Opt-in vs. Opt-Out; Value vs. Numbers

From "all the news fit to print" to "all the news you can fit [in a tweet]".

It looks like the news media model is moving into the social media realm. Sell and buy ads and you'll have sustenance for the tool and a way for brands to get something out of it without having to put too much time, attention, and work into it.

What happened to the notion of personally earning attention on social networks? Where have all the conversations about brands engaging, interacting, and being human gone? At the end of the day, nothing happens until a sale is made - and a lot more sales need to be made.

Editorial and advertising will blend as advertorial. Brands will look to leverage influentials who already have pull and charisma to gain greater reach - a reach many do not have because they have not invested time and people in it. Will the relationships transfer?

This tweet sponsored by

Along with the ability to create lists, or groups of people individuals choose to segment, we now have gone from "what are you doing?" - a question that could have been interpreted too literally and result in messages like "I'm eating a pizza" - to "what's happening?" - a question that for a fortunate brand might yield messages like "at 'X brand name' they make pizza with fresh dough" with link to location.

I recommend a thin pizza made in the province of Modena, but you probably won't be there any time soon and I can't even remember the name of the place. If we meet face to face there though, we could go together.

All the data released recently says that we trust recommendations by peers more than we trust brand messaging. Since many companies have been unable to earn recommendations from customers (in many instances even from employees) at the rate they'd want, they're now experimenting with buying them by sharing the profits with the user.

How many brands would you authentically recommend? Be honest. Now you might like many more, if you stand to make a buck from doing that, right? We'll have to let it play out to see what happens, of course.

Relevance and authenticity

Will relevance trump authenticity? Do you care if your friend truly believes in something he advertises if it's relevant to you? This question goes to the heart of behavioral science and trust - you might want to think about it more than just a little.

Relevance is something that advertisers have been struggling with for years. Even with search, you have no idea why someone is looking for that term. Although you pay only if that person clicks on the ad, it is more likely more of the clicks will go to organic content, which we perceive to be authentic. As people spend more time online, many more learn to tell the difference.

As we now spend so much more time chatting with friends online than searching, advertisers want in our conversation. So do the tools that need to turn a profit. The ad model in question at the moment is ad.ly for Twitter, in-stream advertising "connecting top tier twitterers with top tier brands". Right.

Why won't brands take the time to learn about the way customers make purchases? Embedding an ad in a tweet is not context marketing! As coldbrew notes in a comment to Scoble's post about in-tweet advertising, the company's model:

fails to consider the nature of 2-way communications, trust, and transparency which are increasingly more common in the digital age. It seems an attempt at supplanting the organic, word-of-mouth style of most discourse on Twitter and Facebook, with an artificial one where the conflict of interest is blatant.

Can something be authentically relevant? This is not a play on words. If you have enough information about what your customers like and want, would they welcome your targeted ad as authentic (you disclose it's an ad) and relevant (it hits home)? When in doubt, ask first.

Value and numbers

I think we can agree that value as in being relevant matters. When given the choice, your customers will choose to be in control of when they accept a message from you. "I'm not ready to talk to a sales rep" applies online as well. Would they expect a sponsored in-line tweet as part of the conversation?

It would be the equivalent of breaking into a commercial when someone asks you for a referral. The thought alone has me in stitches. Imagine the cacophony on Twitter where the ratio signal to noise could get perilously close to messy, especially if the etiquette is to follow as close a number to that of people following you - you know many of your followers are bots, right?

Does value for the individual therefore go down as the numbers go up? We already know that brands think value in terms of numbers. I've been in meetings where people have recited the volume needed in a purchase list to get a % of leads. Mind you, leads not conversions. That, in turn, is a (diminishing) number.

Does top tier mean with lots of followers? I suspect it does. All other indications seem to point to porting the same ad model we're used to ignoring elsewhere into the stream.

Opt-in and Opt-out

Are we back to the conversation on opt-in and opt-out?

Let's take newsletters as an example. In my direct experience, very few ask you permission to opt you in a specific communication. Most will opt you in all lists globally if you corresponded with them once. Many will start pushing their newsletter or blog post into your inbox if you've merely exchanged business cards or corresponded.

Why do so few ask?

Because they think it's easier if you just opt-out. Except for it isn't. It takes time and the junk crowds your inbox. So much so that filters and validation software work overtime. How do you like being reported as spam? The alternative is to act offended when someone unsubscribes to something they didn't subscribe to in the first place.

Many of the arguments on ad inventory streamed within social conversations touch upon this very mechanism. You don't like it, you opt out. But social media was supposed to be opt-in.

Do we really want to push in the direction of opt-out?

We know what opt-in looks like. But it's a lot more work, and the revenue is not coming in fast enough. Will ad.ly or other similar ad models be a turn off for you? Will you use them as a brand?

The main question to me is not whether this is a good idea. The question should be one about execution. How can we change the way we do communications online? We touched upon advertising and open systems not long ago. For customers, I'd look more into the mutual benefit route. We'll talk about it in another post.

[image by massdistraction]

© 2006-2009 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.

Comments

[Glen Kendell]

I recently bought a car through an auto broker. I hadn't met the broker before, but after talking with him a couple of times I felt I could trust him. His business was based on listening to me and getting me what I wanted. We could have a conversation because I trusted he had my best interests in mind.

A couple of weeks before I had gone to the dealer. They were nice, but I didn't trust them. They wanted to have a conversation. I didn't. I saw the conversation as a way to manipulate me. They ended up with my phone number and called and called and called to follow up. I didn't want to talk to them ever again. So I just ignored the calls.

In the online world, I often opt-in simply out of curiosity. I'm searching for someone to trust. If I trust you, I'm not likely to tell you. I will just listen. And if I don't trust you, I'm not likely to opt-out right away. I may just ignore you.

[Simon Plashkes]

Great post. Thank you

[Luis Sandoval Jr.]

Excellent points and unfortunately a scenario that scares me. Traditional forms of advertising exist and it's been proven time and time again and people are just not that interested in being bombarded with messages of "Look at me" "Buy This, Buy That."

The concepts moving into social engagement only stands to disrupt the positives existing in the conversations, but begin to sow the seeds of mistrust. If unbeknownst to me a friend is being paid by a brand because of their influence, and they in turn highly recommend something to me. Because they are my friend I'm likely to listen, but the day that it comes out they were paid to share that information is the day I block them from my list and I stop supporting the product. It's underhanded and goes against the "rules of engagement" in social communications.

Alternatively I don't hate all advertising. I definitely think there is a time and a place, but to risk the chance of losing some of the purity of our transparency and authenticity seems too high a price to pay.

I still rely heavily on peer recommendations and reviews before I make any purchases. I can honestly say that advertising has no effect on my purchase directly. They only make me aware of their brand, but I never go off face value.

[Dave Van de Walle]

A great post, with great questions all types of marketers need to ask...

I focus on double opt-in on newsletters for sites I manage -- it sucks to have numbers that are low when compared to the bots. I only have 6000 followers on Twitter and can't stand it when bots game the system.

But wait a minute, isn't the point to actually interact with people who want to interact with you?

I don't know what is going to win out in the end...brands having discussions with people and acting on their feedback? Or spam?

But, alas, great, thought-provoking post.

[Ryan Waggoner]

Authenticity is a tricky concept that depends heavily on context. In the context of social recommendations, authenticity goes deeper than just "is this an ad?" If I'm looking for movie recommendations from friends, it doesn't matter how relevant an ad injected into that conversation is, nor how much I know it's an ad; it's not authentic because I'm looking for peer recommendations, not advertising from a company trying to get me to spend money.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Glen - this is a good story that illustrates the power of your past experience to make an instinctual decision about whom to trust. It reminds me of other examples in "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell.

@Simon - thank you for stopping by.

@Luis - good observation for you as well about trust. Indeed, once you lose it, you cannot buy it back. There will be changes in the way social media happens, of course. The need to monetize is not trivial. I'm still thinking that when technology becomes boring we'll see the better applications and uses to help business operations, not just their promotional needs. Early days, yet. It's good hearing from you!

@Dave - that is the very best practice, well done! I think there is a second point you make in what you write: talking with people who want to talk with you gets you to where a business transaction takes place. Spam is a recurring issue. There would be none if there were no incentives in it...

@Ryan - have you received pitches on Twitter yet? You know, when you type in a certain word and the bot serves you a link. There is an amazing dissonance between that and conversation for me. Then again, we don't all have our meter set to "unacceptable" in the same spot. Experimentation is good, I think. It's a sign the technology is maturing and we're actually looking for ways to make it work economically. The answer is to keep looking for what works and tempering the feedback from the community with the actual results measured. We do that in business every day. Interesting times!