survey - Social Email Marketing

SWYN: Why People Do and Don’t Share Email Marketing Content on Social Networks

I recently came across Contactlab’s European E-mail Marketing Consumer Report 2010 and found some very interesting statistics for European email users. It’s a large report at 40 some pages, but a few questions about sharing newsletter content via social networks caught my eye and I wanted to briefly touch on that subject here.

When asked if they had ever shared a newsletter with friends on a social network, the overwhelming response was negative with 73% saying no, they hadn’t. Breaking down 27% who did share by country, Italy had the highest percentage with 41% while the United Kingdom and Germany were at the bottom with 17% and 15% respectively.

When those who did share a newsletter via social were asked why, 59% stated they shared the newsletter content via social because it was interesting. The next most popular reason for sharing was a discount offer which ranked number one among 36%.

Nice to see that at least among the Europeans surveyed here, the main reason to share was because the content of the newsletter was interesting, meaning it was relevant to them. Perhaps even a good discount offer isn’t going to trump relevancy when it comes to sharing something from a newsletter.

What about the reasons for not sharing an email marketing newsletter via social? When asked that question, 59% stated they don’t like distributing promotional messages. Even more intriguing was the second most stated reason for not doing it; not knowing how. Of those surveyed, 17% said they didn’t know how to share content from a newsletter via social. When it was broken down by country, the highest percentage was in the U.K. at 26%, followed by users in Spain and Italy at 22% and 20% respectively. At the other end of the scale, only 5% of Germans reported the same issue.

Obviously we’d all love people to share our content, but are email marketers really encouraging people enough? All you really need to do is ask people to share your newsletter on social just as you would ask them to forward to a friend. Of course, this presupposes that your email marketing newsletters are rich with relevant and engaging content which people would just love to pass along.

It all seems reasonably straight forward here:

Produce newsletter content which is relevant and engaging which makes people look good when they share it with friends.
Ask people to share your content by working the invitation to do so wherever it fits in your newsletter.
Have sharing buttons displayed prominently in your newsletter. Put them at the top, bottom and even after each piece of sharable content.

No matter what you do, there’s no guarantee people will share your newsletter content with friends via social media, but it’s a good bet they won’t if you don’t bother to ask.

The Wedding of the Century: Email Marketing & Social Marketing

Everyone is talking about this week’s big royal wedding, but the hottest romance for marketers is social and email marketing.

Well, to be honest, these are just two of the channels marketers should be romancing with a multi-channel approach.

According to eCricle’s European Social Media and Email Marketing Study:

95% of the people with an email account check their emails at least once a day.
One quarter of email receivers check their emails via a mobile device every day.
Most of the social networkers still use their email account for ecommerce (85%).

The online survey was conducted late last year and had just over 1000 European respondents ranging in age from 14 to 69 years.

As you can see from the numbers above, email is still the one channel which seems to reach just about everyone practically every day. In fact, everyone taking part in the survey (and this will likely come as no surprise) uses email.

Older target groups lean towards email and newsletters as the preferred channel, while the 20-49 demographic are best reached via a combination of email and social media marketing.

The numbers keep supporting the conclusion that multi-channel marketing is a must if you want to reach the widest possible audience. Of course, it’s not just about reach! It’s also about choice. Putting the power of choice in the hands of the consumer and allowing them to decide when and where they want to interact with you is one powerfully positive message!

Email and social networks are actually closely linked. You can’t even register for a social network unless you have an email account. The notion that every new communication channel must kill the previous one is rather myopic. Historically, mass communication channels don’t die, they evolve. It’s certainly true that some traditional channels are in trouble, such as print, but it’s not likely they will simply cease to exist anytime soon. There will certainly be a shake out and those who can’t keep up will die, but a mass extinction any time soon is unlikely.

So email marketing has quite a few years of relevance left and in fact, smartphones are likely to invigorate email as people use email along with social and SMS to stay in touch and keep informed. One word of caution, as more and more people become smartphone users, I suspect they will become less and less tolerant of irrelevant information from marketers via this platform. The smartphone is a very personal device and we would all do well to respect the personal space it occupies.

When the survey asked what people use email for, the number one response was to communicate with family, friends and acquaintances. Online ordering and purchasing was second and coming in at number three was notifications from social networks. It appears email and social can live happily ever after or at least shack up and share the rent.

The same survey found that the reason most people are fans or followers of a brand is because they are looking for discounts and special offers. Right behind that was a desire to be informed about company and brand news.

Marketers just can’t rely on one channel anymore. A multi-channel approach where the choice is in the hands of the consumer and you are there when they want to interact is the key to a happy relationship.

Filed Under: Email marketing, Research, Social media marketing Tagged With: eCircle, email marketing, Research, social marketing, survey

Paying Attention to the Emotional Aspects of Your Products and Services

End of last week I posted an article on my personal blog about a recent survey by the American Association of National Advertisers. I would like to share it here as well since I find it more important than ever to think about emotional aspects of communication, marketing and businesses in a world where people, what they say and how they share stories and create word-of-mouth is key in social media marketing and other forms of marketing.The survey by the American Association of National Advertisers (ANA) points out that few companies pay attention to the emotional aspects of their products and services in their brand-related messages and how these products and services could meet people’s emotional needs.

The conclusion from the ANA was a remarkable one, since most marketers realize the importance of connecting with people on an emotional level, according to the same survey.

But there is more. How is it possible that, knowing that the buying process is a combination of so-called rational decisions and mostly emotional decisions, marketers neglect the emotional aspects of what they communicate and share (if they share at all)?

Social media metrics and ROI: measuring efficiency and conversion of social media, online video and mobile is a challenge

The fast evolutions in the digital landscape (social media, mobile, online video, etc.) give a lot of marketers a hard time adjusting their marketing mix in such a way that they create more value for their company and for their customers, prospects, and all other people in the ecosystem around their business.

This often has to do with a strong focus on the channels and the technologies, a lack of clearly calculated examples, models, and user cases, and the rising pressure to account for everything using the almighty ROI. But I think that above all, it has to do with the change in mentality, and the failure of existing communication models in a world where people define a brand.

Adopting the media and channels, that are used by people nowadays in the marketing mix is therefore taking very long.

A survey from Omniture points out that a mere 14% of the questioned marketers nowadays use mobile, social media, as well as online video in their marketing mix (so, all three together).

B2B marketers in a changing world: automation instead of or on top of conversation?

US-based lead management specialist Genius recently published the results of a survey in a report titled ‘B2B Marketing Skills Survey’. In this report, Genius takes a look at the evolving role of the B2B marketer.

It is evident that this role is evolving. It is even inevitable with the increasing focus on customer-centricity, the rise of social media, and the shift in buyer behavior. However, the economic changes along with the growing attention for the ROI of marketing, cause changes as well.

The survey, which Genius carried out in cooperation with BtoB Magazine, points out that B2B marketers generally make little use of tools to expand their reach and build (online) relationships with customers and prospects.

Email marketing: reactivating and re-engaging inactive email recipients in 8 steps

All email marketers have them: inactive recipients and dormant email addresses. People that are still subscribed to their email lists with a valid email address but never open their emails and thus don’t interact with them anymore.

How do you re-engage these subscribers? Well, obviously, it starts by defining what an inactive email recipient is. The best way to do that is tracking your metrics (opens and clicks) over a certain period of time and then simply looking at the recipients that didn’t open their emails. Of course you can define other rules such as recipients that opened one mail out of ten but never once clicked.

The next thing to do is understanding why the email addresses of these recipients simply are sleeping in your email database. There can be several reasons.

B2B companies increase or maintain their marketing budgets this year and look at online and social media marketing

According to Loop Demand Gen, an integrated business-to-business (B2B) demand generation and telemarketing services company, the majority of B2B marketers will have at least the same marketing budget in 2010 as they did in 2009.

This despite current economic conditions and budget cuts in many organizations.

In a survey the company found that only 25 percent of respondents will add marketing positions in 2010, which suggests that marketers are challenged with accomplishing more with fewer staff.

PR and marketing increasingly integrated but divided over “ownership” of blogs and social media

According to a recent survey conducted by Vocus, a provider of on-demand software for public relations management (and owner of PRWeb), many businesses are realizing the need to integrate PR and marketing. However, there are barriers.

One major finding of the survey that points to the disappearing lines between PR and marketing is that 78% of marketing and PR professionals report to the same boss, while 77% of the same group report formal working relationships to create a common communications strategy. However, various barriers to the integration remain.

Email or social media: empathy and listening are key in customer service

Recently I wrote about Joseph Jaffe’s Customer Service Manifesto. Now, Joseph doesn’t mean customer service as most of us interprete it (problem solving, etc.). However, in this post I will use the term in its more traditional sense.

Today we are using all possible channels to provide customer service to our customers. As I wrote earlier, people demand 24/24 and 7/7.

And I don’t mind adding to it that people have inflated expectations and sometimes demands that are exaggerated. We live in a society of instant gratification and, to be honest, I personally find this rather sad.

How marketing and communication people use social media

In a small survey done by agency Mindjumpers.com, among people working in marketing and communication (primarily from Denmark), the company got some interesting insights.

Contributor Jonas Klit Nielsen from Mindjumpers.com shares them with you in this post.

The survey had about 170 valid responses and people were asked about their behavior on social media.

Some email marketers still don’t know what a landing page is

Wednesday I subscribed to an email newsletter from a company I decided to follow. I will be really nice and not mention the name of the firm.

Everything was perfect: the sign-up, the follow-up and today I got my first newsletter. I immediately unsubscribed. Not because I didn’t want to receive it but because their mail contained an interesting offer but when I clicked it, I landed on…the homepage of the company.

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B2B marketers in a changing world: automation instead of or on top of conversation?

Email marketing: reactivating and re-engaging inactive email recipients in 8 steps

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