Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

Take the Reins (The Fear of Not Being Perfect)

To be nobody but yourself – in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. – E.E. Cummings

On Christmas Day, 2010, British charity worker Simone Back took her own life. It’s believed Simone had been experiencing relationship troubles and, as a result, felt she could take no more pain.

Gathering together a collection of pills from her medicine cabinet, Simone downed the pills and wrote her suicide note. However, instead of leaving it for those who would find her body, she posted it on Facebook.

The response was tragic.

Instead of concern and help, the majority of messages were of mockery and indifference.

She ODs all the time and she lies.
She does it all the time, takes all of her pills. She’s not a kid anymore.
She has a choice and taking pills over a relationship is not a good enough reason.

These are some of the messages that went back and forth on Simone’s wall as she was at home dying. While some of her Facebook “friends” lived within walking distance of Simone, no-one called or checked on her.

Out of 148 messages left on her wall after Simone posted, just one suggested getting her help.

Her last status update was posted at 10.53pm on Christmas Day. On Boxing Day, her body was found.

The Desolate Human Disconnection

There are over 1 billion users of Facebook. More than half log on every day. Almost half of 18-34 year olds check Facebook when they wake up, and 28% check the site before getting out of bed.

Facebook and other networks have created a cult-like connection to them. We need to be online, checking what’s happening, sharing our lives for all to see, painting a picture of who we want ourselves to be while missing the bigger picture that who we really are is more important.

This need for connection has resulted in the very opposite of what we set out to achieve in the first place. Instead of weighty connections and friendships, often all we’re really creating is an illusion of depth and relationships.

As Simone’s story highlights, the very people we crave connection with can often be the same ones who’re not there when we need them the most. In the meantime, the relationships we foster offline take a backseat and lose importance, as the social networks drag us (not always kicking and screaming) back to their domain.

We never take a break. Or do we?

Taking Back the Reins

A new Kickstarter project looks to change that damning indictment of being always-on but never “there”.

Entitled Take the Reins, and created by Australian actress Emma Barrett, the project aims to hold up a mirror to today’s society while asking the simple question,

The allure of Facebook and social media remains its ability to be social while sparing us all the embarrassing realities of society – but at what cost?

The story of suicide and social media?isn’t a new one?and, tragically, highlights the disparity between the potential of the medium as well as the despair it can foster.

Social media has the potential to be one of the greatest “achievements” in our lives. It’s helping to democratize countries, change the minds of governments, and pull people together for a greater single cause.

Yet it’s also creating this online nation of forced connections and faux friendships, in the search for the person we think we should be more than, even when that person is perfect just the way we are.

Perhaps Take the Reins can be part of the reclamation of our true selves versus the self we feel we need to portray. It’s got to be worth a try, no?

To find out more about the Take the Reins project, please visit its Kickstarter page where you can support and donate to make the documentary happen.

Update December 30 – Emma reached her goal of $15,000 and her project will be funded.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/81845434[/vimeo]

7 Ways to Run an Unsuccessful Mobile Email Campaign

This is a guest post by Matt Zajechowski.

Mobile gadgets are the preferred media for opening email and responding to mobile marketing. That?s true across demographics, but especially among the youth set known as Millennials and Generation Y.

As revealed in the infographic below from our client?Reachmail, among the general population, 75 percent are using smartphones regularly to manage email. Millennials? use of iPhones, Android phones and iPads to scour daily mail is as high as 80 percent.

Most don?t even re-check mail on desktops and are intolerant of marketers who don?t cater to the small screen revolution.

This means a great deal for businesses who don?t wish to lose the business of new clients or customers.

Specifically it means that advertising will become a game of who can satisfy the most mobile users. The companies with most the mobile-friendly promotions and resources win.

They win not just profit from increased sales and website hits, but they win the trust of the mobile public and perhaps even long-term loyalty from mobile shoppers.

Are You Satisfying Your Mobile Customers?

Basic satisfaction of mobile users involves having email marketing messages that can be scaled down to fit a smartphone screen or a tablet screen without losing its wow factor and effectiveness.

That means the ads are pithy and persuading.

They dazzle without relying on too much Flash animation or Javascript that can freeze mobile devices and take an incredibly long time to load.
They have images that are optimal for small devices ? between 360 and 480 pixels.
They have the good content early in the page or email, along with a call to action that can be read without tedious scrolling.

Often it means having online stores that can be navigated and searched without too much hassle for those using small touchscreens and tiny virtual keyboards.

Satisfying mobile users might mean connecting with mobile shoppers through store apps that take users directly to favorite products or recommendations, and then quickly and efficiently to checkout without wasted clicks.

Closing the Loop Between Mobile and Offline

Increasingly, being mobile-friendly as an email marketer also means merging offline deals with online finesse by using email to preview promotions later reinforced through text messages, geolocation-based shopping deals and scannable QR codes that allow customers to learn about sales, coupons or general brand information without having to type any URLs.

QR codes have been slow to catch on, but nearly 25 percent of people ? mostly in America and Germany — have scanned one while on the go and research from eMarketer suggests the codes will trend upward in the future.

In a survey of 2,000, at least 14 percent of Millennials in the U.S. admitted they scanned a QR code that was included in a marketing email, while 16 percent of those between 25 and 34 said they had done so.

Respondents were most likely to scan codes in magazines or hard copy ads sent by snail mail. However, that was often because those types of media have been more eager to embrace the technology.

In the future, online marketers must be dedicated to using the codes more and ensuring that the codes deliver mobile users to sites that are legible and enjoyable to use on a mobile screen.

Lastly, remember, many mobile users are quick and impatient decision-makers who won?t give an email or website the chance to satisfy them again if they encounter even one instance of a landing page or target page that fails meet mobile standards.

Start now by assessing your company websites, blogs, stores and email campaign designs to make sure they are ready for the continuing expansion of mobile marketing.

ReachMail

About the author: Matt Zajechowski is a marketing specialist at Digital Third Coast Internet Marketing. You can read more from Matt on the Digital Third Coast blog, or connect with him on Twitter @Savard1120.

Crafting an Influence Marketing Strategy Through Data Mining

In the Influence Marketing book, we spend a lot of time diving into the field of big data – specifically, text analytics, ontology, and predictive analytics (hey, we never said it was an easy read!).

For both Sam Fiorella and myself, these disciplines are key to running true influence marketing campaigns, and identifying real influential conversations as opposed to amplified noise through inflated social scores.

As more data becomes available to us, so the nuances of that data become more clear, and we can begin to isolate key terms, phrases and even slang to target the ideal audience for our brand messaging (not to mention those who can disseminate that message to an even wider audience).

A recent infographic, collated by the New Jersey Institute of Technology, shares a deeper dive into the mechanics of data mining and why it’s such a powerful toolset not just for influence marketing, but marketing and customer acquisition in general.

Which, at the end of the day, is exactly the message we share in the book when it comes to the direction influence marketing needs to take if it’s to reach its potential and move beyond the likes of Klout and its ilk.

Enjoy the infographic. And if you want to learn how to use the information in the infographic for your influence marketing strategies, simply click on the “Buy Now” book box at the end of this post… 😉

NJIT New Jersey Institute of Technology ? Online MBA

PR Agencies Need to Understand the Digital Communication Laws

This morning, I received an email from Toronto-based PR agency?Paradigm PR?about a new partnership between NBA Canada and Foot Locker Canada.

I’m guessing the agency’s client is NBA Canada, since they offered an interview with Dan MacKenzie, VP and General Manager of NBA Canada, to discuss the partnership.

Unfortunately, what stood out for me was not the chat opportunity, but the complete lack of any kind of Unsubscribe option at the end of the email. Below is a screen grab from the email close (I’ve blurred out the sender’s name).

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to contact the company, but there’s nothing there about removing yourself from their updates. And, effective next summer, that will be illegal.

It’s Not Just CAN-SPAM Anymore

Recently, I wrote about companies that circumnavigate the CAN-SPAM Act, which was brought into play 10 years ago to protect consumers from spammy emails via questionable marketing tactics.

However, this act was primarily for the U.S. (although other countries could adopt it, if they wished). So, in Canada, where I live, you could still receive emails from companies without realizing you’re on their contact list.

I don’t recall ever signing up for Paradigm PR emails in particular. However, it may be I’m on a PR list for Canadian bloggers, hence the contact (although these lists are equally annoying, but that’s a blog post for another time).

So, because Canada isn’t technically covered by the CAN-SPAM Act, ?if you do get on a PR agency’s blogger list you have to hope they offer an Unsubscribe option. Otherwise, it’s a matter of requesting they remove you, or simply hitting the “Spam” button on your email filter.

If a company email gets filtered this way enough times by enough different recipients, their email address gets flagged by web hosts, and you can imagine the grief that causes for a business whose bread and butter is in promotional outreach…

Thankfully, that’s all about to change, with the introduction of Canada’s Anti Spam Legislation (CASL).

CASL and What It Means for Agencies and Marketers

Coming into effect July 1 2014, the new Canada Anti Spam Legislation aims to do for Canadians what CAN-SPAM has attempted to do for Americans – protect consumers while still allowing businesses to be competitive in an ever-changing marketing landscape.

While the full legislation breaks down exactly what will and will not be allowed, the two key points that all agencies and marketers will need to adhere to are:

sending of commercial electronic messages without the recipient’s consent (permission), including messages to email addresses and social networking accounts, and text messages sent to a cell phone;
(b) the authorized person provides an unsubscribe mechanism that, in addition to meeting the requirements set out in section?11 of the Act, allows the person from whom consent was obtained to withdraw their consent from the person who obtained consent or any other person who is authorized to use it.

It’s this second point in particular that would make the email I received from Paradigm PR illegal, and punishable not only by three Canadian organizations – the CRTC, the Competition Bureau and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner – but also opens up the potential for consumers to sue businesses that send out emails without an Unsubscribe option.

The involvement of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner is especially welcome for consumers, given their office forced Facebook to change its privacy settings for Canadian users, amongst other victories for Canadian consumers against social networks and data tracking.

Make Sure Your Agency is Ready

In one respect, it’s kind of disappointing to still be talking about best practices as well as legal requirements when it comes to email marketing (or any kind of digital marketing, since this impacts social network messages as well as mobile marketing).

It’s been almost 15 years since Seth Godin popularized Permission Marketing, about the need for opt-in marketing versus opt-out marketing. Yet here we are, still seeing emails being sent out without Unsubscribes, and lists being utilized without a blogger’s knowledge (if that’s the case with this example).

While the CAN-SPAM Act is U.S.-centric, it’s generally seen as a best practice to adopt by marketers and agencies in other countries. Thanks to the imminent CASL, it will no longer be enough to just follow best practices in Canada.

The mandate and requirements are there for every agency owner and marketer to read and understand.

With a full six months before legal enforcement, now would be a good time to become familiar with them – before it’s more than just a blog post that your agency’s lack of Unsubscribe option has as a result of your outreach.

Update December 16, 2013: I chatted with the account director who sent the email earlier, and the outreach was part of a personal outreach tactic for certain bloggers. The AD wasn’t aware of the unsubscribe requirement, which suggests a larger issue of education regarding email and/or digital outreach campaigns.