I always love to see how different companies market themselves. There is no doubt that the Web has spawned lots of new and different, often very personal ways to promote your business.
Now we all know that recommendations are super powerful. We probably didn’t need all the research to convince us that most people trust recommendations from friends – even “social media friends” who we don’t know personally – much more than advertising.
So I was interested when I got an email from an old work colleague - we’ll call him Neil – who I haven’t heard from for ages except for his endless Foursquare check-ins from his cafe. So Neil never contacts me to say hi, ask how my family is or invite me for a beer… but this email was from him, addressed to me with the subject <Product Name> are awesome…
Now, the product they are promoting is cool. The email is plain text, with a personal message from Neil and a link to click to check it out. I’d bet they get pretty high click-through rates. To be honest, I’m even thinking of buying the product (it’s a memory card for my camera with built-in WiFi so it automatically loads the photos to the computer when on the same network – neat!)…
Of course this got me thinking about the effectiveness of email for this kind of promotion. If he had shared it on Fecebook I would have thought that was really appropriate. If he had been excited enough to actually pick up the phone and call me I’d have been really impressed – and the company would have had no way to track this activity (unless he gave me a promo code over the phone).
But on email… well, it got me talking, but I’m a geek. It does have me seriously considering a purchase, even though I just ordered a regular SD card for my new camera off eBay… and I’ll probably forward it on to a couple of other geeks I know… so it’s had an effect.
Yet at the same time, it kind of feels like an intrusion. If it was a Tweet or an item in by Facebook news-feed I would have been checking for that so I wouldn’t have interrupted my work. I guess it’s like Neil just popped his head up in the middle of my day and stared a new conversation, rather than joining an existing one.
Ultimately I’d give the same answer as I would to any question along the lines of, “will this promotion work?”, which is “test and measure it”, but I do wonder just how effective an email “refer a friend” promotion is…
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