Mar
Do You Know What You Want?
by Greg de Lima in Business, Networking, Social Media
Do you know exactly what you want in a product? What about in a service?
Here is a long (18min) video from Malcolm Gladwell at TED in 2004. Watch it if you want but it has only some bearing on the rest of this post. In 2004, Gladwell also released this article in the New Yorker (The Ketchup Cunundrum).
Consumers are naturally dumb. Not to say they’re unintelligent or anything along those lines. But when it comes to knowing exactly what they want they have almost no idea what they want or what will make them happy.
So what does this mean for us as marketers in a social world? There is no reason we shouldn’t know what our potential clients want! That may be stretching it a bit, but with the wealth of information and the range of demographic & psychological analytics we can derive from information posted (thanks to restaurant check-ins and social ratings), we can cater directly to the clients unknowns.
As consumers it’s likely they will not know exactly what they want, but we as the providers can take this information and take a look into their tastes. By using this information we can develop strategies for companies that cater directly to these people and literally exploit the things that they love.
Mashable! also related to the way consumers behave on internet but from an alternate perspective, User Competency in Social Design.
If these are simple assumptions that Adrian Chan is making, then we can also assume much more about their behavior based on their previous trends.
Let me know what you think! Leave a comment!
Mar
In or Out
by Greg de Lima in Business
What’s your opinion, would you rather have an email newsletter sent to you automatically after purchasing something at an electronics store or willingly sign up for a random email once a month from a service you signed up for?
Yes, the Opt-In vs Opt-Out battle rages on.
I recently went to an Authorized Apple Retailer here in Spain because my Power Adapter hit the fritz (I will keep their name out of it). At the end of my transaction I was asked for my email address, obviously I questioned this, but when the attendant replied that it was to email my receipt I naturally said, yes. I don’t like to waste paper, but if anything happened to this adapter I needed the receipt.
Not much later, I got a monthly newsletter from the store. This frustrated me a little bit. I like newsletters but with some conditions. I don’t like product based newsletters. But, if you’re giving me updates about your company, or useful information that I can learn from or write a blog about, hell yes! Let me sign up for it though!
From EmailStatCenter.com
More than 80% of participants favor doing business with organizations that use opt-in permission to send them email. - Habeas (2008)
That’s a solid percentage.
Only 92% of retailers have an email sign-up form or link on their homepage. - Email Experience Council/RetailEmail.Blogspot, “Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study” (July 25, 2007)
When looking at those two together. That’s a good number of possible subscribers voluntarily signing up for your newsletter.
Why are you still choosing the opt-out way? You will either go straight to spam, delete, or unsubscribe!
Image by Jerry Lindholm
