Mayflies Live on the Internet

How long does a link last?

It turns out that new links published in social media have a similar life span to the Blue Wing Olive.  Links receive half the clicks they'll ever get within hours.

An adult mayfly lives for 30 minutes to a day depending on species; have non-working mouths and a digestive track filled with air.  They have one purpose..... but this is a marketing blog. 


Source.

NYT recently highlighted some Bit.ly research on the window of time during which clicks occur for a new link posted in various places.  Here's the chart....



For Twitter and Facebook half the clicks will happen in around 3 hours (left peaks) ; for YouTube it is 7 hours (middle bump).  

At a Social Commerce Exchange meeting yesterday @DrewConrad presented some figures of what he has found at Zagg.   The first five hour figures of their  12 Days of Christmas and iPad-a-Day promotions confirm this type of trend - 35-40% of the new fans came in the first week of the six weeks reported.  

So, what do I take the implications of this to be...it is like fly fishing. 

1. We need to be constantly coming up with ways to produce interest - meetings and approval should be kept to an absolute minimum.  If a fly isn't working, I change it - if a link doesn't produce in a day, put out a new one.    If does work, put it someplace else. 
2. The attention span impacts the lifespan - YouTubers are likely more captivated by the surrounding content and not the flow itself.   I need to make more of an impact in fast moving water so will use an attractor - the streaming nature of Twitter and Facebook suggest the same need for stimulating, high impact links.   In calm water, where there is more dwell time I'll use a more natural fly - something similar might work in YouTube.
3. Analysis time period of a link is daily; analysis of campaigns is longer, but done in the aggregate.  Looking at one link over a long period of time doesn't make sense.   Success at fishing is measured over the long term, not an individual cast.   

We've always known links work - we get the reports, but this suggests we have to think about constantly changing them up to create a continuous sense of interest.  This is very different than the traditional view of brand marketing which tries to get at the sustainable, long term essence.  

Social, Mobile, and Transaction Segmentation

What opportunities exist in an inter-connected world?

A few days ago a colleague asked around if anyone had an approach to segmentation in a world when social media is integrated with mobile and retail transaction data. So, here's the answer I came up with in an attempt to answer the questions: What did they do before buying? what content did they consume before trying?  


Customer transaction data is like a silent movie, we see the final action but don't understand the nuances of how they got there.  Just before the 'submit button' or landing page is a vast region of content and interactions that most likely influenced the choice a consumer made, we just can't see it and if we can, we can't make sense of the enormous quantities of granular data without some type of framework.

Our objective as marketers is to align solutions with customer's needs to the mutual satisfaction of both.  And to do that we need to not only understand the benefit provided by the product/service but also how the choice was ultimately made and the path to purchase.   So, the first opportunity is to segment people on what technologies, sources, devices etc. people use to consume information - are they mobile, social, or site users?

It is also generally accepted that various types of information are utilized when making a decision - we decide emotionally based on aspirations and needs, we defend the decision rationally based on facts and figures.   This content can be divided into several types that influence choice – emotional or brand, promotional or incentive, informational or reference and communal or recommendation.  If we could tag the content consumed according to such a framework then we have a new opportunity to segment based on content type.

Put the two together and we can build a picture of 'content consumption' based on type and channel.

By linking transactional data (customer value and product mix) where we understand the value of a customer based on LTV, visits or other metric we can create a series of product-specific Paths to Purchase that map content consumption to their value to the organization.   

So take for an example a segmentation scheme based on standard RFM (recency, frequency, and monetary) metrics that produces for groups:  Best, Frequent, Spenders and Uncertain.   Over lay that on the type of content consumed and you might find patterns that impact how you market.   A hypothetical view might look like the following chart.   

For each value-based segment there are two content consumption segments:

• Best customers, those with above average spend and visits, either use branded content, maybe the self-help site you created, or they use a lot of recommendations from social sites.
• Frequent customers who spend less than the average but shop often, are either deal shoppers or search driven.
• Spenders, those who spent a lot but on only one transaction, are either attached to brand as a 'badge' or use information and search to find you.
• Uncertains, those with low transaction value and count, rely on incentives or the recommendations of others.  

The possibilities are endless; there just might be something to this idea....

Loyalty: Goal or Objective

How do we treat the concept of loyalty?

Lately I've been reading a lot on customer experience, CRM maturity models, etc. in the context of analyzing the performance of customer marketing programs.   And while I read a lot about loyalty as part of the strategy I don't see the metric I can map to it.   Somewhere in the reams of stats, metrics, spreadsheets and data dumps there has to a number I can report as success or failure, doesn't there?

Without a quantifiable metric, the concept of loyalty remains a lofty goal- something we aspire to.  And without a link between the goal and the program we run the risk of getting off track and doing what we can measure and claiming it as a success.     Too many times I've heard "we can't measure loyalty so we'll report time on site, posts, opens as the collective measure of engagement." 

If we want loyal customers, then we have to define it in a way that we know we have one when we see one. 

Early in my career I did simulated test marketing where depth of repeat, or the odds of making additional purchases, drove the ultimate success or failure of product.  We could buy trial, but if the product didn't deliver sales eroded.   Is it that simple?

Loyalty, as an objective, is the probability of a consumer making the next purchase.   For a given brand, the odds of repeat increase as the number of transactions increases.   The more often I buy, the more likely I'll buy again.   This simple data can be plotted as a curve and when it starts to stabilize somewhere between 50% and 80% we put a stake in the ground and say 'there is loyalty' because the value of future transactions starts to increase.  

So, here's what I'm telling clients:  "a customer is loyal when the probability of repeat is greater than x%."   Now we simply need to focus on two questions.

1. How do we keep them?   Here reward strategies are more appropriate than encouragement ones; they've already decided to buy your brand.  Surprise, or intermittent reinforcement, is a very powerful motivator as is exclusivity and uniqueness.  
2. How do we get more of them?  It is not unusual to find less than 15% of a business where this condition is true.   The path to loyalty goes through "Thank You" - the acknowledgement of the first transaction based on the fact that first impressions are lasting.  

Now my presentations to the executive team align....

Marketing in the Age of Channel Blur

How should we approach planning when everything is interactive?

We used to talk about multiple channels when separate (and possibly not coordinated) campaigns were executed by the experts in their respective silos.  Then along came Integrated Marketing Communication (ICM) that taught us to think multi-channel and to use a coordinated approach often based on timing, theme and message.    An underlying premise of both these planning models was that we as marketers were trying to reach you as consumer via a predefined route.

But when the network effect of sharing takes over and interesting content jumps the boundaries of the delivery vehicle maybe our thinking needs to change.  

• First, since the relationship between marketer and consumer is by no means exclusive we need to think like we're simply a participant or conductor in the communication plan not its sole controller.  The focus should be on the needs first, not the channel.  This is an area where content marketing has made an impact with questions like "What would help consumers?" 
• Second, given the rapid change in technology and the fact that it is now highly personal and portable we need to think more about how content moves across devices and forms and less about it being designed and optimized for a specific channel.   Today, digital content can be shared across and accessed from nearly any platform creating a blur.  Use a QR code and we're asking ourselves "Where does print end, mobile start and the web sit?" 
• Third, consumers aren't likely to consciously sit down and ask themselves I wonder who placed or published the content in a given channel.  As a result, the planning of paid, owned and earned media seems somewhat out of sync with actual consumer thinking.   And when TV drives search or social activity we end up asking "How do we combine channels to measure the aggregate affect?"

Maybe, we should abandon the concept of 'channel' as the top-level way to devlop a plan.