Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide

Increasingly, active email marketers are wondering how they can engage with their subscribers in social media.

It’s a bit scary, because most email is still of the “batch and blast” variety, and that dog will not hunt in social media, where the marketing is conversational and the name of the game is relevance.

But, assuming you aren’t looking at social media as a messaging venue, but rather an opportunity to learn about your customers, and for them to learn about your brand, tying your email and social media efforts together should be a 2009 prime directive.

Here’s 3 easy ways to do so:

1. Collect Profile Data in Subscription Forms

Offer your email subscribers the option of including their Twitter name on your subscription form. Something like:

“We care about our customers. Can we follow you on Twitter?” Please provide your Twitter name, and we’ll follow you ASAP. (We’re at @companyname, by the way)

2. Promote Social Media Outposts in Welcome Messages

When you send your welcome message after initial subscription (you ARE sending welcome messages, aren’t you?), include links to your various social media outposts. Carefully track which links get clicked, as it will give you an indication of which are most popular among your customers.

3. Social Media-Only Offers

If you really want to get a handle on which social media venues your customers prefer, and in what intensity, create an email that includes links to special offers or promotion codes that are shown only on your social media profile pages. Something like: “We’ve got incredible offers available on items we think you’d love. For details and promotion codes, visit us online on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter”

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What’s the worst thing about social media? The name “social media.” It’s incredibly vague, and that lack of definition has enabled “social media” to become a watered-down, catch-all term with different meanings for each person - like “recreational drugs” and “process improvement.”

The Characteristics of Social Media:

• Duration: Ongoing
• Target: Current and previous customers
• Goal: Repeat purchase, brand loyalty, brand advocacy
• Owner: Internal customer service, external public relations agency

Social media gives brands the opportunity to engage on a personal, human, and powerful basis with customers. Customers LOVE this, because they’ve been talked AT for so long, that being talked WITH is incredibly exciting and flattering.

We’re at the forefront of a trend whereby smart companies recognize that “social media” really isn’t marketing at all, but a set of company-wide beliefs about the primacy of the customer and the customers’ power to dictate the company’s success or failure.

This belief system is best manifested in honest, transparent, ongoing communication with customers in the customers’ venue of choice. This is scary for brands, because it’s the communications equivalent of Alabama playing a road game at Central Arizona College. But, Comcast and many others are proving that trading the 800 pound media gorilla for 8 million tweets and blog posts results in raving fans.

This is truly “social” media, whereby consumers feel they have a relationship with a company. Done right, there is no beginning, middle or end to the conversation, and brands don’t feel the need to ask for the sale every 30 seconds.

The Characteristics of Social Media Marketing

• Duration: Short-term campaign
• Target: New customers
• Goal: Initial purchase or lead generation
• Owner: Internal or external marketing/advertising/interactive team

Companies that don’t yet accept the premise that humanization of their brand can be transformative to their business, have begun using social media too. Why wouldn’t they? The decline in TV ratings and the speeding decay of print readership has been replaced by social media consumption. Advertising follows eyeballs, and social media is attracting more eyeballs every second.

The traditional marketing paradigm of finding where your audience congregates, and communicating to them in that venue is the strategic underpinning of the many social media marketing campaigns now debuting.

Papa John’s Facebook page is a good example. By all rules of marketing, it’s a smash hit, with 187,000+ fans, tens of thousands of coupons redeemed, and millions of dollars in revenue generated. How’s that for social media ROI?

There are hundreds of great examples of companies using the Web for promotions, contests, special offers and other campaigns. (I’ve created several with Mighty Interactive for Fujitsu, Nike and Exide Batteries). The only problem with these efforts is calling them “social media”. Consumers don’t create the content, and there aren’t conversations between the brand and its customers. They are marketing campaigns that are the post-modern equivalent of the direct response TV ad. They do, however, often use social media outreach to promote the campaign.

So, from now on I’m calling these campaigns “social media marketing” to distinguish from ongoing, conversational “social media” efforts. For clarity sake, I hope you’ll do the same.

When working on a social media marketing campaign, a best practice is to consider how you’ll engage in social media AFTER the campaign ends. Can you use email to invite consumers that purchased or signed up to have a dialog? Can you collect Twitter handles on your contest entry form?

Folks that contributed to my thinking on this post (via Twitter): Beth Harte, Amber Naslund, Becky Carroll (thank ladies)

Photo by Andrew Eick

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As discussed recently in “Why Are We So Scared of Our Customers?” and “Presto, How Social Media Makes Bad News Good” I’m seeing the fear of negativity preventing more companies from embracing social media. 

The typical social media objection is that if the company has a conversation with consumers in a public forum, the company will be forced to respond to inadequacies, and doing so will just make it worse. Consequently, many large brands are now engaged in social media “listening” campaigns, but not engaging with consumers directly. 

Sometimes Letting Go Allows You to Steer

Of course, listening is better than ignoring, but actually getting involved with your customers online doesn’t give you less control, it gives you MORE control. If you give customers a legitimate, easy-to-use mechanism for interacting with you and amongst themselves, a large component of the feedback about you is likely to end up within that mechanism. And then you can do something about it. 

Consider Comcast. What is a better circumstance for the company, listening but not engaging while customers post videos like this (which you’ve probably seen since the original has been viewed 1.35 million+ times on YouTube), or engaging and actually encouraging customer feedback and complaint via Twitter (@comcastcares)? (read bottom up for killer customer service on Twitter from Frank Eliason at Comcast)

Control Via Facilitation

Dell has a Project RED application on Facebook. Within the forums, there are several consumer complaints about Project RED and how much it actually helps Africa, versus being a craven marketing ploy. While Dell itself doesn’t appear to be engaging in the dialog, it is facilitating the conversation (with other consumers defending Dell vociferously).

And because all of this is happening on an official Dell production, they have MORE control over it than if it was happening on a blog or some other Facebook page. They could comment officially. They could take down the forums. They could reach out privately to negative commenters. 

If this conversation was taking place on some other blog, Dell’s options would be greatly curtailed.

Creating a mechanism for customer feedback using social media is the post-modern equivalent of the suggestion box. Brands that don’t do it because they don’t want to loose control don’t understand that facilitation provides control, it doesn’t eliminate it. 

What do you think? Do you have examples of brands facilitating customer dialog using social media? Your comments are my food.

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This recession is looking worse than Sylvester Stallone all roided up for that recent Rambo 14 (Rambo goes to the buffet for the Early Bird Special with some pals) movie.

It’s going to be bad. But for social media, it just might be the best possible circumstance. Here’s why:

1. Smart Buying

Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. We’re not exactly rushing to the nearest mall to make discretionary purchases. But because money is tight, we’ll want to make sure we make the best possible purchase when we do make them. 

Enter social media. 

Traffic is of course up for sites like Yelp, Amazon, Trip Advisor, DPreview.com and other review sites because of the impending holiday season. However, I believe sites that enable consumers to benefit from the experiences of prior customers to continue skyrocketing long after the holidays are over. 

If we’re going to part with decreasing dollars, we’re going to make sure it’s a good product first. 

2. Shared Angst

This recession is the first piece of long-lasting major bad news that has occurred in the social media era. Certainly the Iraq war qualifies as bad news, but it’s day-to-day impact on Americans has been mostly negligible, except of course for those served and their families. (Thank you for enabling me to live in a country where I can make a living writing blog posts and telling people how to do social media and send good email)

The ins and outs and ups and downs of this recession and its impact, duration, and cause are going to be a major topic of conversation in this country for two to five years. 

Enter social media. 

You can Tweet using the #recession hashtag, or send a friend a bowl of soup via a Facebook app. Seriously, we’re going to use social media to discuss and micro-analyze our deteriorating economic condition because it’s faster, more customizable, and in many cases more honest than real media.

I can talk to real people at a local restaurant about the recession, but then I’m only getting the local perspective. On Twitter, I can get the perspective of most of the country. That’s why social media will be the recession’s barber shop.

3. You’re Grounded

First the gas crunch. Then, the “if you want oxygen on your flight, it’s $20″ routine. Now, the recession. 

Companies are going to cut back on travel considerably. 

Enter social media.

The conferences and symposiums of the roaring 00s are going to be replaced by Webinars, Webcasts, UStreams, SlideShare and other forms of digital information exchange that will dominate the bummer 10s. 

If I owned a conference company, I’d be working like crazy right now to figure out a virtual delivery component, because given the quality of freely available content online, it’s getting tougher and tougher to justify an in-person experience. 

What do you think? Do you agree that the recession could actually help social media?

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