Social Mediarology

I just got an email today that ExactTarget just released another report in their fantastic Subscribers, Fans and Followers research series. Their ninth report is entitled Mobile Dependence Day and goes into depth about our collective dependence on our smartphones and other mobile devices. (You can see my previous reviews of the SFF research series if you want. I covered report #7 Social Mytbhusting here.) While I was reading the most recent report, I realized that I hadn’t blogged about the previous report: The Social Breakup, so this post consists of reviews of the two most recent reports as part of the Subscribers, Fans and Followers research. If you’re interested in downloading the reports for yourself, check out ET’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers page for the full reports.

Report No. 8: The Social Breakup

The eighth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series focuses on the “social breakup” – how and why consumers “break up” with brands and stop following them via Facebook, Twitter and email. You might be surprised at how much similarity there is across all channels. Here are some of the highlights:

• Email
  • 67% of subscribers hit the unsubscribe button to end the email relationship rather than just deleting (17%), reporting as spam (8%), ignoring (6%) or setting up a filter to auto-archive the message(2%)
  • Top 3 reasons people unsubscribed from emails:
    • Too many emails from the company
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Email overload – too many emails in general, cleaning out the clutter
• Facebook
  • When fans no longer want information from a brand they previously “liked”, 43% of them go to the brand’s page and click “unlike, 38% click the “X” in their newsfeed to remove them from the wall and 19% just ignore the posts.
  • Top 3 reasons people “unliked” a brand on Facebook:
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users walls
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • They only “liked” the brand because of a promotion, discount or deal offered to fans, and “unliked” once they got what they wanted.

• Twitter
  • Nearly half of consumers who created a Twitter account no longer use it with 52% saying they found Twitter to be pointless, 38% saying it became boring and 23% thinking that Twitter was too chaotic.
  • Top 3 reasons people stopped following a brand on Twitter:
    • Repetitive or boring content over time
    • Tweet stream became overloaded with marketing posts, wanted to clean up
    • Too many posts – too much frequency can overwhelm users tweet streams

Notice the striking similarity between why people unsubscribe, unlike and unfollow brands? While there are different strategies to employ for brand to get the most out of email, Facebook and Twitter, online consumers – across the board – seem to all be saying the same thing when it comes to ending their relationship with a brand’s digital initiatives: don’t talk too much and keep the content interesting.

Report No. 9: Mobile Dependence Day

The ninth report in the Subscribers, Fans and Followers series really focuses on our increasing dependence on our smartphones and other mobile devices. Even within the past year, the share of US consumers with smartphones (as opposed to feature phones) has grown dramatically. Here are some of the high points about what it means for interactive marketers:

• 89% of US consumers 15+ own a cell phone. 41% of those have smartphones
  • Android: 33%
  • iPhone: 25%
  • Blackberry: 19%
  • Other: 23%
• Smartphone’s Big 5 (the five most frequently used functions on today’s smartphones):
  • Phone Calls
  • Texting
  • Email
  • Internet
  • Facebook
• How important is the smartphone to people who own and use one? Here is the percentage of people who would (if forced to choose) rather keep their smartphone than the following items:
  • Game Console: 72%
  • Dishwasher: 46%
  • Laptop: 40%
  • Microwave: 34%
  • Refrigerator: 13%
  • Car: 8%

The rest of the report gives recommendations of ways you can integrate your marketing efforts across all three communications channels and is definitely worth a read.

Have you looked through ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers series? What do you think about their findings?

I wrote about Qdoba’s (@QdobaMexGrill) clever email marketing a while back, and after some recent positive experiences with Qdoba, I decided I’d blog about them again. First of all, I’m a big fan of Chipotle. There’s even a running joke with my in-laws about how much I love the gourmet burrito chain. That being said, I haven’t been going to Chipotle as often as I used to. Part of it is because the closest Chipotle to my house is 4 miles away and the closest one to me at work is probably 8-9 miles away. Another reason is that because of slow economy, I’m watching what I spend more closely than ever.

Here’s where Qdoba comes in. Not only are there two Qdoba locations within about 2 miles of my house, but Qdoba is constantly sending out coupons through their permission email channels. When they launched their Craft 2 menu item last spring, they sent several emails letting their subscribers know about their Qdoba Craft Your Life microsite, which allowed you to play a short game, and rewarded you with a coupon at the end. The coupon was anything from a free order of chips & queso with the purchase of an entrée to a free entrée with the purchase of a drink.

Last fall, Qdoba  launched a promotion, Food Lovers Fighting Burrito Boredom, which allowed customers to make their own entrée online – which they can spice up however they want – in order to help fight burrito boredom. Just like with the previous promotion, Qdoba allowed users to place once a day per email address and awarded them with a different coupon of varying worth. Though the coupon portion of the promotion is over now, Qdoba has kept the microsite alive to continue to educate their potential customers.

Although the US has started to see economic growth in the past few quarters, high gas prices threaten to dampen some of that growth for this summer. For a fast casual restaurant like Qdoba, they certainly don’t want to dilute their brand’s quality perception by focusing solely on coupons, but by creating innovate campaigns like this, Qdoba is showing that they understand the economy we’re in now and are trying to build up brand loyalty for when the economy rebounds and discounting isn’t as common.

In addition to their promotions, Qdoba is also doing a great job of creating real conversation and interacting with their customers (below is a tweet I sent out that they quickly replied to).

Looks like Facebook has decided to jump head-first into offering group buying discounts a la Groupon, Living Social, and a host of other local and national ‘group discount buying’ programs. I checked my email about 10 minutes ago and had my very first Facebook Deal staring me in the face. There were rumors that Facebook Deals would launch in five US cities this week and it appears they official have launched in Atlanta, Dallas, Austin, San Diego and San Francisco.

Just like Groupon, Living Social and other group buying programs, I received the Facebook Deal in my email instead of through Facebook. They must have realized the power and personal nature of email marketing to have launched a program that is so dependent upon email as opposed to their own platform.

The most interesting part of the email is that I now live in Indianapolis, but the Deal (see screenshot below) is for horseback riding in Acworth, GA (a suburb of Atlanta). I did live in Atlanta for a couple years, but I’ve been in Indy for the past 5 years, so Facebook needs to do a bit of work with their Deal targeting.

Have you received a Facebook Deal yet? Do you think you’d be likely to buy a deal via Facebook or will you stick with Groupon, Living Social or another similar daily deal program?

While there were several great presentations during ExactTarget’s Connections 2010 Conference, one of my favorite sessions was the Subscribers Fans & Followers: Cross Channel Success With Email, Facebook and Twitter session hosted by Jeff Rohrs (@jkrohrs) and Morgan Stewart (@mostew) on the last day of the conference. You can check out my previous posts about ET’s SFF research here and here. Below are a few videos I took during their presentation.

Mythbusting with Jeff and Morgan:

Throughout the Subscriber, Fans & Followers research, Jeff and Morgan were able to identify some really interesting information. Some of that information was picked up by local and national news outlets, but like with most research, you can make it say whatever you want it to say. Some news outlets ran tiny portions of the research, skewing some of the data. That’s where Myth #1 comes into play.

Myth #1: Email Usage is Dropping:

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about how Nielsen just came out with data saying that email usage has dropped significantly in recent years. In short, the Nielsen study, only includes email accessed via the web – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc – but it doesn’t include email accessed via mobile platforms or even Outlook!

Myth #2: Facebook Fans are worth 136.38 dollars:

Some recent research said each Fan a brand has on Facebook is worth roughly $136. While that may be hard to prove one way or another, during the SFF research, participants were asked: Are you more likely to purchase from a brand after becoming a Subscriber, Fan or Follower? The results were different than you might think.

Only 17% of Facebook Fans said yes, while 27% of email Subscribers gave the same answer. The real kicker is that a full 37% of Twitter Followers said they’d be more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter. Obviously, this question only asks about intent and there aren’t any hard dollar figures behind it, but the fact that more than a third of Twitter Followers would be more likely to purchase from your brand after following should encourage you to start using Twitter.

Myth #3: Twitter is Dying:

2009 was a great year for Twitter and it became the fastest growing social media channel ever. At some point, the rate of growth was going to have to slow down a bit. Even though we’ve seen some higher profile users quitting Twitter recently (John Mayer, Demi Lovato), Twitter is far from dying. Jeff and Morgan remind us that Twitter users create six times more content online than non-Twitter users. So, while a few celebrities may come and go, the real influencers on the web still use Twitter heavily.

Did you attend the Connections 2010 Conference? What was the biggest takeaway you got from the conference?

While there were several great presentations during ExactTarget’s Connections 2010 Conference, one of my favorite sessions was the Subscribers Fans & Followers: Cross Channel Success With Email, Facebook and Twitter session hosted by Jeff Rohrs (@jkrohrs) and Morgan Stewart (@mostew) on the last day of the conference. You can check out my previous posts about ET’s SFF research here and here. Below are a few videos I took during their presentation.

Twitter Users as Content Creators:

Through their SFF research, Jeff and Morgan discovered that Twitter users end up creating six times as much content online as the typical online consumer. This is extremely powerful news and should be a wake-up call to marketers – just because only 5% of online consumers follow a brand through Twitter, those consumers are some of the most influential people online today.

In the video below, Jeff and Morgan talk about the tremendous reach and influence of Twitter users.

3 Follow-up Points to SFF Research:

The final report in the SFF study was released just before the Connections 2010 conference and Jeff and Morgan talked about three follow-up points to the research. First, SFF’s are long-term assets, not short term sales opportunities. If you only look at the short term, you’re overlooking the true value of your SFFs. Second, SFFs must be integrated and optimized. Once you’re involved in email, Facebook and Twitter, you must continually work to integrate and optimize the content across all three channels. Finally, leadership must unify email and social marketing – don’t look at email, Facebook and Twitter as channels in separate silos.

Keep an eye out for another post of videos from the SFF talk later in the week. Were you at the Connections 2010 Conference? What was your favorite session?