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Month: August 2011

Unsubscribe vs. Opt-out

Our organization, CEPSM,  recently ran a database “cleaning” email campaign to remind our e-communications subscribers that they are in full control of what they want to receive and how often. While at first instinct nobody wants to see their database decline in numbers, I’m sure most people would agree that clogging your audiences’ email in-boxes with info they do not want is much worse over the long term.

I thought I had my email terminology down pat, however I recently came across a blog post from our wonderful email service provider (Blue Sky Factory) which explained the difference between “unsubscribes” and “opt-outs”. I must shamefully admit, for the longest time I thought they were the same thing. They’re not.

Facebook’s latest response to Google+

First thing I thought of when Google+ launched a few months ago was that they were making a big promotional mistake by making their USP (unique selling proposition) the fact that they allow users to create “circles”.

Why did I think it was a mistake?

One of the key things I remember that my strategic management prof would drill into our heads back in business school was to always differentiate between a “competitive advantage” and a “sustainable competitive advantage”. In Google’s case, the circle feature was clearly the former. In other words, a competitive advantage with a short lifespan; something that competitors could easily replicate.

How will we know if we have achieved success with social media?

I was recently asked the question “how will we know if we have achieved success in our social media engagement?” (i.e the age old ROI issue)  by a someone from my client’s senior management team. The only problem was that it was a closing rhetorical question for which they did not actually want to hear a response at that particular moment.