One of the things I like most about working in the email space is that as of 2009, being an email user is entirely label-free. When you give someone your email address, it doesn’t drag along a laundry list of negative connotations or misleading assumptions about who you are as a person. An email user therefore is given a tabula rasa—a clean slate—that gradually takes on the character of the contents within the inbox.

Now compare that perception with your initial reaction upon hearing a new acquaintance say, “you can find me on Twitter.”

Of course, with any new technology there is always going to be the knee-jerk reaction that any early-adopter is probably a geek. But let’s disregard that perception for now—as any mobile phone user now knows, giving out your cell phone number today does not send out images of the Zack Morris brick phone the same way it did in say, 1990. Once a technology becomes mature, the geek argument becomes moot. But think about the other stereotypes that come with saying “you can find me on Twitter” to someone you have just met, and then consider the obvious negative implications that someone might draw from it:

• You have enough interesting and/or important things to say in 140 characters or less that this person should be happy to receive all of your updates in real-time…
• By that logic, you consider yourself an interesting and/or important person…
• You are very concerned with how many people are “following” you…
• You are an egotist.

Obviously, this string of stereotypes is an unfair characterization to draw without getting to know someone first. But here’s the problem I see facing the Twitter community: there is some significant truth to these conclusions.

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Every day it seems that another once well-respected sector of the business world finds itself under fire from the economic downturn. For whatever reason, many analysts seem eager to add email marketing to the list of soon-to-be casualties of the recession. Tweets, texts, and pokes – oh my! (or is it OMG?!)

My advice to the pundits: don’t call the coroner. Even better, you can un-friend him on Facebook because he won’t be visiting us anytime soon.

Now, I realize that I have covered this topic on our site before, but there have been some over-reaching statements made recently regarding the viability of the email industry that require a response. Let’s have a look at what’s being said about email right now and think about what’s really going on.

From ReadWriteWeb, responding to a Nielsen report showing that more adults are now on Facebook:

Our take away from these findings? People prefer the clean, controlled, multimedia and publicly social experience of social networking communication over the relatively open, individualistic and spammy medium of email. The fact that there is effectively no data portability allowing communication archives to be ported from one social network to another as there is with email doesn’t appear to be bothering people in the short term.

While the Nielsen numbers do confirm that adults have definitely warmed to social networks, they do not indicate what people “prefer” or how they interact with them. To suggest that MySpace became popular because it provides a “clean” experience is patently absurd to anyone with two functioning eyeballs. To suggest that the 15 Zombie/Vampire War requests I have in my Facebook account or the now-famous “work from home” Facebook ad scams are not “spammy” is equally ridiculous. For the record, I would also point out that there’s a difference between being private and “individualistic” – I would consider my email account private, while my tally of Twitter followers skews more towards the realm of “individualistic” and ego-serving.

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I just loved this email I recently received from Urban Outfitters, and thought I’d share some of my thoughts about it with you all.

Scrolling through my inbox, the main image of the Urban Outfitter “Where to?” campaign grabbed my attention above all the others. For those of us on the East Coast, it’s been a long winter. Nevertheless, spring is in the air, and Urban Outfitter’s image of the ocean popped out at me. The creative inspired me to open the email and daydream a little about being on a beach where I could forget about the economy and relax.

The “Where to?” campaign is a great example of using attractive photography and creative marketing to engage your subscribers to open your emails.

Because I took the time to look at the picture, I saw that Urban was advertising friends’ top picks for the season based on their travel plans. Their approach of using friends’ favorite items was a clever take on viral marketing, used in this instance to market a number of different products. Even if the recipient does not have any trips planned, the items fit different personalities as much as they fit the destinations selected.

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An interesting piece popped up in a recent edition of the New York Times that makes you realize just how different the marketing universe has become thanks to interactive web technology. It seems that Tropicana, the fine purveyor of orange juice, has scrapped its latest re-branding effort and will bring back their old packaging in the near future. I see this as a smart move for Tropicana – a solid way to gain a reputation as a company that listens to its loyal customers.

In the good old days, marketing agencies would hand out new branding ideas and even if consumers didn’t like the changes, they would eventually accept them. With a few notable exceptions (New Coke is the classic example), it used to be difficult for consumers to make a fuss about their displeasure with corporate marketing. But in the brave new world of Web 2.0, one customer’s voice can be heard fairly easily. And in some cases, that one voice can lead to an avalanche of public opinion over the web. As the Times piece states:

Such attention is becoming increasingly common as interactive technologies enable consumers to rapidly convey opinions to marketers.

“You used to wait to go to the water cooler or a cocktail party to talk over something,” said Richard Laermer, chief executive at RLM Public Relations in New York.

“Now, every minute is a cocktail party,” he added. “You write an e-mail and in an hour, you’ve got a fan base agreeing with you.”

…Or disagreeing with you, as the case may be.

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The social networking site Facebook recently scrambled to react to negative user feedback arising from recent changes to its term of service. The most telling lesson from this latest controversy is how quickly Facebook has responded to user concerns and how welcome this response has been to the aggrieved users, privacy advocates and the media.

Every emailer gets some complaint feedback from recipients, often routed through direct ISP ‘feedback loops’ where users press the ‘spam’ or ‘junk’ button. While studies have shown that a portion of this feedback may be ‘false positive’ mistakes, the substantial majority are clearly negative feedback from aggrieved users.  Unfortunately, few email marketers closely track these complaint percentages or use this data to quickly respond to trends/spikes in complaints. 

The message here is simple; every email marketer can quickly respond to increases in complaint feedback.  The reasons for complaint increases are usually very clear, and often tied to subscriber acquisition practices. Email is the greatest testing vehicle ever created, and complaint reduction can be tested along the same lines as subject lines. However, if the complaint reasons or testing processes don’t seem clear, then comment here and I’d be happy to point you in the right direction.  

It took 64,000 complaints for Facebook to pay heed to their users.  After doing so, their users are now further endeared to them.  How much negative feedback do you need to before you re-examine your privacy practices? 

If you’re considering launching an official company page on Facebook but are concerned about measuring results, you’ll be happy to know that the social network has recently created a new application which allows companies to delve deeper into visitor analysis. The application displays a graph which demonstrates shifts in day-to-day visitor trends. A drop down menu allows for additional graph customization in categories such as unique visitors, photo views and wall posts. You can drill down even further by downloading an excel spreadsheet with all the statistics side by side. The spreadsheet allows for comparison of various page activities and tracking new fans based on sex and age group demographics.

If you are actively promoting your Facebook page, the application allows you to quickly measure campaign results. For example, if you email a newsletter to clients promoting a Facebook link, you can instantly see if the communication yielded results by monitoring visitor spikes using the graph as a comparison tool to days when no communication took place. If your company advertises on Facebook and targets specific consumers, this insight can help you determine overall response rates, as well as exactly which demographic groups have been most receptive to your messages.

It looks like Facebook is making constant adjustments to the corporate portion of the site and is starting to understand the importance of measuring marketing results. There are still many kinks to be worked out, but the social network is certainly making strides in attracting advertisers by offering these new tools.

At the beginning of 2008, I had a number of people ask me the same anxiety-riddled question: are Facebook and MySpace going to kill email?

My response then is the same as it is now: email is fine, the kids are alright, and we can all play in the same sandbox together.

My impression at the time was that many industry veterans seemed genuinely freaked out by the fact that their own kids were now using these new and different forms of communication a lot more than email. And truth be told, the meteoric rise of social networks, particularly among young people, was (and remains) worth noting, learning about, and venturing into for some businesses. But social networks’ relationship with email is less about “this or that” as it is about “this and that” — the two channels are not competing with one another so much as coexisting peacefully within one online ecosystem.

One easy way to understand this coexistence is to take a look at clickstream data from this past week (ending 10/4/08), provided by our friends at Hitwise:

The above data shows that nearly 15% of all social networking site traffic is currently coming directly from email accounts like Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live/Hotmail, Gmail, and AOL Mail (These are 4 of the top 13 sites visited immediately before social networks).

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