fan
noun
a person who has a strong interest in or admiration for a particular sport, art form, or famous person.

Facebook pulled an interesting marketing strategy  this week by replacing its “fan” buttons with “like” buttons. On the surface it seems like just a minor grammatical change, but the ramifications of this small action can be huge. According to Facebook, the reason for this change was a “part of [their] ongoing efforts to improve the user experience, increase engagement and promote consistency across Facebook, [they] are changing the language [they] use when people connect to [their] Brand Pages. People will soon connect with [their] Brand Pages by clicking “Like” rather than “Become a Fan.” People already “Like” their friends’ status updates, photos and links everyday. In fact, people click “Like” almost two times more than they click “Become a Fan” everyday”.

Will this plan actually work?

I am not convinced. One of the reasons social networking has become so popular is because it opens up brands to the consumer, allowing them to access ‘their’  brands on-demand. This can inspire more than just a “like” feeling, it creates a fan. This is what marketers have been trying to get their consumers to be: brand-loyal fans!  I can guarantee a “fan” will buy a band t-shirt, someone who just likes a band probably will not. While this new “liking” strategy may get more people to “like” a brand, I would like to point out that quality is way more important than quantity when it comes to social and email marketing campaigns. It is the fan, the super-loyal user, that will always click on your email and will always engage with your brand on social sites and will bring you the most return on your marketing investments.

And how do fans feel about this?! I think some of them feel a demotion in status from a FAN who attended every single one of band x’s tour dates last year and has band x’s tattoo, to someone who has been to just one show. Fans love being fans, they love the status and they are your most brand-loyal consumer. Engage them instead of losing them in the crowd.

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Seth Godin has a post up on his blog about viral growth on social networks. His basic point is that providing relevant content to a few people creates the kind of viral activity that over time is far more effective that providing mediocre content to a whole lot of people. Relevancy rules, and you increase relevancy by generating better content.

In order to generate better content though, we need to know who it is we are generating it for. The average Facebook user has around 123 friends which means that you are getting around hundred more views each time somebody shares a piece of your content on Facebook. The initial impulse here is to say “Well, shoot, if I can potentially increase my reach by 100 times, I should broadcast to as many people as possible so that there are more chances for the content to be shared.” Very simply, this is wrong. This idea is based upon the false assumption the odds of somebody electing to share a piece of content are fixed and are the same across all people. This is the old mindset that almost killed the music industry: our customers/fans/ticket-buyers are not individuals, but are all the same nameless, faceless automatons. This is obviously not true. If it were the case that for any piece of content, the odds for a recipient choosing share it socially were fixed at say 1 in 100, then I would tell you to get your content in front of as many people as possible. But that is not the case. The fact is that most people are not willing to share your content, no matter what. So instead of worrying about the masses, why not instead focus on the small handful of individuals that are willing to redistribute your content?

The key then is to identify which fans/subscribers/customers are most likely to respond to your message so positively that they want to spread the word. Go to your Facebook Fan-page… What? you don’t have one? MySpace is fine and all, but really, MySpace users are less engaged than Facebook users and there are far fewer of them. So, like I said, go to your Facebook page and look at you number of fans. Now look at the other areas of your page: the wall, the discussions, anywhere that your fans can interact. Is the number of active posters equal to the total number of fans you have? Not even close. The fact that some of your fans have posted on your wall or contributed to the discussion boards shows that they are willing to speak up and be heard though. These are your target, these are your speakers. So listen to them. Listen to what they want, what they like and dislike. Listen to them and find the clues, and there will be clues, about what you could do that would really make their day. Then do it.

Just like in life, Facebook users vary dramatically even though the uniformity of Facebook pages makes this easy to forget. Also, just like in life, some Facebook users are more outspoken then others. Find your outspoken fans and give them something worthy of being outspoken about. Even if your outspoken fans have only the average number of friends, your message still will gain significant reach beyond just your initial subscriber list. However, I suspect that you will find that the more outspoken Facebook users also have many more friends than the average user. Also, they are probably friends with other outspoken people who may not be on your Fan list (yet), which means that they have access to entire tribes of folks that you don’t even know are out there. This is how viral activity works. Pretty soon, if your content is truly compelling, not only has your actual fan base grown, but your messaging reach has been increased exponentially.

Okay, homework time: Go to your page, explore it, read it, get to know like your fans get to know it. Then come up with one good idea based purely on what your fans express and do it! Then let me know how it goes.

It is great coming back from Connections ‘09 and the A2IM Tech Day, having hung out with a plethora of great thinkers, marketers, innovators and friends and we’re inspired to reach for the next generation of direct-to-fan marketing tools and strategies. We are top-tier ExactTarget resellers in the entertainment vertical and have been hanging out with their team since they were a small five person startup. Now ExactTarget is 500 people strong, completely profitable and recently took $70 million in VC to innovate on new tools, expand their architecture and expand into Europe. They are a fantastic company.

Some of my highlights from Connections included hanging out with Morgan Stewart and talking about the convergence of email, social and mobile marketing, discovering some advanced data marketing strategies from my new friend Ami Packard from Expedia and presenting our Roadrunner Records Social Profile story in the entertainment and media showcase with our friend, Lauren Kufta, New Media Coordinator at Roadrunner Records. In addition, our team member Josiah Kaiser spoke at the Developer’s Track on the evolution of Live Capture and Mobile Automation.

Wow, what a week!

One of the things which really struck me was how far behind the music industry (in general) is on the sophistication spectrum from other industries.  There are organizations who really push the envelope, but, generally, the music industry is 2-5 years behind on direct email, SMS, voice and social strategies and implementation.

Yup, the music industry missed the boat.

And the travesty of it is that the music industry has the asset which every other industry covets… they have fans. They have people who actually care! Best Buy dreams of having the type of loyalty which is baked into the music industry.

Why is the industry behind the sophistication spectrum? Here is my take…

The Music Industry is Spoiled. - Or, at least, it has been. Because of the fan asset they haven’t been driven to innovate, strategize and do the work around really owning and engaging the life cycle of the fan until recently.

Who’s Job Is It? – In every other industry it is the MARKETER’S JOB to be in charge of customer acquisition, retention and growth. In the music industry it used to be the label’s job.  . .  that is what they do. . .  they sell. Now days? Well, now days, it is anybody’s guess. Is it the manager, the drummer, the label, the distributor, or the publicist? Who knows? Consequently, nobody has developed the skills and competency to do it well.

Bright Shiny Objects! - There has been fascination over the last decade for the music industry to run after the latest and greatest bright shiny object. Ring Tones, Mobile Fan Clubs, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Reverb Nation and Topspin have all be heralded as the savior of the music business. These are all amazing and fascinating pieces to the fan engagement tool set. . . but they don’t constitute a holistic, strategic long-term-strategy for fan-relationship-management(FRM). They  don’t account for not learning the very basics of permission-based marketing.

Who Owns the Fan? – I find it fascinating that Artists have been writing into their riders that they also get a copy of the concert ticket buyer manifest complete with customer email address. It is fascinating because it places the value on the list, rather on than on the subscriber. It suggests that permission is sharable. . . that the promoter, artist and ticketing company should all be able to contact somebody just because the have access to the same database. . . without any real permission process. Yes, the music industry spams the fans more than any other industry out there.

There have been big moves across the major labels and promoters to initiate broad CRM based strategies and solutions and the managers and artists are certainly getting more savvy. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years and we certainly will be trying to be one of the leaders in the mix.

Below is the sophistication spectrum which we use to work with clients on understanding where they are and what their goals in revenue can be.

If you would like a more complete understanding of this chart visit the link below:

The Sophistication Matrix

A full copy of our slide deck is available for download here.

We are really looking forward to what the future holds here.

FanMail and long-time clients and friends, HeadCount, teamed up for a voter-registration drive at the beginning of October. With the deadline to register for the upcoming election as early as October 5 in some states, time was of the essence.

As we all know, democracy only works if we all exercise our right to vote. HeadCount approached us with the idea of allowing FanMail’s clients to send a free mailer to their subscribers encouraging them to register and vote. This proved amazingly successful. Over the course of just a couple of days, FanMail and it’s clients sent almost a half of a million registration reminders and successfully registered thousands of previously unregistered voters. Thank you to all of our amazing clients, such as Another Planet Entertainment, Outside Lands Festival, Gathering of the Vibes, SCI Fidelity Records, and Umphrey’s McGee, who participated in this event, and if you haven’t done so, please register to vote. The deadline has not passed in many states yet, but time is running out. Please go to www.headcount.org to register and see a list of each state’s requirements and deadlines.

Long time FanMail client 10,000 Lakes Festival (10klf) is at it again. Check out their latest artist additions.

We would like to congratulate long time FanMail client Headcount on their new documentary. HeadCount is a non-partisan organization devoted to using the multi-faceted power of music to enable voter registration and participation in democracy. With interviews from folks like Bob Weir, Bela Fleck, Trey Anastasio, Michael Franti, Patrick Jordan, Johnathan Schwartz and more, this documentary is a real call to action for the music industry to change the world. Watch the Preview >>

Let me just begin by welcoming Cartfly to the FanMail family. Cartfly makes it easier for anyone to run there own on-line store through a PayPal account, which means the barriers between artist and consumer are continuing to fall.