Comments on: The Volume/Personalization Trade-Off

By: wortgefecht (wortgefecht)

wortgefecht (wortgefecht) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:10:44 +0000

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The volume/personalization trade-off [link to post] #SocialMedia

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By: SourceBottle (SourceBottle)

SourceBottle (SourceBottle) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:32:14 +0000

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The Volume/Personalization Trade-Off [link to post] - What's your approach?

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By: enspired (Frances Pratt)

enspired (Frances Pratt) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 12:05:14 +0000

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RT @SourceBottle: The Volume/Personalization Trade-Off [link to post] - What's your approach? Mine personal

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By: BethHarte (Beth Harte)

BethHarte (Beth Harte) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:42:06 +0000

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@DaveFleet's insights on The Volume/Personalization Trade-Off & pitching are spot-on. We need to be realistic folks. [link to post]

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By: Dave Fleet

Dave Fleet — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:35:40 +0000

Tom – my first tip would be not to leave spam comments on sites.

By: Tom Lopy

Tom Lopy — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:26:16 +0000

what should i do to target audiences with my website [edited: website removed]?

By: Jesse David Hollington

Jesse David Hollington — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:25:09 +0000

I tend to get pitches at both extremes, as the site that I write for tends to be influential in its particular industry focus (in short, iPod services and accessories). Most of the pitches are for new products, and considering the wide breadth of different products out there, it’s not surprising that some of the “releases” are outright spammy in nature.

On the other hand, we get a lot of very personalized ones due to an existing relationship and the knowledge from the manufacturers that our site is one where they would prefer to see their product release news posted or their product reviewed. While we remain as neutral as possible in our approach to product news and reviews, obviously a personalized message that specifically highlights why we would care is going to get a lot more attention than a generic “For Immediate Release” type of message.

The completely spammy ones tend to frequently be ignored outright just based on their tone. Further, there are those where we’re obviously on a mailing list that’s completely unrelated to our target readership. For instance, we’re a site about iPod-related technology and accessories, so chances are we’re not particularly interested in a press release about new home water heater technology — at least not unless it has iPod or iPhone integration hidden in it somewhere.

However, in a sea of spammy so-called “press releases” it’s often hard to find those situations where there *is* something interesting for our particular readership, unless it’s specifically highlighted in the release.

Ergo, this is also where the completely non-personalized marketing messages do tend to fail miserably. In the very least, I think people need to personalize for different *categories* of audience. You may not be able to custom-tailor your news releases to every individual customer, but breaking down your mailing list by the focus or interest of each group will probably take you much further.

For example: If you’re pitching a new home theatre receiver, your pitch to an audiophile blog or magazine would highlight its sound fidelity and quality, whereas a pitch to a home-theatre related site would need to emphasize its tight integration with other home theatre technologies, and a pitch to an iPod-related accessory site would highlight its iPod, iPhone or iTunes integration. A generic press release that glosses over these important target-specific issues is much more likely to get ignored in a sea of similar pitches that don’t highlight that particular focus that the reader may be interested in.

So you may not be able to write a custom pitch for each one of the thousands of people on your mailing list, but you should at least spend some time separating your mailing list into the industry focus areas that you are targeting, and ensure that your pitch is targeted to interest those groups. The time to “triage” your contact list and identify focus areas may represent some initial time investment at the beginning, but I suspect it would ultimately pay off in the longer term.

By: John Cass

John Cass — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:23:05 +0000

Hi Dave,

Great post, one of the ironies for me here is that Gary’s publicist probably would have gotten a review from me if they had simply said, “Gary has a new book about social media, would you like to review it?” I would have jumped at the chance. The irony being the post would not have even needed to be addressed to me. I think the email set my expectation that it was personalized at the beginning of the email, but the last paragraph clearly indicated it was not.

Maybe this whole discussion is all about setting expectations with people. Perhaps the two extremes can work:

1) Hello this is a non-personalized pitch email.
2) Hello this is a personalized email, I read your blog.

But when you try to appear to be something you are not that’s when a company is more likely to fall down. I think that’s what happened with Gary’s publicist’s email, for me anyway.

Hey, maybe it’s a case of testing pitch emails before sending them out with the community. I don’t expect that every aspect of an email will be personalized. But I do expect that people will be transparent about whether they have read my blog or not.

The description of how to get into the PR sweet spot seems perfectly reasonable to me, you suggest people read a journalist/blogger’s work and even tailor where appropriate. If you are just giving the facts about a campaign I think it’s quite reasonable to reuse them over time.

By: Amy Flanagan

Amy Flanagan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:18:33 +0000

Nice post. Very clear and thought provoking.
To me, new media is just like old media. There are brands that will always blanket the world with generic messages (the junk mail of yesteryear) and brands that will invest the time and resources to deliver thoughtful communication. Unfortunately some categories do not warrant the latter and so there will always be junk mail in the world – in every form.

By: Daniel Young

Daniel Young — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:05:58 +0000

It really depends on the size of the market. The ‘individually tailored’ approach is feasible here in Australia because the media landscape and the blogosphere is relatively small. This makes the targets more sensitive to the mass mailing approach because they all know each other. There was an amusing case recently whereby an agency spammed local bloggers, food writers and journalists with a mail merged pitch on a new premium cat food product. The pitch and numerous responses were played back in the public domain – in print and online – much to the embarassment of the PR firm.