Conversation Along the Customer Journey with Email

Regan Maloney, digital planning director at BEC London

Beware..I Want to Influence You

A Study by agency 360i indicates that the majority of Twitter conversation is between consumers and that Corporate Twitter seems to be directed at the Consumer rather than with the Consumer.


According to the study, only 12% of consumer tweets mention a brand by name. When they do refer to a brand, consumers are sharing news or information about the brand (43%) or reporting use of or interaction with the brand (35%).

Hold on..what do you mean ONLY 12% of consumer Tweets mention a brand name? Are you telling me that brands would be unhappy if in the physical world over 1 in 10 conversations mentioned a product?

But of course the real failing is in the idea that again Brands are not engaging in a dialogue but in a monologue – ‘’Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness’’....Margaret Millar. This does seem to hark back to an era when TV and Print indulged in ‘Interruption Marketing’, talked about in great detail over a decade ago by Seth Godin in his book Permission Marketing. And of course even the early days of email marketing followed a dose of ‘Spray and Pray’ communications.

We all know these days its much more about the conversation and the idea of spreading influence through peers and contacts. I came across a very interesting form of this influence spreading by the Fast Company. They essentially wanted to created a viral campaign to find the person with the most Online Influence in 2010 – The Influence Project. They do this by a very crude method of making you feel more of a mover and shaker by getting people to click on your personal url . And yes that was mine. And they have effectively used this to get a degree of awareness out there about their magazine.

Perhaps more importantly, as I type, they have acquired something in the region of 25,000 email addresses. Hopefully they won’t abuse that privilege, and so have used a very ‘social’ need of many people ( i.e. to perhaps to have their 15 minutes of fame) to potentially start a conversation with them in the future and indeed have already created millions of google searches ,tweets, emails, facebook mentions .100% of which have mentioned the Brand.

Oh, now that I can think about it, 1 in 12 does seem low

Ps...I am currently ranked 422..please make me famous

(This post first appeared on Inside the Box )

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Consumers prefer email to social and text?

According to research by marketing firm smartFOCUS, email contact is more acceptable to people than contact through social media and text messages.

Indeed, some 71 per cent of those questioned said they prefer to be informed of new products and services via email.

Just 21 per cent said social media was their favourite way to receive marketing material, while only five per cent named text messaging.

Telemarketing came out as the least popular method, with none of the respondents expressing a preference for it and more than half citing it as their least favourite way to be contacted.

Commenting on the findings, Tim Watson, operations director at smartFOCUS, said: "Email has developed into a mature, primary source of information for both consumers and marketers.

"If companies want to communicate effectively with customers, they need to do so using the channels that customers use and interact with the most."


First posted by The IDM

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Am I an Online Influencer in 2010?

Check this link to see if I am