Eggblogg

Permission email marketing: permissible, or not?

Hands up if you like receiving unsolicited email on subjects that don't interest you!

No? Ok then....what about unsolicited email on subjects that do interest you?

I see a couple of hands going up there. So what's the problem, the rest of you?

Ah, I get it - it's the unsolicited bit that's annoying. Stuff you haven't asked for, clogging up your inbox, even if you are tempted by the subject line.

Yup - there's no denying that spam (bulk, unsolicited, commercial email) is truly one of the evils of the internet. But permission email, stuff you've genuinely signed up to receive (as opposed to not having seen the little checkbox saying 'no thanks') - that's OK, though, isn't it?

Apparently not always!

I was interested to see this blog post by a company stating that they do not, and will never, send marketing emails to customers, apparently because they hate being on the receiving end themselves, but also because they're 'just quite confident that you don't need to be reminded that we exist.' 

This might well be the case, but it's a tricky decision to make - just because you find any kind of marketing email from a company unacceptable, is it right to assume all your customers feel the same way?

There are all sorts of reasons why a company might not do any email marketing.

I chose to stop sending an email newsletter a while ago, the reason being that I felt my blog and twitter activity combined were enough, and offered more opportunity for two-way conversation. I also acknowledged that the market was crowded and I no longer had the time or the inclination to write the type of content that was needed and send it regularly.

For some businesses, email marketing doesn't deliver enough of a return to justify itself, or it's been supplemented or replaced by something else such as an active Facebook page. Or they just don't have the resources to do it well, or regularly. Or their customers don't use email. These are all reasons to abstain.

But according to the research reports, permission email is still a marketing mainstay delivering a good return on investment. A recent eConsultancy report found evidence that 'more than a third of consumers (36%) say that receiving an email prompts them to make an online purchase'. I have ecommerce clients whose sales peak every time the newsletter goes out. It appears there are plenty who do actually want to receive marketing emails.

People don't necessarily need reminding you exist, but they sometimes appreciate a nudge - and that's especially because of not despite the digital information overload.

And besides all this, it's a classic marketing mistake to assume your customers and prospects are just like you. The only way to find out is to ask them, give them the choice - which is what permission or opt in email is about.

If they say yes but then change their mind, or don't like what you send, they can just hit 'unsubscribe', and if the marketer has done his job right, the unsub will take effect immediately. The company then knows it's communicating with customers in a way that suits them, not the company.

What do you think? Is there too much commercial email, even the permission-based stuff? Do you subscribe to company emails, and if so, which ones? It would be great to find out which companies are doing it right, from the point of the view of the recipients. Or perhaps that's another post.

Photoshop, fakes and the fear of technology

How do you feel about X-Factor competitors using Autotune to disguise their poor singing skills? Or celebrities having their figures or complexions adjusted in Photoshop prior to publication? 

If we are to believe the flurry of indignant news items in recent months, we 'the public' are being misled, and we don't like it. The message seems to be: it is very important to be genuine, because if you pretend to be something you're not, you are at best a cheat and a fake and at worst a damaging influence.

In other words, when we turn to the media we expect to be entertained and presented with aspirational people, but they must be real. To recall a computer term, WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) seems to be the order of the day.

And all this in parallel with the fledging of social media -  could there be a connection? After all, aren't we continually being reminded of the importance of authenticity? Do we not only admire, but expect more transparency, more authenticity from people in the public eye? Facebook is all about real names and real people - it's quite different to the MUDs and online communities which were the first online networks 15 or so years ago. On the other hand, Twitter is awash with fakes, many of them more entertaining that the real thing. There are sites dedicated to creating fake personas and the sad truth still holds that on the internet, no-one knows you're a dog.

There's another possible explanation though - the media's love of tech-horror stories. After all, nobody on the X-Factor gets accused of being fake for wearing shedloads of makeup or having hair extensions, and adverts for fake eyelashes are all over the TV.

Perhaps that's a different sort of fake because it's got nothing to do with technology, and technology is the real fear - today Photoshop, tomorrow human cloning.

Photo credit: ellf.ru

Does social media drive sales, or not?

Earlier this month New Media Age reported on a piece of research claiming that only a small percentage of people buy based on social recommendations - 5.1% in this particular study - as opposed to email (9%).

According to another recent study, 71% of visitors coming to a site via social media actually completed a transaction, as opposed to 7% of all visitors in total ('Social media helps drive purchases').

You've probably seen other pieces of apparently conflicting research such as these. I'm often asked for the short answer. Never mind the marketing fluffery, does social media drive sales or not?

Of course, it's not easy to interpret stats without going through the source data and research methodology in fine detail. But it's tempting to give more weight to data that's based on analytics rather than reliant on questionnaires and self-reporting. How often have you been asked, when ordering something online or on the phone, 'how did you hear about us?' And how often have you been able to answer accurately? If only people were as reliable as computers! (Erm, that's a joke. Sort of.)

One way to think about the role of social media in purchase decisions is to imagine what marketers sometimes refer to as the sales funnel. In the days of 20th century marketing, we were told that people were to be pushed through an imaginary funnel, through stages of awareness, interest, desire and action ('AIDA') - action being the point of purchase. The model was tinkered with over the years, but it now looks quite different. Here's Dave Evans's take on it - the 'Social Feedback Cycle' taken from his book Social Media Marketing, an Hour a Day:

 Rather than marketing coming to an end at the point of purchase, it continues long after - and is carried out not under the control of the marketers but rather their customers.

In the days of one-way, broadcast marketing, 'after sales' service was generally considered to be unrelated to the sales process. The legacy of this can still be seen at companies where the sales phone number is free to call and answered promptly, but once you're a customer you have to call a premium 0870 number then wait in a long queue.

Social media affects our attitudes and opinions long before we reach the purchase stage, often before we even need or want whatever it is someone's selling. So trying to draw a direct correlation between what gets said or shared in social networks and actual transactions is far from easy.

But for as long as people want straight, simple answers, you can be sure plenty of folks will keep trying to provide them.

Fears about privacy and social media shouldn't hold us back

How much of yourself are you prepared to reveal on the internet? Does the idea of having your movements tracked by GPS and broadcast on the web, even if only to a handful of 'friends', make you a little anxious? Now a personal question - when were you born...?

Privacy issues are always in the news - there was the great Facebook revolt back in May over members' details being made freely available to advertisers, and recently Foursquare came under attack for having default settings that inadvertently made it an ideal tool for stalkers.

Last week I was introducing social media to a group of students looking to set up their own businesses. When it came to discussing privacy, there was a noticeable difference of opinion between those who felt comfortable with the idea of mixing business and personal, and with exposing themselves or their business to criticism or scrutiny by strangers, and those who did not. On the whole, those under 30 were more accepting of the idea than those over 50.

I usually get shot down for saying this but I've found time and again that there is a correlation between attitudes to internet privacy and age. It's got nothing to do with ability or aptitude for new technology. God knows I'd be shooting myself in the foot if I thought that. But I believe it has everything to do with the experiences of people under 25 due to the style of their education, their familiarity from a young age with computers, the internet and mobile phones and their predilection for sharing and accessing stuff electronically.

There is a real and understandable fear in many people when it comes to privacy and the internet, particularly those (like me) whose formative years were long before the coming of the web. It's not helped by the mass media and their endless reports of stalking, grooming, phishing, identity theft and so forth. The unfamiliar is often frightening, and newspapers aren't interested in pointing out that using the internet is probably a lot safer than getting in a car.

When I'm asked about this, what I tend to say is:

• you must decide on your boundaries, on what is comfortable for you - it's not the same for everyone

• always check the privacy settings for any application you are using or at any site where you create an account - you can always start with the highest setting, you may decide to relax it once you're more confident, at least you have that choice

• of course, how much you share should always be appropriate to your business and respect the confidentiality of others

• don't do anything on the internet when under the influence of alcohol - sounds flippant, but worth pointing out all the same

• social media isn't going away - things are changing and this is a wonderful time for experimentation and learning, so seize the day and don't let fear hold you back!

Do we need to think smaller?

Interesting opinion column in this week's New Media Age, by Neil Perkin, talking about how best use of the internet comes with thinking small. Unfortunately though we've been programmed by decades of thinking big.

I know what he means - there's a constant pressure to grow numbers, and to use these as measures of effectiveness. Get more website traffic, get more followers, get bigger audiences, email to bigger lists. If Facebook were a country, yada yada. But this is broadcast thinking. Old marketing.

As Perkin says, the web is a great opportunity to actually have personal, individual relationships with relevant prospects and customers where previously we could only serve up mass messages and hope that something would stick. Digital channels allow micro targeting on an impressive scale. Interestingly, I think, people are coming to expect it more and more - and with the blasé expectation of personalised messaging and customised offerings comes an increasing intolerance of mass messaging.

In a way, consumer marketing is becoming closer to business-to-business marketing, where it's so often about highly tailored messages and the development of long term relationships based on mutual trust.

Thinking about the web as a 'web of webs' reminds me of those photo-mosaics where it's possible to dwell on the big picture at the expense of missing the individual elements.

Thinking small, rather than big, is perhaps something we need to cultivate.

Photo from icanhascheezburger.com