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[Thanks, Fanny]Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
A new study from the University of Illinois confirms what many of us may have suspected privately: "personalized" marketing communication online can often make us actively dislike the message's sender.
"People bristle at personalization just for the sake of personalization," said Tiffany Barnett White, the professor who headed the research. Barnett White found that relevance was one important factor in increasing recipient interest, but ultimately it was the actual value being offered that made the lion's share of the difference in peoples' reaction. At a time when information overload is often being responded to by varying degrees of personalization, we believe this study is worthy of consideration.
The University of Illinois study focused on emails sent to college students that were personalized based on information that the students voluntarily submitted. "Even when someone has volunteered their personal information, they still have preferences about how firms use it. They don't want to be bombarded with a mountain of facts about themselves unless they perceive a very good benefit," White said.
What This Means
We would argue that this behavior is probably common in online communication in general. If your service is personalizing its messages to users for anything but a very good reason, it's probably a bad idea. Flickr's "welcome [username]" in various languages around the world is cool - but other forms of fake personalization are not. Now we've got the numbers to prove it.
We've written here about how we want to get RSS feeds from PR agencies, not just emails - but the pseudo personalized emails are pretty obnoxious. The most obnoxious are emails personalized with our competitors' names! (This happens at least once a week.) We also receive any number of other emails from online training services, conferences and others that include some personal information. Especially when this personalization tricks us into opening the email, then we really get angry at whoever sent us that email.
We are interested to know whether you, [Reader'sName], feel the same way - or if you are someone who uses this kind of personalization in your online communication and have seen different results.
Image from Beth Kanter
A new study from the University of Illinois confirms what many of us may have suspected privately: "personalized" marketing communication online can often make us actively dislike the message's sender.
"People bristle at personalization just for the sake of personalization," said Tiffany Barnett White, the professor who headed the research. Barnett White found that relevance was one important factor in increasing recipient interest, but ultimately it was the actual value being offered that made the lion's share of the difference in peoples' reaction. At a time when information overload is often being responded to by varying degrees of personalization, we believe this study is worthy of consideration.
The University of Illinois study focused on emails sent to college students that were personalized based on information that the students voluntarily submitted. "Even when someone has volunteered their personal information, they still have preferences about how firms use it. They don't want to be bombarded with a mountain of facts about themselves unless they perceive a very good benefit," White said.
What This Means
We would argue that this behavior is probably common in online communication in general. If your service is personalizing its messages to users for anything but a very good reason, it's probably a bad idea. Flickr's "welcome [username]" in various languages around the world is cool - but other forms of fake personalization are not. Now we've got the numbers to prove it.
We've written here about how we want to get RSS feeds from PR agencies, not just emails - but the pseudo personalized emails are pretty obnoxious. The most obnoxious are emails personalized with our competitors' names! (This happens at least once a week.) We also receive any number of other emails from online training services, conferences and others that include some personal information. Especially when this personalization tricks us into opening the email, then we really get angry at whoever sent us that email.
We are interested to know whether you, [Reader'sName], feel the same way - or if you are someone who uses this kind of personalization in your online communication and have seen different results.
Image from Beth Kanter
Jed Lewison from political blog JedReport has put together a great four and a half minute video showing off the various residences owned by political candidate John McCain. There are nine properties in all. Lewison created the video using Google Earth of all things, and adds little tidbits of knowledge with each house, including price tags and historical information.
You can get the entire map used in the video here.
Jed Lewison from political blog JedReport has put together a great four and a half minute video showing off the various residences owned by political candidate John McCain. There are nine properties in all. Lewison created the video using Google Earth of all things, and adds little tidbits of knowledge with each house, including price tags and historical information.
You can get the entire map used in the video here.
AP - Hackers broke into Citibank's network of ATMs inside 7-Eleven stores this year and stole customers' PIN codes, according to recent court filings that revealed a disturbing security hole in the most sensitive part of a banking record.]]>
AP - Hackers broke into Citibank's network of ATMs inside 7-Eleven stores this year and stole customers' PIN codes, according to recent court filings that revealed a disturbing security hole in the most sensitive part of a banking record.]]>
American Gladiators has been a big hit for NBC this season. When the show kicked off earlier this year, the episodes were 90 minutes to two hours in length and each event in the competition was shown in full. As the season moved on, the show moved into a one-hour slot and with the change, came a change in the way the show is broadcast.
With the new episodes (including last night's), some of the events are not shown in full. For those events that are shown only in a short clip, the announcers point American Gladiator viewers to the Web to watch the full event. I am trying to get some numbers from NBC on how well this strategy is working and will report back once I get the detailed stats. While I assume some viewers are sitting at their computers while watching and will load the Web site immediately, I can't picture many people getting off the couch or recliner to watch Python beat someone in the Terminator. By the time the show is over, the draw to online dips even further.
The more important question is, where are the videos? I loaded americangladiators.com and found what appears to be about 20% new version and 80% old version. There are some promo videos including a promo for an episode that aired weeks ago. The other content, from cast bios to images and games, is all from the old series 10+ years ago.
The new content is all housed on NBC's Web site including full episodes. What I don't see anywhere is the specific events that were cutoff on the live TV version. Do I really need to sit through the full hour if I only want to see what happened in the Joust?
I think NBC is making a big mistake by not updating the American Gladiators main .com site. While it's important to display content from the old version, the new version is where it's at now. In fact, on the americangladiators.com site, there's one tiny link over to NBC. At least redirect the domain. How much traffic, ad impressions and even more importantly, high paying video ad impressions is NBC losing because of this poor online strategy?
(in case you are interested, my favorites are Jet, Justice and Crush, do you have a favorite?)
Partner Links
-- Free Online Budgeting Software
American Gladiators has been a big hit for NBC this season. When the show kicked off earlier this year, the episodes were 90 minutes to two hours in length and each event in the competition was shown in full. As the season moved on, the show moved into a one-hour slot and with the change, came a change in the way the show is broadcast.
With the new episodes (including last night's), some of the events are not shown in full. For those events that are shown only in a short clip, the announcers point American Gladiator viewers to the Web to watch the full event. I am trying to get some numbers from NBC on how well this strategy is working and will report back once I get the detailed stats. While I assume some viewers are sitting at their computers while watching and will load the Web site immediately, I can't picture many people getting off the couch or recliner to watch Python beat someone in the Terminator. By the time the show is over, the draw to online dips even further.
The more important question is, where are the videos? I loaded americangladiators.com and found what appears to be about 20% new version and 80% old version. There are some promo videos including a promo for an episode that aired weeks ago. The other content, from cast bios to images and games, is all from the old series 10+ years ago.
The new content is all housed on NBC's Web site including full episodes. What I don't see anywhere is the specific events that were cutoff on the live TV version. Do I really need to sit through the full hour if I only want to see what happened in the Joust?
I think NBC is making a big mistake by not updating the American Gladiators main .com site. While it's important to display content from the old version, the new version is where it's at now. In fact, on the americangladiators.com site, there's one tiny link over to NBC. At least redirect the domain. How much traffic, ad impressions and even more importantly, high paying video ad impressions is NBC losing because of this poor online strategy?
(in case you are interested, my favorites are Jet, Justice and Crush, do you have a favorite?)
Partner Links
-- Free Online Budgeting Software
[Via Electronista]
[Via Electronista]