To put it in a more colloquial way: Haters gonna hate. So don’t fixate on the people who will never be a part of your audience; concentrate on the ones who are or who could be.
Over the course of this chapter, we’ll dig into what distinguishes the three JOINER audiences that are most important to marketers—SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, and FOLLOWERS—from one another. At the risk of putting the cart before the horse, here’s how I would differentiate the expectations of each:
SUBSCRIBERS = Convenience delivered.
FANS = Passion empowered.
FOLLOWERS = Information shared.
The channels JOINERS use impact their expectations. Therefore, your success with SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, and FOLLOWERS depends on your ability to meet or exceed their channel and messaging expectations. Let’s take a look at each JOINER audience to understand their differences better.
With More than a Little Help from a Friend
Back in late 2009 while we were colleagues at ExactTarget (@ExactTarget), Morgan Stewart (@mostew) and I first hatched the idea of studying the different core motivations of SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, and FOLLOWERS. That idea gave rise to our research series of the same name and planted the seed for this very book.
Morgan has since gone on to launch Trendline Interactive (@trendlinei), his own consultancy focused on helping companies maximize the value of their proprietary audiences—particularly email SUBSCRIBERS. While he’s not listed as a co-author of AUDIENCE, he certainly contributed mightily to its existence. And for that, I’m forever grateful—and his #1 FAN.
SUBSCRIBERS
Well before there was an Internet, there were SUBSCRIBERS. They had newspapers on their front stoops, magazines in their mailboxes, and cable television networks on their TVs. Back then, SUBSCRIBERS were best defined as: Consumers who provided something of value (money) in order to receive exclusive information delivered to their home or office.
What SUBSCRIBERS Want
These traditional SUBSCRIBERS still exist today, and I’m proud to count myself among them. The Cleveland Plain Dealer (@PlainDealer) currently lies spread out on our kitchen table with my daughter’s head in the comics. My son is busy reading a dog-eared copy of FourFourTwo (@FourFourTwo), our favorite world football (soccer) magazine. My latest copy of Wired (@Wired) is on my desk waiting for its usual cover-to-cover read. Oh, and there’s also the two TVs with cable—mainly because of my addiction to the English Premier League (@PremierLeague) and HBO’s Game of Thrones (@GameOfThrones).
You may be tempted to call me a Luddite due to my consumption of “old media.” However, that misses the point. I keep each of my “old media” subscriptions because they’re convenient. Yes, I could consume newspaper, magazine, and video content on my iPad or Kindle; however, I want them delivered in a fashion that is easy and useful for my lifestyle. That’s the value of being a SUBSCRIBER; I get to choose because I’ve paid for the privilege.
The value exchange is similar for your company’s SUBSCRIBER audiences:
Consumers provide something of value (such as an email address) to receive exclusive information delivered to the channel of their choosing.
How SUBSCRIBERS Are Acquired
You can build SUBSCRIBERS online through these digital direct channels:
Email
Mobile appsa
Online communities
Podcasts
RSSb
SMSc
YouTube
We’ll delve into the specifics of the major SUBSCRIBER channels in Part II. The key point to understand right now is that SUBSCRIBER expectations are set at the time of subscription. Thus, if you promise that SUBSCRIBERS to your emails will receive exclusive offers, you had better provide exclusive offers—not just stuff that everybody gets. If you promise convenience to your mobile app SUBSCRIBERS, you absolutely must offer an experience that doesn’t frustrate. Failing to meet SUBSCRIBER expectations will inevitably cause poor channel performance, negative brand experiences, and higher unsubscribe rates.
A Social Guy Catches Email Religion
I could barely contain my frustration a few years ago as marketers half my age waxed poetic about Facebook and Twitter, while disparaging email marketing. Email has been and remains the Internet’s silent workhorse, directly accounting for a much higher volume of sales revenue than Facebook and Twitter combined.4
So imagine my delight when SocialTriggers founder Derek Halpern (@DerekHalpern) posted a video in which he proclaimed, “If you’re not building an email list, you’re an idiot.”5 Derek graduated from college in 2006 and came of age during the social media explosion. As a result, he focused many of his early, traffic-driving efforts for his websites on Facebook and Twitter. But then he caught religion in 2012 when he saw that an email to his neglected email SUBSCRIBER list generated 14 times the amount of traffic to his website as a tweet on the same day and topic did.