Thanks, Yahoo!

I just got an over-enthusiastic email from Yahoo about something that means very little to me. Following on from my recent rant about poor sign-up practice over at Q Magazine’s website, Yahoo have shown that actually having all that good data can be a waste of time… by failing to use it.

“Dear Yahoo! Calendar and Yahoo! Notepad Customer” runs the greeting.

This is being sent to me because Yahoo! think they hold some information on me – and they definitely have in my Yahoo! profile a record of my name. Shame they didn’t bother to personalise.

And, if they’d paid any attention, they’d realise that I don’t use either Notepad or Calendar. Had they recognised this, they’d have been able to send me an enormously more relevant email inviting me to explore the new service.

Finally, am I alone in thinking this name change is extremely naff?

Sorry Yahoo! No sale.

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I admit I have a tendency to get more worked up than the average customer about bad form in email sign-ups. Most people, I’m sure, will either groan and put up with it, or lie… Maybe they simply don’t bother and move on.

But for me, it seems daft to go to all the effort and investment of persuading someone to engage more closely with you – and then make it so difficult to actually get on your email list.

There is really only one piece of information you should ‘require‘ to send someone email. Yep, the email address. Take a look at this form: it’s the only thing that Q have NOT required you to give. Madness.

All the other information is useful, I agree. But if you don’t get it immediately, it can still be gathered later… a really good welcome programme is a much better time to do it. Anyway, surely it’s better to be in contact with someone you know only a little about than to lose them completely because they don’t want to share their full address, mobile number and date of birth with you?

I’ve worked with a lot of companies on their sign-up processes and subsequent email programmes. I’ve analysed which data you hold on someone is the best indicator of customer value – for retailers and for media companies. Believe me, there are many more important things than having all these required fields.

Please, Q, stop making your would-be subscribers jump these barriers to entry. You’ll thank me for that advice if you follow it!

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It’s nearly Christmas, so once again I’ve had an email from them – first one I’ve had since October 2008. In a world where around 30% of Guinness’s key target audience have switched / created a new email address in the past year, that 2 year silence alone is a recipe for deliverability hell.

I was curious to see whether they’d improved their unsubscribe options – take a look at http://www.diageobrandsunsubscribe.co.uk/ t0 see for yourself. There *is* a slight improvement on 2 years ago: you are no longer obliged to share your physical address. But there is still way too much information required for what should be a painless procedure.

When you consider the enormous levels of creative expertise that go into their Google Earth-driven online campaign and their TV commercials, it astonishes me that their data driven marketing is so primitive.

Oh well. Another year, another Christmas spam button hit.

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According to the Economist last week, it’s on the decline… temporarily at least, thanks to the shutting down of a bunch of servers in Russia.

Part of the rationale Mark Zuckerberg offered for Facebook Messaging when he announced it this month was that:

“…the “social inbox” … would catch spam or other unwanted messages. “Because we know who your friends are, we can put in really good filters to make sure you only see things you care about,” he said, with unwarranted confidence.”

So why are supposedly respectable marketers like gocompare.com sending me messages I don’t recall signing up for… and then requiring a password, email address (astonishingly) my date of birth to remove my email address from their list? Why???

This comes across very badly: one very small step short of phishing.

In the (generally) looser regulatory environment for email marketing of the United States, would expose them to risk of prosecution. This is one area where the US rules are better crafted than those in Europe, where this is not against regulation – but it is firmly against best practice standards.

In practice, what I did was to hit the ‘REPORT SPAM’ button on my gmail account.

This makes my problem go away, but is only the start of their likely headache.

Increasingly, the focus of deliverability is shifting to an engagement index. Every person that hits the ‘SPAM’ button adds to the likelihood that messages from this sender will end up in the SPAM folder, not the inbox. It doesn’t make any business sense at all to keep people on a list who don’t want to hear from you. So let people leave your list in good grace: they may be more prepared to return to you at a later date when what you have to say is of interest to them again.

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I guess I’m not alone – it seems the good folks over at Cupertino have been on the same thought. And, as regulars on this blog will know, I’ve been a consumer of ebooks on my iphone for a long time.

There’s been a lot of discussion in the media about how the iPad may help publishers embrace the digital era – especially this excellent post over at Gizmodo, which identifies that Apple are trying to do what they did with the iPod: not haggle about the early adopter audience who’ve already bought a Creative JukeBox (or Kindle in this case) but rather reach the rest of the world. Those regular consumers who just like great kit that works.

The impact on marketing is huge. The transition of apps from the iPhone to the iPad will be an enormous opportunity for marketers who’ve succeeded in engaging their customers to the extent of committing to a download. This might be content driven – or commerce driven – or other ‘marketing as a service’ approaches. And yes, I’m look at you, fashion retailers, banks and other service providers.

My colleagues at my new employer, Lyris, are working on an app for a fashion retailer that already looks great on the iPhone. If the high net worth customers of this brand do, as I suspect they will, end up with iPads to do their surfing, they are almost certain to use it to do their online fashion shopping.

Are you ready for that?

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Click to play the 1997 Guinness advert

I was leafing through the soon-to-be-lamented November issue of Revolution (specifically the Insider Guide to Digital Marketing) when I came across the following quote:

“The DMA estimates that marketers gain $45.06 (£28.28) in ROI for every dollar they spend on email campaigns.”
Mike Hilts, president & general manager, Yesmail

Now, speaking pedantically, this is factually correct. But so wrong.

This (frequently quoted) statistic is a ratio, that was converted into US dollar terms to help present the finding in meaningful terms to an American audience. So far so good. But why the half-conversion? If it’s $45.06 to $1, then it’s £45.06 to £1, right?

To be fair to Mike, he’s by no means the first to make this error – but surely as an industry it’s in our interest to get the facts right?

Unless, of course, Mike is saying that we’re only getting a little better than 60% of the return in the UK that our trans-Atlantic counterparts achieve? I thought not.

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g.mail glitch

I learned a while back now that there is an issue with the use of dots at Gmail. This is a known issue that Google list on their help pages. I was quite relaxed about this as, to quote Google:

“If you’re homerjsimpson@gmail.com, no one owns Homer.J.Simpson@gmail.com, except for you.”

So far so good.

Until I started getting emails from someone in Australia about all kinds of stuff – mostly related to a university campus down there. And other emails from the US, where church organisations were sending me with all kinds of stuff about things they wanted me to participate in.

On checking with the two sets of emailers, turns out the difference has come from the presence (or absence) of dots in the email address. In both cases I’ve been told that the email addresses are otherwise the same.

So now I’m worried. If I am getting their mail, are they getting mine as well?

In the wake of various other privacy / data security glitches from Google, I think I need to find a new webmail server. Fast!

Is anyone else bothered that Google’s concern for the security and privacy is so low that private communications can be shared so easily?

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I’ve rehearsed the arguments on this question before, but I’m more interested today in the subtext to this story: the extent to which Yahoo!’s reliance on display advertising is going to hurt them during the current economic difficulties.

It’s chastening to think how much of digital’s growth in revenue is purely from search – and yet that’s just the beginning of what the medium can deliver.

Search marketing words (both SEM and SEO) because it is by some distance the most effective way to introduce someone to what you are offering/saying… providing that they are already in the market for it. It’s all about steering someone toward your version of what they already know they want. Powerful, cost-effective and an essential weaon in the marketing arsenal. And almost totally transactional.

But what about the other side of the line?

For most businesses, it’s not just the first sale that matters – it’s the ongoing relationship that the first sale might lead to. This is very strongly the case with subscription-type businesses (e.g. utilities, mobile phones, satellite tv, magazines etc). It is also central to FMCG (or CPG as they call it in the US) marketing.

But it’s also the basis of what your local retail outlet hopes for. Or what your window cleaner relies on. In fact most businesses in the real world tend to prize the ongoing relationship past the first sale very highly.

So why has the digital economy been so hung up on the idea of paying Google (or their affiliate marketing partner) every time they want to conclude another transaction?

Of course, this is still very different from the display advertising model that Yahoo! and the like espouse. But it is, for me, crucial to digital marketing’s success in this recession – and to the rosier times that will sooner or later follow it.

If you haven’t already, start planning for it now! Google is NOT the only show in town.

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I then decided that I didn’t want to keep getting their emails. This happens, marketers, get over it.

What I saw is probably the worst opt-out in the world.

Who wants to fill THIS out to unsubscribe from an email blast?

It is a minefield of unnecessary information across a range of brands in the Diageo group. It is almost certainly against the rules set out in the UK under the wonderfully named PECR legislation (pronounced ‘pecker’). It is definitely against best practice.

Oh well. Yahoo! mail has a ‘This Is Spam’ button. Just got hit again.

Come on, Diageo, get a grip!

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The Times are telling us that markets are responding positively to yesterday’s government and central bank announcements. House prices are falling slower than (month on month) than any other time this year (!). Even the Daily Mail is getting in on the act, with a real tabloid lead of “Phew! Shares bounce back…” before dissolving into another attack on the government. Even so!

My favourite though is from The Sun – classic red-top reporting:

The Sun: Simply FAB Darling

It’s good to see the press recapturing a bit of a sense of fun. Maybe, just maybe, things are on the up and up.

I’ve spent the week at a couple of event – Silverpop’s customer conference and the launch of a new product, Vtrenz – talking to people in the digital business. I’ve been struck how the mood has been distinctly lacking in despondency about business and it’s prospects.

Some business types have been decidedly upbeat: a holiday company who are racing to keep up with demand; a high end bank who are seeing people having to put in desperately long hours to keep pace with the (profitable) trading they’re engaged in.

It’s true that growth is forecast to be somewhat slower than the heady days of the mid 2000s, but digital marketing spend is hot on the heels of Press and TV spending. And, according to Rebecca Jennings of Forrester when I spoke to her yesterday, there is every sign that it will continue to grow.

My instinct was to ask whether that was just Search marketing, but no, it turns out that her surveys said that spend would increase for Search, Display advertising, Email… even Web 2.0/Social Networking, which I might have thought susceptible to budget cuts as its ROI is still being proven. Only mobile appears to be showing a modest retraction.

To my delight she was championing the idea of measurement past the transactional level, on to the longer term customer value metrics I’ve long espoused.

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