“Hardly anyone knew who Epsilon was”: Mentioning Competitors in Blogs

I know a lot of people in the email marketing industry and at Email Service Providers. After this post I will probably have a few less friends but I guess I wasn’t born to be popular. Just like many of you, I have registered for several newsletters from MediaPost Publications. Every now and then I scan one like today’s Email Insider, featuring a post from StrongMail’s Ryan Deutsch.

The mail with the post called “Combating Pandora’s Inbox: Email Marketing After the Breach” caught my attention since it was obvious what it was going to be about: recent hacks and security breaches at some ESPs. So I was kind of curious what a distinguished blogger, working for an ESP that was not hacked, would say about that.

Ryan’s post basically is a “a wakeup call” for marketers to make sure that they protect their data properly instead of assuming that ESPs and other “third parties” have it all covered. “It’s a brand’s responsibility to take care that they don’t lose consumer trust by being vigilant”.

As Ryan writes: “companies affected by the security breach were quick to point the finger to a third party, but ultimately the responsibility lies with the brand. Consumers have a relationship with the brand, not the technology or the service providers the company sues”.

In other words: if shit hits the fan and consumer trust is damaged as a result, you should be aware that, unless you minimized all possible risks, “excuses matter very little” as Ryan puts it. Allow me to doubt that. But that’s not the topic of this post.

Many brands were hit by the latest security breach that happened at Epsilon, as Ryan mentions several times. One of those brands was McKinsey. They sent me a nice apology mail. I understood. Some probably didn’t. There is no such thing as a waterproof system that protects us against the malicious minds of others, not offline and certainly not online. But I guess that consumers must be too stupid to realize that, right?

Ryan mentions Epsilon a lot but he doesn’t attack them. He simply says that brands should be careful and assume responsibility. One of the ways to do so, Ryan writes, is to “ask for an audit from your IT department or from a third party if you currently outsource your email to an ESP”. If I didn’t know any better or was paranoid, I would see this as a hidden call-to-action, fortunately I’m not that stupid.

I know Ryan, just as I know the other EmailInsider bloggers: Kara, also from StrongMail, Chad from Responsys, Loren from Silverpop and many of the others.

They often post good nuggets of wisdom in a language they master much better than I do since it’s not my native.

Choose wise, think twice

Some things puzzle me however: why wasn’t Silverpop’s December hack mentioned?

And why does Ryan write “Before this month, hardly anyone knew who Epsilon was or how it worked with their favorite brands. That’s not the case anymore.”

Am I one of the few to know Epsilon? Is the McKinsey Quarterly the only newsletter powered by it? Apparently not since Ryan mentions Target and Citibank as well and I happen to know that Epsilon has a few more customers.

Ryan might be right that the Epsilon’s security breach (again, Loren’s Silverpop isn’t mentioned) has a devastating impact on email marketing in the consumer’s perception. Poor old email marketing, so often hit by social media gurus and dropping conversion rates and now this…

It’s your fault, brands. You should choose wiser. A respected blogger says so and the blog says he’s vice president of strategic services at StrongMail too. That must impress you.

My point? I read between the lines, I admit, sometimes wrongly. I like the people I know at StrongMail very much, I even did stuff with them. I also like some people I know at Epsilon. They don’t write on MediaPost though. I guess they have no nuggets of wisdom.

I might be wrong but this post, how innocent and relevant it may seem, leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth and makes me wonder about blogging ethics of all things. My rule of thumb has always been “never talk about competitors in sales, blogging or marketing, it’s unproductive and gives a bad impression”.

I’m not getting personal here but thinking out loud, believe it or not, on my small personal blog that is not MediaPost and hardly read.

So, am I wrong? Or paranoid after all? Or just European? That should be a valid excuse, no? Even if I have a security breach.

Good Deal of Positive News for Daily Deal Email Programs

Groupon Daily deal websites and email campaigns have certainly gotten a lot of attention this past year. With Groupon leading the charge, now other big players such as Google and Facebook are drooling over getting a bite of the pie.

The real question is, have consumers eaten their fill and could more chefs in this soup cause a loss of appetite?

According to research from Yahoo! Mail and Ispos OTX MediaCT, deal overload doesn’t seem to be much of an issue yet. The survey from February 2011 found that at least in the US, adult internet users subscribe to an average of almost three daily or weekly shopping emails or newsletters. More importantly, respondents actually read them! 61% of those who subscribe to at least two of these emails indicated they read all of the messages. They also reported accessing those messages at least once a day.

Frequency with which US internet users access daily deal and shopping emails or e-newsletters

Another bit of good news is that most of those subscribed to daily deal emails pass them along to friends and family, albeit with less frequency. Only a quarter passed them on daily, but almost half (45%) forwarded them on at least once per week.

There seems to be a good deal (pun intended) of positive news for daily deal email programs. Even the enthusiasm doesn’t seem to wane too much among subscribers. Six out of ten said they are subscribed to more of these programs than last year and almost half were still excited enough to say they “can’t wait” for the latest and greatest offering message.

There also seems to be a certain level of trust here with only 27% of respondents admitting they use an email account (other than their main one) for these daily deals. In other words, the vast majority don’t mind getting these in their primary personal account inbox. That seems to suggest that subscribers view them as desirable and relevant.

Speculating on this, I think the perception of these emails for many is about the same as a wrapped present. Part of why we love these daily deal emails is because it promises the potential to reward ourselves. The ribbon on the box is that we can rationalize giving ourselves that treat because we are getting a deal on it.

Fear of Email Overload?

Of course relevancy is the key here for daily deals as it is with any email marketing campaign. If your messages are not relevant people will soon tune out and unsubscribe. I wonder why more brands don’t engage in their own daily or weekly deal emails. Is it because we have become so hung up on the frequency issue (the fear of overloading subscribers) that we just don’t even consider trying it? Or is it just a case of most brands not having the variety of products or services to offer consistent deals? Or is it because we just don’t have the imagination to try such things?

Which is it? Or is it something else or a combination of all of them? I don’t have pat answers for this – you tell me.