Market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research released a study recently that says a fan/follower of a brand on Twitter or Facebook is more likely to buy from or recommend those brands than they were prior to following the brand. Though Facebook and Twitter were both effective, the difference in the percentage between the two sites is, at the very least, interesting.

Chadwick Martin Bailey - iModerate Research Technologies Study

Twitter followers are far more likely to buy or recommend a brand to others.  They’re 19% more likely to recommend a brand than a Facebook follower.  So, obviously Twitter is the superior marketing tool.  Or is it?

Facebook has far more users (over 400 million compared to Twitter’s 75 million), and is much more user-friendly.  It even looks non-threatening, like a little, social networking puppy.  Twitter’s #hash tags, on the other hand, are ugly little monsters.

But when you think about it, hash tags and retweets are part of what makes Twitter cool and different.  Twitter has always been the beautiful-on-the-inside social networking site.

Having an online presence on both sites can be beneficial in different ways.  Twitter is all about the simple text and/or link post.  Short, sweet, to the point.  Facebook has become a great place for many types of media, links and information to be posted.

Think about the strengths of each site to determine which one might be better for whatever content or message you’re posting.  If you want to share a new video, Facebook is going to allow you to post it straight to your profile, whereas with Twitter, you’ll have to provide a link to it.  If you want to let people know that you just posted dates for the new tour, then post it on both sites.  There are even applications out there that will allow you to post to both Twitter and Facebook in one post, like Twitter on Facebook.

No one approach is going to work for everyone.  Depending on your brand, your target market, and the content you’re posting, one site may be more effective than the other.  But the most important thing to understand is they’re both pieces of a holistic marketing approach.

Just a heads up that today is the last day to use the SXSW panel picker to choose which panels you might want to see. Take 2 seconds and give the FanCentric Future panel a vote: http://tinyurl.com/lec5mh

For those who missed it last year... check out the overview and the slide deck.

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On October 14th we will be joined by our client Road Runner Records in the Media & Entertainment Solutions Showcase at ExactTarget Connections 09 in Indianapolis. This is the largest direct marketing conference in the world and is a super valuable and insightful event for any direct or interactive marketer. If you are going be there, hit us up so that we can hang out.

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On October 19th, The A2IM will be presenting a Tech Day for their members prior to CMJ. We have been asked to participate on the panel discussing direct and email marketing. If you are an A2IM member and going to be in NYC for CMJ, check out this event and hit me up to hang out.

In their words:

Hosted by the A2IM New Media Committee, this Tech Day will feature presentations and question & answer sessions on the topics of Email Marketing and Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) Marketing.  It will be our 3rd such event and the two previous have been very informative and no doubt benefited the members who attended.

Following Tech Day, A2IM will host a Cocktail Party starting at 6pm and open to all members.  Last February’s pre-Digital Music Forum: East and last October’s pre-CMJ Tech Day and Cocktail Party were both great successes with over 70 attendees at each Tech Day and over 130 attendees at each Cocktail Party.

Yah, I said it.

Eblasting is lame. Broadcasting the same email message to everyone at the same time, is a weak strategy.

If you want to drive a high a high return on investment, go for relevance. Target and deliver real value that improves a person’s life.

See, this is what Forrester found out during their executive survey…

Take five minutes to check out some of the progressive things which our clients are doing in their direct to fan marketing and Fan Relationship Management programs.

This time next week I will be in sunny Austin, Texas at South by South-West with a couple thousand of my closest friends from independent artists to record company moguls.  I know, my life is hard, but don’t worry about me.  I put myself through such suffering for you.  Fan marketing and FRM (fan relationship management) are not spectator sports. No, sir. In order for me to keep all of you up to date, I must be relentless in my quest to find out what people all over the music industry are up to, and how successful they are. Then, and only then, can I return triumphantly to you with the secrets that I have distilled from my tireless efforts. Besides, I hear there is going to be music there too.

Anyway, while I am away, I wanted to leave you with a little food for thought. The ESPC (Email Sender & Provider Coalition) has a Best Practices Guide available on there website that is a must read for anyone in music media marketing and digital marketing in general.  In addition to the Best Practices Guide, their website is full of interesting articles and documents that are worth a good look.

So, while you are patiently waiting for the last of the cold weather to go on back north and for spring to come, why not snuggle up close to your special someone with a bottle of wine and the latest in Best Practices? Ah, it’s like a scene right out of Shakespeare.

Oh, and before I forget, if you happen to be attending SXSW, check out our lunch symposium on the Fan-Centric Future.

So, we all know that SPAM stinks. In every sense of the word. But how do we, as digital marketers, keep from falling into the dreaded can of spicy meat substance? Easy, we get permission to contact people, before we send them emails. That is why we have opt-in generators on web-pages and social-networking sites, why we ask people to sign-up for mailing lists at events, and also why every email includes an option to unsubscribe. But how long does this permission last? Well, this is a bit trickier. If you get someones email address and start using it immediately, then it could last forever. After the initial explicit permission to contact them is given via on opt-in or other subscription request, each communique that they receive and do not unsubscribe from is implicit permission to continue to contact them. That makes sense, of course, and probably seems pretty obvious. The waters get muddied, however, when we start talking about addresses that have been collected, but not used. How long is the shelf-life of an unused email address? Well, regardless of why the address has not been used (lost list, changing database systems, etc.), I think it is fair to say that it is not open-ended. There aren’t any written-in-stone rules here, but I think if we apply some common sense, we can come up with a reasonable answer. First, let’s keep in mind that permission only exists as long as the recipient knows that they gave it. So, if you got an email list three years ago, I think it is safe to throw it away as the people on it have forgotten that they signed up if you have not yet contacted them. Also, relevancy is important. If you have emails from a year or two ago that you never contacted and you never received again from any other channel, I think it is safe to say that they are not your target audience and that whatever you have to say is not relevant to them. So, what is a good rule of thumb then? I would venture to say six months, a year at the absolute most. If you have not contacted a subscriber in that amount of time, I think it is safe to say that your permission window has closed, and you need to get explicit permission again. Maybe that is just me. What do you think?

Another Planet Entertainment (APE) had been blasting their e-mail list without the ability to track how effective those sends had been. Getting past spam filters presented another problem. Using tracking features within FanMail, Another Planet was able to clean-up their list and in turn base sends on past behavior. Streamlining the process and using information on hand enabled APE to drive ticket sales through pre-show e-mails. Also, they were able to directly track money spent on a specific send and the ticket income received. Check out this case study on Another Planet Entertainment. Have you made $28,000 on a $75 investment? You should.