Interactive Marketing

The geniuses at Google have recently come out with a drunk email filter that users can enable, which forces the user to answer a series of basic math questions before sending out a message. While comical, there are some online business marketing lessons to be learned here. What kind of filter to do you use for your company’s online business marketing messages? Here are a few ideas:

Is your message helpful? Whether responding to an email inquiry or sending out a social network marketing message (i.e.: a “Tweet” or Facebook status update), ask yourself if it’s something that people would consider to be useful or valuable to some degree. Don’t just blast spammy messages at people. Which brings me to…
Is your message spam? People have been inundated with digital messages for years. As a result, we’ve all gotten pretty good at sniffing out spam. If your online business marketing messages are spammy, you won’t get a positive response. In fact, you’ll get just the opposite. Instead of sending out a Tweet saying, “Bob’s Collision is the best,” consider offering some sort of value, like a coupon. For instance, “Bob’s Collision is the best, and we want to prove it to you. Mention this message and get 20% off of your next repair!” See the difference?
Quid pro quo. If you want something, you’re going to have to be willing to give something in return. If you want people to respond to your newsletters or social network marketing messages, you have to give them an incentive to. Take the time to really think about your content, and make sure that it’s friendly, error-free and not too sales-focused.
Break from the norm. With social network marketing, it’s less about pushing people to your business and more about pulling them in. If you can figure out how to draw people to you and your business, you’ll be a lot better off than if you’re pushy.