It’s the utility, stupid

Article first published as It's the Utility Stupid on Technorati.

Google+ is not a ‘product’ apparently.  It’s still a ‘project’.  And it’s out in what looks to be a limited beta release as ‘Field Trial’ – but which feels more like a ‘throttled release’ as new users can then start to pass invites on.  

Google clearly feels that this is all a work in progress. 

However, it doesn’t feel like work in progress. It has hit 10m users in a few short weeks making it one of the fastest growing network launches ever, according to Mashable. The interface is clean and slick – and Circles makes the concept of ‘groups’ easy to implement and manage.  Even the animation when you add a friend or contact to a group is a great little piece of interactive design.

And there are other features not found elsewhere.  ‘Sparks’ looks like it could build into a powerful content recommendation engine, especially once Google+ gains scale.  It also provides a good benefit for users to actually ‘Google +1’ content they find or that their friends may like.  It could also be strong opportunity to monetise the platform as brands looks to promote their own content.

‘Hangout’s are fundamentally video chat (though trying to get that to actually work is a little tricky) – and Facebook’s video chat via Skype looks like it could trump that feature right off the bat.

And I suppose that’s the problem with Google+ so far.  There’s no killer feature.  There’s no compelling reason why this should be my new social network of choice – no reason to give up Facebook.  And I don’t need yet another network in my life.

Even Google’s own FAQs include the question “Why don’t you have killer feature X?”.

So far, I wager that a large proportion of Google+’s growth has been driven by its limited access and exclusivity.  

It’s the power of scarcity. 

Everyone in the digerati wanted an invite and the power to send invites.  How many of Facebook’s News Feed updates were posted from Google+ - just to demonstrate one’s own personal sense of digital status?

But where’s Google+’s utility? Where does it add value to my life that no other platform does? Facebook created that social utility by connecting people with their friends - and it became the dominant social network by doing that better than anyone else.  And it continuously evolved functionality that was useful: from pokes, picture tagging, status updates to Like’s, Fan pages and Facebook plug-ins.

However, Facebook needs to continue being useful.  As Mark Choueke says in Marketing Week, unless it continues to evolve its utility, people will start to drift away from the constant wall of trivial personal updates and stilted brand updates.  (I’m really not sure I can take another brand asking what I am up to for the weekend, each Friday afternoon).

There is some interesting data that shows that although Facebook is growing globally, in some more mature markets Facebook is seeing a decline.  For example in the US (according to Inside Facebook) it lost 6 million users during May this year and in Canada it lost 8% of users (1.52million out of its 16.6m base).  

And this trend is mirrored in the UK. According to Hitwise, Facebook has also seen a declining market share losing ground to both Twitter and YouTube.   

Now, of course, this doesn’t for a second mean that this is even the beginning of the end for Facebook. 

But it does demonstrate the need to keep things fresh and, most importantly, useful.  It will be interesting to see how Facebook’s Skype partnership adds to its utility and how Google+ intends to create some significant space between it and Facebook.

Data is relationships

This is REALLY worth watching. We’re always looking for 'The Next Big Thing'. Many trends are just fads. But if we should pay attention to anyone, it’s Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web.

This talk at the TED Conference gives a great overview of the birth of the web as well as reintroducing one of his concepts called Linked Data. He believes that Linked Data is as important an idea as the invention of the World Wide Web itself. Berners-Lee suggests that data from governments, organisations and individuals should be opened-up so that others can share it and work with it.

He believes this transparency of ‘raw data’ will allow the relationships between data to grow increasingly ‘connected’ affecting every aspect of our lives, speeding up knowledge transfer and reducing the time needed to solves problems (such as the cure for cancer).

Commvergence - the future of digital communications

No 'commvergence' is not a typo.

I've been struggling for some time to keep track of my various email addresses (I have 4), social networks (Linked-In, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter), communication tools (Skype, Messenger), RSS feeds & mobile (SMS, email and so on). And that's not to mention the volume of emails, feeds, Tweets, pokes and messages that each channel produces.

Now I know that because I work in the industry I am bound to sign-up and try-out more channels/routes than most consumers. However managing digital communications is a growing problem for consumers. A recent survey from Emailvision has found that women are half as likely as men to read the email newsletters they receive and are more prone to cancel their subscriptions citing 'cluttered inboxes'.

So how will consumers start to manage? That's where I think that 'commvergence' will play a part: tools and service that bring together and unite different digital communications.

iGoogle goes someway in starting this. Flock and Swimwire are amongst a group of tools that allow users to aggregate their social networking sites. But other tools such as Fuser and Orgoo aim to provide access to all your email and social network accounts in one place. Orgoo is not yet in public beta, but Fuser is up an running and provides the familiarity of a web-based email interface to manage messages and contacts. It's not perfect, but it's a start.

What's clear is that it won't be long before Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! get involved. Because a one-stop-shop for online communications is a huge consumer need and will become a key traffic driver (and hence revenue) for those properties.

Twitter: the end of push marketing?

There is an interesting article this week on the Marketing Week website. It about whether Twitter means the end of 'push' marketing as more and more consumers filter their media through their own social circles. It asks whether because search behaviour becomes increasingly focused on consumers asking real questions of real people in real time, rather than of static web pages - that the days of interruption marketing may be nigh.

But rumours of 'push' marketing's death are greatly exaggerated.

Yes, its power is on the wain.

Yes, social media will grow as, if not more, important.

But for the meantime, push marketing has its place. And, ironically, the first sentence of the Marketing Week article proves the case:

"Twitter went mainstream one Friday in January when Stephen Fry appeared on Tonight with Jonathan Ross"

So Twitter went mainstream with a celebrity promoting the service on the mass communications vehicle that is a chat show.

Now there's a novel strategy.

Every sale counts

You can't open a newspaper or turn on the TV at the moment without hearing more implications of the global recession and 'credit crunch'.

One of the key strategies for surviving an economic downturn is ensuring that every customer touchpoint is working as efficiently as possible. For a great many B2B marketeers often fail to maximise the impact of their web presence. But there are a number of techniques that businesses can employ in order to evolve their online presence away from simply brochureware to make their site support the sales process and demand generation.

Jakob Nielsen, one of the pioneers of website usability, outlines the three major goals relevant for almost all B2B sites:

1. Survive the screening process
In the consumer market around 67% of consumers use the internet to research products before buying (source: InternetRetailing Feb 2008). Again this habit has translated into the workplace with more and more employees using the internet to shortlist vendors in an initial research phase. This is where search engine visibility, homepage usability, website accessibility and content usability are essential. Additionally, ensuring that site content explains exactly what a company does (rather than the often impenetrable language of marketing-speak missions, visions and propositions) and signposting users to key elements of content is critical. Remember, first impressions count - and the website is the most influential first impression that B2B marketers can control. Even if potential clients are visiting simply to find contact information, make it easy for them to make contact in the way that suits them – email, instant messaging, telephone etc. (How many websites make it difficult to find the company’s telephone number!)


2. Build a reputation
This is where the internet excels and where companies can provide excellent post-sales support online at a fraction of the cost of other methods. However, this is the area in which many companies fail. A recent report by Transversal (March 2008) showed the dire performance of many UK firms when responding to customers’ emails. Less than half (46%) answered those questions “adequately” and the average time they took to respond was almost two days (46 hours).

3. Support your advocates
Nielsen recommends the creation of Advocacy Kits to make it easy for potential clients to access materials and information that helps them support the argument for a particular vendor. This may include links to external PR coverage, webinars, downloadable video and product tables together with PowerPoint slides (that clients can use in their own presentations) and downloadable White papers (using this as a potential value exchange to obtain some data about potential customers).


As with the B2C world, content is king. Building content distribution deals and gaining associations with the right industry bodies/brands takes the marketing message to a wider audience – hitting those business buyers who may be actively trawling the internet within their own buying cycle - and in an tougher economic client every sale counts.

B2B marketers need to embrace online search

Search is a key area in which B2B marketers are falling behind their B2C counterparts. Despite the huge growth in online advertising, business is not harnessing the internet to build brand awareness or drive product education. In fact, according to the IAB only 39% of businesses are using display advertising and less than 39% make use of online classifieds.

And these figures deteriorate further when we look at less frequently used online advertising media. If we take affiliate marketing, 67% of affiliates promote B2C merchants, 29% promote both B2C and B2B but only 4% promote B2B advertisers only (source E-consultancy, January 2007).

Why is this?

There are a number of factors. Firstly it’s a direct reflection of the lack of significant B2B-only properties & audiences in the space. However, despite the enormous size of the market, vertical B2B websites are only just starting to spring up.

Secondly there is the feeling that media planners and buyers lack awareness of these properties when planning online strategies.













[Source: E consultancy / Convera, Nov 2007]


Of course, some business sectors have been well represented in the online advertising space for some time – Technology being the obvious example.

And it is, perhaps naturally, in this sector where companies are pioneering. Take Second Life for example. Within the B2C space many brands have used Second Life less as a means of targeting specific audiences and more as a way of generating PR.

However, IBM’s large presence in Second Life has evolved into a real sales channel. Last year it opened a “virtual business centre” in Second Life, staffed by IBM sales personnel from around the world.

Clients looking to purchase hardware, software or simply get support in solving a business problem can actually meet with IBM sales personnel within the virtual business centre. The IBM avatar can interact and work with the Client avatar right up to the point of signing contracts and the final sales transaction, which are handled via a link to the main IBM website or by telephone.

“We seek to engage with clients in the way they prefer to engage,” Lee Dierdorff, vice president of Web strategy and enablement for IBM, said. “This may be over the Web, this may be over the telephone, and now it may be over a 3-D virtual world.”

So there’s huge potential for businesses to upweight their use of online advertising and other digital awareness routes.

Monetising YouTube and the power of content value

Google is launching a new "incentivisation programme" where it will pay advertising agencies commission on video advertising as it tries to bolster ad revenues from its video properties, including YouTube.

So why does it need to incentivise agencies?

There are two key issues.

The first is the need to push the online video format, more generally as part of Google’s rather large entry into the display advertising market.

The second issue is the fact that YouTube has yet to make a profit or meet earnings expectations. So presumably the thinking is that “YouTube is about video – consumers expect to see video content here – we need to boost income - so let’s push video advertising via YouTube”.

Video advertising will become the de facto standard on the web – but the active debate is which online ad formats will work (pre-roll, post-roll, interstitial etc). One of the key stumbling blocks to date has been that online video advertising has been positioned in such was as to really pose a barrier to the online consumer experience....do I really want to wait 90 seconds watching a pre-rolled ad BEFORE I get to the content I originally came to see? And what do I think about the brand that puts that barrier in my way?

However what could really drive take up of on-line video ads is that YouTube has just announced a deal with MGM studios to offer full-length movies on the site (building on the deal with Lionsgate films earlier in the year offering short media clips). By effectively giving away content content with a high perceived value, perhaps Google belives that consumers will overcome any potential barriers/resistance to online video ads.

Ironically, it’s Google itself that is leading a joint-research project into how online users consumer online video. One would imagine that the results of this alongside an incentivisation programme would be most effective.

Could this be the first internet-powered US President?

If you’ve followed the US election campaigns (and it's been hard not to) over the last few months, one thing that was truly amazing about Barack Obama’s campaign was his use of the internet and digital media.

Of course, we are all used to online political campaigning even in the UK (how could we forget David Cameron’s infamous Blog?) but Obama’s campaign has been significant in how he has used the very best practices from the world of online e-commerce applied it to raising funds for his campaign.

He has used every online device to encourage voters to donate: from mobile ring tones, to his own blog, email updates from the campaign manager &, of course, social networking. In fact Obama was dubbed the “Master of Facebook Politics” by the New York Times with about 1.5 million online ‘friends’ (compare this to ‘only’ 142,000 friends for John McCain).

All this has managed to translate the huge public enthusiasm for him directly into cash. To put this into context, in February of this year his campaign raised a record-setting $55 million— with $45 million donated over the Internet—without Obama hosting a single fund-raiser himself. The money just came rolling in and has allowed Obama to campaign harder and deeper than McCain - just look at Obama's 30min election advert over the weekend.

Why is this important? Because it’s a great demonstration of how online engagement & interaction can be used to drive consumer action. Now that Obama has seen that he can drive cash donations, the next challenge is to turn that into votes. It’ll certainly be interesting to watch.

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php
http://www.new.facebook.com/barackobama?ref=s&refurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.new.facebook.com%2Fs.php%3Fq%3Dbarack%2Bobama%26init%3Dq

Can businesses actually make money with virals?

• Indirectly, yes. Viral marketing is simply about creating word of mouth, developing communications that raise awareness and drive engagement with a brand in the hope that it will be passed on. The same ATL success metrics of ‘awareness’ and ‘engagement’ still apply.
• Word of mouth marketing is THE most effective marketing tool

What should marketers bear in mind when considering a viral for their company - Dos and Don'ts?

• The biggest mistake that marketers make when creating viral campaigns is to think that a brief to ‘create a viral campaign’ will create one campaign or idea that will ‘go viral’ – the essence of what creates a great viral can be hard to pin down and therefore a number of different routes should be created and perhaps, one out of every 20 ideas will get traction and hit that all-important ‘tipping-point’
• Ensure that viral is considered throughout development of all marketing elements to maximise impact and cost effectiveness – not just created as an ‘add-on’
• Viral is NOT simply:
  • uploading the latest TV ad to YouTube (unless it’s a gorilla playing the drums…..)
  • simply creating a member-get-member mechanic or ‘send to a friend’ functionality – and does not even have to be about creating a ‘piece’ (ie a video, application etc). The US TV show has hit #1 in the DVD charts simply from the amount of online buzz and word of mouth content seeded throughout online communities and the press.
• Therefore, how to seed the viral should be considered as much as the viral concept
• Lastly measurement is key – and again this is something that should be planned at the outset – there are many ‘buzz marketing’ tools that can help in the tracking of campaigns and their impact

What makes a good viral?

• Viral ‘pieces’ need to be easy to send on – it sounds like a basic requirement, but it’s often missed
• Content and engagement is key: virals must be: engaging, funny, sexy or a weird for users to send on
• Remember virals don’t necessarily have to be complex pieces: consider the recent Gap virals (and the successful if a little costly Thresher email from previous years) that simply offered customers a good deal (eg 30% off) on a given day / product

Email best practice

It is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve cut-through with e-mail communications year on year.

DMA performance benchmarks are falling whilst the volume of e-mails people are receiving increases, even with ever more robust security and spam management by the ISPs. This creates and environment where improving performance means improving the quality of your communications both technically and emotively. To this end we’ve created a number of email basics for all our e-mail campaigns.


1. Improving deliverability

A brand/company’s e-mail reputation today drives their ability to get e-mail delivered tomorrow. And it’s an on-going cycle. The reputation of the brand’s/company’s IP address is the most important factor in an ISP either delivering the email to a consumer’s inbox, delivering it to their junk folder or simply rejecting it altogether. So how can brands improve deliverability? There are a couple of simple “dos”:

• Do build your reputation slowly and avoid irregular send patterns
• Do build volume to each ISP gradually or manage send volume over a period of time to build reputation – no sudden surprises
• Do Manage new campaign volumes extra carefully for Hotmail/MSN and AOL accounts
• Do Build familiarity with your IP address and be prepared to hold volume on troublesome ISPs
• Do Change sending patterns slowly

In addition to building reputation, there are a number of companies with relationships with ISPs who guarantee (or certify) delivery of an email to a user’s inbox - for a fee (eg Goodmail). This is where the most debate in email marketing is most hotly debated – that certified email is in danger of creating a two-tier email system: the equivalent of first and second class post.


2. Minimise Spam complaint rates

ISPs monitor the number of customers who mark the mail using ‘Spam’ or ‘Junk’ buttons. Complaint rates are the number 1 reason why ISPs block or filter e-mails. Again there are some simple “dos”:

• Do track complaint rates for each ISP for each campaign
• Do remove inactive e-mail addresses after 6 months
• Do use clear and specific subject lines
• Do use clear ‘from’ labelling to identify your brand
• Do test e-mail send frequency and it’s impact on rates
• Do drip feed send to suspect ISPs so you can manage the situation
• Do make unsubscribing easier for those that want to unsubscribe – if a consumer wants to unsubscribe – then don’t make it difficult otherwise they will just mark your email as spam.

3. Manage and reduce bounce rates

ISPs monitor the number of e-mails they reject and return (called ‘bounced’) – usually unknown or bad e-mail addresses. It’s a virtuous circle, fewer bounces today increases deliverability tomorrow, so:

• Remove all hard bounces straight away
• Remove all addresses that are soft bounced regularly, a typical rule is three soft bounces in a defined time period
• Change the rule if bounce rates persist
• Batch delivery to reduce risk of blocking due to high bounce rates

4. Understand how content filters work

ISPs use content filters to screen and detect spam by scanning the contents of all incoming e-mails. These filters are generally 3rd party tools employed by ISPs and use and email’s “subject line” extensively as a key contributor to spam scores. E-mails that fail content filters get bounced without even entering the recipient’s mailboxes. At best they may be delivered to a junk folder. Core to improving response here is:

• Understand the tools, how they operate and test your e-mails against them before they are sent
• Construct subject lines that are not seen as spam
• Use mailbox delivery testing to ensure that e-mails get into inboxes rather than junk folders
• Check that html is clean –
• Content filters will send e-mails with missing tags or empty title tags to the spam filter
• Avoid coloured backgrounds and links without http://’ prefix

5. Audit e-mail collection

The better the data you collect the fewer bad e-mail addresses. The better you keep the data up to date the less chance there is of bouncing

• Cleanse existing database to remove duplicate addresses
• Validate e-mail addresses on collection for correct
• Adopt a double opt in to confirm that the e-mail address is valid and that the e-mail address exists, confirmed as willing to receive e-mails from you
• Inform recipients why they are receiving the confirmation message and confirm what they can expect to get from you

6. “Sender From” Authentication

Sub domain authentication will re-assure ISPs that the e-mail comes from a genuine source so:

• Your email should contain a white Listing Statement advising the recipient to add you to their ‘safe
• Consider ‘CertifiedEmail’ status
• A scheme that allows regular e-mail senders to get pre-authorised ‘white listing’ certification

7. Consider the timing of your e-mail

Your audience will be considering different things at different times of the week or the day so

• Try sending your e-mail on different days: Does your message lend itself to the weekend? - Try sending on Friday morning.
• Travel bookings tend to be made on Monday or Tuesdays – Try sending your mail on Monday morning
• Try sending your e-mails at different times of day: Lunch time is a time when people open personal e-mails or for when they get home from work
• Maximise impact by considering how time of day or week can improve relevancy for your audience

8. Include a prominent ‘permission reminder’

Give context for the message to reduce potential for the message to be marked as spam

• Have a prominent unsubscribe link - if someone wants out, let them go and make it as easy as possible.
• Set maximum width to 600 pixels
• Avoid reverse text
• Avoid vertically aligned content regions where height is determined by text –e-mail clients will display fonts with different leading
• Include key non-graphical calls to action above the fold
• Add alt tags to your images
• Avoid padding and margin – Some e-mail clients do not display them
• E-mail size should be under 20k

9. Have something relevant to say

• What is the reason to communicate - Be newsworthy, informative or entertaining
• Strength of message / offer – Be as relevant with the offer as you can to the target audience.
• Segment your list and target your offer or information to the segment
• Have a clear objective for your e-mail - What’s the one thing you want your audience to do as a result of reading your e-mail?
• Ensure that you have a clear call to action above the fold

10. Continue the dialogue

If you are able to attract the user to click or interact take them to relevant content

• Build specific landing pages for your campaign or take the user through to relevant on-site content
• Meet the users expectation of the content contained there
• Use similar wording and images
• Re-assure them they are in the same place
• Don’t just take people to your home page
• Don’t present consumers with content that is not specific to the advert they have responded to

But most importantly, test, measure and test again. Each e-mail list will be different, fine tune your e-mail campaigns based on the timing of delivery and the relevancy for your audience.