Whenever a brand throws out the old in favour of something topical it gets attention. It is bold, and both the professional and amateur media love it. In the end the numbers will either vindicate or invalidate the experiment, assuming they measure the ROI in a way that reflects reality. Everything else is speculation, informed or otherwise.

Facebook has got to be better than email...

As interesting as the lively debate between the social media exponents and eDM professionals was at the time, it just begged the question: ‘Why not just do both?’ After all, I am sure you won’t get tarred and feathered at your favourite morning coffee do if you dabble in the black arts of using stuff that works.

Social Media and Email: With, not Instead Of

How you can use a social media platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, et al, is different from the tools available with email, from users’ expectations regarding content and frequency to how the user can interact with the material, and the platform’s restrictions on what can be delivered in what form to whom.

To borrow from Mitch Joel, it is ‘With’ not ‘Instead Of’. Using both social media and email gives you more options, and increases the size of your potential audience. Connecting with customers across multiple platforms facilitates different interactions, and gives the customer the choice of how they want to connect with the brand. Maybe a Facebook fan that finds no value in your updates would actually love the email newsletter, or perhaps the Twitter account amuses them during their work day while they find eDM invasive. Giving the customer the choice can mean that when they opt out of one channel, they might still connect through another.

Building Audiences on Other People’s Platforms

Building eDM and Social Media Audiences

Facebook fans are not really yours; neither are Twitter followers. Without the accounts they are connected to, these audiences don’t exist. Unlike email. There is also little point in building different engagement strategies for multiple channels without cross-promoting them.

Competitions, surveys and other data collection or content driven special events can accomplish both of these goals:

• Making the brand’s audience aware of other touch points and
• Collecting contact details and other information through either a microsite or the brand’s main web presence.

The nature of eDM as a one way communication channel without the ability to demonstrate social proof makes it better suited to direct customers to a range of appropriate social media touch points, where most of the content would be published during the campaign. Cross promotion of the brand’s social media touch points and a call to action that would lead to further entries in the brand’s email database and CRM will generate better connection with and a better picture of the audience.

Promoting campaigns such as these should not be restricted to just eDM and social media. Getting the most out of it requires that other media is added to the mix, be it print, broadcast, SMS, MMS, PR, online display and promotional activity on the brand’s site. However it is executed, there should be two returns to the business:

• More information on the brand’s customers
• More points of contact with the brand’s customers.

Do Everything You Can Do Well

Limited access to resources and avoiding uneconomic channels are the only reasons that should affect what tools are and are not used online. There is no reason to abandon one kind of promotional activity online in favour of another. With so many ways to go online and consume information, arbitrarily limiting a brand’s options in how it can reach and be reached by its customers is not a winning strategy.

All users of Hotmail, Messenger, or Xbox Live automatically have a Windows Live ID, a single login that gives the user access to many Microsoft services. From ComScore’s 2 Million More Australians Go Social in 2009 report, Microsoft Live’s web presence had 1,962,000 unique visits in June 2009, just behind MySpace in Australia.

This does not include people using Microsoft’s services such as Xbox Live and Windows Live Messenger. With the addition of more web services to Xbox Live, Microsoft is certain to increase the use of their social platforms.

The first thing that struck me about the Microsoft Live profile pages and tools is the lack of opacity within its network. There are not many tools for sharing content or for finding new connections compared to sites like Facebook. It is easy to aggregate content from Flickr, RSS feeds and a number of other sources on the profile page but there is a lack of third party tools and applications. Microsoft’s main strength lies in their other products, and not in their web presence. In future it is their gaming platform and email services that will expand their reach.

In this regard, the most significant development for Microsoft will be cross platform gaming, encompassing Xbox360, mobile and desktop computing.

Xbox Live gives its users the ability to find new connections, share relevant content and access a lot of third party content via DLC games. It also provides a structured environment with engaging tasks, much in the same way that MMORPGs do the same for the social environments they create. There are other platforms that incorporate a gaming mechanic (Foursquare.com), have third party developers build one (Facebook.com), or have seen one emerge from user interaction (Twitter.com). It will be interesting to see how cross platform gaming, and applications in general, evolve in both their functionality and in how they are used going forward.

In a recent campaign using a third party list I observed something interesting. The mail-out was moderately successful in its first two days, generating a fair few hits and sales. What was novel was that the promotional code continued to be used over the course of the next two weeks, following a consistent sales and traffic curve over the course of the week. The traffic over this period took a sharp drop and roughly equalled the sales figures for volume. Over the post campaign period, almost everyone that visited the page, bought the product.

The creatives used in this campaign were all focused. They consistently communicated a single offer that was relevant to the list used, and from the creative to the single landing page and the cart, limited onsite leaks. While sales were limited to a small percentage of the people mailed, the value per customer was high.

The initial result, and the ongoing traffic and sales confirms that this campaign did deliver something of value to the customer. Like other good campaigns, this one was a success because it offered a targeted promotion that provides real value to the right customer.