I'm a student of internet history. I was there, I am there, I will be there. I've seen us (myself included) repeat the same marketing sins over and over. Each time of course we felt that whatever new shiny object we were playing with was "unique", that nothing like it had come before, that the rules don't apply. And each time we miss the fact that while there are some unique aspects to whatever tool or medium we're playing with at the time, human nature has not changed.
So I submit the following for your consideration.
I just came from the Social Fresh conference where we discussed all the different ways that one could find and leverage customers and prospects in the social media space. One of the overriding themes that comes up in the more intelligent conversations is that of "providing value". This makes perfect sense of course, if you are going to practice interruptive marketing you had better be bringing value to the table. {side note: I believe this should be "interjecting" not "interrupting" but that's another story for another day}
But here's the thing, has everyone forgotten what it was like when email first came along? I was one of the people in those original marketing sessions drooling over the fact that all of these people were now accessible to us and we just had to find the right way (value add) to leverage them. We had to figure out "personalization", "one to one", "relationship marketing", etc. and how to integrate them into an overall effort. And we did. We created some incredibly creative email campaigns, and they were really successful. I went on the road and spoke around the country at conferences about email marketing and how to do it "right". Does any of this sound familiar yet?
Our initial conversion rates were wholly dependent upon the message, the creative, the value add, etc. In other words, we were in control of our destiny. If we were really good at what we did then we'd see really good returns. Over time that ceased to be the case. The returns were dropping precipitously and we were struggling to find more creative ways of continuing the dialog, but no matter what we did the rates kept going lower over time. Have you figured out why yet? Spam. The four letter word of the online industry. We all despise it, and there are entire software sectors built around trying to keep it out of your inbox. What you have to realize is that the only difference between what was valuable one day, and spam the next is the volume in which it occurred.
There is a distinct break point of diminishing returns when it comes to the equation of "value" vs. "volume". At a certain point it makes no difference if what you are communicating is valuable or not. If you send me one thing a week that I find valuable I'll excuse the fact that you weren't invited into my life. If I receive 100 items a day you are a nuisance, no matter the value of the individual items.
So what does all that mean? It remains to be seen, but I made a prediction on the record the other day that within 12 months Twitter (or a twitter client) will make it simple for the users to restrict anyone from communicating with them that they haven't explicitly approved. If/When that occurs all of this dialog about how to talk to social media prospects in an interruptive fashion will be a moot point. We'll be back to having the next stage dialogs of "permission marketing" and "opt in".
The problem isn't the individual marketer, they hopefully are smart enough not to do overdo their communication cycles…it's the fact that there are hundreds of those individual marketers all after the same thing. And then those without moral compasses will begin peddling their wares as well. People will not be bombarded with unsolicited information and allow it to continue. That will not change whether it's door to door sales, email marketing, or social media marketing. If you're smart you'll start working on permission based strategies now and be ahead of the game when the fences start being erected.
When this happens, and I'm convinced it will, it will be a shame because part of the magic of twitter is its openness. The thought that the tide will turn from being able to block the sporadic person, to explicitly *allowing* selective persons saddens me.
Matt Ridings – @techguerilla