there tries to pit email against social media in some kind of caged communication channel death match. But I think they're both at their best when they complement each other. And they do, quite nicely. Email supports notifications and alerts that drive me to the, ahem, eight social networks I'm a part of.
I see folks send an email campaign then post a link to it on Twitter to extend its reach. Just as common, I love to see companies who've added links to their Twitter & Facebook pages in their email campaigns. And I frequently see folks tweeting a link to their email signup page, asking people to go beyond the casual 140-character level commitment and get to know their message and their brand at a whole new level.
It's also important to remember that each channel has its unique strengths. Social networks help keep your messages personal, timely, short, and very sharable. Email gives you a chance to pair those messages with particular segments of your audience and gives you plenty of visual real estate to show off great design and branding.
How will I use email 1 year from now? 3 years? 5?
Email's tremendously influential, and it'll continue to be 1, 3, and 5 years from now. Whether I'm asking as a friend, colleague or marketer, I can ask for your email address knowing it's overwhelmingly like you'll have one. Habeas put out some numbers last year showing that 67 percent of folks prefer email as a communications channel over other online vehicles. And 65 percent believe it'll be that way in five years. So that's what the numbers are telling us about the general perception.
And I think the inbox is and will continue to be a place where consumers are expecting and liking promotional and marketing messages. There are some fantastic numbers from Epsilon and ROI Research showing that 84 percent of customers like getting email from companies they registered with, and half of them saved messages for review later.
As an industry, where is email/email marketing in its life cycle (introduction, growth, maturity, decline)?
You know, it depends on who you ask. We talk to plenty of small business owners who either haven't tried or aren't familiar with email marketing, so for some, there's a tremendous amount of introduction still to be made.
In terms of growth, here's a nice statistic from Datran Media. They surveyed marketing executives, and email led the list of channels they're expected to increase their spending on in 2009, with nearly 60 percent budgeting more for email.
In another sense, I think there's a lot of growth happening around a renewed sense of best practices among email marketers out there. They're understanding that their audiences are more media savvy these days, that they have more sources for information than ever. So they're forgoing the tired old "batch and blast" approach. They're starting to segment their big list and craft different messages to different groups. They're adding more personalized information, and they're doing it with a personal touch. And they're testing different versions of subject lines, creative and content to see what their subscribers respond to. It's an encouraging trend for email as a whole.
Without those smarter tactics, consumers will get tired of the same companies sending the same discounts over and over again, and email will lose a bit of its effectiveness. I'd encourage small businesses to invest in the strategy and tools that make a more refined approach to email.
Conclusion
The world of "shotgun" emails is for yesterday. Use a rifle with a scope. Target. Ready, aim, then fire. Skip or rush either of those first two steps and negate the effectiveness of the third.
Time and money are limited commodities. Do not throw a dart and hope a tactic works. Set goals, form a strategy, resesarch what tactics work with each other to yield the best results within that strategy, and move toward implementation. If you're trying to decide between social media or email, shift that thinking to how you might use both to make the whole of your campaign greater than the sum of its parts.
Special thanks to Suzanne Norman and Gina LaMar of Emma for their assistance and contributions to this article.
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