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Once upon a time, a request for an email address was a sure fire way to be able to reach someone. Now, as recent research shows, email usage amongst the next generation has dropped by a staggering 59%, and for the vast majority of the rest of us, email has quite simply become a burden.
So, how do you get in touch and stay in touch?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have been solving this problem for the last few years and we need to start learning, fast, from these solutions. But, that simple question: “How would you prefer to be contacted?” no longer has a simple three phase answer: email, snail mail or telephone.
What we need to consider now is far more complex. As social networks expand and people become more au fait with their smart phones, tablets, and alternative ways of communicating, you need to find the communication medium of choice for your customers and contacts. And you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that for the vast majority of people – email is not IT.
Spam is not the only problem. The sheer deluge of emails into your average inbox each day means that many people are just ignoring email as a means for communication. And for instant communication, as the #blackberrycrumble showed this last week or so, even your smart phone cannot save you if something more major goes amiss with email servers.
People are relying on a variety of mechanisms to stay in contact and as a company, it is now down to you to learn and adapt to the chosen communication channels of choice for your users. Whether that is Twitter, Facebook, SMS, email, a phone call, or a visit. And then within each of those channels, you may need to understand more comprehensively how your user uses that channel to stay informed.
So, for instance, post something on Twitter as a reply to a tweet I have sent or as part of a conversation I was involved with, and I will only know if it includes @myhandle. I simply do not have time to constantly monitor Twitter so the only way you can reach me is a DM or a replytome. Start a conversation on Twitter with 3 or 4 other people and you will see how Twitter handles start to fall off quite quickly in 140 characters.
Post something on a Facebook page for a client and how will I know unless you tell me?
Understanding how each of those you contact uses social networking and communication channels is becoming a must. Look at those in your office and close family. Do you know the best method for contacting each of them, according to their preferences, which will raise an instant response? If so, then you need to start applying similar knowledge to your wider address book.
For instance, don’t leave me a voice message or expect me to spot an email in the several thousand which arrive each day. Instead, a DM on any of the social networks will arrive as an SMS to my mobile phone. However, you will never know how I set up my personal devices to receive my personal communications, so you need to guess until you know. And then when you know, you need to target me in the most effective manner possible.
Here are some examples:
x: will only answer emails. Thinks SMS are the spawn of satan and will not answer. Ever. The smartphone lives in a box waiting to be sold as a heritage item, like an Atari.
y: loves Twitter. Always picks them up within moments, even at the dead of night. Other than that….
z: checks email weekly. Chooses 10-20 emails to answer only. Facebook, LinkedIn, and social bookmark sites such as delicious and Digg are monitored constantly.
Worrying? It should be if you are relying on email to reach your target audience. It is time to get personal and understand how your audience wishes to communicate. A good CRM mechanism is essential and a full appreciation of the cost of NOT reaching your audience with your messages will force you to look into these solutions.
What does your company use?
It’s easy to set up a Facebook page or a Twitter account. And then you can say you are doing social media marketing, can’t you?! But, think a little harder: are you making a rod for your own back in the long term? Do you know what consumers want or do you make assumptions about what the brand thinks they want?
A recent report by Exact Target called The Social Break Up may not make comfortable reading for the many companies who think that simply creating a Facebook page with offers or tweeting marketing messages is effective social media marketing.
It would seem that consumers are becoming much more discerning in what they sign up to, engage with and are willing to receive through their social streams. For many brands, unless a dialogue is established and the offers are compelling, it is as easy to Unlike or Unfollow as it is to just allow the messages to fill your stream. And this may come as a shock to brands who have failed to understand that the rest of the Web is just one click away. Not, as it used to be, a click leading to another website, but a more permanent click that removes the brand from the consumer’s stream and mindset, potentially for good.
There is something almost final in removing a brand from your social stream. Whilst it may only be a simple click to Unlike or to Unfollow, there is a level of psychology associated with that process which runs deeper into the psyche. You have chosen not to associate with that brand any longer. And it may be that next time you see that brand on a supermarket shelf or in a retailer or advertised on TV, you think about the fact you have unfollowed them.
And why did you unfollow? Was it that there were simply too many marketing messages? Aka spam in many people’s minds. Perhaps the offers were of no interest? Perhaps a suggestion, feedback or an Direct Message you sent was ignored or not replied to?
However, there are some very interesting stats in the Social Break up Report.
For instance, 24% of Facebook users surveyed said that they had UnLiked a brand because there were not enough deals/offers, whilst a strikingly similar 24% said that they had UnLiked because there were too many promotions. So, there is a balance to be struck here if you want to continually avoid putting off a 1/4 of your Friends.
26% said they had Liked a brand simply to take advantage of a deal to then UnLike once that had been acquired. Consider this quote from the report:
Marketers should consider their goals when offering promotions through Facebook—are you looking for a long-term relationship, or just a one-night stand?
Whilst every brand must expect churn and an ongoing win-lose of friends, customers etc, understanding what you are likely to gain from your social relationships is vital if you do not want to give away too many tempting goodies only to watch the punters turn their backs on you immediately.
You may not realise it but safely guarding all your emails that include your passwords is a very bad idea.
Imagine that your computer is stolen. The thief accessed your email inbox simply by clicking on Outlook, or going to Gmail, hotmail etc. Because, of course, for easy access and because you don’t think of this as a shared computer (right now in this scenario it is though), your passwords for entry to these places is saved.
Once in your inbox, a simple search on the word “password” will bring up untold emails unless you are one of the very few who delete these type of reminder and registration emails, and store passwords in a much safer place away from the computer.
It may be your registration to Amazon (it turns out the thief could really do with some new DVDs), or to the admin area of a client site (s/he really fancies changing a few things on that website you have worked so hard on), or your blog (you *know* you didn’t write that post), or one of any number of sites you have been sent the password to.
Try it now. And then put those passwords somewhere much safer and delete the emails!
I know you won’t believe me, but it’s true.
Recently, we wrote about phone call tracking. The point being that it gives very strong data about conversions from landing pages when the call to action is to ‘p.p.p.p.pick up the phone’.
Interestingly, this has now cropped up again as a subject for discussion on SearchEngineLand.
Let’s ask why consumers might call a number, rather than send an email or complete a form. The article above fails to address the issue from a consumer point of view, instead looking at all the reasons why the industry has ignored phone calls to date and why there is now a resurgence of the humble call.
As a consumer, how many times have you emailed an enquiry to a company and then not received a response? Not received a timely response? Or not received *any* response? Ditto with forms on websites. You complete the form, which is often far more lengthy than it need be, and you hit ’submit’. You get an error and are thrown back to the previous page, yet now all the fields are blank. UGH!
Having cursed all coders under the sun for that last primary school error, which are you most likely to do:
a) just return to a search engine and seek another company offering a similar deal?
b) start all over again completing the form and pray that this time it will actually be delivered and that there isn’t another bug in the system that has failed without informing you?
Now, let’s look at it a different way, but still from the consumer’s point of view.
You are looking for a particular item, to be delivered by the weekend, and the first website you fall over clearly has the item in stock (great landing page, BTW, it took you straight to what you were looking for!), they can deliver in 2-3 days guaranteed (force majeure excepted), and have the item at a price you are prepared to pay.
You have Skype or similar installed, and the only call to action on that page is “Call this number and order today”. No alternatives. Just call. No email address, no online web form, although there is obviously clear navigation to the rest of the site.
You click and the phone call is initiated. Within moments you are through to a lovely receptionist who, within literally moments, has taken down and double checked your address, your order and removed a reasonably substantial amount of your money from your account on your instructions.
Two days later, the item you wished for is on your doorstep and is precisely what you had anticipated.
Next time you try online shopping, having been more than happy with your last purchase, and less than happy with other companies’ failures to answer emails, respond to forms etc, will you be:
a) More confident using the phone to order
b) Less confident
Each time a company gets it right by having well-trained staff to answer the phones, a back-end system that confirms the product is in stock, processes the order, and ensures that is sent out to the customer’s spec, that customer will use the phone.
Any company who starts ensuring that their phone answering process is up to scratch, and PROMOTING THAT FACT publicly, will begin to win out as customers feel let down by technology and revert to the one thing that they can rely on – the goold old telephone.
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More changes to come on Facebook. This time, some actually seem to make sense.
However, there is one particular change which seems likely to upset users, advertisers and hence Facebook’s potential revenue.
Last week, almost below my radar, a small notification appeared which casually stated, amongst other text, that notifications would be vanishing in the New Year and that if you want to keep informed of application updates, you would need to ensure that the application had your email address.
My instant reaction was – that’s me out of visiting Facebook regularly then. Like many people, email is no longer the communication tool of choice. It has its place, but so do tweets, SMS, phone calls, IM, Skype and so on.
The email inboxes of far too many people are overladen with a surfeit of incoming messages, many for newsletters subscribed to moons ago that you always mean to read but never quite do, offers that you are sure you never wanted to receive, spam, forward chain letters from ‘friends’, and a host of other tosh.
These can often hide the important messages so people resort to other solutions to ensuring they don’t miss an important communication. If you need to talk to another business person, LinkedIn is a great way to ensure attention. If you need an answer instantly, you seek your respondent’s online status in Google Chat, jabber, Skype, IM – knowing before you hit send that they are present at the other end and will respond quickly.
SMS isn’t strictly reliable but in most cases will get a reasonably instant answer – if the message is delivered promptly, if the phone is on, if the recipient is checking their texts etc.
One wonders the logic behind Facebook’s decision. For many people, the notifications are the means to getting engaged in FB, telling them who has said what, posted a photo, commented in a discussion group and so on. It is also a means by which applications drive users to their page or app, relying on people power to encourage viral marketing.
This issue will no doubt cause untold discussion and heated debates shortly and on implementation. It isn’t that users hate change (of course they do!) but it takes away one of the primary mechanisms for users to know what others have been doing. It puts all the footslog and hard work back onto the users, instead of making it easy for them to engage and socialise.
It is a valuable lesson for any company to consider. When you plan changes to your website, are they for you or for the users’ benefit? Or both? Can you meet the target of satisfying your desire to make your life easier without making your users’ lives harder?
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