Web/Tech

If email were a stock, would you short it?   For many that live outside the email space, there seems to be a growing sentiment that email is diminishing in value as an asynchronous engagement vehicle.   While the projection for email growth is still climbing, the nature of the business is changing in many respects.  The response proxies are declining, the performance proxies are being challenged (conversion declining) and it’s never reached the scale of media in terms of reach and frequency without negative fanfare.

Email appending is still polarizing as a “responsible” way to reach customers that you engage through other channels.  Email deliverability is a really fickle business today, with all the fraud and litter that crowds the inbox.   With that said, it’s still seen as a critical layer of every customer engagement, it will continue in the future and it’s mainstream in the eyes of most generations that are “online.”  Shorting this stock might be a bit premature, in my opinion.

Yet is it really effective?  As they say, if you don’t have the answer to the question, ask a different question. I think we’re at that point of maturation in this space that we have to ask another question:  “Is there a real value exchange with the consumer through email?” I believe email has four functional values to the consumer:

• Informational value (newsletters, publications, general information tied to interests and connectivity).
• Promotional value (extensibility to offers and brand connections where there is some reward tied to the communication).
• Social value (today it’s more than viral, it’s about relevance of the “share” function — and there are many tools to enable this today, which is why email “viral” never lived up to its press).
• Notification value (this has been somewhat minimized with SMS and other site notifications, but as long as we are driving commerce with customer online, there will be notification systems that will be leveraged.)

The problem with this, in today’s time is that the use cases have changed.

Content generation, creation, curation is less about the brand today.  It’s become so easy to search, create, publish and syndicate information as a consumer that fewer people rely on email as their sole source if content.  Does this minimize the value of email newsletters?  No, but the value is changing, and timing in many respects takes priority over content.  It used to be about sharing an article from a newsletter.  It used to be the question was “is email designed to link you to the site?” or “is email expected to be the container of the information?” Today email has notification value.

Timing is changing our use case.  Time-shifting has evolved with the device.   No longer can we consider content as static or timing static.  Our publishing standards will have to shift to simplified real-time, vs. batch personalization.  Our notion of timing will be content on demand vs. push logic.   Email will follow the ad media optimization and multimodal consumption rather than the traditional personalization view of direct response marketers of the past.  It will combine contextual, behavioral, response, location, device and an interaction index that will support personalization on-demand.

The notion of what drove the sale has never been a great science, nor has it really benefited the email channel.    I believe attribution will be defined by a weighted interaction index that will allow us to understand and project channel bias, layers and recency of interactions.  I believe the index will have “network” and “reach” values that help isolate how customers are connected in what context and the values of these connections.  Many define that as influencers.  I think it extends past the concept of an influencer and has a much more granular value:   connecter, advocate, influencer, evangelist… each have a commercial value, and the use cases for how they engage with email changes by brand/type and timing.  It won’t be fixed view.

by David Baker

Big banks’ big advertising doesn’t satisfy customers. Photo: John Woudstra

A The big four banks have spent much more on media advertising in the past 12 months, but the 19 per cent average increase appears to have done little for customer satisfaction on one measure and nothing at all on another.

According to mainstream media advertising data by Nielsen, the big four spent $209 million in the year to July, up from $175 million the year before. All four increased their spending, particularly with campaigns to offset the effect of interest rate rises.

But two sets of customer satisfaction ratings – from Mozo, the company that runs consumer group Choice’s banking comparison site, and Roy Morgan Research – indicate that the advertising had little or no effect on customers.

On Mozo’s measure, Commonwealth Bank’s satisfaction was flat – down by less than 0.1 per cent – despite increasing its ad spending by 30 per cent.

On Roy Morgan’s figures, it increased 0.6 percentage points, despite Nielsen estimating it spent $58 million in advertising from August last year to July this year, up from $44 million in the previous period.

It is not alone. ANZ upped its media spending by 14 per cent to $65 million, only to register a 0.1 per cent fall in customer satisfaction, according to Mozo. But it recorded a 1 percentage point increase according to Roy Morgan.

Westpac increased its spending by 18 per cent to $36 million, the lowest total of the big four, and recorded a 0.1 per cent increase in Mozo customer satisfaction, but a 3 percentage point increase on Roy Morgan.

National Australia Bank increased its spending by 16 per cent to $50 million, and its customer satisfaction edged up the most – still only 0.2 per cent, according to Mozo, but 3.4 percentage points with Roy Morgan.

Rohan Gamble, managing director of Mozo, said it took “more than marketing hype” to win over customers.

“The banks that won the most customer fans were those that backed up their marketing with real actions,” he said, such as NAB’s move on penalty fees.

Andy Lark, chief marketing officer for CBA, said the bank did not expect any correlation between advertising and satisfaction, which was driven by actual banking experience.

“The job of advertising is to help people fall in love with our brands,” he said.

By Tim dick

An international study into the use of social networks by Experian®, the global information services company, reveals just how much time people living in different countries spend on Facebook. Singaporeans emerge from the study as those who spend the longest on the social network site, with an average of 38 minutes and 46 seconds per session, while people living in Brazil spend less than half that with an average of 18 minutes and 19 seconds per Facebook session.

According to the analysis by Experian Hitwise, the average session time on Facebook in August 2011 across the eight countries varied significantly as highlighted in table 1 below:

Understanding average time spent on Facebook, the world’s most widely used social network, illustrates the importance of brands needing to be on social networks. By knowing that an average social network user in Singapore, will for example, spend an average of 38 minutes on Facebook means that a brand can increase the likelihood of capturing an individual’s attention by running digital marketing campaigns through Facebook. Content and advertising which is compelling will ultimately lead to greater engagement in social networks and consequently greater sales, whether on the brand’s own website or indeed within Facebook.

Ankur Shah, CEO and co-founder, Techlightenment, an Experian company, commented: “The power of social networks like Facebook is that in some respects they don’t have any boundaries and make the world a much smaller place. Knowing the market share social networks have in each country and the level of usage is key to social networking success. However, our research shows that the way individuals use social media can and does change according to cultural and personal backgrounds – therefore ‘one size definitely doesn’t fit all’ when it comes to digital. For any international brands to be successful in their digital campaigns, they must understand the local, digital and personal nuances that exist.”

Social networks compared to total Internet usage: the local story

Social networking is now one of the biggest online pastimes across the globe. In each country there are thousands of social networks, varying from 3,245 in Brazil to 9,000 in the UK. Despite being one of the most mature social markets, the UK has the lowest market share of visits going to social networks and forums (12.2%). Brazil has the highest percentage of Internet visits going to social sites (18.9% of Internet usage) with 43% of all social networking visits in Brazil going to Orkut, the most visited social network in Brazil.

Table two shows market share for social networks and forums in August 2011 the eight countries surveyed:

Jim Hodgkins, EVP, Global Marketing Services, Experian commented: “Understanding how long people spend on Facebook in different countries is vital for any brand on the social network. With Facebook still finding its feet in the emerging markets of India and Brazil, lower session times are to be expected – users won’t have as many friends or groups that they have signed up to. However that doesn’t mean brands should ignore Facebook in those countries – with market share for Facebook in India increasing by 88% year on year and 16% in Brazil year on year, its influence and dominance is only set to grow.”

Using social to drive website traffic

Further analysis of the data reveals how different industries attract website traffic as a direct result of social networks. Social network users in Brazil, India and Singapore rarely go on to visit retail websites after being on a social network highlighting that retailers in these markets have a significant opportunity to increase their presence on social networks, ultimately driving website traffic and sales. This contrasts with countries such as New Zealand, where nine per cent of retailers receive web traffic directly from social media.

Entertainment topped the list of the sites visited after social networks in the nine countries polled by Experian, with well-known sites such as the BBC’s iPlayer and Sky Sports featuring prominently.

Other key findings from the survey revealed:

• In Brazil the number one social network is Orkut.com with 43% market share. This has fallen year on year by 18% with Facebook experiencing an increase in market share August 2010 to August 2011 by 16%
• The country to experience the fastest growth in Facebook use over the past year is India, with the social network accounting for an increase in market share of 88% in August 2011 compared to August 2010.
• The US also experienced a market share increase from Facebook of 5% year on year.
• Approximately 1 in 4 Singaporeans (18%) jump from one social network directly to another, demonstrating their love of social networks.

PRINCETON, NJ — Americans view the computer industry the most positively and the federal government the least positively when asked to rate 25 business and industry sectors. All five of the top-rated sectors this year are related to either computers or food.

Gallup has asked Americans each August since 2001 to indicate whether they have positive or negative views of a list of business and industry sectors. The 2011 update is from Gallup’s Aug. 11-14 survey.

The results range from a +62 net positive rating for the computer industry to a -46 net positive rating for the federal government.

The sectors Americans view most negatively have all had well-publicized problems in recent years. The federal government has been near the bottom of the list in previous years, but is at the absolute bottom this year for the first time, displacing the oil and gas industry. Seventeen percent of Americans have a positive view of the federal government — the lowest of any sector tested this year — while 63% have a negative image. Only one sector, oil and gas, has a higher negative percentage, 64%. Other poorly ranked sectors include real estate, healthcare, banking, and the legal field.

Federal Government’s Image at All-Time Low

The positive and the negative ratings for the federal government this year are the worst since Gallup began measuring its image in 2003.

The deterioration in Americans’ views of the federal government began in 2004 — correlated with a downturn in President George W. Bush’s job approval rating and rising concerns about the Iraq war and the economy. Views turned slightly more positive in 2009 during Barack Obama’s first year as president, but dropped back down last year and again this year, likely reflecting rising concerns over the economy as well as the increase in government spending and power.

Other Gallup data from August of this year show that Congress has the lowest approval rating in Gallup history, and that satisfaction with the way things are going in this country is near its all-time low.

Images of Federal Gov’t, Real Estate Industry Drop the Most Over the Past Decade

Americans’ views of a number of sectors have worsened dramatically between 2001 and 2011, or, in the case of the federal government, between 2003 — the first year Gallup asked about it — and 2011.

The images of the federal government and the real estate industry have dropped the most over the past decade. The percentage of Americans rating the government positively has declined 24 points since 2003, and the real estate industry’s positive ratings have fallen 23 points since 2001. Other sectors with double-digit drops include the banking sector, education, accounting, and healthcare.

Americans view four industries more positively now than they did in August 2001: the Internet industry, electric and gas utilities, and the computer and movie industries. The current 72% positive rating for the computer industry is the highest such rating of any industry since Gallup began tracking business sectors in 2001.

Implications

The continuing high ratings for the computer and Internet industries likely reflect the global success of such American companies as Google, Apple, and Facebook, the technology industry’s apparent success even in this time of economic uncertainty, and the increasingly major role that technology plays in Americans’ lives. It is less clear why food-related sectors such as the restaurant industry, farming and agriculture, and the grocery industry do so well in the eyes of Americans, but it could reflect the United States’ relatively noncontroversial and efficient food supply system.

At the other end of the spectrum, poorly rated sectors have been associated with various well-publicized political or economic problems in recent years. Americans’ frustration with politicians and Washington — exacerbated by the contentious debt ceiling negotiations — comes through in the federal government’s all-time low image rating. The oil and gas industry has never done well in these image assessments, which is likely tied to swings in gas prices and the overall high price of gas.

The bad image of the real estate industry most likely reflects the housing crisis that has beset the country in recent years, and the poor image of the healthcare industry may reflect the rising cost of healthcare and uncertainly about access issues. Americans continue to view banks poorly, which clearly reflects lingering concerns from the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent failure of many banks around the country. Lawyers and the legal field have never had positive images.

By Frank Newport

We all read the statistics every week documenting the meteoric new growth areas of the Internet, and they are impressive:

Online video is exploding, with annual user growth of more than 45 percent. Mobile-device time spent increased 28 percent last year – with average smartphone time spent doubling. And social networks are now used by 90 percent of U.S. Internet users – for an average of more than four hours a month.

None of this is a newsflash. Every venture capitalist, Web publisher, and digital marketer is hyper-aware of these three trends.

But what’s happening to the rest of the Web?

The Web Is Shrinking. Really.

When you take these three growth areas out of the picture, the size of the hole left behind is staggering: the rest of the Web – the tried and true core that we thought would have limitless growth – is already shrinking.

Here are the facts:

When you exclude just Facebook from the rest of the Web, consumption in terms of minutes of use shrank by nearly nine percent between March 2010 and March 2011, according to data from comScore. And, even when you include Facebook usage, total non-mobile Internet consumption still dropped three percent over the same period.

We’ve known that social is growing lightning fast – notably, Facebook consumption, which grew by 69 percent – but now it’s clear that Facebook is not growing in addition to the Web. Rather, it’s actually taking consumption away from the publishers who compete on the rest of the Web.

And just what is the rest of the Web?

I have been calling it the “document Web,” based on how Google and other Web architectures view its pages as documents, linked together. But increasingly, it might as well be called the “searchable Web” since it’s accessed predominantly as a reference, and navigated primarily via search.

And it’s becoming less relevant.

In the last year, Facebook’s share of users’ time online grew from one out of every 13 minutes of use nationwide, to one out of every eight. In aggregate, that means the document Web was down more than half a billion hours of use (that’s more than 800 lifetimes) this March versus last March. And in financial terms, that represents a lost opportunity of $2.2 billion in advertising inventory that didn’t exist this year.

The Creation of a New, Connected Web

The change in the Web’s direction is a clear indication to me that we aren’t just in the midst of a boom for new interaction modes, but rather in a generational overhaul of the Internet.

What replaces the declining searchable Web is a new and “fully connected” digital life. You may have heard this before. After all, the promise of the Web was to connect pages with hyperlinks. Well, this time, “connected” means much more. It means the Web connects us, as people, to each one of the individuals online; and those connections, ultimately, extend from one of us to all of us.

Just as significantly, this all happens in real time, and at nearly all times.

And here’s what’s different when you connect people, as opposed to pages: Now, the Web knows who we are (identity), is with us at all times wherever we go (mobile), threads our relationships with others (social), and delivers meaningful experiences beyond just text and graphics (video).

The connected, social Web is alive, moving, proactive, and personal, while the document Web is just an artifact – suited as a universal reference, but hardly a personal experience.

The Social Web Versus the Searchable Web

Analytical explanations – increasing smartphone penetration, bandwidth availability, and technology sophistication – fill in some of the gaps as we try to understand this sea change, but they fall short.

Something larger is afoot, and it’s not about science or technology. Rather, as human beings, we have changed how we fit the Internet into our lives.

And the nature of the Web is changing to match. The old searchable Web is crashing; while the new connected, social Web is lifting off.

The implications for publishers are massive.

The last decade has been defined by the rise of Google as the nearly limitless supplier of traffic to digital media properties. And so a generation of digital media publishers developed and followed the same playbook: create lots of content around top keywords, engineer for search engine optimization (SEO) and expand the surface area in search engines to reach more users. The objective was to catch visitors in their net; expand reach – as measured by ComScore – look more impressive to advertisers and capture more demand.

The landscape is changing, and fast.

SEO’s strategic value is quickly fading as Google’s growth slows and its prominence in distribution slides away. In its place, Facebook has become the wiring hub of the connected Web – a new “home base” alternative to Google’s dominance of the last decade. Facebook began receiving as many visits as Google in March 2010, and already garners more than three times as many minutes as Google each month from users, according to comScore. Looking ahead, the best projections of U.S. online reach indicate that Facebook will surpass Google on that metric in less than a year, too.

And with this change, the nature of the relationship between users and publishers is being altered fundamentally – and perhaps forever.

Search offers a utility relationship, connecting users to content for the briefest of transactions; typically, it provokes users to just one pageview so they can find a piece of information, and then they move on.

But social discovery builds a relationship. Leveraging social endorsements and an environment of serendipitous discovery, consumers meet publishers in a meaningful context. As a result, the relationship that forms is stronger – and, more importantly for publishers, it’s branded.

Unlike the ecosystem set up by Google, where the search engine ironically intermediates between users and the objects of their queries (so that users reinforce their loyalty to Google, far more than to the publisher), in the world of social publishing, the Facebook hub enables a direct, if constrained, relationship between users and media brands.

The results – at least for my own company, Wetpaint – are that social media brings more qualified eyeballs and retains them. People who come via social media stay longer on the first visit; and they are more likely to come back sooner and more frequently. Overall, our visitors from social networks have a relationship that’s several times stronger – and several times as valuable when measured in engagement, pageviews, and revenues – than the relationships people form when then arrive through search.

The Human Connection

But it’s not just a change in mechanics. It’s a change in our human relationships.

Lewis D’Vorkin, the Chief Product Officer at Forbes, speaks of it when he and Alex Knapp talk about “live” media, quantum entanglement and mutually rewarding relationships that bind authors and readers on the new connected Web. It’s a sense of the Web moving from static published reference to living digital companion.

But there’s even more, and this vast change foreshadows bigger and better impacts on our lives. The greatest innovators in social media are driving exactly along that edge today. As one friend commented recently on the full potential of connected lives, by being joined more closely together, we can increase empathy and meaning, while decreasing isolation.

Toward a Fully Connected Future

Admittedly, we’re early in the replacement cycle when it comes to the connected Web. Even for strong connected Web performers like Huffington Post, Wetpaint, and others, the sum total of traffic from Facebook, Twitter, video, and mobile may add up to only half the total, or less.

But the trend has tipped, and with that tip has come both the business necessity and the human impact potential of elevating the relationship.

As the document Web of old shrinks, the new connected Web expands and delivers experiences that make our time online more effective, efficient, and enjoyable.

And that changes the role of companies on the Web from mere content publishers or providers to truly connected digital partners for real people.

By Ben Elowitz