February 27, 2008
On Marketers...And Dinosaurs
I was driving into work this AM listening to WCBS radio in NY (I know... how retro. ;-) There was a story about the number of e-mails that a typical businessperson receives in a day. The point of the story was that if you spent even a nominal amount of time processing each e-mail, it would take about 2 ½ hours a day just to process e-mail.
That got me thinking about the changes in marketing that are on the horizon. The boomer generation of marketers was raised on the philosophy that if you need more awareness, more orders, or more action, simply push out more marketing. We manage daily communications similarly — pushing information (e.g. "e-mail") to colleagues and blithely copying large blocks of people.
The Gen Y/Millennial cohort now entering the workforce has been raised differently. They eschew e-mail in favor of self-service, permission-driven social networks. They tune out irrelevant marketing. They tell manufacturers how to market instead of passively absorbing what the company chooses to spit out. They collaborate with peers. Welcome to new world of communications.
The implications of this psychology and behavioral change are immense. My company lives in the B2B world and we see the growing need for a whole new way for companies to interact. Dealers don't have time to read all the "noise" they receive from the manufacturers they represent. Salespeople can't spend 10 hours a week in training to learn increasingly arcane product features. In short, the philosophy of B2B communications must change in the same ways that B2C communications have already begun to change. But marketers have never been known as the most adaptive of species, and this change does not come easy for most companies.
My advice? The next time you prepare to send an e-mail, or approve that new mailer or ad, think hard about the changes happening around you. Do your actions account for new media, new strategies and new organizational behavior? Change happens by slowly modifying behavior on the thousands of small decisions you make daily, not just the big, high-profile ones.
Of course, you could just continue "business as usual" ... and reserve your place in the same hall as T-Rex.
Posted by jcioban at 9:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 29, 2007
Registration Forms and Opt-In Practices
Check out this Get Elastic blog posting "Registration Usability - 87 Registration Forms Tested" containing interesting data on the registration and opt-in practices of 87 e-commerce Web sites.
My favorite factoid was that only 14% of sites actually listed the benefits of registration. Increasingly e-mail weary readers are overwhelmingly suspect of any registration process, and to ask people to register without clearly telling them what's in it for them is silly. In addition, the reasons have to be clear and believable. As suggested in the blog, bullet points that are easy and fast to read are highly preferable to long copy blocks.
Nice posting.
Posted by jcioban at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 8, 2007
Personalized Contact Redux
I read a funny sidebar in CRN (formerly Computer Reseller News) about recruiting developers in the Web 2.0 bubble. Why funny? A creative recruiting e-mail went to David Heinemeier Hansson, a partner in the software company 37 Signals and the creator of the Ruby on Rails Web development framework. The e-mail offered a development opportunity with the note "It looks like you have an interest in this news and exciting framework." Duh.
Of course, it is also a sad commentary on how badly and frequently misused e-mail marketing is. Given the continuing growth in the e-mail marketing backlash, sending these type of messages feeds into the hands of the growing legions of people screaming for a "Do Not E-Mail" registry.
E-Mail can be a powerful communications medium, but only if we as marketers do not kill it before its value can be matured.
Posted by jcioban at 1:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 6, 2007
E-Mail Marketing: Coming Of Age??
I read about the latest Forrester report on e-mail marketing, "Email Marketing Comes of Age" in DMNews Online and was pleasantly surprised by some of the data: click-through rates remain steady (since 2003) at around 5%; e-mail readers spend over 138% more on products they see advertised in e-mail than their non-e-mail marketing counterparts.
However, the line I keyed on was from Shar VanBoskirk, the Forrester analyst who authored the report, "The responsibility of marketers today is to think strategically about how to incorporate e-mail into an overall marketing program and how to reap the benefits of a good e-mail program." Why?
E-Mail marketing is unlike other media because low cost is quickly leading to heavier and heavier use. Diana Dilworth in DMNews noted that the Forester report identified that 94% of its surveyed marketers are using e-mail marketing. While that number is obviously skewed by their sample set, (I know lots of small business who are not doing "e-mail marketing" in any classical use of the term) it is fair to say that the medium is getting a lot of attention. And as I noted, that worries me. Volume in e-mail is hard to "ignore" so it is unlike advertising...and unlike direct mail, it's low cost makes it easy to do regularly.
Which leads to my thought that the greatest threat to e-mail over time remains misuse by larger marketers (I have gotten 7-8 Gevalia e-mails in the last month) and plain old use by small businesses, non-profits and other organizations. As noted in a previous post, with over 24 million small businesses in the US, if each sent you one e-mail per year, you would receive an average of 652 e-mails every day. Overuse will not only force a restructuring of the medium, but it will also create weary consumers who begin to tune out the medium. And THAT, as advertisers everywhere are already experiencing with traditional media, is a REAL threat.
So, what to make of MarketingProfs blog author Roy Young's posting titled "The Biggest Threat To Email Marketing..." in which he identified the threat as "the failure of marketers to "market" email as a communications vehicle to senior management." I know lots of CEO's who will take the raw numbers and encourage increased use (reactive management at its best.) But, the answer is not in MORE e-mail, but in BETTER e-mail. That may be implied in Roy's post, but it was worth emphasizing.
Posted by jcioban at 5:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 10, 2007
E-Mail...A Nuclear Winter Looming??
In the January issue of Direct Magazine, an article by Richard Levy titled "Watch Out for the Little Guys" noted that small and mid-tier companies--those with annual revenue in the half-million to million-dollar range--are pouring more money into database marketing, especially e-mail. The article quoted results from an Alterian best-practices study that indicated 85% of respondents planned to increase their online direct marketing budget in 2007, with 82% of respondents indicating an increase in e-mail marketing.
That got me thinking about a quote from John Mozena, the co-founder of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail that I read Technology Review in 2004. In the article John stated,
"Our concern is not so much for the porn and the herbal Viagra as it is for legitimate businesses. There are 24 million small businesses in the U.S. If just 1 percent got your e-mail address and sent you one message per year, you’d have 657 additional messages in your in-box every day. That is our nuclear winter scenario.”
He's right. As I have noted in talks and verious postings, e-mail in its current form is relatively easy and fast to blast to an audience, making it unbelievably attractive to smaller businesses and organizations. However, if we fail to apply good practice and respect the individual recipients, we threaten to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. I liken the state of e-mail marketing to global warming...a disaster looming, but marketers everywhere want to "say it ain't so, Joe." An Inbox is not infinitely expandable, and increasingly frustrated e-mail readers are eventually going to demand a "mandated whiltelist" approach or some fees to reduce the burden of junk.
Seth Godin and others have spoken of the value and importance of "Permission Marketing" which remains the key to ensuring that e-mail remains unregulated and affordable. Remember the next time you plan an e-mail program.
Posted by jcioban at 4:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2006
Enemy At The Gates
In the Septermber/October 2006 issue of Office Dealer, a publication dedicated to sales in the office products industry, there is an article titled "Permission Marketing." (Unfortunately, it was not available at the time this posting was written...) In the article, the author profiles some dealers who rant and rave about manufacturers executing "permission marketing programs" (read...e-mail marketing).
It is a sad article, for two reasons.
One, it shows that even the biggest of the big (in this case HP) can strugggle executing direct marketing programs that don't alienate their independent distribution partners. In the case of e-mail, where exotic merge technologies make it straightforward to create programs that can drive the HP brand while still providing support for the channel, this really doesn't need to happen. But, there is a blend of hubris and business necessity at work. You cannot blame manufacturers who try to enhance brand loyalty at the expense of channel building. Thus, the hubris of simply ignoring the channel. The business necessity? That comes from the need to keep growing the company at all costs. Of course, therein lies the conundrum — how can you ask for channel loyalty while simultaneously undermining the channel's apparent value. Channel distrust remains a major hurdle in many industries.
At the same time, it is sad to see any dealer publically railing on this topic. Dealers need to spend less energy complaining about direct communications touches and more time figuring our how to build their value proposition or enhance their own communications programs. Getting e-mails delivered and read is increasingly complex. As a result, the organizations closest to the customer (those with facetime to back up their electronic touches) remain in the best position to be successful. Mr. Dealer, your customer intimacy is the key to defending your turf. Don't wait for HP or anyone else to erode your value...build it up so that HP's e-mails become irrelevant. I know that is easier said than done, but to be blunt --- there is no alternative.
Posted by jcioban at 12:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 25, 2006
How Bad Do I Want To Be A Preppy?
(Is she smiling because she likes getting 5 e-mails in two weeks...or could it be she really likes the ruffles on the shirt???)
Quoted in inMarketing, the magazine of the DMA, Seth Godin said, "There's more spam, more clutter and more noise than I predicted, making it easier than ever for the consumer to ignore you." That said, between August 14 and August 25, I received 5 e-mails from J. Crew with a variety of promotions. I could be a cynic and say they just don't get it, or I could say that their rigorous testing proved that twice a week was the right frequency to drive consumers to action. Either way, their volume does show how tricky it is getting to become "accepted" on someone's list of preferred e-mails. Assume you can effectively process about 300 e-mails a week (high for some people, low for others....) that means J Crew has taken up 1.7% of your total e-mail volume alone. Given all the people who want to use e-mail, it is easy to see how we will be jockeying for prime positions in consumers' inboxes.
Posted by jcioban at 6:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
