Consent
I’d say that the strongest perceived problems come from unsolicited ’junk’ email or spam. Its something that most people have to deal with everyday. The main point here though is the fact that the email was never asked for in the first place, does not apply to an interest area shared by the recipient and usually arrives along with many more similar variations on the same original email.

Marketers should seriously consider the locations where they solicit subscription to the email newsletter, updates or mailing list and the manner within which it is carried out, in the same manner that it applies to any other form of solicited and unsolicited advertising. This is as much important as the contents and design of the email itself. A good place to start is to look for locations where there exists a shared enthusiasm for the product or an inherent need. Its obvious that involvement will be much higher and if the product is in fact worthy, you will generate positive word of mouth.

Emails are Personal
Messaging with emails are quite personal. Its not traditionally (nor desired) to be a public broadcast medium. Usually the recipient will already know the sender. Keep this in mind. Email messaging today easily takes advantage of personalized elements as well as personalized messages written within the template by a friend. Use this. Its extremely powerful. Also draw upon personalized content from previous points of contact with the user, but not content that is private. Be genuine. Be authentic in both communication and manner. This is the fine detail, but its also shows respect towards the user (potential customer). Its a level of transparency that today is expected.

A common misconception is that computers, the internet, and technology will do everything for us. Mailing lists are easy to put together and require little resource to maintain. Yet the fact is that we are lazy. We don’t care that 95% of the recipients will not be engaged. We ignore the fact that many of them will in fact be turned off and that there is a consequence of generating a negative aura around the product. There is no real problem with the mechanism of communication itself but rather the manner that we carry out our communication.

I personally subscribe whole-heartedly to mailers from Sketchers shoes. I love to know whats coming out, when and where promotions are taking place. There is a shared enthusiasm here, but please keep it simple.

Having designed html picture emails for over a year, I know that clients and users alike appreciate emails that are shorter and easy to quickly identify the message.

What is it useful for?
Email is being used for B2B marketing because it is free and relatively easy to maintain. If you take the approach seriously there is a lot to be gained.

What can be tracked?
- the number of recipients (not very helpful)
- the number of recipients who open the email (more helpful)
- the number of recipients who click on embedded links, and what links they are clicking on (useful)
- the number of recipients who send the message on.

Content that can be delivered
- text, image, animation, video, sound, personalized messages
- content can draw on previous points of connection between brand and user, from a website, phone call, survey – basically any database

What should be delivered
- a clear and visually well designed message with a call to action
- content that will add value to the recipient, ask yourself first – “what has the recipient to gain?”
- a legitimate incentive to send the email on to friends. This constitutes positive endorsement through word-of-mouth. Most of the time incentives are marketing gimmicks manipulating the user – “You scratch my back (send the message on), I scratch yours (show you 30 seconds of that new music video)”

How will e-mail evolve as a B2B medium?
Just to point to Yahoo!’s picture email service which is in early beta. Picture emails and ecards will become more common place, so don’t rely on the format alone to make your message stand out. Actually make your message stand out. Think about your content, your added value to the user, and be better targeted and transparent.

Viral
There are clear times for using viral type content – mainly for raising awareness on a grand scale.
Virals are great because the brand or marketing crew don’t have the labour intensive job of pushing the content around to the many places where users will see it (that on the other hand is what happens with say, traditional marketing that is placed outdoor, in magazines, on radio stations etc). True virals that spread all on their own, need only initial seeding, and the viewers do the rest. Whats even better is that these virals (which may be video clips, email chains, slogans etc) cross the boundaries and spread across a diverse landscape of viewing destinations and when they inspire imitation – media types. A viral that starts out on a forum, or in an email or on TV will probably see its way to YouTube or BoreMe, may find its way to video phones and may also be talked about (extended coverage) in print newspaper and on the radio.

But we know that already.

Targeted
There are times where you know where your core audience is, and what you need to say to them, and how to say it. So don’t try and give yourself a hard time and seed something virally. Thats a joke.

Targeted marketing is perfect for quick executions, communicating distinct messages and inspiring a response from the crowd.

And thats not to say that the two types of communication can be used together, which is what we will be doing with Yahoo! Music with an initial viral video before launch, that whets the appetite, sparks an interest and begins to grow awareness of the campaign, followed by another 80% of marketing that will target many distinct groups that make up the Yahoo! Music audience and only includes one more viral element aimed specifically at the Facebook community.

Ben raised a few interesting discussion points -
One of the things that makes a viral so appealing is that it is not seemingly coming from the brand, but from a friend or community right? So, in targeted messaging do you not lose the credibilty that a viral may hold in this instance? Do you envisage using ‘viral targeting’ so that people receive something that is seemingly not from Yahoo!

Yes I know exactly what you mean. But lets be clear that viral and targeted are firstly two different a distinct methods of spreading a message. Viral also refers (as a more umbrella understanding of the word) to the content and tone.

With that said – targeted marketing may also take a form that is more personal (set by tone) and personal (set by reducing branding, and changing the author of the piece). The second may set off alarm bells in being inauthentic and manipulative of the audience’s trust. I would argue that you might do the same when you commission or invite a guest speaker or writer to create something that embodies the truth of what you wish to communicate. I’d also say that lower budgets compromise this by relying on a few talented creatives in an agency to carry out the same work – that is up for consideration.

Either way, I believe that targeted communication can also be personal and unbranded.
An example of this are blogs setup by people in a company where they voice their own insights and opinions that sometimes may be at odds with the company – as Dan Wieden said – ‘hiring people with their own voice and unique perspective’. Microsoft allowed one such controversial employee to keep his blog and his job, and today in a changing world of transparency its become quite common place.

You might then argue that a blog, though personal in tone and usually smaller in scale, is also just another broadcast form and un-targeted. I’d argue that if the blog’s author interacts with the readers through comments and quote referrals, then he is doing a fine job of keeping it personal through action and engaging a more down to earth relationship with his audience. Secondly blogs become a lot more targeted when they embody a strong theme or topic that connects with a specific audience segment – and hopefully that audience is as passionate and enthusiastic. Now thats personal and targeted and worth talking about.

My two cents. I think personal, unbranded and targeted can still work.
What do you think?

The credibility that underlies word-of-mouth and it’s endorsement is nothing new. We’ve all been communicating person to person since the dawn of time. If anything we are returning to our roots, preferring relationships with people, that are meaningful and rewarding to the cold mass automation of the factory mindset.

We can look at numbers endlessly and try to determine where the eye-balls are and what spaces they have left and perhaps, where they might go. But here you are still just estimating and acting in a broadcast manner. That may have been the way offline, but its not utilizing what is most precious and unique online. The web is personalized and on demand. It is person to person services and conversations, and it should reduce barriers and bring people together. If a brand can meet people at this level and utilize technology that is effective and efficient, and a manner that is genuine and authentic – then it is surely potent to explode onto the scene garnering trust and loyalty. In such a way social networks are useful to brands, but there is something more.

The real holy grail of social networks lies in the power of the enthusiasts themselves. They are the ones, usually only making up 1% of the crowd who are the initiators and the influencers. They are the ones who propagate messages on their own time, with their own energy, and spread it out, innovate on it and creates fresh ideas. They can do it because their relationships are credible and authentic and their motives for involvement are situated in an innate core enthusiasm that they share with the brand or product.

I don’t think social recommendation is a ‘new’ social currency, but rather something we’ve always had. What is new today is the unprecedented access to free online tools that make communication, networking and sharing easy enough that anyone can do it who wants to do it. Consumers today usually know more about a brand’s product than most people working within the brand. If they don’t know it, they soon will. And when they do, they’ll share it.

Get in with your core 1%. Do the ground work and use the technology at hand to make people connections, encourage conversation and be honest. Theory behind word-of-mouth marketing, engaging enthusiasms and utilizing the platform of social networks is all meaningless if the brand itself continues to build billboards online and hope that ‘if you build it, they will come’.

~ Gautama Payment

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Originally written for Brand Republic. I am copying the original post by Havlev Pinkerfield below.

Vox pop: Is social recommendation the new advertising currency?
by Hayley Pinkerfield, Revolution UK 01-May-07

Are social networks the best place to push your brand message?

New social networking research commissioned by Microsoft has revealed that 35 per cent of people recommend a brand socially and 25 per cent post a comment about a brand. With over 215 million user accounts globally, there are more personal spaces worldwide than there are people in the UK, France and Germany. This would explain findings from Jupiter that 50 per cent of marketers plan to use social networks to reach consumers this year. Following IAB figures revealing huge increase in online ad spend and AOP stats which showed a decline in interruptive formats, we asked the industry: are social networks the future for online ads?
- MICHAEL STECKLER: EMEA regional advertising sales, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions

Social recommendation is the next iteration of customer segmentation – that’s where it’s going to make the most impact on marketers. It goes beyond identifying groups of people to pass your message on, to individuals who’ll do it.

Some advertisers and sites are doing a good job of engaging consumers. Among those consumers, there is a keenness to engage with more branded content. This is probably because it’s of a higher standard and more relevant. People are interacting with other users, for instance via blogging.

There are huge opportunities for marketers to both advertise and create content in that space. You need to understand why consumers are there and stay sensitive to brand values. Identify brand advocates, they can potentially be very influential. Give them great content and it can become viral.

Although these are positive results, marketers need to be very specific about how they engage through content.
- CHRIS SETH: UK MD, Piczo

It’s another currency in today’s media world – customers, consumers, are dictating that. The terms of media reach and media frequency are something that every brand needs to understand. If your message is not relevant in terms of message and context and specific to social networks, that’s a missed opportunity.

Brands that do it well offer more content with which consumers play and co-create new messaging. Comic Relief invited members to put forward ideas on how to make Red Nose Day the best ever. This put power into the hands of the member base. The right brand presence is relevant, authentic and offers meaningful content to encourage social networkers to co-create a message.
- MARTIN GILL: head of new media, Comic Relief

Social recommendation has always been one of the most powerful tools – if not the most powerful tool – for promoting a product or brand. It builds on the unparallelled trust and confidence embodied within a peer-to-peer interaction. The challenge for an organisation like Comic Relief has been how to stimulate that word of mouth: what do people want to talk about and where are they talking? Now, with people using social network spaces more fully, it is possible to know where people are, so we have worked to be in those spaces too, and to empower our advocates to ’spread the red’ and get involved with us.
- MARK PORTER: client relationship director, Tonic

The economics of reach for the social network marketer are simply awesome, especially when you consider the high production costs of traditional advertising formats. We see it as a matter of content being an agent of the brand, capable of broad consumer engagement, while being adoptable and adaptable. It’s as though the content seeding is only the beginning of an unknown journey, the length of which will be something the consumer decides. All across the online social networking space, page views are rising phenomenally, but the overall user adoption is beginning to plateau. Targeting will prove increasingly difficult. Youth is now older, but silver surfers are adopting younger habits and reinventing themselves. We need to try to find a way to get big ads into small spaces.