Digital Expression

I previously stated that social media is one way to disaggregate your customer database so you're not completely reliant on email. 

Your customers' habits are changing. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

This chart from Morgan Stanley shows that social networking usage has now surpassed email usage.  Disaggregation is important.

Source: Internet Trends 2010 by Morgan Stanley
Corroborating Source: 2009 Marketing Trends by StrongMail

Furthermore, with this shift in behaviour, comes a shift in marketing budgets. Forrester estimates Social media spend of US$3.1 billion by 2014 versus only US2.1 billion for email.

We are past the tipping point.  Social media can be more effective than email because:

1. You can offer seamless experiences that keep the prospect on one channel and medium throughout the sales funnel, thereby reducing friction.
2. Overcome the noise associated with email marketing and reach prospects through a channel of their preference.  People who ignore your emails may listen to your message via an alternative channel.
3. The perception of a brand on a social network, is a brand that listens.  a brand that cares about me. And that asset - that social capital will deliver you customers that are worth more than those who you are not connected with on social networks.
4. It's easier for a recipient to share your message within a social network, than from an email client.
5. It's faster and easier for you to create a brief (and more easily consumable) post rather than produce a much longer html newsletter.
6. There are more relevant targeting opportunities than was possible with email segmentation, at least in the early stages of the customer lifecycle.

What's critical to remember, is that the tone of social media communications and it's approach is starkly different to email messaging. It's typically shorter and contains more rich media.  It's also a more passive message,  entertaining and has a level of personalisation that is unseen in email marketing.  It's ideally suited for targeting a niche group of subscribers who are interested buyers and / or influencers who are likely to think your message is remarkable enough to share it with their friends.

Here's how you can start integrating social media into your email marketing.

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Preference. With greater freedom to choose, we as online marketers must enhance our targeting capabilities so that we get noticed by a larger proportion of our potential audience (subscribers, followers and fans.)  I feel like i'm stating the obvious here, but ExactTarget have provided the evidence to back it up:  People don't interact with brands in silos:

There's an overlap between channels like Email, Facebook and Twitter but different audience subsets have their preferred interaction channel. For example, it's a younger audience that is more likely to share your message on Facebook.

The report supports what we have come to accept as best practice content guidelines for engagement:

On Facebook, provide infotainment

On Twitter, it's all about what's new and keeping people informed.

How is Social Media impacting your email marketing?

Here's a little something I put together while trialling Virtual Assistant company GetFriday.  Following some initial research, I asked them to see how they could put that data into an infographic.  This is the result:

Augmenting your customer database with user interest data from social network profiles is possible using Flowtown or Rapleaf.  But these solutions require an email database for you to plug-in to their systems.  If you don't have an email database yet, you can still gain some insight into how your audience interacts with social media by tapping into market research conducted by Exact Target, Forrester and GlobalWebIndex.  Play time: 

Forrester Research

Exact Target

The total number of social network users in New Zealand is about 2.3 million people. 

The total Internet population of New Zealand was 3.5 million as of 2009.  Assuming a nominal growth rate of 5%, the 2010 figure is around 3.675 million people. Therefore, 62% of the internet population are social network users.

Note that this chart covers only social networks and not publishing platforms with community features like Youtube, Wordpress and Slideshare.

Feel free to re-use this chart, but please link back to this page referencing Social Network Stats | Kryptonite.co.nz as the source.

There are 1.65 million kiwis or 72% of social network users on Facebook.  NZ Daily Unique Visitors

Twitter

NZ Daily Unique Visitors

Bebo is in steady decline as its audience migrates to Facebook. However, for now, Bebo is still more popular than Myspace. 

NZ Daily Unique Visitors

Myspace is steadily losing volume, but they have a very niche,  music-centric offering. 

NZ Daily Unique Visitors

Linkedin is steadily increasing its New Zealand user baser.  They claim 250,000 members, but the actual number of active users is closer to 180,000.

NZ Daily Unique Visitors

Sources:

1. Saatchi and Saatchi / Colmar Brunton Survey via Kelly Gregor at The NZ Herald
2. Google Ad Planner