Change Conversations

May 17, 2012

Pinterest, an online visual “pinboard” that allows users to share and discover images related to their interests, is the latest craze in social media. Attention has been fueled in great part by its rapid rise in just two years to become the number three social network. But every marketer knows that relevant quality trumps quantity, so let’s quickly review 5 questions to help you decide if this is a quality place to invest your marketing time and effort, before turning to examples of brands making the most of Pinterest if you decide to dive in.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Are your customers there?

Pinterest appeals most strongly to women, who represent 54-70% of it user base. That makes it a natural for a company marketing consumer product goods purchased by women, but if that’s not you maybe not yet.

2. Can you ‘own’ it?

Can the results of your investment get a copyright, trademark, be saved or protected in some way? If this is a new channel, should it be classified as paid, owned, or earned media? If not fully owned, what guidelines govern your relationship?

Pinterest is mostly designed to encourage ‘pinning,’ or sharing, of other people’s images. You can, of course, pin your own images. Make no mistake, however, you will not own or control the content on your Pinterest boards in the same way you own your website.

3. Can it offer synergy with other marketing efforts?

Something new that you can integrate into your strategic marketing plan and use to get more out of what you are already doing is generally a win-win.

Pinterest enables sharing just about any image online, with attribution. To support your other marketing efforts, you will need compelling visuals that link back to your website, blog, or microsites.

4. Is there a market advantage from being in early?

Depending on your industry and your positioning, being on the leading edge as one of the first to adopt a promising new marketing technology can be expected, if not necessary. Then again, if yours is a more conservative world, you don’t want to forget the wisdom in the term ‘bleeding edge.’

Pinterest is already the number 3 social network, so it’s too late to be on the leading edge. There’s still opportunity to be among the first to use the network well though — the number of successful brands on Pinterest is still small, especially in the B2B arena.

5. Do you have the capacity to do it well?

You can only do so much. It’s easy to be distracted and lose sight of the reality that no matter how promising something new is, you must execute it well to derive any benefit. In marketing communications, in particular, a low-quality implementation can be much worse than doing nothing at all.

Today, Pinterest represents just one more thing to learn and do for many small businesses and nonprofits. Pinterest is still a long way from the consumer marketing reach of Facebook’s 750 million users. And we cannot forget that despite all the never-ending buzz about social media, email is still the most popular way for most people to share information.

Your Decision

Every business will answer these questions differently, of course. If you can answer “yes” to 3 out of 5 of these questions, I generally think this new whatever is probably worth exploring further. If you answer yes to 5 out of 5, jump on it! It may still turn out to be a short-term infatuation, but it’s more likely to be a trend and a marketing opportunity you won’t want to miss.

Five Brands using Pinterest Well

The brands doing well on Pinterest are not overly promotional, but they are visually interesting and they offer ample opportunity to click through to their home website. Check out these examples to get inspired.

Whole Foods Market

Peapod grocery delivery service

Chobani yogurt

General Electric

Wall Street Journal

Resources

Connect with me on Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/pheffernanvt/

Wall Street Journal primer on Pinterest

4 Reasons Pinterest Wins with Women (And Facebook Loses) – Forbes

7 Useful Pinterest Tools You Should Know

Brands on Pinterest: To $ or Not to $? [STUDY]

Mar 22, 2012

It can be hard to be a good customer. I recently had the misfortune of needing to change my personal email address and in this consumer role, I was reminded once again how important it is to make it easy for your customers to take actions you desire. In this instance, my goal as a customer was simply to change the address on record for various newsletters and online catalogs I valued. It was an instructive experience — and a surprising headache in an age when marketers reportedly invest heavily in seeking ‘engagement’ and maintaining the quality of their lists.

Compliance versus Consideration

Thankfully for all of us, compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is widespread now and among the many advocacy groups, subject newsletters and merchants who had my personal address there were none that did not at least offer an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of the message in my inbox.

And that was at the same time the problem — I did not want to unsubscribe! I simply wanted to update my address and leave everything else the same. I was surprised by how difficult this simple task was made by some otherwise sophisticated marketers.

Common Difficulties

In terms of convenience, of making it easy for me to continue the relationship, the most common error was to offer only an ‘unsubscribe’ link in the message. This leaves no choice but to go through a multistep process something like this:

1. Go to the website (Amazingly, many messages did not include a direct link to the home page.)
2. Survive the challenges of remembering (or looking up) user name/password/login
3. Search for profile, ‘my account,’ or the equivalent
4. Find where the email address is listed (Profiles sometimes included multiple pages to wade through before email address is listed!)
5. Click edit
6. Type in the new address
7. Click save.

Whew! You recall that I am a customer trying to maintain a relationship. No doubt significant effort was invested to establish this relationship by the organization or company trying to sell me ideas, goods, or to sell my eyeballs to advertisers.

A Few Examples

Peter Cashmore’s Mashable newsletters surprised me by falling into this category. Seven steps? Really. Similarly, the Kevin Kelly’s usually simple-but-functional approach fell down when I wanted to update my subscription to KK Lifestream. No thanks.

Mashable: email message options

KK Lifestream: email message options

Direct merchants of goods often did little better. A quick look at Eileen Fisher (FAIL), Wine Spectator (requires change preferences, change email, update for a total of 3 clicks, which beats seven) and finally Lands End, with its fetish for user friendliness came through with a clearly labeled single click to ‘change email address’.

Eileen Fisher: email message options

Wine Spectator: email message options

Lands End: email message options

Do some marketers think such contortions are a way to weed out their email subscribers, that if a customer is not motivated enough to go to some effort to update their address they do not want them? Today’s consumers simply have too many options for any marketer to afford to be so cavalier. At best, I will go directly to their website in the future (IF they happen to be top-of-mind that day). These marketers lost me — a heavy online shopper with regular needs for gift-giving to a large extended family, and years of donations to various causes, and they will now have to start over again to get into my pristine new email inbox.

Who was the winner in this survey of marketing attentiveness? It’s the free (or optionally premium) AWAD (A Word A Day) news letter from Anu Garg. Labeled clearly in the footer of every email is a link labeled ‘update email address.’ Thank you!

AWAD: email message options

There’s a lesson here for anyone trying to inform and educate to change behavior or market a small business or nonprofit: Start by looking at your own behavior to be sure you are making it as easy as possible for your best customers to do whatever it is you really want them to do.

 Related

 Step up your email value or else!  [What Counts]

Tackling the Top 5 Challenges of Email Marketing [1 to 1 media]

The Ten Most-Ignored Email Best Practices [Lyris]