Develop Your Subject Lines

Your subject line is often the one chance you will get someone to open your email. Having a good subject line is often not enough, you have to instil a sense of urgency in the consumer’s mind and give a reason to really make them want to click on your email. You also need to sum up the best or most topical / relevant piece of content in your email in the subject line. People will get many promotional emails every day and it’s becoming a real challenge to get your email opened.

The best way to find the best subject line is not simply though brainstorming and running with the best idea, you should be actively testing multiple subject lines with each send. You may have had multiple subject lines that have worked well in the past and in some rare cases, sticking to these with only small modification will work. For the rest of us it is more difficult than this and you need to use around 3 unique lines per send.  You can then send out a small proportion of your email list to a good sample of your email list and from there determine which has the best open rate. Then you can use this data to choose the email subject line for the rest of the send, ensuring you have gone with the best performing line for the bulk of your campaign.

This may sound tricky to do, but actually most good email providers will do this automatically on each send with the only work involving setting up the different subject line variants.

Segment Your Data

The ideal aim for any email marketer is to have a list segmented out to each relevant area of your business and emails to these people will then always be highly targeted and therefore well received. This can be problematic though and if the lists are not large enough to allow specific sends for only certain interests then you may have to settle for less targeted sends to the whole list.

If you do have the option to target emails then you should be doing this. This should be based on previous buying history, interests registered when signing up, areas of the website viewed previously and data collected from previous emails sent out. You will receive much better rates of open, click through and conversion if you can target people in this way, and also reduce the risk of these people unsubscribing from the list.

Once you have got your data into segments, you should store it in this way in your email system by either sub categorising your main list or using separate lists for each segment. Then when you create your next campaign, only send to the segments that will really be interested in this promotion. This also means you can create more campaigns over the month but individuals will not be bombarded with that many emails in too short a time period, which brings me on to my next tip.

Manage email send frequency

Striking the balance between keeping regular contact with the user and bombarding them with too many is a tricky task, but in general I would advise sending certainly no more than one email per week. For some industries this may even be too much and a fortnightly send is the right amount. A lot of companies try more than this, and even brands that should be able to get away with it by having rapidly changing stock and regular offers send too many emails in my opinion. Amazon is a real offender in my book and I only keep subscribed with them to monitor this situation, I long gave up clicking or buying on the email I receive every other day.

There is a debated technique that is built into a lot of email providers and that the is the “second chance send”. Essentially when an email is sent out to your list and x amount of people receive but do not open your email, you are given an option to second send your email with a some of the key features of the email changed to try and encourage them to open this time round.

This in my experience can be a really powerful tool and can boost enquiries / sales without the need for much extra work in terms of setting up a new campaign. It can however annoy people on your list and lead to much higher than usual unsubscribe rates. It is something to consider and use from time to time, but be careful about which emails you do it from, and which segments you send it to.

Summary

There is obviously more that can be done and I will pick some of these up in my next post. There is another big change happening in the world of email marketing and that’s Google’s priority inbox. Assessing what affect this is having on emails is key at the moment and is something we will be documenting soon. In the meantime check out Matt’s post on the key features of the system by clicking here.

Just to be clear this means that if you search for a certain term and Google can recognise that the user is likely looking for something on specific website, it will dominate the search results with results from that website either entirely or mostly. So for example we have noticed this on client called Turquoise Holidays which their website is on www.turquoiseholidays.co.uk.

If you make a search for the brand name “Turquoise Holidays” then the first 7 results are all from the turquoiseholidays.co.uk website. Only a few weeks ago the results were completely different and would show only 2 listings at most and the second result was an indented version of the main site, most likely the honeymoons section as it appeared Google was assessing which part of the site was the most dominate area. This is the same as doing a search now for “wmps” where you see our main site first then the blog home page as the indented second listing.

This even goes one step further though and applies this rule to search terms where the entity is included but not just on its own. So for example “amazon books”. Typing in this search query brings back almost all the results as amazon pages. Granted some are for the .co.uk version which appear at the top as I am searching from the UK but also some from the .com and one even from a sub domain of the .co.uk. There is only one other result in there which is from the Nectar website. The SERPs still feature alternative displays where neccessary which is postive such as news posts, images, videos etc.

What does this mean for users and brands?

Well it means quite a lot actually, for one the brands that are benefiting from these searches have just eliminated a mass of affiliate or sneaky competition who were appearing in the natural search listings underneath there site. Obviously this means the days of losing clicks to competitors who have a nicer sounding META description than yours are potentially over, well that is until you consider the paid search ads which will now be increasingly desirable for any competitors.

If you are going to be cynical you could even argue that this seems to have been done at a time when Google has relaxed rules on competitor trademark advertising even more and potentially means a new stream of revenue coming in from competitors who want to appear for a search term of one of their closest competitors as the paid search route is now the only way to cash in on this.

For users it means seeing results more suited to what they likely looking for in the first place in my opinion. A search for Amazon books really doesn’t leave much scope open for what else the user would want to have seen apart from a selection of web pages from Amazon offering books for sale and book reviews. This is taking nothing away from the competition who arguably offer a similar service and sell similar items who will be annoyed that they are no longer appearing for free, but its not what the user wants to see based on their search term.

The immediate effect that brands should see is a rise in overall longer tail traffic to their website that includes the entity or brand term within it. Similarly competitors and affiliates should start to see that traffic tailing off. At this stage the list is not exhaustive for all brands and there are a lot that are still not functioning in this way.

How does it work?

This is something I am currently pondering myself, as what determines whether a brand or entity term is necessarily related to that website is not an exact science. It was about as exact as deciding which website to rank top for the same search result before this update was made but now it’s a lot more important as if Google gets it wrong, you will not only have to scroll down one or two places to find the site you were actually looking for but now even go onto the next page of results.

Even the prospect of how Google identifies whether the search is a brand / entity full stop is interesting enough. This is debated in a recent post on SEO by the sea and is covered in more detail than I can do justice here.

Essentially though Google will work this out on the same way it works out relevant websites for any query. If a website URL, META data, content, inbound links and previous click through rates from that keyword all support the same brand term then that is likely to be a safe enough bet that its the right site. There will undoubtedly be times when this is wrong and you see a page of irrelevant results for the search you made, and this will either mean the way people search will change slightly to accommodate for it, or more likely that Google will refine the algorithm even further to make sure it works more of the time.

This is assuming though that more mobile phone manufacturers follow this trend. For example, whilst Apple continue to develop screen size and quality to levels that enhance the browsing experience on their latest iPhone offering, they are still refusing to integrate properly with flash. Currently the iPhone browser does not support Flash in any way and is unlikely to in the near future. Flash is also under attack from supporters of the HTML 5 code standard which has arisen after recent discussion on the BBC website. Essentially people are claiming the BBC is not embracing open development standards because of its reluctance to move its flash functionality into HTML 5, and this sort of news, whilst been played down by the BBC, does not help support Flash in the public domain.

Whether it will continue to enhance the android platform in the next few years remains to be seen, but the main problem is getting hold of a phone at the moment that supports android 2.2 is a challenge on its own. The market leading model, the HTC desire, is currently out of stock on most of the main carriers and with no confirmed date of when it comes in. In the meantime I will have to go back to my non-flash supported G1 and continue to view websites with big gaps in them where the flash animation cannot be displayed, much like the millions of iPhone users who will continue to see this view in the coming years.

The BBC reports on a case with a Russian media player application that was released on the android market. The app essentially stole money from users by sending out premium rate text messages after the app gained access to that area of the phones operating system.

The mobile research manager for Kaspersky Lab, Denis Maslennikov, stated, “The success of the Android platform in the marketplace has triggered increased interest from virus writers.” The company intends to release a new mobile security application to respond to these threats which should be out early 2011. In the meantime advice is to be careful about what you install and monitor what settings each application has access to. If you are at all dubious about an application uninstall it immediately.

This news is almost expected but is another hurdle developers are going to face when creating apps for genuine companies and will likely mean reduced uptake rates on any smaller applications in the coming months.

As a result, most people get lost in the important page design and build, focusing efforts on the homepages, landing pages, product pages and anywhere else that the designer has the chance to use cutting edge techniques and ideas to make the site stand out. Sadly this often means other “less important” pages are only given minimal attention. This can be true of any ancillary page like terms and conditions, privacy policy, or faqs.  Whilst these contain key information, they are often not done in the most inspired design styles. Some pages are given even less attention than this and are nearly always overlooked. Examples of this include order confirmation pages, form submit pages and the dreaded 404 page. The 404 page is the focus of my article today.

What is a 404 Page?

For those of you who are not sure what a 404 page is, it is the page you are shown when you visit a URL on site that does not exist. It is often referred to as 404 Page Not Found. The reason the page is often given little or no attention is because, in theory, everyone hopes the customer will never land on one of these pages.  The processes put in place should ensure this never happens. Sadly it will happen and can happen naturally if a customer thinks they know one of your web pages and types it in directly or you have a product or service that finishes but has no new equivalent page to 301 redirect to. So rather than pretending it’s not going to get used and completely ignoring the page, take the time to make the 404 page on your website as friendly to users and search engines as possible.

Things to consider!

One of the main things to ensure you have got right before looking at the page content or design is that technically everything is working as it should. Search Engine Watch discuss the best practice scenario and point out that when a user types a URL that does not exist:

“the server should respond with a special “HTTP Status” header value of “404 Not Found,” which may also be followed by custom error-page body content. Incorrectly configured Web-servers that respond with a status header value of “200″ (or any other erroneous value) are exposed to significant risk with respect to search engines’ “duplicate content penalties.” This is because the identical content (in this case, the error page content) would be available under a potentially infinite number of URLs.”

Whilst this is tailored towards search engines, it is also important for users. Whilst ensuring the code returned to the search engine robots is what they expect to see, a user also needs to understand the link they tried to access does not exist and that instead there are a number of options for them. The page should not automatically redirect them back to another location; they will not understand why they have arrived there and may believe it is due to an error.  They’ll be left wondering where to go next. This will likely result in the user pressing the back button and attempting to find out what went wrong or simply giving up on the search all together.

Not only this but an automatic redirect has implications for SEO as well. The problem is that if you use a redirect to pass PR from an error page to a normal page, the redirecting page will likely return a 200 OK or 302 Redirect code, rather than a proper 404. This can mean the pages end up being indexed and end up looking like duplicates of your homepage to the search engines. Don’t run the risk of this happening and instead present the user with a correct 404 page with no redirect in place.

404 Page Customisation

As previously mentioned a 404 page is often neglected by designers, and whilst it does not have to be anything amazing looking, there is no reason why it can’t look nice.  This will both prevent frustration and keep customers happy looking round your site. Some examples of well designed 404 pages can be seen at smashingmagazine.com if you are looking for inspiration to make a page that will stand out.

But you don’t need to go this far to make a page that works well and often you will have more success keeping the page in line with the branding of the rest of the website whilst keeping the message simple. The main rule is to customise the page to some level, do not leave in the standard 404 page as it looks unprofessional and the error looks more serious to a user than a page that has been put in place to cater for the problem.

A good example (the WMpS example!)

With all this in mind something along the lines of the following would be appropriate in terms of the content for the customised page, well obviously I would think so as this is what we have on our website!

As you can see we include links to key sections to help the customer get back to a suitable place in the site, i.e the homepage, blog home or contact us. If the site has a good one and it is large enough a sitemap link can also be useful here.

Some other things to note

It is worth tracking and keeping a note of all the page 404s that users stumble upon. You will start to identify key pages that would be suitable to 301 redirect and others that can be left alone. Whilst you should not be getting many of these unless you are a large retail site with lots of products coming on and off the site, it does happen and it helps to be proactive about it rather than just accepting traffic losses to these dead pages.

For more information on implementing a correct 404 page or anything else website / online marketing related, please feel free to contact us.

These are all on our WMpS YouTube account so please visit there now if you missed out on the event and want to catch up with the valuble tips and advice given out by our guest speakers or if you did attend and want to recap on any points made. Please click  on the links below for each video on our YouTube channel to view the videos or click on the YouTube link in the blog header to visit the main channel page.

ecommerce market trends – guest speaker David J Smith from the IMRG

social media listening platforms – guest speakers Rachel Goalby and Alex Britten from Meltwater

onsite photography – guest speakers William Lack and Andy Holmes

What is a Web Browser?

For those of you don’t know what a web browser is, it is the application you run where you can view web pages. Without this tool, most online activity would be lost to you. The process starts after loading up your chosen web browser and entering a uniform resource identifier (URI) which is essentially the website address, http://www.wmps.com for example. The browser then retrieves the page html and, using the markup, displays the interactive page content. Browsers do this in different ways and web pages will display slightly differently depending on how the page is coded.

Despite Internet Explorer being the dominant model now, this was not always the case. The original web browser that had over 90% of people using it at its peak was Netscape Navigator. This was not even contested until Microsoft used a clever strategy to ensure people used their new product over Netscape’s version.

Why do so many people use Internet Explorer?

Basically Microsoft used to install Internet Explorer (IE) as standard with any computer running Windows. This has been the case since 1995 when the browser was first launched and it is a good reason why a 62% majority usage existed right up to February 2010. A large amount of these users were most likely not aware of any other options.

This changed on March 1^st this year when Microsoft was found to be in breach of competition laws by pre-installing the software on every machine equipped with Windows (currently around 95% of all desktops bought) and they now have to offer a choice to users of the different options available. This is done through an update made to Windows, which prompts users to select a browser and then gives further instructions about its usage.

Whilst this will be ignored by a lot of people, it has opened the doors for the other browsers.  People who have spent time looking into alternatives will reap the rewards with a user experience more suited to their browsing needs. By April this year, usage of IE had already dropped 2%, which shows that the Windows update has had some positive impact on people using different browsers.

This is not to say the pre-install is the only reason people use IE. It is backed by Microsoft which is the largest software company in the world and it has some good features. But that’s no reason for everyone to use it. We wouldn’t all choose the same car to drive around in, or pick the same place to live etc and similarly we are no constrained to one browser.

What are the other web browsers?

There are quite a few options available although there are only 5 in common usage. These are the same 5 promoted in the Windows browser choice update. I have just given some general opinions on each one and put next to it the position given by the Internet Browser Review (IBR), hosted on top 10 reviews, which incorporated a whole stack of comparisons on loading time, features, security and much more.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Many versions of IE exist, unlike the other browsers which update as standard. IE 6, IE 7, IE 8 are all currently in use with IE 9 coming soon. The browser has some good features such as private browsing, web slices and smart filtering for security purposes. It allows browsing by tabs and other clever features but in general there is nothing that isn’t on other browsers’ functionality lists. IE does seem to have more reported crashes than other browsers, although this could simply be due to its extensive usage. The capability view is a good idea but you have to question why it’s even necessary when the latest version of a browser should just show all web pages correctly first time. IBR ranked it 3^rd of all the browsers. Usage is currently at 60%.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox is the second most popular browser and for good reason. Mozilla was set up by the same guys who brought us Netscape Navigator and anything the browser lacks in terms of functionality is provided by a whole host of free plug-ins available due to its open source availability. Features such as private browsing, customisable themes, location aware browsing and open audio and video support all add to the experience. The browser is generally the first one to get plug-ins made by third parties and the whole setup is completely customisable. Reports of the latest release have not been as positive as previous versions with more crashes than usual although the browser is ranked 1^st in the IBR review. Currently around 25% of people use Firefox.

Google Chrome

Chrome is quite new and was only released by Google 2 years ago. Rather impressively, nearly 7% of web browsers are already using it.  As with IE, the support that comes with Chrome is from Google which is arguably the most dominant and influential in the internet realm so you can be assured it will continue to receive cutting edge development and new features on a regular basis. Features such as private browsing were introduced early here and the browser also utilises an all in one search box (URI and search box) meaning web searching is easier. The browser also has a handy feature that gives you a preview of your most visited sites. Rated 2^nd by the IBR review, it is likely to be a market leader in the near future with Google’s continued support and the current 7% usage rate is likely to grow quickly.

Opera

Opera is only used by around 2.5% of web users but its is regarded as one of the best available. It is also used heavily on mobile phones and is what the Nintendo Wii uses for its browsing software. Its main features are the speed, as many reviews report it to be the fastest browser available, inbuilt bit torrent downloader, overall download manager and thumbnail preview of web pages. Other features, such as storing different preferences for websites and a reload from page cache option, add to the browsing experience. Opera’s main problem is lack of promotion, which is an area where Google Chrome in particular has excelled. That aside, Opera is rated 4^th by the IBR, although it is worth noting the browser often places first in other reviews where site speed is the focus.

Apple Safari

Like IE on a PC, Safari comes preinstalled on Apple Macs. It works to a high level of compliance with coding industry standards like HTML 5 and CSS3 but the browser only manages to pull in around 5% of all internet users which, considering the support from Apple and the amount of devices that use it, is quite low. Some of the problems are well documented and are based around integration with Adobe Flash. One of the main complaints is the compatibility issues, in that a lot of websites don’t look as good in Safari as other browsers. Whilst this is more a problem for the website developers building these sites, it’s a reason for people not to use it if their favourite sites don’t look right. It does have some good features and looks very nice, but the general opinion is that on a PC it does not work that well. With these features reviewed by IBR, it ranked 5^th and considering the usage of 5% is based on a good % who will have had it preinstalled, it’s not that encouraging.

So which browser is my favourite?

Personally I use Firefox and will continue to do so in the near future mainly because my other choice Opera does not support the same levels of plug-ins. I like the customisation it offers and the wide variety of SEO toolbars that are available. This article is not about which one is best though; it’s more about encouraging choice so here are the opinions of the other members of the WMpS Marketing team:

Kayleigh Browne

“My choice of browser is Firefox. I used to use IE but discovered Firefox when I first started working at WMpS and have stuck with it since. This is mainly because it is secure and has lots of add-ons that help me with my job and I can customise it as and when I like.”

Meghan Burton

“I use Firefox and can’t remember ever using anything else regularly, although I had a brief flirtation with Chrome about six months ago.  I originally liked Firefox because it had tabs (IE didn’t at the time) and it was reputed to be more secure.  I still use it because I enjoy the extensions and themes, every site I go to works on it, and I appreciate Mozilla’s stance on open source.”

Matthew Redford

“I used  IE when getting onto the internet for the first time. I didn’t know any other browsers existed… I didn’t really need to move away from IE at the time – it did all the basic things I needed it to do. My next move was to Firefox where the array of good plug-ins was one of the reasons for switching as well as the improved speed.

I then moved on to and have settled on Google Chrome. It’s lightweight, quick to load, minimal approach. The browser is good for developers and supports a lot of the latest standards in HTML & CSS whilst utilising developer tools to improve page load speeds & identify bugs. Finally I like the combo box at the top for both URLs and Google searches.”

Emma Gray

“I have always used Internet Explorer and have never really thought to change browsers or look into what other options are available.”

Clare Blunt

“I’ll be honest I don’t have the most extensive experience using different browsers. My repertoire consists of IE, Firefox and a dabbling of Chrome. I’d choose either of the latter two over IE any day due to the more sophisticated styling and functionality. I primarily use Firefox at work and have numerous valuable plug-ins; however, using Chrome at home when I don’t have the need for plug-ins easier and simpler.”

For more information about browsers, optimising your website for use in different browsers or anything else in the online world please feel free to contact us.

e-payment solutions – guest speaker Richard Parker from Cybersource

translation services – guest speaker Kris Smith from Applied Language Solutions

legal services – guest speakers Gavin Matthews and Andrew Kimble from Bond Pearce LLB

logistics – guest speaker Roger Burns from DHL

turning browsers into buyers – speaker Mike Anderson (WMpS MD)

For those of you who would like to attend the next event we are holding it at the Malmaison Hotel in Manchester on Tuesday 20th July. This event will focus on the following topics:

- Industry overview and current market trends

- Listening platforms for social media

- Lifestyle imagery and 360 photography

To get a free place in the event please contact juliee@wmps.com as soon as possible.

Who are Krispy Kreme?

For those of you have not heard of them this is something you need to know, not just for the purpose of the article but so you can sample one of their products. “Who are Krispy Kreme”  was a question I first asked myself when I encountered a Krispy Kreme stand in Paddington station after attending a conference in London a year and a half ago. I had not heard of them before but I was curious so I ventured over to the counter. The doughnuts are not particularly cheap, for quite a small snack that you don’t sit down and have it served to you, so I was justifying to myself why I should buy one. My quick summary was they smelt great and compared to other outlets in the station, pricing was about the same so I bought one and sat down and ate it. Never again have I questioned the price, and now buy a dozen at a time whenever I see a stall.

After getting on the train I did some investigating into the company. They are American and founded in 1937 but they have only been in the UK for 5 or so years in which time the company has rapidly expanded but still remains only a large presence in London. New outlets, kiosks and stores are opening rapidly and they will undoubtedly be a large presence in the whole UK market over the coming years.

Their current success is based on their business model based on franchising but its more than that, they have stuck to core values that have kept them through a UK focus on healthy eating which is seeing fast food restaurants take a hit. The principle is that Krispy Kreme doughnuts are a snack, not a meal, and they never claim otherwise. A quote used in the peach report by Krispy Kreme MD Don Henshall about their strategy confirms this:

“We had a treat, not a meal. No-one comes into Krispy Kreme for a meal, they come in to treat themselves. We had to stick to our message – it’s easy to forget that.”

Krispy Kreme’s Facebook Efforts!

So why have I written this post you may be asking, as most of you will not care about my particular choice of doughnut brand. Well, recently I encountered an aspect of their social media work and I was suitably impressed. This article is going to focus on their work on Facebook only.  What is most impressive about their Facebook work is both the quality time and effort put in to interaction with users although there is more to it than this.

Store Locations

Whilst the current amount of fans is quite low at around 2,150 people, this has risen quickly and is likely to continue to do this with the current promotions they have running. The page is the main hub for news and updates as the website currently does not deal with this. The website is fun but maintains essentially company information and more corporate features and there is no blog or news section. This does mean fans of the products are almost encouraged to visit the Facebook page just to get information they might have expected on the website.

This only plays into the strategy Krispy Kreme employ though and one of the most constantly talked about topics on the page is the location of new stores. This is something that the staff bring up but mostly requests for new store locations are from the customers, in fact to the point that whatever conversation is started, it normally ends up back to store locations. This is what people want to hear about and the staff only encourage this for example with comments based around the following:

“Patricia we are looking to open many new stores over the next four years, so let’s hope we get close to you soon! We will reveal more info here on FB as and when we can!”

This is great for the following reasons:

1) It gives people a reason to keep visiting the page as they are excited about when a new store might open near to them.

2) It provides useful conversation to fill the space in between campaigns and promotions, ensuring the page appears popular and always conversations going on.

3) Most importantly it keeps the user engaged with the brand, making people feel they are helping the company grow and influencing new store openings with their requests.

Ok so you can argue that as new stores begin to open will the popularity die out. Well the answer is no, I don’t think so. For a start this is a long time away unless they change the business model and stores start appearing left right and centre, which won’t happen. More importantly as people request stores and they start to appear they are likely to feel ever more engaged with the brand and almost have a vested interest in promoting the store to ensure it stays open so they can get their doughnuts.

In fact this activity is likely to help build the fan base ready to start a new phase of social media work where promotions will be then thrown at the customers as well as using the channel to manage the brand profile and handle customer complaints that may start to arise with the expansion of the business.

Whilst this situation could arguably as much determined by the current position of Krispy Kremes business and the fact their product is highly desirable, they have ensured it works well. Over the week I have been monitoring the Facebook page I have not seen many comments go unanswered by the page administrators. It is always done in a friendly and positive way as well which is reflected by a lot of users even leaving thank you messages under the answer.

Free Dozen!

Store location is not by any means the only part of the Facebook page that is popular. There are the usual photos, videos and page information. This is a good start but it something that they really need to build on. Having lots of store photos, and photos of doughnuts will help but engaging people to get theirs on too would help. The discussions tab is also a good idea although is currently not been used so they need to get on this as well, providing some topics for discussion like what is peoples favourite as well as how they eat particularly sticky doughnuts etc. The tab that is really working for them is the free dozen page.

This was run through June and was a great way to turn customer store visits into Facebook followers, and in fact it was how they got me following them. Each customer that bought some doughnuts from one of the stores in June was given a coupon which a unique code on it where it claimed you could win a free dozen of doughnuts simply by going online and entering a code. The URL given was not a Facebook page and instead redirected back which was cool as it shows how much they value Facebook as part of their online experience. Why build the competition on the site, when Facebook is there and can be utilised just as easily.

Rather than simply entering the code and being entered to win a prize, you are asked a question which you must answer correctly to win, the main catch being it was more of a bet on an outcome than a question. This means you had a good chance of winning and had a vested interest in the page, but the contest would not cost the company lots in prize money. The real aim was to get you to become a fan and help build their fan list. It worked for me.

The way Spotify has set up its business model is clever but could be problematic for users if it takes off. Essentially, the paid membership removes the adverts from the system, so when you sign up, you are no longer eligible for advertisers. Since these users are more likely to spend money online as they have proved themselves to be prepared to pay for membership, removing them from the pool of users advertisers can target is almost certainly going to harm the proposition of advertising with Spotify as their user rates grow.

That aside, most people will be happy with the free service they get.  They’ll still be able to listen to music with only occasional interruption for 20 hours a month and share their favourite tracks with their friends, which is what most people want from the service. So it is likely we will see a similar proportion of users to subscribers in 6 months or a year, providing Spotify make no more changes to the subscription packages.

So who is it for? Well in my opinion and from what I have heard from extensive listening to Spotfiy, it can be used to promote almost anything, although the obvious industry that will make the most of it is the music industry. I have already been introduced to 5 new bands from which I have gone on to buy CDs or download tracks after listening to an ad and then trying out a couple of their songs.

Social network updates

A recent update was made to add social media elements to the service. This was detailed in the article “the next generation of Spotify” so I will not re-cover that material but it is worth looking at how this will impact the future of the service and the advertising potential of it.

The service has certainly not tried to take any of the market share for social networking and instead fully integrates with Facebook, making links to friends on Spotify easy and quick. Not only this but Spotify posts messages onto Facebook as you subscribe to new playlists etc so the programme is very much designed to run alongside it. The main advantage of this is Facebook will not see Spotify as a competitor as such and more future integrations will be possible with the service. It also means that Spotify directly captures more and more of Facebook’s audience as users of Facebook will see their friends integrating and can then look into joining Spotify themselves.

The updates have added another reason to be on Spotify, rather than other music streaming services, and they encourage more frequent use as you go on to see what music your friends are listening to. This, coupled with the influx of new potential subscribers to Spotfy from Facebook’s current extensive user base, is another bonus for people considering advertising with Spotify.

Current Adverts on Spotify

Whilst there is undeniable potential to get success from Spotify advertising, my current experience is that there are still a lot of Spotify related adverts, which indicates ad space is not exactly in high demand. Certainly this is getting less and less as time goes on but recent adverts to promote banner advertising on Spotify will have enticed a few people into the arena.

As with any advertising you have to put together a business case for setting it up, and the one main advantage of advertising with Spotify, as with Facebook, is that you can target your ads to the right demographic. There is certainly nothing more annoying from a user’s point of view when you are forced to endure an advert for a Christina Aguilera track when your playlist consists of rock only. Considering the segmentation data currently available, it is surprising that these sorts of ads are often relayed to users who have no interest in them.

What else can you do on there?

Paid advertising is one way to market with Spotify, but there are many more ways to integrate with the social aspects of the service. Creating your own brand page on the service is a good way to create a buzz and give more of a personal touch to your company’s online profile. Here you can give some detail about the company and allow interaction with clients, suppliers, followers etc by letting them see what music the staff are listening to and publish lists of their own.

Creating playlists for events or publishing suitable staff playlists that others can subscribe to is a good way to add something to your online presence as well as providing more content for your Facebook page and creates a more human view of the company. For example, when working late to deliver a project for a client, the staff can add a playlist of songs they were listening to when working through the evening.

For more ideas to get your social media campaign off the ground or how you can use Spotify as part of your business model please feel free to contact us.