FanMail Marketing | Blog » Music Media Marketing

The Better Marketing Tool: Facebook vs. Twitter

Murray Stall — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:29:45 +0000

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.

SXSW, CMJ, A2IM and Connections ‘09

david — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:13:18 +0000

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.

———

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.

————–

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.

“Eblasting” is a lame strategy

david — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:52:34 +0000

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…

Why Relevence Matters

david — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:49:52 +0000

Bringing Email, Social and the Power of Viral Together

david — Thu, 14 May 2009 18:45:44 +0000

Technology Brings Bands, Artists Closer to Fans

Roadrunner Records Artists Among First to Integrate Email, Social Media

INDIANAPOLIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Roadrunner Records artists Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman and Slipknot will be among the first artists in the country to use a new technology that will bring them closer to fans through email, Facebook, Twitter and more than 40 other online networks.

The bands will incorporate ExactTarget’s Social Forward™ technology in emails to fans, giving their followers the ability to share the contents of fan club messages directly to their social networks with a single mouse click.

“Fans are an artist’s best advocate, and the industry is continuously looking for new ways to engage them and help them share their passion for a band with others online,” said David DeVore, chief executive officer of FanMail Marketing, a Cincinnati-based firm that uses ExactTarget and a host of technologies to power and manage communications for artists, promoters and record labels. “While email and social media have become a staple of any band’s communications, the two have been completely separate. With ExactTarget’s Social Forward™, bands can give fans a tool to simplify sharing the latest news and information received by email to their social network friends and followers online.”

ExactTarget’s Social Forward™ technology consists of two new unique offerings – Direct to Social and an integration with social media syndication powerhouse ShareThis.

Direct to Social allows marketers to incorporate the icon of a social network such as Facebook, Twitter or MySpace in an email. Subscribers can click the icon and instantly share the contents of the message with their online networks.

The integration with ShareThis allows email marketers to enable sharing to more than 40 social media sites with a single click of a button. The technology works by incorporating a small ShareThis icon into email marketing messages, allowing subscribers to share email content with their social networks. When subscribers click the ShareThis icon, they are directed to a custom landing page where they can select the social networks where they would like to share the content.

“While Social Forward certainly provides fans a great tool to share content online, it also gives marketers and promoters the first way to value and track social media,” said Tim Kopp, ExactTarget’s chief marketing officer. “Social Forward provides marketers actionable data that identifies the value of a campaign’s most viral content, most active subscribers and the most popular networks for sharing.”

The announcement of Roadrunner Records’ artists adopting ExactTarget’s Social Forward comes less than a month after the firm launched the solution at ad:tech San Francisco. The social sharing solution is available to ExactTarget users through the company’s online Innovations Lab and will become an integrated solution for all ExactTarget users worldwide as part of the company’s Summer release.

Forrester Research’s Emily Riley will join experts from ExactTarget in a June 3 Webinar to provide marketers with the latest research and best practices for integrating email marketing and creative social strategies. Marketers may register for the free Webinar online at http://email.exacttarget.com/Resources/Webinars/SocialForward.html.

About FanMail Marketing

FanMail Marketing is a Fan-Relationship Management and Digital Marketing Solutions Agency for the music and entertainment industry. FanMail helps clients become more Fan-Centric by providing innovative strategies to Artists, Labels, Events, Venues, Festivals, and Promoters and by leveraging the power of cutting-edge email, sms, and voice technology. The FanMail team is made up of the music industry’s top marketers, designers, developers and account executives. Since 2001, FanMail has deployed and consulted on thousands of interactive marketing campaigns for some of the biggest names in the music industry such as Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly Presents, JamBase.com, The William Morris Agency and Roadrunner Records.

About ExactTarget

ExactTarget, Inc. is a leading provider of on-demand email marketing software solutions. The company’s suite of on-demand one-to-one marketing applications enable clients to send business-critical and event triggered communications to increase sales, optimize marketing investments and strengthen customer relationships. ExactTarget offers four editions of its on-demand software application along with integrated solutions such as ExactTarget for Salesforce.com AppExchange, ExactTarget for Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ExactTarget for Omniture Genesis. ExactTarget offers a range of optimization services including support, implementation and training, integration, deliverability, account management, design and deployment and strategic consulting. ExactTarget’s software powers permission-based email communications for thousands of organizations including CareerBuilder.com, Expedia.com, Florida Power & Light, Gannett Co., Inc/USA TODAY, the Indianapolis Colts, The Home Depot, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Liberty Mutual Group, Papa John’s and Wellpoint, Inc. For more information, please visit www.exacttarget.com or call 1-866-EMAILET.

Five Clients in Five Minutes

Josh — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:26:16 +0000

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.

Make Friends Through Best Practices

Josiah — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:38:18 +0000

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.

How To 101: How a label can represent their artists

Josiah — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:25:42 +0000

Let’s Talk About Permission

Josiah — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:24:47 +0000

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?

ROI–Do you know your Return On Investment?

Josiah — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:15:41 +0000

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.