Mixed Messages

What's in a name?

Of the many emails I get, and like you I get a fair few each day, many get deleted straight away as they are obviously spammy. Others get deleted as their message is clearly not meant for me ('pills') and others just make me laugh by trying to appeal to different sides of me I never knew I had.

For example a ticket agency just sent me an email about upcoming gigs and how did they use the subject matter to get me to click onto their deals?

See Metallica, Oasis And Lionel Richie

Now with the best will in the world is there one person on the planet who likes all three of those bands? (the answer is no by the way!) So a really mixed message, not really thought through and an opportunity missed.

I would have much preferred to have had a couple of emails splitting off Lionel and that way I would have been far more likley to click through to their offers, at least for Metallica and Oasis.

So just like landing pages on your websites where the message should be really clear and hitting the right target so should the subjects in emails, at least if you want to get people through to that first stage of even looking at the email you have written.

Update

Another company just sent me an email and there subject was: Check out this week's hot tickets and special offers - OK, I will!

Another one has just arrived: Oasis UK Stadium Tour on sale Friday at 10:00 -that's useful so off I go.

Online Security no longer an issue?

comScore has recently done some research into online banking in the UK and found that 1 in 3 people of the UK's online population logged into an online bank account.  I am surprised it is so high, especially with the amount of spam I am getting from "banks" where I don't have an account.

LloydsTSB was the most popular single bank with 2,832 individual users, while RBS was the strongest group at 2,906 individual users.  Natwest contributed by far the majority of that traffic - maybe RBS will be sending more in the future

It is good to see that consumer confidence with online related privacy and transactions is so strong in the UK.

The great gadget monopoly

The advent of the gadget can be traced back almost to the creation of mankind itself, when ancient man used various devices to help carry out daily tasks more effectively.  However gadgets aren’t strictly devices, they are simply a means to complete a task more efficiently and precisely than was previously possible.  Google for example is not a gadget, its scope and purpose in many ways goes beyond the function of a gadget, it is in fact more an operating system.  So why then has the simple ancillary gizmo got behemoths such as Google, Microsoft and other media giants so worried?  The answer many analysts believe is straightforward: empowerment and content, two factors that in their own right dictate a large proportion of todays human behaviour.

Perhaps the greatest example of this influence can be attributed to the new I-Phone, in many ways the epitome of gadget influence and domination.  If you would like to download music you have to go through the I Tunes interface, phone calls are made through a set provider and even your ISP is predetermined.  It’s no wonder the people who are responsible for producing entertainment and even information providers themselves are so concerned about what the next gadget is going to be.

We have reached a point in time, where in many ways, technology is raging a war with technology.  Each new gizmo produced is desperately trying to create a platform for itself where other media companies, television networks, ISP’s and cable providers will want to be part of.  I feel there will always be two winners in this battle; the creators, people like Steve Jobs and those who have the ability not only to predict the ‘next big thing’, but also know how to exploit it.

Amazon is trying to score a big win in the audio department!

Its clear that in 2008 Amazon has its eyes firmly set on iTune’s much coveted music trophy, and the American e-commerce company has certainly hit the ground running, making several decisive steps already.

The most prominent of which is probably their well documented take over of Audible.com.  Audible.com was established in 2007 and boasts a subscription service model for radio shows, audio books and podcasts.  This is all the more significant as Audible supplies audio books for, yes you guessed it, iTunes!  What’s more Amazon has recently introduced its Kindle service which essentially plays MP3’s and electronic books.  This is in addition to the already popular Unbox that allows users to rent or buy downloadable videos.    
All of this is very admirable and will no doubt help Amazon gain a few ‘brownie points’ in the online music arena.  However Amazon lack Apple’s ‘cool’ edge and no matter how much functionality is added to their online offering, the brand recognition that Apple has built up over the years puts it in a very favourable positions indeed.  Making it very hard for competitors to get anywhere near it in the online audio stakes, that is until the next big thing comes along.

BBC, the new player

The BBC’s big foray into proper digital media was launched in December last year with the iPlayer. The first available official figures since the Christmas launch say that 3.5 million iPlayer programmes were watched by more than a million viewers between the 25^th of December and the 7^th of  January.

This is promising, although the traffic doesn’t rival YouTube it illustrates quite clearly that it is possible for the traditional big media companies to rival the new school web 2.0 upstarts. Now the only issue is of monetisation for this medium, is the Beeb going to make any ad revenue from the iPlayer?