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.

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?