Are you ready for Project Titan?
Facebook, the largest social network in existence (400 million users and growing) is growing its own email system, codenamed Project Titan. Details are a little thin, but articles from Techcrunch and other sites on the Web indicate that Facebook’s mail system is going to be an actual, standards-compliant mail system with POP3/IMAP and SMTP with users getting an @facebook.com address.
Here’s the zinger: if Project Titan is adopted by its userbase, it’s going to absolutely devastate your current email marketing efforts. Deliverability will go out the window. Open rates will drop to near zero. Your email won’t even get to users, much less get read.
Why?
Simple: Facebook will throw out the book on email deliverability because it will likely be the first mass-user email platform that is whitelist-based. In other words, you will NOT be able to send to a user unless they have given you explicit permission to do so.
This is already baked into Facebook. Messaging and privacy are very limited on Facebook. Brands and companies have to resort to Fan Pages and pay per click advertising to gain any leverage among the user base. A Facebook email system is likely to verify that you, the sender, are friends with the recipient before allowing your message to even show up in their inbox.
It’s already baked into Facebook’s existing messaging.
This will do two things: for users, this will make email an incredible experience again because all the junk we’ve dealt with over the years (from companies we don’t want to hear from) will simply not get through. What will drive adoption of Project Titan is the promise of 100% spam-free email. Friends and family will always get through. Corporations? Probably not. Spammers? Locked out forever. For marketers, you’re not going to get through at all unless Facebook recognizes your connection to the recipient.
What a game changer that would be.
Of course there will always be corporate email. Of course there will always be other services. However, if Facebook uses its existing friends architecture to determine email deliverability, its inbox will be the most valuable real estate of any email inbox because it will only contain messages from people you want to hear from, and it will be inside a website where users already spend an incredible amount of time anyway. Facebook’s inbox will be the email you always want to read.
Now, how do we know that Facebook is likely to leverage friend lists? Simple. In the Techcrunch news piece, Facebook’s email system will be based on the vanity URL system they rolled out last year. Facebook.com/blueskyfactory will become blueskyfactory@facebook.com. Facebook.com/cspenn will become cspenn@facebook.com.
Get it? If I want blueskyfactory@facebook.com to send to cspenn@facebook.com, I’d bet you a beer that the two must be connected as friends, fans, or the recipient has to permit anyone to contact them by email (which will probably NOT be the default).
So you’re probably saying to yourself, okay, apocalyptic prediction received, now what? Here’s our recipe for preparing for Project Titan.
1. Get in the habit of not sending garbage to your existing email lists. As DJ Waldow tries to beat into your head every opportunity he can, send relevant, timely, targeted, valuable (RTTV) email. If your users are in the habit of receiving RTTV email from you now, they’ll likely be receptive to receiving it from you in the future, no matter what the platform is. Are you just emailing worthless ads to your audience? Are you sending stuff like product announcements full of corporate-speak to your audience? Take a look in your email analytics right now. If your open rates are below industry standard, chances are you’re not providing value to your customers. (Blue Sky Factory customers, ask your client service manager for suggestions on your current performance. Not a Blue Sky Factory customer but want to be? Click here.)
3. Get 25 fans on your Facebook fan page right now. Why 25? In order to obtain a vanity URL (Facebook.com/yournamehere) you’ll need 25 fans at a minimum. (Hat tip to Bryan Person for the update)
4. Get your Facebook vanity URL. Go to Facebook.com/username and grab that URL right now, because it will be the basis of your @facebook.com address later. Make it consistent with your other online identities. (e.g. if you’re @blueskyfactory on Twitter, you should be atfacebook.com/blueskyfactory)
5. This is the hard part but the important part. As soon as you have steps 1-4 complete, start contacting your user base, your customer base, anyone you have permission to contact, and get them to become fans of your Facebook Fan Page. Offer incentives, coupons, exclusive info, whatever it takes for them to become a fan, because this will almost certainly be the gold standard of deliverability in Project Titan. Fan or friend? Your message will probably get through.
Put your Become a Fan button on your website, on your blog, in your social networks. BSF Customer? Make use of Share With Your Network on ALL your creatives. (Contact your client service manager if you don’t know what that is.) Provide hooks in every touch to your customers (email footer, etc.) letting people know that your Fan Page exists and that you should connect.
6. Make much more use of your Fan Page right now, today. Start interacting with your customers there, so that they get in the habit of seeing your name and brand more often. Put up a web form on your Fan Page (BSF customers – ask your client service manager about how to integrate Publicaster into Facebook), so that customers can do business with you if they so choose.
Above all else, follow the RTTV rule on Facebook from the moment you get started. Be a part of your customers’ Facebook experience in a relevant, timely, targeted, valuable way, in everything you do. Once Facebook’s walled garden goes up around email itself and proves its value to users (look, no more spam, ever!), the ONLY way as a marketer you will be allowed into that Friends category of messaging is if you’re behaving like an actual friend – a real life friend – would, bringing value to your relationship.
The implications around Project Titan are huge. The consequences to unprepared email marketingprofessionals are likely to be dire. Make sure you’re prepared for Titan’s rollout and do the appropriate groundwork now so that if it does explode (as many predict it will), you will obliterate your competitors. Even if it doesn’t, the steps you take to prepare for it will give you a valuable Facebook outpost that you can use for all your marketing efforts.
Christopher S. Penn
No comments:
Post a Comment