Will Yesmail Become NoThankYoumail in Social Networks?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at 2:07PM By Larry Kilbourne
As reported in today's BtoB online newsletter, Yesmail, a permission-based email marketing company, has announced a partnership with ShareThis that will allow recipients of marketing emails to share them with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Digg, and others.
Yesmail, which is a component of Omaha-based uber marketing database company InfoGROUP, describes the relationship as a "natural add-on" to their email campaign capabilities. According to John Harrison, SVP of product strategy and client services, it will allow them to "integrate email, web and social media objectives, in a cost-effective manner."
This development represents a significant attempt both to monetize social media for marketing purposes, and to move email database marketing virally into the social web in a way that allows clients to track the effectiveness of the campaigns once they enter the realm of social networks.
It is also a hybrid marketing partnership, with one foot planted firmly in the world and tactics of Web 1.0, and the other in the social world of Web 2.0.
The press release on Yesmail's site references a Forrester report showing that 69% of adults still rely on email as the basic means of receiving and sharing information and content. However, it notes that according to Forrester, among younger age groups multi-media channels predominate, including IM'ing, text messaging, and use of social media. Thus, the partnership with ShareThis seems a 'natural' attempt to bridge the two worlds and their demographic differences.
What remains to be seen, however, is how welcoming members of social networks are going to be to marketing tactics and products straight out of Web 1.0.
It is one thing to share a YouTube video on my Facebook Wall for my friends' enjoyment; it is quite another to share a marketing message I've received where the clear intent is for me (and now you) to purchase something. The former is all about sharing and bonding; the latter is not quite in the same league.
It's not necessarily any disjunction between the world of Web 1.0 and 2.0 that's at issue here, so much as the propriety of importing techniques long established and accepted in the former into the latter.
Moreover, the question arises whether those who share these marketing messages are going to legitimately expect some form of compensation if a sale results, and if so, how that message is going to fly in social-network land. How will popular destinations like Facebook fare if they start gaining a reputation as platforms for direct marketing?
So, once the ink is dried on this partnership and the new feature on Yesmail's Enterprise product is launched, it will be interesting to watch the reaction. Will it be "thanks for sharing" or brickbats, or something in between?
For those wondering how successfully social networks can be monetized using approaches associated with Web 1.0, stay tuned. This should be an interesting partnership - and experiment!
Copyright © 2009 by Larry Kilbourne, Ph.D. Dr. Kilbourne is an independent marketing consultant. He may be reached at lkphd@yahoo.com
Reader Comments (1)
Hi Larry!
Julie Anne from Yesmail. I think it's important to keep in mind, consumers will only share emails that are relevant to them (Yesmail is not posting client's emails - its the consumers who get an email that can share it with ShareThis). So it's critical that an email that goes out has very good content that's worth sharing.
I recently did a survey about share-worthiness content, which you might find interesting: http://pdxreda.blogspot.com/2009/04/whats-shareworthy-survey-says.html. So far at Yesmail, we've already seen the tool used by consumers for several clients with great results. :-)