It seems as though everyone has an opinion on who will win the online communication wars; the old guard with their POP3, spam filter and "reply all" button on email or the new kids with their Twitters, The Facebook and all that fancy social media. Don't believe there's a war (or at least a huge difference of opinion) over who will win out in the end? Then you should know a Google search of "Email versus Social Media" returns 318 million results, while a search of "Social Media versus Email" returns 2.7 billion. Oh, it's on.
Or is it? Would we look like fence-sitters (or peaceniks) if we just told everyone to chill out and pointed out that there's lots of room at the party for everyone? Just like email didn't kill the telephone, (mostly because we all check and respond to email on our phones now), new technology doesn't mean the end of old technology.
Despite all the advantages in communication that social media offers, email still serves a valuable need, and that's especially true for marketers. A recent article from Marqui Solutions called "The Question of Email vs. Social Media: 4 Reasons Why Email is Still Relevant" makes a strong case for the need to reach out to your audience through email.
As a quick summary, the four reasons Amberlie Denny gives make total sense; email is permission-based (at least it should be), it's targeted, it's personalized and it's easy. There's a reason it's been such a powerful marketing tool since the internet spread its tubes worldwide, and it's not going away any time soon, but that doesn't mean you stick with the tried and true and ignore the new guy. As Denny says at the end of the article,
"we’re not saying you should ignore social media either. What we’re saying is that it’s important that you don’t lose track of the importance of email as a marketing tactic in the face of the popularity and low barrier of entry of social media."
Dan Martell at Flowtown agrees, and has the data to back it up. He recently shared an infographic on the Flowtown blog that spells out "Why Email Marketing is Still in Vogue". It turns out the answer is as simple as email being cheap, widely used and a preferred communication method for many users.
So if you already know how powerful social media can be, and how solid a bet email is, why choose between them? Why not choose a marketing communications platform that can take advantage of them both, saving you time and giving your customers the power to choose the way they'd like to be communicated with?
If that makes as much sense to you as it does to us, we'd love to give you a live demo of big time Pulse. Submit one form and reach your customer base on the delivery method they prefer and choose, so you don't have to decide between social media and email anymore. Leave the choice to your customers and get the data you need.
Oh, and we've got SMS too.
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Just like the A-Team, we love it when a plan comes together. Earlier this year, we responded to a Tweet looking for people interested in hosting an event that connected the worlds of professional sports and social media. That event became SportsConnectTO, and we were immensely proud to be sponsoring partners and c0-organizers for the event. At the time we thought it might just be a one-off sort of deal, but due to the overwhelming response (and how much fun we had putting it together), we're hosting another event; a bigger and better one.
MusicConnectTO will be a panel discussion with a small group of people who know an awful lot about about how emerging media will affect (and is already affecting) the entire music industry.
You can see a full list of the panelists and read their bios (just click on their names) here. It will be a moderated discussion with lots of opportunity for Q&A from the crowd, and some mingling/networking time afterwards to grab a drink and bend the ears of your fellow attendees and the panelists.
If you're interested in music, you should come. If you're interested in the business of music, you should definitely come. If you're deeply involved in social and emerging media and you love music, you've probably already registered. That means you already know it's on Thursday, October 28th at 6:30pm (doors open at 6pm) at the Gladstone Hotel. We'll be in the ballroom, which is a great venue for any get-together, and there will be bar service.
In case the impressive list of panelists wasn't enough to tempt you, perhaps some of the prizes will be. For example, you can win a free trip for two to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, courtesy of the FlightCentre. There will also be door prizes and surprise giveaways at the event, courtesy of our other awesome sponsors.
So what are you waiting for? Register right now for MusicConnectTO and we'll see you on Thursday.
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I'd like to think that most people are like me and don't like being advertised to everywhere they go. That being said, I don't mind it as much if the ads are at least relevant to me.
We've all been trapped on a crowded bus with no room to read a newspaper or play Angry Birds on our phone, so to avoid awkward eye contact with our fellow riders, we scan all the ads for trade schools, TV shows and sketchy medications that will "improve" your love life. These ads have never impacted me because they're targeted to a very general audience and have nothing to do with my life.
Online marketing is more of the same, or should I say was more of the same. Until very recently, every ad we encountered online was purchased like a bulk media buy, and the closest thing to relevance was an ad specifically posted on a site tied to the content of that site (think ads for games on gaming sites). It still wasn't perfect and was the exception rather than the rule. And then recently, ads in Facebook and Google started to get eerily topical, like someone had a camera in your life.
Well, it turns out they sort of do. The science of Predictive Analytics has started to change how advertising works online. In a recent article on Mashable called "How Predictive Analytics Can Make Money for Social Networks" Dr. Rado Kotorov says "predictive analytics, a branch of data mining concerned with predicting future probabilities and trends, applies a filter to users’ online interactions with the aim of delivering more value from a sea of irrelevance."
The article explains that by collecting, tracking and analyzing what the internet knows about you, companies can monetize social media by ensuring that you always see relevant content in the ads you are exposed to online. There are a few problems with this though.
First, anyone reading this probably comes for a generation raised online who have learned to either tune out ads on websites (we all learned our lesson from clicking on the dancing monkey in 1998) or, more likely, have figured out how to use browser add-ons to block them completely. Relevance doesn't really matter if we're not watching. Second, how creepy is it that what I look at online determines how I'm classified as a shopper? If I like to kill time looking at awesome kitty videos on YouTube, but don't even own a cat, will my targeted ads be for cat food and toys?
The key elements missing from this equation are declaration of intent and choice. Just because I don't blog or Tweet about living room furniture, that doesn't mean I'm not looking for a new couch. I may not be a fan of "I love wrench and sockets sets" on Facebook, but I still need to fix up my car. Can't I have the choice to declare what I want to know about; the types of purchases I plan to make and would like information and promotions on? With my purchasing intent clearly declared, predictive analysis could refine my advertisements to a far greater degree, instead of offering up ads for catnip.
In social media, the user has choice and control. We pick who we follow and who we allow to follow us. We carefully select the brands and organizations we allow into our online lives, and we find comfort in the knowledge that if we want, we can always unfollow or unfriend (defriend?) them at any time. Shouldn't we have the same sort of individual control over how we're marketed to?
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While Hallowe'en is still over two weeks away, the world of retail sales is already ramping up for what should be a stellar Christmas shopping season. With the Canadian dollar creeping up on parity with the US dollar, Canadian retail chains are preparing for a lot of 'at home' purchases this year, and while the economic crisis continues to spread gloom in headlines about unemployment, analysts are predicting some heavy spending this year.
While most of us won't even start thinking about our Christmas shopping until well after the first tinsel shows up in a store (probably on November 1), holiday marketing strategies have already been inked in boardrooms and offices across North America, so what will retail do this year that's different than years past?
For retailers, the holiday rush is about beefing up stock in early December and clearing it all out by the end of the month. That means fueling the Christmas rush and then deep discounts for Boxing Day (or the "post Christmas grab-bag", as I like to call it). Essentially, they have 31 days (minus stat holidays) to get as much inventory out the door as possible and to pocket as much money as they can in the process.
Sales, markdowns and two-for-one certainly help, but it's a tough battle against competitors for the Christmas wish dollar, so it's imperative to get the word out about products and deals. We all know that retailers can use social media to spread the word better and more quickly than through traditional media, but in Christmas of 2010, will they? Is this the year where we no longer root through the flyers that clog our mailboxes to seek out the perfect gift only to find it's sold out when we arrive in store?
How would you like to see retailers use social media to make your holiday shopping easier, if not cheaper? Even better, what retailers are already doing it right?
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We're at DemoCamp Toronto 27 today, so if you are too, be sure to say hi (@BTDC on Twitter). We're always excited to be a part of entrepreneurial activities and anything to do with the tech community, here in Toronto and anywhere we can take part. Aside from hearing about all the exciting things that our colleagues are doing and being inspired by tales of challenge and success, we've also found that start-up folk are some of the most fun people on earth.
We've attended a few DemoCamps in the past, so our faces might look familiar, and some of our other favourites include Refresh Events (now on hiatus in Toronto) and the amazing SproutUp events put on by Sarah Prevette, Erin Bury and everyone else at Sprouter. Aside from networking and meeting prospective clients, these events also allow us to compare notes and commiserate with our contemporaries while meeting and making new friends.
When we talk to colleagues in other cities, we're always blown away by their comments about the start-up tech culture here in Toronto, which is something we often take for granted. It seems everyone knows each other, and we all want to do whatever we can to help each other succeed. We just assumed that events like these all over the world had people saying "Wow. Great job. What can I do to help?" and small groups of random people coming together to create new and exciting events, and merging ideas and technologies into monsters taking this city, country and world by storm.
We're always looking for ways to give back to this generous community which has been so kind to us, so if you've got an idea or problem, let us know how we can help. After all, we're all in this together, right?
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If you're reading this, you probably spend much of your time (like we do) innovating; looking for new ways to do things, better ways to solve the problems that people encounter every day. So what does true innovation look like? Well, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review says that "Designing Innovative Services Begins with Four Questions" (link courtesy of RBC's Innovation Team on Twitter).
While the questions put forward by Lance Bettencourt are pretty standard ones asked by anyone looking to improve an old way of doing things, an example he sets out early in the article is a great way of looking at where innovation doesn't come from. He says that one of the things that hinders true innovation is a focus by companies on measuring and researching existing service quality without focusing on what the customer truly wants.
"Consider an analogy in the product space. If a mop maker asked housecleaners to rate the various elements of its mop, what would it ask about? Absorbency, let's say, and the length of the handle, and who knows how many other attributes. And what would it do with the feedback? Seize upon any shortfall, no doubt, as an obvious opportunity for improvement. But would any of those lead it to create the Swiffer? Highly unlikely. Odds are good that it would come out with a new and improved mop.
To recall Ted Levitt's famous admonition, the customer doesn't want a mop. What the customer wants is a clean floor. By focusing on the tool it had already invented, a mop maker would neglect to focus on the higher-potential prospect of providing a better way to solve the customer problem."
The same issues come up when organizations decide to make the jump into social media for marketing and communications. They know that their customers are out there talking and listening and decide that they should be there too. They create accounts and start talking and offering information, perks and customer service and support. Only then, do they realize that they have no means for measurement and they're stuck. Now they need to find a social media measurement and analytics tool that will gauge how effective all their work has been.
This loop is what a recent BBC article calls "the holy grail of of social media metrics". In "Why companies watch your every Facebook, YouTube, Twitter move", Tim Weber lays out the problems faced both my organizations making the jump into social media, and the customers who are engaging with them. Companies need measurement, a fact of life in the world of business, and the measurement tools available are reportedly as accurate as your average weather forecast when it comes to gauging sentiment and customer reaction. On the other hand, consumers want targeted and relevant information (not to mention deals) and they want to know with whom they're dealing (a realistic interaction, not a forced one where a CEO is being represented by a PR team).
In this case, real innovation comes from changing the way organizations interact with customers in social media. Too many organizations look at social media and say "Well, this is where our customers hang out, so we need to be there too. Let's tack social media on to our existing marketing strategy and come up with a way to measure it as we go", which just ends up giving the customers a slightly better mop.
Creating a way for consumers to segment the information they actually want, and to get it from a branded source with a genuine corporate voice in the social medium of their choice gives them the control they want and the interaction they desire. Having built-in, real-time measurement on hand at all times to easily calculate ROI and customer engagement solves many of the problems organizations are already facing in social media. That's innovation. big time Pulse takes the same tools and media that consumers are already using, and lets organizations use them in a new, targeted and best of all measurable way.
After all, as the famous anecdote says, Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb by trying to make improvements to the candle. Innovation requires change to solve a problem, so focus on the problem and not on the existing ways of dealing with it.
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We Canadians love to shop. Besides talking about the weather and how different we are from our American neighbours, hitting the mall and finding a good bargain is just about as Canadian as it gets. So if you had to guess the one place where Canadians spent over $15,000,000,000 last year, what would be your guess? Tim Hortons probably, but the answer is clothing optional and open 24 hours.
According to Statistics Canada (as reported by the CBC), we spent $15.1 billion ordering goods and services online in 2009 which is a 15.23% increase over 2007 ($12.8 billion). That's a significant increase for such a short period of time, but that's not the most surprising finding of the survey by Stats Can; it's the shopping habits of Canadians that came out in the percentages.
For example, nearly half of all Canadians aged 16 and over made online purchases in 2009, with a near tie in gender demographics (42% men, 37% women). With an approximate population of 34.2 million, and accounting for those under the age of 16, that's still 0ver 10 million people surfing the internet with their wallets open.
And those that don't have their wallets open, are getting ready to open them. The survey also found that 52% of Canadians (and not necessarily the same people who actually bought online) use the internet to "wind0w-shop". They browse, research and otherwise compare products that they intend to buy, either in a store (as 69% of Canadians did in 2009) or online.
So whether or not Canadians are actually buying products online, it's safe to say that most are at least seeing what's out there and comparing price tags, features and looking for deals, all from the comfort and relative anonymity of the internet.
These stats reinforce what we're doing by giving these two groups (the shopppers and the deal-seekers/researchers) the information they need to feel great about parting with their hard-earned money for the products and services they want. Why should finding great deals on travel, event tickets and clothing be hard work? It doesn't have to be. Why can't they get information about the books and magazines they read, the make-up they use and the movies they love? They can.
We know that big time Pulse can give retailers and service providers the tools they need to speak directly and relevantly to not just the Canadians who buy and do research online, but everyone with a Twitter or Facebook account, an email address and even a cellphone. If you want to reach those consumers, let us know.
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Since school started after Labour Day, it seems like everyone's internal clock has already moved into 'new season' mode. Despite being out of school for nearly a decade each, all of us at big time have certainly felt that switch ourselves, and it's always surprising that some timelines stay with you no matter how long they've no longer actually applied.
It's been a hectic few weeks here at big time headquarters as we've launched a new client and been working feverishly on some improvements to big time Pulse. It's great knowing that all the hard work is paying off and that we're delivering a quality product to everyone out there who uses it. For us, keeping the end-user in mind for any changes to Pulse is key and it's what keeps us grounded at a time when it's so easy to get bogged down in details.
In every business, keeping the fine balance between client needs and end-user needs can be a delicately refined art; a choreographed dance that requires weighing the desires of one group against the requirements of another. We're really spoiled by the fact that we have great clients who share our desire to provide the best information to users and who work closely with us to make sure that happens. You don't have to spend much time on Twitter or in the development community to know how rare that is.
We've got some big plans for this fall and early winter, and moving out of the planning stages into the implementation is really exciting. We're looking forward to sharing some of those changes here as they go into action. I can let you know that we're adding some exciting new delivery methods to Pulse shortly that will increase its reach and popularity with end-users, and making some changes to the UI to make the user experience even better. We're also going to be announcing more client launches, and some new features to our site to better serve our communities here in Toronto; namely the social media and start-up communities.
So fall is shaping up to be a busy season for us. How about you?
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We're proud to be a part of Royal Bank of Canada's (RBC) launch of the 2010 Next Great Innovator Challenge (NGIC). At noon on September 22, the NGIC announced this year's question via a webcast to university classrooms across Canada.
The RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge encourages students to not just think about innovation, but to live it. Each year, a question or idea is proposed to students from a variety of educational disciplines, and entrants develop an innovation that answers the question or expands on the idea.
This year's question asks about the future of banking. "Suggest an innovation that will be critical to Canadian financial services in 2015."
Past questions included "suggest innovative methods or tactics to transform the workplace to match the needs of an evolving and increasingly diverse workforce," (2009), "suggest an Innovative concept, product or process from another region or different industry that Canadian Financial Services providers should adopt," (2008) and "describe an innovation, idea or concept that Canadian [financial institutions] should consider to make it easier for clients to do business with us," (2007).
Many of the ideas proposed by students (all entrants, not just winners) have gone on for testing and refinement in the RBC Applied Innovation Lab, where some have even gone into application at RBC. For example, the RBC Student Better Life site was the direct result of a finalist's proposal.
Other ideas have been passed along to RBC's business and strategic groups where they have influenced planning and development within the bank.
Avi Pollock, Head of Applied Innovation and Strategic Plans for RBC defined innovation during the webcast as the connection between "what is possible to what is valuable to our clients, employees and shareholders," going on to say that innovation "meets and unmet need."
RBC is committed to innovation, especially the use of emerging technologies, and we're proud to announce that the primary communications tool for entrants and those interested in this year's challenge is big time Pulse. Anyone wanting more information about the challenge, or who wants to keep up-to-date on key milestones, can sign up to the RBC Next Great Innovator Challenge Pulse account and get their updates through the social medium of their choice.
This year's challenge will reward $45,000 in prizes as well as exposure to the senior executives of one of Canada's largest companies. The registration deadline is November 6, and registration is free.
You can get more information, including contest details from the RBC Next Great Innovator site.
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Mitch Joel asked the question "Is Social Media Right for Every Business?" this week on his blog, Six Pixels of Separation, and his well-thought-out answer is one that we hear a lot. Namely, it's right if you can take the time to be social.
This attitude is pretty common today, and most people heavily involved in social media (shoot me if I ever say "social media gurus") argue that NOT making time to be social in social media is what's holding businesses back from fully engaging and being successful in the space.
Customers and clients are already there, willing and waiting for interaction, but organizations don't like the amount of time and effort required (not to mention money) to dive and invest in creating their social media brand. That's not even accounting for the sheer terror they feel when they think about opening a public dialogue with their customers where they could be (gasp) criticized; despite the fact that their customers are already criticizing them online, they just don't see it.
We created big time Pulse with all this in mind. Not only is it a low-effort, low-cost way to get information out through social media and to market to customers who live there, it's a great first step into that crazy world. Organizations can watch and learn without having to fully engage, and grow their social media presence naturally.
We'll be talking more about how this works with big time Pulse on Monday night, here in Toronto. Camaraderie co-working is hosting a free, live demo of Pulse and we'd love to answer your questions. Just RSVP here to join us. If you can't make it, but would love a demo, just drop us a line and let us know.
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