Welcome to Socially Speaking

It's 5pm, do you know where your customers are?

Retailers are seeing a seismic shift in the ways customers are communicating and spending their time on-line. Email has been a proven communications vehicle for marketers, as a cost-effective channel for superior customer retention and loyalty. Due to its low cost and initial success rates, it's now being challenged by social media techniques and may become a victim of its own success. With the proliferation of email campaigns from the largest to the small retailers, spam filters have become more powerful and in-boxes are opened less frequently. Conventional email techniques are not reaching targets nor converting sales anywhere near the levels that they once were. Especially among the young millenials (18-35yo), customers are investing their time and reinforcing their relationships via their social networks, leaving their in-boxes behind.

Brands can chose to continue with the status quo and their current marketing methods, while losing market share, mind share and miss out on sharing in the rich social discourse that is going on in the world of trusted friend content (TFC).

The writing (or lack thereof) is on the wall for e-mail

75% of adults 18-24 are using social networks. A recent Pew research study

41% less email messages were opened per day in 2008 as they were in 2006, just two years earlier. Jupiter Research

22% of email users are using their social networks INSTEAD of e-mail. Jupiter Research

39% of e-mail users believe signing up for permission-based e-mail from retailers and banks leads to more unsolicited e-mail

Since 67% of retailers expect to invest more in email marketing now (State of Online Retailing 2009, soon to be published), it appears that old habits die hard. The continued dependency on email as the channel for retailers to get their message out is a function of the narrow view of the potential channels of how consumers can be reached. This dependency on email is also a function of what is considered "successful" in the often misguided view of the measurement of influencing customers. The ROI equasion involving impressions, conversion, and revenue generation has it's place, but the social web operates on a different set of measurements that require a new understanding of the impact a brand can have in the hands of its customers.

Social requires new strategies, tools, measurement and monitoring to make your brand an active participant in the dialog. This blog will explore these and other related topics with new posting frequency expected to be once per week.