Category Archives: digital media

November 27, 2017 · 11:14 am

Lost In The Flood

Today is Cyber Monday, which is, of course, another “Hallmark Holiday” – something made up by marketers to sell stuff. It’s the first Monday after Thanksgiving which, as we all know, exists only to let us know that Black Friday is the next day. That might even be a bit untrue since Black Friday now seems to start after lunch on Thursday.

In any event, there are lots of deals to be had (available while supplies last). I did a little counting and my inbox received 324 Black Friday emails announcing sales, deals, specials, and other marketing miracles. I’ve received 88 Cyber Monday emails promoting today’s deals but the day has barely begun so that number is low. My business account received far fewer which I guess means that neither day is as huge for B2B selling.

I don’t know about you, but I deleted the vast majority of these emails without even opening them. It wasn’t that they had crappy subject lines. They all just got lost in the flood created by the breaking of the holiday dam. Interestingly, Amazon, from whom I get a daily mail about something I might have been checking out in the last week, only sent a single missive for each sale day while several other retailers sent multiple emails every day.

What’s a marketer to do? The next month is a prime selling window for nearly every brand so sitting it out isn’t really an option. There needs to be a recognition, however, that the noise level is at jet-engine levels and something needs to help your marketing efforts get noticed. If you’re thinking that moving to social channels is the answer, it’s probably not. Sure, it might be easier to get in front of the customer but, as a McKinsey study stated:

E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media—nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined. That’s because 91 percent of all US consumers still use e-mail daily,1and the rate at which e-mails prompt purchases is not only estimated to be at least three times that of social media, but the average order value is also 17 percent higher.2

I’d suggest avoiding the flood as best you can. Start your holiday season in early November (or maybe even late October if you can avoid the Halloween noise) by teasing offers to come. Get your customers in the mood to buy. Who wouldn’t want to have their holiday shopping done early? Obviously, if you’re not checking your outbound mail across every platform to be sure it renders properly you’re committing marketing suicide. Responsive design is a must!

Finally, go local and get personal. Whatever you can do to tailor your messages to each location and/or each customer will greatly increase your conversion rates. I’m always surprised when I get what is obviously a generic email when even minimal segmentation would get me to read it. There are dozens of retargeting technologies out there. Speak as if you were at a cocktail party – one to one – and not with a bullhorn.

To paraphrase The Boss, have you thrown your marketing to the war, or did you lose it in the flood?

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November 20, 2017 · 10:29 am

This is a week for friends and family as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday. Most of what’s being advertised, based on my narrow sample of one, are cars and drugs. Admittedly, my viewing tends towards news and live sports with a smattering of public TV shows and other entertainment. I scroll through the commercials in the latter category but I can still get a sense of what’s being marketed.

Photo by +Simple on Unsplash

Why I raise this is that it seems to me to be a missed opportunity. As I initially stated, this is a week where friends and family gather, and when they’re not stuffing their faces or yelling at football, they talk. Among other things, I’m sure they talk about services they’ve used, places they’ve eaten, and prodcuts they’ve bought. It makes total sense that research shows that nearly three times as many people said content from friends and family influences their purchase decisions compared to content from celebrities. You can imagine how powerful it is when that “content” is delivered in person at Thanksgiving.

The research – The 2017 Consumer Content Report: Influence in the Digital Age, by Stakla – also found that

  • On average, people are able to identify if an image was created by a professional or brand vs. generated by a consumer, 70% of the time.
  • Consumers are three times more likely to say that content created by a consumer is authentic compared to content created by a brand
  • On average, 60% of consumers say content from a friend or family member influences their purchases decisions, while just 23% of consumers say content from celebrities influenced their purchasing decisions
  • People want to see content from people they know or that they can relate to.

I’m not suggesting that some brand co-opt Aunt Sally into being a hidden spokesperson nor that some product unleashes an army of Aunt Sallys into every table. I do think, however, that there is an opportunity around this time of year to focus your brand and your marketing so that you’re top of mind as the conversations are taking place. If sharing is caring, your customers need to care enough to do so and this is the best time of year for that to happen. What are you doing to help them with that?

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November 15, 2017 · 10:59 am

Digital Graffiti

Suppose you own a building and someone sprays a message on the facade. Maybe the message is as benign as just the “artist’s” tag or maybe it’s hate speech or maybe it’s as simple as pasting a sticker promoting some commercial venture. Whether you might find the message offensive or not, you probably wouldn’t hold the building’s owner responsible for the message unless you notified them that the message was there and they didn’t remove it. In NY, it’s illegal for landlords to leave graffiti up and the city will come and remove it for you at no cost. Of course, the city will also fine you once they’ve been told your building is hosting graffiti and you’re doing nothing about it.

English: Graffiti tag on train station buildin...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might be wondering what this has to do with your business since you probably don’t own a building. In my mind, the same principle applies when users post links to content on a particular platform or when a news site reports on content hosted elsewhere and links to it. This very notion is at the center of a lawsuit filed by Playboy against Boing Boing. The latter posted a story about someone aggregating all of the Playboy centerfolds. As  Techdirt reported:

it’s a blog post titled “Every Playboy Playmate Centerfold Ever.” There’s a very short paragraph that reads:

Some wonderful person uploaded scans of every Playboy Playmate centerfold to imgur. It’s an amazing collection, whether your interests are prurient or lofty. Kind of amazing to see how our standards of hotness, and the art of commercial erotic photography, have changed over time.

Boing Boing then linked to the images and a video, both of which were off-site (on Imgur and YouTube, respectively). Playboy is suing for copyright infringement even though it’s pretty obvious that Boing Boing didn’t create or host any of the material. They merely reported on it (fair use, kids). I’ll let the lawyers decide if this is what’s known as a SLAPP action (designed to intimidate and be costly) or whether it has any merit, but it’s not unique. Web hosting companies have been sued for hosting pirate sites that stream copyrighted material.

You might know that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Internet service providers (ISPs) may not be liable for copyright infringement from copyrighted material passing through their systems if they take certain steps to police infringement on their site(s). There are some requirements for you to claim this protection, but generally, if you didn’t post it and take it down when you’re told about it, you’re fine. It’s the equivalent of digital graffiti in NYC. Clean up the eyesore when you’re told about it and you’re not penalized.

I can pretty much guarantee that your business has a website. It might have a public-facing comments section or some other place where consumers can post things. You need to monitor and moderate it, and if you’re notified that someone is posting digital graffiti – whether it’s infringing materials or worse – you need to take action. Yes, fair use and the DCMA can protect you up to a point but ultimately you want all of your digital presences to reflect well on you and your brand. Being covered in graffiti doesn’t get you there, does it?

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