Seven Saving Graces to Keep You from Spam

Copyright © by ian fenwick. All rights reserved
Copyright © ian fenwick. All rights reserved
The Seven Saving Graces that
Keep You From Spam
Presented at GMAC Asia Pacific Conference
November 10, 2016
Ian Fenwick
Visiting Professor, Sasin Graduate Institute
Professor Emeritus, Schulich School of Business

Digital marketing’s like high
school sex.
Everybody’s talking about it.
Few people are doing it,
& those who are doing it, aren’t
doing it very well.
Keith Weed
Chief Marketing Officer, Unilever
June 25, 2010

3
A few years back, Kent Wertime (now co-CEO Ogilvy & Mather Asia-Pacific) and I wrote an
overview of digital marketing. We covered the entire spectrum

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/Leonardo_da_Vinci-_Vitruvian_Man.JPG
http://juzmental.deviantart.com/art/Vitruvian-Cartman-27804523?q=boost%3Apopular%20vitruvian&qo=1
…we felt like renaissance men

…now digital is just too big to cover it all.
From renaissance man to Eric Cartman in just a few years
When I say email, what comes into your mind?

vic15 Spam CC BY 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/vic15/3734909465/arie
Well, for most people they think email, they think spam, spam, spam.
And probably delete, delete, delete… the morning purge.
Now as one who grew up in England, I think spam’s delicious, with so
many varieties too
(battered spam was my favourite, with Marmite & spam sandwiches
close second)
But as an email marketer, you DON’T want to be thought spam.
Here are 7 ways to stay above the spam

https://secure.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/2866399803/ Last Conversation Piece, 1994-95, Bronze by Juan Munoz, Spanish, born Madrid, 1953-2001by cliff1066
In the book, we called email the workhorse of digital marketing… and it definitely is.
Not talked about too much, but doing the hard work behind the scenes

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sweetman/221560643/ Sofia Sweetman
Trojan Horse
But don’t think of email as just a workhorse
think of it as a Trojan horse:
a way to get into the consumer’s mind…
without them thinking marketing.
Once they think marketing, you’re finished

As you craft your email, try for a human tone
For a moment forget you’re a marketer.
Try to be a human: with a name, and a face
Saying useful, helpful things.

http://www.contagious.com/blogs/news-and-views/insight-strategy-the-swedish-number
Take a look at the Swedish number… it’s not email,
but it is a refreshing use of PEOPLE
It’ll be 3 minutes well spent
i.digi8.us/Swedish

http://theswedishnumber.com http://www.contagious.com/blogs/news-and-views/cannes-lions-direct-award-winners /
http://theswedishnumber.com/
In a world where we text, we
tweet, we snap & we have a million
options at our fingertips, it’s easy to
mistake technology for human
connection.
At the end of the day, we’re people
talking to people.
Mark Tutssel, global chief creative officer, Leo Burnett Worldwide
“

Everyone who writes email, thinks they need to say more.
Everyone who reads it, knows they should have said less.
Everyone who sends email, wants to send more often.
Everyone who receives email knows, they get too much
The email is the bait, the Trojan horse, it’s not the full
dinner…that’s on your website, FB, LinkedIn page etc

Dean McCoy fish bowl CC BY 2.0 https://www.flickr.com/photos/deanmccoyphotos/5103908380/in/photostream/
Attention spans Consumer Insights, Microsoft Canada http://advertising.microsoft.com/en/cl/31966/how-does-digital-affect-canadian-attention-spans
You may remember the Microsoft Canada study that
purported that human attention spans were less
than a goldfish…. You can read its debunking at
i.digi8.us/GoldfishNot
But in the morning email purge there’s probably
only a few seconds between delete and open

©Copyright Ian Fenwick 2010
https://www.flickr.com/photos/vialbost/9140286259/ by Frédérique Voisin-Demery Orange
Don’t forget relevance… if it’s relevant to me, it gets my attention.
Segments, that used to be broad demographic things, change in digital
to X-treme segments

Pomegranate from https://www.flickr.com/photos/74444001@N00/15799835919/ Samantha Durfee
…no longer broad and static. In digital segments are small and
behaviorally defined. Based not on what the customer is , but what the
customer does.
If you’re not using retargeting (some call it remarketing), you shold be.

No-one believes marketers.
They believe their friends, their on-line friends that they’ve never seen!
So you need to harness sharing, getting customers to spread the word for you.
What people share, what they spread, are stories.

Most marketers thought this title was probably true, but a little rude

The second edition was better titled!

Why ask permission in digital?
We never did in traditional media

…because digital media is controllable by the consumer. If they don’t like you
communications, the wall comes down, and you never be able to speak to them again

…because you’re not trying to say it all
in an email…or in any one place, you
need to reassure consumers that
they are still with you, by providing
clear, consistent messaging

https://www.fl ickr.com/photos/thisparticulargreg/514818651/in/photostream/ ThisParticularGreg by ThisParticularGreg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanh1/4897457597/in/photostream/ Insects and Flowers #1 by Duncan
We’ve come a long way in a short time.
At the turn of the century we talked about the stickiness of
digital.
We aimed to get people on our website, and trap them
there forever

https://www.fl ickr.com/photos/thisparticulargreg/51481n’8651/in/photostream/ ThisParticularGreg by ThisParticularGreg
https://www.flickr.com/photos/duncanh1/4897457597/in/photostream/ Insects and Flowers #1 by Duncan
More recently we’ve realize that we should try to trap customers: that’s not nice.
Rather we should, like a flower, have attractive, useful information for users to freely
take away and enjoy.
When they share that useful information (please don’t think of it as content) they also
share our message.

Finally, almost everything in digital can be tracked and measured.
Certainly in email we should be constantly testing everything we do.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/demandaj/5982440920/sizes/l/in/photostream by demandai
And a last word from the famous Canadian science fiction writer, the man
who coined cyberspace

Seven Saving Graces to Keep You from Spam

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