7 mistakes to avoid at the email and social front line
Latest posts | By Mark Brownlow | 14 Comments | Licence this content
My son has finally become my technological superior.
He is 10. (I’m proud I held out so long.)
This great life-changing experience (involving a new smartphone and my inability to use it*) caused me to sit and reflect on my inadequacy in other fields of digital life, notably online marketing.
Here are seven mistakes I and many others have made, which I pass on in the hope you can stay ahead of the next generation longer than me.
1. Don’t be seduced by high-profile stars
You look at a social media guru’s stream of Twitter messages and think, “Holy retweet Batman, I gotta get tweeting.”
You look at big brand’s busy Facebook page and think, “Holy page update Batman, I gotta get on this Facebook thing.”
You look at the creative emails from your favorite apparel retailer and think, “Holy open rates Batman, I gotta do more email promotions.”
Not necessarily.
The profile and (apparent) success of various channel stars has a seductive pull. But none of them share your business model, goals, skills, resources or audience.
We shouldn’t seek to emulate these stars simply because they are there. Instead, we should look to them for inspiration where the channel they work in and the tactics they use also fit our situation.
2. Don’t be seduced by channel hype
As a dedicated digital hypochondriac, each day I wake with the thought “what new development will kill my business model today?”
A healthy awareness of the competitive environment is good. But panic isn’t.
Marketing headlines can leave you thinking your lack of an integrated multichannel marketing system or star status on Facebook will be the death of your business.
But it’s not like that.
There’s pressure to do certain things in online marketing. But a lot of that pressure comes from:
- Journalists interested in a hot story (not in helping your business)
- Vendors interested in selling (not in helping your business)
- Experts interested in self-vindication and self-promotion (not in helping your business)
Don’t ignore them, because the same sources also have a great deal to offer. But take the headlines and ask “does this make sense for me and my market?”
In many cases, “Does this make sense?” is all you need to ask.
The value of each channel to you and/or your organization guides you on where you focus efforts and how much you invest in acquisition and messaging. Among the things to consider are how different channels differ in terms of:
- Acquisition costs
- Suitability for relationship building
- Suitability for customer dialogue/service
- Suitability for driving responses through that channel and others
- Availability of actionable analytics and subscriber data
- Message costs and reach
- Risk
None of that is easy to assess and compare, but a simple awareness of channel differences is an important start. They are not different ways to reach the same end, but different ways to reach various ends.
The last point in the list – risk – is often ignored online and can be reformulated as “Who owns the channel?”
Email, for example, is an intrinsic part of the Internet itself. It’s near ubiquitous, built into the very infrastructure of the online world.
Nobody “owns” email.
Your email list and website are, broadly speaking, hostage to nobody (email delivery issues notwithstanding). Nor are either likely to disappear.
Other channels, particularly new social ones, are not so fortunate.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. are all private entities. You have a presence there at the discretion of the owners. If any of them “dies”, your relationships there die with them. And you are hostage to the beneficence of these owners.
There is no suggestion that any of these locations intends exploiting their position of power “unfairly” or is likely to disappear anytime soon. But the risk is there.
3. Don’t be seduced by feel-good metrics
The early hunter, crossing the plain with spear in hand, probably focused on the small deer in front of him rather than the herd of mammoths hiding in the wood.
Which might explain why we focus on the numbers right in front of us, rather than the bigger numbers hiding in the spreadsheets.
Likes on Facebook! Followers on Twitter! Open rates on emails!
We know our business goals. We know what metrics really matter. And still we fuss and obsess over the ones that don’t matter quite as much.
And this despite every article on measuring success telling us not to focus on these feel-good metrics. If you’re building a house, you’re goal isn’t “to reach 25,000 bricks”, but that’s how we behave.
I have no solution, but two suggestions:
1. The perceived importance of a metric is often proportional to how easy it is to find it.
If you know the metrics you should be paying most attention to, then set up a reporting system, spreadsheet, whatever to make getting those numbers as easy as possible. There are, for example, basic ROI calculators out there (example).
If email marketing campaign reports started off with profit and revenue numbers and buried open rates on page 17, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
2. If you can’t kick the feel-good metrics habit, then take the trouble to understand what they truly measure and how that relates to your end goals. Then at least you have a good chance of drawing out the right insights from your analysis.
4. Don’t be seduced by terminology
Email senders have readers. Except most of them don’t read your emails.
Twitter folk have followers, a word that is totally out of proportion to the tenuous link that joins the follower to the followed.
Even Facebook’s “like” is disingenuous, as those keen to disparage a page owner will “like” them in order to gain posting privileges.
Most “followers”, “friends” and “readers” offer their allegiance only for as long as you offer them value through your updates, posts and other messages.
If you tip the value exchange too much in your favor, then their loyalty will be exposed for the delicate thing it is.
Actions speak louder than words: don’t let the word describing a relationship lead you to overestimate the actual strength of that relationship.
And don’t forget that this relationship varies within each channel too.
For example, how many of your Twitter followers are following thousands in a never-ending dance to the tune of “I’ll follow you if you follow me”? Good luck getting any attention there.
Or do you have a segment of followers adding you to their Twitter lists to better access your words of wisdom? In such cases, the word follower has real meaning.
5. Don’t worry about what you get back from the time and money invested in a channel
When we analyse results, we tend to make two errors.
The first is analysis in isolation. Did the time I spent on Twitter produce enough positive outcomes to justify the effort?
That question is incomplete.
It’s not (just) about whether the Twitter response justifies the time on Twitter, but whether the Twitter response justifies not spending that time elsewhere.
It’s not enough to get a positive ROI. It has to be better than the alternatives. An obvious concept that’s often forgotten in the rush to justify a personal channel preference.
Email experts will, rightly, tell you that investment (of time or technology) in segmentation will boost end results. If you analyse in isolation, you jump into segmentation. And you get a good return for your new investment.
But the right approach is to ask if the money or time invested in segmentation might be better used elsewhere for an even bigger response.
The promotional value I get through Twitter justifies the time I spend there. It does not, however, adequately compensate for the time lost to other activities. I’d be better off writing more content, for example.
If I was a rational human being (or had a boss), I’d spend less time on Twitter.
The second error is also analysis in isolation. Channel results are typically limited to those observable through the channel itself. So email responses are measured as opens, clicks on links in emails, and conversions that follow a click (like a sale or download).
That’s fine, but the next level is to find ways of measuring responses to email that come through other channels. When you send an email out, does it get people to, for example:
- Go to Google and search for your brand/products/services?
- Visit your real-world store?
- Type in your website URL directly?
There are many responses we don’t capture, but which impact the value of that channel to your overall results.
The only way to be sure of a channel’s true worth (and thus to make the right investment and tactical decisions) is to follow Kevin Hillstrom’s advice on holdout tests.
6. Avoid “the weight watcher’s butter” syndrome
Don’t spread yourself too thin.
For many organizations, you can find justification to be active in numerous channels. Even if it’s just an obligation to appear “cutting edge”.
But the net is filled with Facebook pages, blogs, Twitter accounts and email newsletters that started strong and faded quickly. Is it better to have no presence at all than a crappy one?
Is it not better to start small and grow than start big and shrink? The latter builds expectations and fails to meet them, the latter builds expectations and exceeds them.
If you have to be present everywhere, but can’t be everywhere, then design this presence so it:
1. Still offers something meaningful there (however small)
2. Has minimal maintenance requirements
7. Don’t listen to me
Finally, as I’ve written before:
“Are you implementing new tactics because some Englishman in Austria with a blog said they worked, because they make intrinsic sense for your audience and model, or because you tested the ideas and found them beneficial?”
Any other lessons you’d care to add?
*…but note I am still way better than him at Angry Birds.
Find related articles:
Get posts like this: RSS feed | via email | via Twitter | via G+
You can follow any comments on this blog post through the RSS 2.0 feed.
14 comments on “7 mistakes to avoid at the email and social front line”
Another excellent and thought provoking post Mark – wait until your son reaches 15 and you’ll remember fondly when you were better than him at anything “electronic”.
I think it also worthy of note to ensure the content used in digital communications is and can be adequately adapted or re-purposed for each additional channel. (RSS is not enough.)
And to recognise the relative importance each person will attach to their relationship with your brand or organisation through each channel.
I feel this diminishes from email, to Social Networks, to Twitter – conversely as content richness decreases and people then add their own comments or spin.
I agree no one owns email – but feel people like to own their own inboxes and I feel this sense of exclusive ownership is heightened on mobile (phone) devices.
Some great points Robin, worthy of dedicating another post to.
I find it interesting that email marketers worry about inbox clutter, but clutter is a far greater challenge on, say, Twitter.
A related point is definitely the value a subscriber has depending on how she can be reached. The same individual is presumably worth more in those channels she’s paying closer attention to and where’s there’s less competition for attention.
I don’t see much discussion about all this, which is a shame.
I too would welcome more discussion on these points – especially with the massive increase in the numbers of Social Media Experts/Ninjas/Jedi.
It might be said that the majority of inbox clutter can be attributed to alerts from social and business networks and Twitter updates are another digital distraction bundled under but not actually (IMO) “inbox” clutter. But a significant distraction it is – and seemingly more so those seduced by the high profile stars.
I have found the value is often quite difficult to determine and depends on the attractiveness of the channel to the person as well as the cost and complexity or servicing the requirements of effective communication through that channel to the organisation.
But if it was easy….. anyone could do it!
Social is not a fast growth for business. Social is about building relationships and that takes time. Sincerity, passion and commitment to those relationships will lead to success.
At some point we forgot about relationships being personal and we comoditized them and that was a disaster.
If you’ve got it in yourself to thrive socialy and make those connections and service those relationships honestly, you will succeed. If you don’t hire someone who has those qualities. Social marketing is so much more about the person than it is the brand.
jim
I was intrigued by that last comment by Jim which I guess harks back to another recent post by Mark reference how email marketing is affected by Social Media, which intrinsically has personality and so is personal. I deal with clients whose emails are being progressively stripped of personality in favourite of the corporate ‘hard sell’ and could be an additional reason why open rates etc are falling. Enhancing the brand is important for all forms of marketing but email recipients are not stupid. Jim is right building social relationships does take time perhaps email marketers have to inject personality back into their offerings, tease and tickle a while and be patient…
Great comment Jim. Like Michael, I find your last paragraph especially relevant.
It takes certain skills and characteristics to make social work. Skills that, for example, you have at the Email Guide, but others (like me) have less of.
Like any serious discipline, organizations need to have those skills in-house, train those skills or get in outside help. I think too many folk look at places like Twitter (and email) and think “how hard can that be?” Harder than they might think…
And to echo Michael’s excellent point: all things being equal, communications will tend toward corporate blandness. You have to keep fighting the pull of mediocrity.
And to bring the two points together: you can go a long way with personality and social as a tactic or strategic decision. But the real winners are those where the values behind “personality” and “building (social) relationships” are internalised…where it’s not just a tactic or strategy but a way of thinking, a belief.
And now I’m already writing another blog post, so I’ll stop.
As per your tweet Mark, very thought provoking!
As you said on email radio, email is not ’shexzy’ and subsequently left with the corporate robotic approach where getting the ‘blast’ out is more important than the recipient experience and the digital rapport your brand may or may not have built with a prospect or customer.
Every person who writes an email, to one or many people can know who that person came to ask for it – if indeed they did. Subsequently the rapport is there and recipients should be addresses as such.
I personally believe that much of the problem is the purse strings looking for new revenue from every marketing event, ignoring the long tail and thus ruining or at least disrespecting any relationship they had or could have.
Agree Andy, and I think the recent recession is partly to blame, because it reinforced a culture of short-termism, where surviving to the end of the month means success.
I notice a lot of your advice starts “Don’t be seduced…” which I think is very telling. There’s a perceived pressure to join in these channels, because *everyone else is doing it* (pressure which is deliberately promoted by the channels themselves of course, because they want maximium market share).
I think often the main driver for marketers to start Tweeting and Facebooking etc. is fear- the fear of being left behind, fear of getting overtaken by your competitors, a fear of failure which is aggravated by the recession as you say.
I find myself increasingly reminded of the craze a few years ago to market in Second Life. Arguably it worked for some brands who knew what they were doing, but in the main it was a clumsy expensive failure. Here’s an article from 2 years ago that I think still holds true, suggesting that half of social media campaigns fail;
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10058509-36.html
Great points Benedict. I use the word seduced often and deliberately for the very reasons you outline. I think the fear factor is important, too. People aren’t going to get criticized for doing what everyone else appears to be doing, so they do it…
Ah-ha! We seem to have arrived at the herd mentality – anyone who has read the excellent DotCon may recall where that led us – and the cycle will almost certainly repeat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJCzyAP6els
There is to me a clear distinction here in that Social Networks are for Social Purposes and not for business.
If an organisation can distribute good “shiny” content to an audience that is easily re-purposed across channels and each recipient chooses to spread it to their own Social Networks – that is great.
Yep, Robin. In a way it’s not rocket science. If you don’t want people complaining about how crap you are, then don’t be crap. If you want people to talk about how great you are, then be great. I’m being facetious, but there is a truth in there. And I’ve always believed that great content takes care of a lot of marketing problems.
Very thought-provoking post. I often struggle with the nagging thought that I should be spending more time Social Networking when I am actually doing goal oriented work that is more effective. I have found that sometimes less is more when making time for tweeting or posting to Facebook or LinkedIn; a few quality posts is far better than many trivial ones.
I have the same struggle that you articulate so perfectly Bob. The rational part of the brain tells me to do less, but the social tug is strong!