DaxThink: Digital life

I have mentioned the Disaffection Index in previous posts on email marketing but have not discussed it in detail. A year or so on I am still talking about it and use in training courses for the Institure of Direct Marketing (IDM) and so thought we should dive a little deeper.

The Disaffection Index (or DI) was first mentioned in a MediaPost publication wrtten by Melinda Krueger. It is effectively a better way or working with the unsubscribe rate, which is traditionally calculated by dividing the total number of unsubscribers by the total number of emails successfully sent. Although a very common calculation it is not a good metric to measure your performance on as it is skewed by all those people who did not choose to open that particular email.

Also, the unsubscribe rate from experience tends to be very consistent from one edition of the same newsletter to another, and only really changes with major format or content-type changes. Looking back over some historical client data there can be as little a change as 0.1% over all newsletters sent in a year.

DI instead calculates itself by dividing the number of unsubscribers by unique clicks.

This offers a measure of delivery vs promise, or put more literal gives you the total number of people who have actually taken an action just to not hear from you again.

Let me give you a real example from an old client (a major UK men's lifestyle magazine), who send out a weekly newsletter (that is exceptionally popular) and then rent their list for solus broadcasts too.

The results from a typical month are below (July 2006):

(each value is the DI for that mailing, and the lower the number, the better it was received by the audience)

Newsletter 1: 2.9
Newsletter 2: 2.9
Newsletter 3: 2.9
Newsletter 4: 2.9

You can see from these numbers that their newsletter performs consistently well, but in the same month they also sent out 6 solus emails on behalf of advertisers. Bear in mind that solus advertising emails will receive a higher DI generally because of the very nature

So the month started off ok with 3 broadcasts:

Mobile phone offer: 5.4
Godfather DVD Release 1: 5.6
Godfather DVD Release 2: 7.8

The mobile phone offer was well received by the audience and the DI barely moved. Similar for the first DVD offer about the 're-release of the Godfather in a week's time' but it did lift a little when they reminded the audience the same DVD was released that day.

Online Gaming: 15.6

The next offer of online gaming saw a huge jump and if I was the data owner I would be telling my sales folks to prioritise other advertisers above anyone pushing gaming.

Mobile phone offer: 5.4

Amazingly another offer for a mobile phone contract got the lowest DI of all commercial broadcasts for the month, rare given it was the 5th one in just a few weeks.

Godfather DVD Release 3: 63.0

However, the month was finished off with a final promotion for the Godfather DVD reminding people it came out the week before, an interesting strategic decision anyway, and one that saw the DI score leap to 63.0.

Think about this for a moment - that means that 63% of all people who decided to take some action with their email took that action just to tell them never to content them again. This is powerful insight.

My recommenedation is to always include DI in your reporting and to calculate it based on historical data. As a stand alone metric for a single email it will tell you nothing but over a period of time it will become the most vaulable part of your defence acting as your own marketing early warning system.


:~Dax~:

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Have popups and popunders suddenly become acceptable again? I really hope not, and with my consumer hat on, I still find them irritating to the point that i stop using sites completely that use them.
I am not talking about functional windows that open to help you select a calendar date for instance, but the ones that just carry advertising and are typically spawned from the homepage.

Take MoneySupermarket.com as an example; a very successful UK site for comparing financial products, and one that has doubled in popularity in the recent weeks due to the global credit crunch. I have been aware of this site for a while but not had cause to use until this week as my current mortgage offer just came to an end.

From all accounts it is the best site for this type of information in the UK, it certainly must be doing well to spend the advertising dollars they are. But I had a horrible experience whilst using it and in the end gave up and went elsewhere. The problem was that on every page there is a script running that tries to open a popunder window, and on some pages you feel inclined to accept the popunder because it seems to contain functionality only to feel tricked when shown a window full of ads.

Grr.

As a consumer they have lost me now. I will not return to use the site until they stop this practice. Usability and consumer behaviour studies I have been involved in indicate that I will not be alone. The site may be enjoying double volume right now, but the long term effects of such actions may be felt in the leaner days.


:~Dax~:

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I saw a story slip out on the wires this morning about Microsoft looking to acquire a 5% share in Facebook at a price that would value it at aproximately $5 billion. This is a company that was started just 3 measily years ago by a 23-year-old Harvard dropout called Mark Zuckerberg.

Of course Microsoft already have a good relationship with the site in the form of an advertising partnership (established August 2006) but owning a stake in the company would allow them to have closer access to the developers and influence the direction that the site takes.

What the direction MS is looking for is open to debate. One consideration is around their strategy to move all elements of their business online in the form of the Live offering. Facebook already allows developers to build their own applications and disperse them throughout the user base, and these vary in type from social photo maps, travel logs and even the ability to bite others and turn them into vampires. So could MS be eyeing up the portal as a future home for some of their own software?

What is certain is that MS will not be the only interested party, and the rumours are already beginning about Google sniffing around for a share too. The fact that neither party is talking about an outright purchase already is the significant value assigned to this newby. Just consider that number again of $5 billion for a 3 year old company in a sector that has already proved just how fickle consumers can be. Wasn't the darling of this area MySpace just a year ago, and before that you could argue it was Friend's Reunited (or Classmates in the US)?

Interest from both giants have certainly contributed to this (bubble-creating?) value of Facebook and if we are to learn anything from other acquisitions I discussed earlier in the year then this price is likely to go higher.

(Interestingly, whilst I am writing this I did a quick search on the topic for other opionion and found sites now saying its value is looking more like $10 billion - that's just within 6 hours of the story being released).

:~Dax~:

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Such a simple concept, and very addictive. This page shows a constant stream of all the photos being uploaded to the Blogger severs. Apparently (according to Blogger's own blog) this was has been running a big plasma in their offices from the beginning and then someone at Google suggested they launch it as a feature.

play.blogger.com

Check it out, fascinating insight into the diversity of blogging; in the last few minutes I have seen an illustration of someone in a bath full of purple bubbles, a monkey in a tree, children playing a variety of games, an ancient map and a screenshot of some European Union legal document.


:~Dax~:

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I attended a very interesting lunch yesterday hosted by Adify. The lunch was an opportunity to discuss the current position of advertising within the new media space and the debate was as good as the food and wine. Thank you to Adify and Soho House.

A key topic was about the phrase ‘new media’ itself.

Paul Brown, Media Director at Ogilvy argued that “it’s not new media, it’s just more media”; this is a man of experience, having been in this industry for the birth of commercial television and heard the same phrases of ‘new media’ and ‘revolutionary’ used back then. Indeed, he referenced a rather good quote that centred on the belief that an entire generation would have to die before commercial television took off.

His argument, and one that he did not have to champion alone, was essentially that advertising on the internet should be considered as simply another advertising channel, simply an alternative method of execution to TV, Radio, Outdoor and Print. I can follow part of the logic of that, and it is important that any advertising is done with at least knowledge and understanding of what advertising is taking place in other channels as overlap will occur and every channel influences all others.

That is where the ‘more media’ argument stops.

For brands and agencies that focus their efforts on fixed length start-stop campaigns this may be true, but the opportunities for digital are far more reaching and complex than any other form of media to date.The reality is ‘more media’ for push and ‘new media’ for pull... and focusing on the more media side means you might be missing the real opportunities this space provides.

Cast your vote: I have placed a poll on this topic (top left) that will run for a month or so, please cast your vote on whether you think its new media or more media.


:~Dax~:

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