Nones Notes

Goodbye Hotmail … Hello Outlook

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Hotmail becomes OutlookMicrosoft has finally bitten the bullet and acknowledged the catch-up ball it needs to play in the e-mail space.

Last week, Microsoft announced that it’s unveiling a completely revamped version of its Hotmail free online e-mail service.

Dubbed “Outlook” in a bid to transfer some of the goodwill from Microsoft’s popular Office email application to the free e-mail space, the successor product to Hotmail incorporates functionalities designed to make it more directly competitive with Google Gmail, which has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent times.

You may not realize it from the persistent dearth of industry press coverage about Hotmail, but it’s actually held the rank of the world’s largest online mail service, owning more than a third of the world market share (~325 million users), according to June 2012 reporting from cyber-statistics firm comScore.

But Microsoft’s margin over rivals has shrunk considerably, with Gmail hard on its tail at ~31% market share of users and Yahoo holding a similar percentage (~32%).

It may be surprising to learn that in the ever-changing digital space … but prior to this revamp Microsoft hadn’t updated any of the features or functionality of Hotmail in nearly a decade.

“A lot has changed in the last eight years, and we think it’s time for a fresh look at e-mail,” Chris Jones, a Microsoft exec, stated in a blog post that has to be the understatement of the decade.

Here’s some of what’s in store for users when they switch from Hotmail to Outlook:

  • A clean, uncluttered look – just like Gmail.
  • Tasteful, unobtrusive advertisements appearing in the right column of the screen – just like Gmail.
  • Users can link up with all major social media accounts to view the latest updates from their contacts and friends – just like Gmail.

Is this beginning to sound a bit repetitive?

But there is one feature that may give Outlook a bit of a leg up on its free online competitors: The service will automatically detect mass messages like sales notices, daily deals, newsletters and social updates and place them in separate folders. Users can customize this functionality to sort incoming e-mail any way they wish.

I haven’t used Hotmail in the past … although I might be tempted to consider Outlook now that these newest innovations have been added.

But the long-term success of Outlook – and any free e-mail platform – is going to be how effectively they can connect various online assets together to provide “one-stop convenience” for users.

One thing’s certain: There’s no way Microsoft can let another eight years go by before making more enhancements to its free e-mail service offering, considering the always-aggressive posture of Google and its Olympian competitive spirit.

B-to-B e-mail marketing: From sleepy to creepy?

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Unwanted e-mails from businesses and brandsThe amount of information that companies know about the behavior of their customers has been growing, thanks to the “digital footprints” people leave all over the place when interacting with companies and brands via web surfing, e-mail and e-commerce.

Still, up until now, there’s been a polite dance wherein the companies don’t acknowledge the degree of that knowledge. Call it a sort of digital politeness.

But that seems to be changing, as the stakes have grown higher for engaging with customers via online, social and e-mail communications rather than traditional advertising.

Take Pitney Bowes in the B-to-B world, for example. In recent months, its marketing staff has sent out e-mail communiqués to their opt-in customers containing messages like, “We notice it’s been a while since you opened an email from us.”

That creepy little missive is as impertinent as it is likely false. Considering the wide swath of people who use the Microsoft Outlook e-mail platform – and many of those use preview panes and have set their default preferences to block images – in reality Pitney Bowes doesn’t actually know if its customers have been reading its e-mail messages or not.

It’s also unclear whether Pitney Bowes really wants its opt-in recipients to go away rather than just browbeating people into engaging with their e-mails more.

This has manifested itself in e-mail messages sent asking if customers are still interested in receiving e-mails so they can “continue receiving the latest from PB.” But despite this implicit threat to be dropped from Pitney Bowes’ e-mail database, ignoring those e-mails doesn’t seem to result in that actually happening.

Rather, it’s just a continuation of more borderline-creepy e-mails with messages chiding the recipient for potentially missing out on “valuable information about supplies, offers, discounts, new products and thought leadership pieces.”

Thought leadership pieces? The leaders of Pitney Bowes may think quite highly about their company and its “vaunted” position in industry … but self-describing itself as being the fount of industry-leading knowledge is a surefire way to get laughed out of town.

Just like the obnoxious teacher’s pet in school or the crashing bore at a cocktail party, no one enjoys interacting with a know-it-all who just can’t wait to corner you and tell you all about his or her latest feats of accomplishment.

In a world where most businesses are spending more effort than ever trying to collect e-mail addresses for ongoing engagement with customers and prospects, here’s a little reminder to them: Try disseminating content that is actually of value to people … which is what will get them to engage with you.

More often than not, that content won’t be about their products and services.

QR Codes Go Ghoulish

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QR Code on HeadstoneIt’s no secret that QR (“quick response”) codes, the Japanese communications tech import, have had a difficult time taking off here in the United States. It’s a topic I’ve blogged about before. 

Indeed, it seems that marketing people are more attached to them than anyone else.

And why wouldn’t marketers be excited? It’s yet another way to engage audiences “in the moment” and enable them to head over to a landing page on impulse to take an immediate action … or at least to find out more information.

But a mix of things – lack of complete smartphone penetration, lack of QR-enabling software on mobile devices, ignorance of how QR codes operate, or just plain laziness – have conspired to keep QR engagement levels far below what marketers were hoping.

But hope springs eternal. And now we even see the QR spirit rising in the grave marker business.

That is correct: At least four monument companies in the United States are now offering QR code services as part of the grave markers they’re preparing for families of deceased loved ones.

And the QR codes look just like you’d expect: one of those square splotch-marks, affixed prominently to the headstone. So now gravesite visitors can point their smartphone at the headstone and immediately pull up a biography, pictures, or even videos of the dear, departed soul.

One of the companies offering QR service is Katzman Monument Company, a Minnesota-based company that conducts its business completely online.

“It’s a chance for future generations to make a connection with a loved one,” company head Norm Taple reported to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune newspaper. “There’s no emotional connection when all you can look at is a headstone – probably a dirty headstone at that.”

Part of the fun is the person who maintains the login code for the deceased’s online information. While anyone can access information on the deceased via a smartphone, only that one person can edit the information … and he or she can do so at any time.

Want to beef up Grandpa’s legacy by having him graduating from Harvard as opposed to Haverford? Done in a flash.

Looking to spice up Great Aunt Emma’s early dramatic career by having her being a burlesque showgirl in Chicago? Just a couple keystrokes and it’s now in her official biography.

Kidding aside, it’ll be interesting to see if this latest manifestation of QR code technology is more successful than the other attempts to force-feed them to the public.

My hunch tells me … it’s doubtful.

Tower of Babble: Four billion e-mail addresses and counting.

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Billions of e-mail addressesDavid Baker, a global vice president at marketing technologies firm Acxiom and e-mail expert extraordinaire, wrote recently that when speaking with an employee at one of the major online database aggregators, he was informed that this company had a grand total of 4 billion e-mail addresses on file.

And of these, ~2 billion had names and addresses associated with them.

These numbers are dramatically higher than the worldwide estimate of e-mail addresses published by the Pingdom blog in its Internet 2011 in Numbers report.

Think about this for a moment. Considering that the total population of the United States is a little over 310 million, how many e-mail addresses per person are floating around out there?

Strip away the very young … plus teens and ‘tweens who don’t engage nearly so much in e-mail … and we’re left with the realization that among the core adult audience of Boomers and GenXers, there’s really no such thing as a single e-mail address that can be tied to one individual.

Even if we ourselves don’t maintain multiple e-mail accounts for different purposes, surely we know people who do. One person I know is juggling no fewer than 20 separate e-mail addresses; he claims to be keeping them all straight.

This notion of multiplicity is at cross-purposes with how marketers have traditionally viewed prospecting. We’ve been conditioned to think about an individual as being tied to one physical address and one e-mail address – in the same manner as a discrete mobile phone number or a unique social security number.

In theory, all of these are vehicles of monetization, with e-mail being particularly attractive because of the low cost associated with reaching prospects in that manner.

But in actuality, there’s a great deal of complexity:

  • Which e-mails are associated with opt-in permission?
  • Which e-mail addresses are primary (highly active) versus secondary (relatively inactive)?
  • Which e-mails are valid, but lying dormant?

Because e-mail addresses are “cheap/free,” they’re ephemeral. They aren’t “linear” in the same sense as the data on a residence, a business address or even a mobile phone number can deliver.

Mr. Baker concludes that, far from becoming easier, “the ability to engage a customer through e-mail across a portfolio of communications is becoming more costly and complex.”

With 4 billion e-mail addresses sloshing around in the digital space, there’s no doubt e-mail marketing will continue to be a major force in marketing. Even if half of them are cyber-zombies, digital Potemkin villages or what-have-you.

The challenge is in sorting it all out.

I think the e-mail specialists are going to be at this for a good long time to come.

Employees are ill-prepared for retirement … but how much do they really care?

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People are ill-prepared financially for retirement.If the economic shocks of the past five years haven’t been enough to spur people to focus on their financial futures, one wonders what it would take for them to do so.

You’d think that more people than ever would be taking the time and effort for retirement  planning … but a recent study conducted by CFO Research Services and Koski Research, done on behalf of the Charles Schwab investment firm, belies that notion.

The study, which was completed in April 2012, surveyed ~200 senior finance and HR execs from mid-size and large U.S. companies, along with ~1,000 401(k) plan participants. The research found that despite the efforts by employers to educate their workers on the financial offerings available to them, not only are most employees financially unprepared for retirement, they’re also disengaged from the process.

More specifically, over half of the employers surveyed report that their 401(k) plan participants are not taking full advantage of the investment options, features and other services offered in connection with the these plans.

And it’s not for lack of trying on the part of companies. Among the tools employers are offering their 401(k) plan participants are:

  • Interactive planning tools (~93% offer)
  • In-person meetings or workshops (~81% offer)

Employers are even taking the step of auto-enrolling employees into 410(k) savings plans as a way of spurring interest.

But as the saying goes … you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. In fact, only a minority of employees in the Schwab survey express the desire to manage their own workplace savings programs. They give numerous reasons for this, the more prevalent ones being:

  • Don’t have the time
  • Insufficient knowledge
  • Just not interested

This lack of attention on their plans is illustrated further in this stunning statistic: Three-fourths of the employees surveyed spend fewer than eight hours annually managing their 401(k) account. That’s less than 45 minutes per month, on average.

Considering that for many participants, their 401(k) plan represents the single largest category of savings they have, this is a startling finding to say the least.

People talk a good game, it seems: More than four out of five respondents in the Schwab survey claim they’re interested in receiving professional investment management advice from their employer.

But this hardly translates into action. While many companies are offering such support … only ~10% of employees actually takes advantage of such advice when it is offered.

The final, sobering finding from the survey is this: For those respondents who have attempted to calculate the savings they believe they’ll need for retirement, there is an eight-fold gap between how much they’ve actually saved and how much they calculate they’ll need to have in retirement.

It’s pretty difficult to ignore that oncoming freight train … but not if you close your eyes and cover your ears.

Asian-Americans Set the Pace

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Asian Americans setting the pace in education, income and career success, according to the Pew Research CenterAs an American with Asian relatives in my family, I’ve witnessed first-hand how having a strong work ethic and a dedication to industriousness leads to success here on our shores.

And now a new Pew Research Center study demonstrates that the anecdotal evidence of our family reflects a larger reality.

Bottom-line, Asian Americans are not only the fastest-growing racial group in the USA today, they’re also the best-educated, highest-income segment.

According to the Pew research, Asian-Americans are also more satisfied with their lives compared to the general public … as well as more satisfied with their own personal finances and the overall direction of the country.

Other questions on the Pew survey reveal that Asian-Americans place more value than other Americans in time-tested values like parenting, marriage, hard work and career success.

But they’re also distinctly “21st century” … in that they’re the most likely of any major group in America to live in mixed neighborhoods and to marry across racial or ethnic lines.

The findings of the Pew survey are even more interesting when we realize that the U.S. Asian population remains majority-immigrant – nearly 75%, in fact. Asian-Americans now represent almost 6% of the U.S. population, some ~18 million people. That’s up from less than 1% of the population in 1965.

The Pew study contains interesting income and education demographics that place Asian-Americans above all other groups. But the research also addressed attitudinal measures and found that most Asian-Americans believe the United Sates is better than their country of origin in a variety of quality-of-life factors, including:

  • The opportunity to “get ahead” (~73% in USA versus ~5% in country of origin)
  • The freedom to express political views (~69% vs. ~3%)
  • Treatment of the poor (~64% vs. ~9%)
  • Conditions for raising children (~62% vs. ~13%)
  • The freedom to practice religion (~52% vs. ~7%)

Opinion is mixed in one attribute: “the moral values of society.” In this case, ~34% of Asian-American respondents believe that the United States does better, compared to ~28% who give the edge to their country of origin.

And in one big measure – “the strength of family ties” – the U.S. falls way behind: Only ~14% perceive the U.S. does better in this attribute, while a whopping ~56% give the nod to their country of origin.

The Pew report provides a fascinating snapshot of the current situation characterizing the Asian-American experience.  More details from the Pew Research report can be found here.

“Don’t Tread On Me”: Employees have strong feelings about employers gaining access to their social media profiles.

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Social media privacyRecent news reports that some companies are asking their current employees or prospective new hires to grant them access to their private social media profiles haven’t set well with many people.

It seems that while people don’t mind publishing their personal information for friends and families to see, they’re not keen at all on employers having access as well.

This is borne out in the latest American Pulse survey from BIGinsight, a consumer information portal. In that survey, which queried nearly 3,600 American adults over the age of 18, respondents were asked how they would react to a request by an employer to hand over personal social media passwords, thereby gaining access to their profiles.

Approximately one in five of the survey respondents reported that they are not engaged in social media.  But among the remainder, most would resist the employer’s request … even to the extent of quitting their job:

  • Would quit a job or withdraw an employment application: ~52%
  • Would delete social media pages to prevent them from being seen: ~21%
  • Would go ahead and provide social media passwords to the employer: ~14%
  • Would edit social media profiles first … then provide passwords: ~13%

Based on the opinions of the respondents, it’s not at all surprising that the survey also found that ~85% think that when employers asking for access to social media profiles, it’s an invasion of privacy.  And only about 11% of respondents would be “comfortable” sharing their social media profiles with a potential employer.

There does seem to be a bit of altruism at work, because the preponderance of survey respondents (~72%) claim that they have “nothing to hide” on their social sites.

No doubt, Americans’ views about online privacy are borne out of the “live free or die … don’t tread on me” tradition of individualism in this country.  We love our ability to express ourselves … but spare us the KGB/Stasi routine!

Radio audiences: “Stickier” than you might think.

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Radio audiences: Stickier than you might realize.It’s a pretty common belief that when commercial breaks come on the radio, the audience scatters to the four winds.

And that view isn’t just held by laymen … those in the broadcast industry itself tend to believe that.

A study conducted by Arbitron, Media Monitors and Coleman Insights, released about six months ago, discovered that ad agency personnel believe that the typical radio audience is one-third lower during commercial breaks than during the lead-in.

Among radio industry personnel, those feelings are only slightlycloser to reality; they believe that the radio audience is about one-fourth lower during commercial breaks than during the lead-in.

In fact, a parallel study conducted by the same researchers found that these industry perceptions are way wide of the mark. Their evaluation, which covered nearly 18 million commercial breaks and ~62 million minutes of ads airing over a 12-month span on ~865 radio stations, revealed these interesting findings:

  • The average radio station aired 2.6 commercial breaks comprising nearly 9.0 minutes of advertising per hour.
  • The average break was ~3.5 minutes in duration.
  • On average, more than 93% of the lead-in audience stuck with the station during commercial breaks.
  • Longer spot breaks (4 to 6 minutes) still delivered ~90% of the lead-in radio audience.

These figures are significantly higher than the perception of industry observers. But one perception did turn out to comport with reality – the fact that older radio listeners are more apt to stay listening through the commercials than are younger listeners (~98% versus ~90%).

The study also determined that listening behaviors don’t differ at all between the different seasons of the year. But the audience for music stations is somewhat more prone to “wander off the reservation” compared to listeners of radio stations with spoken-word formats:  Fully 99% of the news-format radio audience stays on the station during commercials, while only ~88% of music format station listeners have the patience to stick around through the advertising.

The bottom line on the study’s findings is that radio is delivering audiences for commercials at levels that far exceed advertisers’ expectations.

So, the radio industry’s job is two-fold: Change the erroneous perceptions about audience levels … and also convince advertisers that the audience is actually listening and learning during the advertising breaks, not tuning out.　

This last bit may well be a lot harder to accomplish!

You can read more findings from the radio audience research here.

Wikipedia vs. the Church of Scientology

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Wikipedia vs. ScientologyI’ve blogged before about Wikipedia phenomenon and how it’s completely taken over the realm of encyclopedic knowledge in the span of only a decade.

One of the central tenets of Wikipedia is that it’s an open and inclusive environment where anyone can post an article or edit article entries.  But it’s also a self-policing environment where “the wisdom of crowds” ensures that inaccurate or spurious information is quickly removed and replaced with corrected entries.

With such a free and open environment, it comes as no surprise that certain topics can engender passionate debate and create some highly interesting “fireworks.”

Once such example is the Wikipedia entry on Charles Bennison, the embattled Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania whose social and financial controversies have been wide-ranging. For months on end, dueling article entries made by Wikipedia posters and countered by the Bishop’s own partisans made for a morbidly fascinating tit-for-tat spectacle.

Or consider Wikipedia’s article entry on President Barack Obama, which at times has undergone literally minute-by-minute edits frantically posted by dueling editors during high-profile episodes such as the birth certificate controversy — a kind of editorial ping-pong match.

But never has Wikipedia stepped in as an organization and done what it did this past week: It has actually banned the Church of Scientology from editing any articles appearing on Wikipedia that are associated with the religion.

This unprecedented action was reportedly taken in response to “repeated and deceptive editing” of Wikipedia articles related to Scientology and its beliefs.

And according to the news reports, the vote wasn’t even close; Wikipedia’s arbitration council voted 10-1 to ban users coming from any and all IP addresses owned by the Church of Scientology and its associates, along banning with certain individuals by name.

The Scientology case has been under review by Wikipedia since last December. It centers on more than 400 articles about the religious organization and its members. These articles have been the source of fierce “edit wars” pitting organized Church of Scientology editors against the religion’s detractors.

As a measure of how heated this issue has been for Wikipedia, this was actually the fourth arbitration case concerning the Church of Scientology occurring within the past four years.

To the casual observer, the whole Church of Scientology issue is a tempest in a teapot that could be summed up by the title of William Shakespeare’s famous play, Much Ado about Nothing.

But the fervor in which Scientology’s promoters and its critics have battled each other tooth and nail over the content of the Wikipedia article entries proves the rule once again that politics and religion are among the most passionate subjects in the world.

But the Scientology fracas also makes another point: Wikipedia is now the most important information repository in the world. Otherwise, why would there be such a fuss?

So the stakes are high … and tempers are high.

Here’s a prediction: Despite the unprecedented ban by Wikipedia’s arbitration council, the Scientology “edit wars” are far from over.  These folks are relentless.

A Newspaper Startup in 2012 … Is this Madness?

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European Daily, preview editionOver the past decade or more, seemingly all the business trends on the newspaper front have been negative. So to read that a new transnational newspaper is being planned for a Fall 2012 launch comes as a pretty big surprise.

Yes, you heard that right:  The European Daily plans to hit the streets in a few months’ time. In the meantime, the budding newspaper already has a website up and running.

The European Daily is the brainchild of three young entrepreneurs from Sweden and Germany. “We are a publication that partly targets a more senior audience who, to a great extent, still prefers print, as well as a traveling audience who wants to read their news on a flight or at their hotel,” says Johan Malmsten, one of the three founders.

Does this sort of thinking sound like a recipe for success in 2012?

At first blush, it seems like a pipe dream. Two huge roadblocks appear to be standing in the way of success. First, the market dynamics have been ugly for traditional newspapers … their traditional business model swept away by the Internet and changing ways that consumers access the news.

Add to this the mounting political and economic crisis in Europe, which could result in the European Union’s breakup, rather than any sort of renewed consolidation.  Is this the right time to be introducing a media property that’s “pan-European” in its character?

Mr. Malmsten discounts these threats. Instead he asserts, “Some people have praised us on our perfect timing, given the vivid current debate about Europe and the fact that a European news source and a common public sphere have never been as much in demand.”

“Europe is a daily reality for millions of Europeans, and that won’t change. We see giving these people a news source and a daily point of reference as our mission,” he adds.

Looking at the newspaper’s launch plans, it’s pretty clear the investors are fully committed to their mission. A staff of 30 is being constructed for the paper — about half of them focused on content.  The editorial team will be based in Amsterdam in Holland.

A “preview” edition of the European Daily was printed last year and ~40,000 copies were distributed in key urban centers like Paris, London, Berlin and Brussels. Reportedly, the reception was highly positive.

But I have doubts whether a completely new newspaper title can be launched successfully – especially one that’s based on a conventional print-centric product with a digital adjunct. It seems like we’ve seen this movie before:  This very formula has been tried and found wanting – even among established newspaper brands.

It will be interesting to look back in about two or three years and see if this endeavor adds up to much – or instead has gone by the wayside.

Anyone care to weigh in with odds on the front end?