This is the fifth installment in a series titled, How to Get Your Client on the Front Page of the New York Times, explaining how PureDriven helped vault the Google Twin Ports initiative (focused on Duluth, MN and Superior Wis.) to national prominence in its effort to win Google’s attention and become one of the few sites where Google will build an ultra-high speed fiber network. I’ve written this series in hopes of sharing with businesses, politicians and grassroots organizers how to best gain offline and online attention for your cause, event or organization.
Lesson 5: My Mistake Was Not Viewing E-mail as Critical
Photo By Dampeebe
Even though we used nearly every tool available to attract our city’s and Google’s attention, e-mail was by far remained the most valuable one. I’m glad the rest of our team didn’t listen to my feelings that e-mail would be our least valuable asset. Here are three key reasons why e-mail still rules the Internet roost.
1. Your data on social networking sites could disappear in a flash.
In an age where social media continues to be the hot topic, e-mail at times comes across as outdated and stale.But we like to tell our customers that social media – while wonderful – contains a major drawback. You don’t own your data.
Not only do you not legally own your content, but if one of these sites collapses or gets bought out, there’s a chance everything you put on those sites will disappear forever. If for some reason your personal account is terminated, you lose that data as well. So make sure you don’t treat LinkedIn as a permanent Rolodex.
2. You don’t have control of how to speak to followers or fans.
We have a Facebook groups page with more than 20,500 people as of May 5, 2010. So you’d think we could just send a message to each member right? Wrong. You lose that ability at 5,000 members. There are tricks you can use, like sending a message in the form of an invitation, but overall, Facebook is not designed to serve as your e-mail list. So don’t try and use it that way in the long run. Plus, often just five or 10 percent of your friends or followers on Twitter even see any particular message you send. E-mail is the only good way to control exactly how you want your content seen and delivered, and make sure your customers at least see that they received a message from you. Consider social media like the screen door to your home. But to really speak with customers, they’ve got to come into your home’s front door all the way, and that requires an e-mail address.
3. E-mail allows you to become a regular part of your client or supporter’s life. These days people may visit your blog or Facebook page a few times, or place your blog’s feed into a Really Simple Syndication system (RSS) where they’ll check back for content anywhere from every day to every week or month. But if you send an e-mail that lands if their Inboxes every Tuesday, your clients will come to expect it, and can’t skip over it, or ignore it like an RSS site they have to log into when they want to read blog posts.
Now when we send out a message to our 12,000+ subscribers, we can see immediate results, whether it’s just informing them, or rallying them to do something specific.
So Remember: If you’re trying to build an audience, collecting e-mail addresses is the most critical element. Everything on social media can be snatched away.
To read the first post in this series, visit “Google called, so we vaulted our client to Page 1 of the New York Times”
To read the second, visit “In Campaigns, Little or No Money Sometimes An Advantage”
To read the third, visit “When Running Big Projects, Simple Tools Work Best”
To read the fourth, visit “Steer – Don’t Order – Volunteers For Best Results“
