Do Millennials Read?

        

Yes. Especially print.

Iron Mountain Knowledge Center asks, "Do you think the world is abandoning the printed page? Research indicates that a trend toward the tactile—even among Millennials—is opening up exciting new creative opportunities for fulfillment collateral."

In 2014, more than eight out of ten American adults would rather read magazines in hard copy than online. Similarly, 67 percent would rather read a book with a spin than one that glows. This information comes from a report by JWT, the New York marketing communications firm formerly known as J. Walter Thompson.

Do you know what's even more surprising, midway into the second decade of the 21st century? This trend is consistent among generations, even the grew-up-online Millennials, according to the same report, "Embracing Analog: Why Physical Is Hot."

Eight out of 10 Millennials say, "Physical cards/letters make me feel more connected to people than digital notes (emails, SMS, etc.)." These findings, as well as other studies, are calling upon the printed page to play a larger role in your marketing collateral and fulfillment efforts.         

Yes. Especially plain vanilla text and “print-like” apps.

A September 2014 article in The Atlantic reports that 88 percent of Americans under 30 said they had read a book in the past year compared with 79 percent of those over 30. At the same time, American readers' relationship with public libraries is changing—with younger readers less likely to see public libraries as essential in their communities. But wait … there’s more.

         “Moreover, young mobile readers don’t want apps and mobile browsers that look like the future. They want apps that look like the past: 58 percent of those under 50 and 60 percent of Millennials, prefer a ‘print-like experience’ over tech features like audio, video, and complex graphics. That preference toward plain text ‘tends to hold up across age, gender, and other groups’.”

Yes. Except for “e-versions.”

In her June 24, 2014 LinkedIn article Millennials: Digital vs. Print, Anna Burnham, coordinator at Everthrive, Illinois, tells this story: “…I hate e-versions. I own a Kindle, and it has been sitting in a drawer dead since I received it as a gift. Of course I use Twitter to get the majority of my news, but that is because the quality of magazines and newspapers has devolved into what I believe to be tabloid quality news … It is tempting to say that Millennials are e-version addicts who don’t appreciate the ‘older’ ways of doing things; that we are the ones driving the market. But in reality, what Millennials all crave is a media source, a book, or a show, which guides us and shows us the meaningful side of aging into adulthood just as books, the radio, newspapers, and magazines did for the generations before.”

Comme ci; comme ça.

In April 2013, Edelman’s Research Insight featured an article by Alex Abraham, senior VP of Edelman’s 8095® Millennial Insights Group. His article was titled “Millennials Hate Traditional Media. Or Do They?” Here’s what Abraham came up with:

• 93 percent of Millennials had read a magazine in the previous 60 days.

• 23 percent of Millennials had read a newspaper the day before, which was not that much lower than the general population.

         Abraham concluded, “One thing I have learned from my research of the Millennial generation is that for every study proving a point, there is likely another saying the opposite. But the insights above do show us that we have not yet entered a world where everything has to be digital to reach Millennials.”         

Yes. With visuals, please.

The Millennial Marketing blog made a “Yes-But” case in its post titled, “Do Millennials Read? Yes, But They Read Differently.”

“Perhaps the biggest take away is that Millennials are capable of taking in a lot of visual information at once, probably more than older generations, provided it is presented in an attractive and easily digestible way. This makes good design as important, if not more important, than good writing. In studies where we have had an opportunity to compare age groups, it is striking how much more attuned younger consumers are to the way information appears on the page. Older consumers tend to overlook poor design and focus on the meaning. Millennials have a hard time getting past the way it looks.”

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This Is My Favorite Marketing Newsletter Because ...

I get about 60 digital newsletters a day. I love this one.

The graphic header is recognizable, yet shallow enough to show the crux of the blog post without scrolling down. So critical. 

Hubspot sends this out multiple times a day (two? three?). I always glance at it and I often read the intro. I click through maybe four out of 10 times.

Sometimes I tweet it. Every month, I draw from it for Marketing AdVents, the award-winning monthly newsletter of the Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DC), which I edit. 

This newsletter meets the objective: It makes me click through to the blog.

Yes, the blog content is superb, but the enewsletter design gets me there.

Finally, this is the only enewsletter I receive that looks like this and persuades like this.

Serving Enewsletters? Get to the Meat!

©CreativeCommons by Heather Joan

I got an e-newsletter today-- one of about 60. This one featured four boxes, each with a stock photo. Every box had a headline, 35 words of fluff copy, and a link to the company’s blog. The meat sat on the click-through. I never got there.

Here's a better recipe for electronic newsletter tidbits:
1. Skip the headline.
2. Cut the intro.
3. Jump to the meat.
4. Serve.
5. Repeat.


Details
This copywriter served four dishes and four headlines:
• 10 Easy Ways to Grow Your Social Presence Now
• Is Your Brand Too Bland? Avoid These Pitfalls of "Wallpaper Copywriting"
• Reputation Management — the Secret Weapon
• 3 Twitter Tips That Will Boost Your Twitter Marketing

Not horrible, but very commonplace headlines. “Nothing to see here. Move on."

So what brought me back?
Nothing tasty, that's for sure. Just curiosity. A couple minutes later I wondered if these guys could teach us all a lesson. I went back to my trash folder, retrieved the email, and checked to see if they had anything to offer.

Here's my review.
• I've seen those headlines too often.
• The short 35-word intros to each item were even more trite than the headlines (for example, “Twitter is a fast moving social network. New content pushes older content out of the way fairly quickly, meaning that it's easy for your tweets to go unnoticed. If there's an important tweet that you want your customers to…”) [yawn]
• The meat was buried on the click-through link. I never made it there.

Cure
If you want readers to look further, tell us one thing we don't know. A single item we don’t know is better than four items of old news.

Sadly, the meat (see below) was there! But it was buried in paragraph three on the blog post. Why not put this on the cover page instead?

"When you pin a tweet, it's the first thing visitors will see when they come to your Twitter page …Here's how to pin a tweet:
• Locate the tweet you’d like to pin.
• Click the three little dots (extra tools) menu at the bottom right of the tweet.
• Select 'pin to your profile page.'"

Forty-eight words of pure meat. So why didn’t the writer serve me this tasty morsel first?

Beats me.

How They Forced Me To Choose "Yes" and Like It

Crossroads by CarstenTolkmit @CC

GraphicDesignBlender came up with a sneaky way to push website visitors to choose “yes.”

I hopped from their excellent Design Blender newsletter to an article on the myriad benefits of featuring testimonials on your website.

When I landed at the article, a free offer popped up on the screen. The pop-up invited me to download a free ebook. I was in a hurry and started to click “no.” That's when I noticed the wording Design Blender had attached to my "yes/no" options:

___ Yes, please send me your free book on "How to Find Clients."

___ No,  I already have enough clients.

I didn’t particularly want the book, but I simply could not check a box that said, “I already have enough clients.”

Call it superstition, call if fear of tempting fate, call it gut reaction. I just couldn’t do it. I gave them my email address -- which was, of course, their purpose -- and downloaded the book.

Their spine-chilling “No” option was the only reason I caved.

Magic, huh? And an awesome way for copywriters to score.

p.s. The free download is actually pretty good.


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You Might Think Everybody Does This. Uh… no. But Everybody Should.

Writers tend to do a lot of online research. As the editor of a marketing newsletter and a relentless blogger, I visit hundreds of websites, download dozens of whitepapers, pile up racks of statistics, and read a lot of blogs.

Sometimes a website will ask me to leave an email address and I will (though often reluctantly) IF I want the product badly enough. That’s what happened when I visited Vidyard.com to download their whitepaper “Video: the New ROI Star of Marketing.” What I never expected was the simple, non-pushy “nice-to- meet you” email that arrived 24 hours later:

Hi Nancy,

Thank you for stopping by the Vidyard website. I wanted to reach out to you to see if you were looking to learn more about video marketing or if you have any questions about Vidyard.

Please do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions or if you think Vidyard might be a fit for your specific use case.

All the best,

Ally

From all the websites in all the urls in all the world, this is the first-time I’ve ever received an email like this. Phone calls from salespeople, yes. Thank you for downloading XYZ, yes. Glad you downloaded, now how about buying this, definitely.

But a simple, short, no-pitch email offering help if needed? Not once.

This classy follow-up tells me these folks are very good at what they do.

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For Content Marketing, Headlines Power Tiny eNewsletters

Headlines rule Facebook's PAPER app.

Digg does it. Huffington Post does it. Even NAPL VP Bill Farquharson is going short. And you know what? I read at least one piece from each of these content providers during my morning "keep up" ritual. Why? I can't resist clever headlines.

DIGG
Consider this NPR headline featured by DIGG. "So You Think You're Smarter Than A CIA Agent." The story focused on "the wisdom of crowds" — ordinary people who, as a group, forecast better than the CIA or the experts. Killer interesting.

Huffington Post
HuffPo's "Morning Email" opens with two or three catchy headlines and brief copy blocks (mostly sans graphic), followed by more terse headlines within come-hither sections. The Scuttlebutt, Top Stories, Culture Catch-up, Sports Scouting Report, Other People's Business, International Intrigue—these sections are broken into paragraphs and one-sentence copy blocks with links. For me, short works. I'm scanning; I'm reading maybe only two pieces … but I'm reading.

Farquharson Has A Short Attention Span newsletter
Bill Farquharson started his "Short Attention Span Webinar" series in February 2009. These little gems run about 5 minutes on Bill's YouTube channel and  typically get 700 to 800 views. The first time I saw Bill refer to "short-attention -span," I knew he was on to something .. and he is. It's now 2014. Bill is still cranking out the webinars and promoting them in a short-attention-span eNewsletter that also features minimal copy, several headlines, and some links.

There's more. Even Facebook's app Paper is geared toward promoting tiny content with a “newspaper” feel. Text and link posts are designed to resemble paper, while clicking unfolds the link like a newspaper.

Perfectly petite!

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Talk Nice and Other Tricks to Make Your Email Kissable

In April, SilverPop released a white paper useful to any marketer responsible for “talking to” customers, particularly when the channel of conversation is email.

The essential message of “5 Tips for “White Space” Emails,” is keep it useful and make it look good.

To that end, fill promotional emails with useful, educational, enteraining content—photos, humorous stories, info graphics, tips from other customers/donors. 

For example:

1. Seasonal tips and stories that tap into your customers’ time-sensitive needs: spring clean-up, holiday recipes, December charities, March madness, etc.

2. Personality and humor. Write chatty copy that reflects your customers’ attitudes and interests.

3. Other-user-generated content. Search out customers’/ donors’ own words. Find them in social media comments, letters to customer support, etc. 

4. Buying tips: Customers don’t just buy; they interact with products and services for a reason. Broaden everybody’s buying experience through education. Political donors go to the polls and have experiences to share; nonprofit supporters embrace values and belief systems with a community of people; folks who “like” products are interested in how other customers make choices.

5 Usage tips. Focus copy on innovative ways customers can use your product or get involved in your charitable activities. For copy ideas, talk to customer service reps who hear feedback in customers’ own words.

Source: SilverPop white paper,  5 Tips for “White Space” emails, April 2014, http://www.silverpop.com/marketing-resources/overview/

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Leftovers To Feed the Content Beast

1. Turn an ebook into a series of blog posts, or a series of blog posts into an ebook.

2. When you host a webinar, create a ride-along transcript so content “snackers” can scan the information. Later, turn the transcript into a slideshow.

3.  Capture a real-time tweet chat and republish it as a crowd-sourced blog post.

4. Pull sound bytes out of a long-form report or white paper and use them as tweets and Facebook updates.

5. Give quotes a new life as graphics; use them on visual platforms like Facebook and Pinterest.

6. Always read blog comments; they serve as both fodder and inspiration for tweets and short blog posts.

7. Use Evernote to snatch tidbits from all over the web; use liberally.

8. To keep readers abreast of change, revisit last year's article as the basis for a retrospective (e.g., "That Was Then, This Is Now.")

9. Rely on white papers for blog wraps like this one. (And thank you, Curata, for your ebook, “How To Feed the Content Beast.” You inspired me.)

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Thirsty Marketing: Slurp, Slurp

I've been watching Season 6 of "Mad Men." As fans know (and to boil it down to almost nothing), the show is about the history of advertising (the 50s, 60s, and 70s, so far) as seen though the eyes of copywriters and account pitchmen. The premise that the world can be moved by ground-breaking ad copy may have been true at one time. That time has passed. Here's the deal.

In 2013, consumers really have "heard it all" (about one million to seven million times per year, according to Yankelvich Research). 

No wonder, in this heavy laden content world, consumers both recognize and loathe being talked at and down to.

A case in point: Overuse of the term "community." Look folks, I'm your customer, not a member of your self-anointed community. True, I may love your product design and functionality (iPad) or treasure the incomparably customer-centric way you do business (Amazon). But I'm really just an Amazon enthusiast/fan and an Apple user (Note: Once upon a time, when the Mad Men were young, I used to be part of the Apple community because it was a community ...  but that's another story).

A second case in point: The co-opting of genuine customer service by the telecom industry's la-de-da marketing (or is it their NON-marketing) C-suiters. Have a problem? If you call in, you're sure to get recorded messages like these:

"Please hold; your call is very important to us."

or

 "A customer service executive will be right with you."

You've got to be kidding me, Comcast. Your customer service "executives" are paid a pittance. The big bucks go to investors and lobbyists who haunt Congress for de-regulation favors. We all know this. Get real .. or we'll get you. Lose your grip on that monopoly and you're done. We will remember.

Consumers Fight Back with Sharing

We've been hearing about "authentic" marketing for quite awhile. It matters ... a lot. But too many folks with something to sell, sell us short. We're getting even .. On message boards and Twitter and Facebook pages and Yelp. And here's an even bigger threat to "fool me twice": the sharing economy. Here, from an article in The Economist, check out what is, perhaps, the most successful peer-to-peer sharing scheme yet.

 "LAST night 40,000 people rented accommodation from a service that offers 250,000 rooms in 30,000 cities in 192 countries. They chose their rooms and paid for everything online. But their beds were provided by private individuals, rather than a hotel chain. Hosts and guests were matched up by Airbnb, a firm based in San Francisco. Since its launch in 2008 more than 4m people have used it—2.5m of them in 2012 alone. It is the most prominent example of a huge new “sharing economy”, in which people rent beds, cars, boats and other assets directly from each other, co-ordinated via the internet."

This! Your house and mine, now competing with one of the most price-aggressive, stable industries in the world: hotels!

It's not quite over yet, though. Here  are a few positives for combating cons and intrusions while retaining the marketing edge and dealing with/cashing in on/exploiting the trend to peer sharing:

1. Do be authentic. It's okay to be funny (Mayhem is) and brilliant copywriting still builds customer goodwill (brought to you by "the most interesting man in the world"). But don't even try to cover up the truth.

2. If you have loyal customers, you already have the makings of your own "shared economy." Group pricing? Hosted information roundtables? Shipping/logistics packages? None of these are brand new, but maybe you have a twist to add. Consider the possibilities.

3. The world is rearranging its parts, which suggests new partnership opportunities. For example, who would have thought that hands-on construction worker types-- or realtors, for that matter -- could so successfully partner with artsy-heartsy interior designers? The Property Brothers, that's who... and they are cashing in.

4. Customers are both voting with their feet and screaming as they head for the exit. Voting and screaming. This could work.

Stay thirsty, my friends.

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