Comments on: Is Twitter the New Mailing List?

By: randulo

randulo — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:39:37 +0000

Wink, thanks for the input. The average Twitter user may not be dealing with thousands of people like you and I do for business reasons. In fact, there are figures on this somewhere, but typically, people are dealing with under the Dunbar number of 150. So, if they’re following friends, family and a few wineries they are really into, Twitter is the RSS for the masses as well as the new mailing list. Then, if the wine folks are really big fans of a lot of wineries, bloggers and wine buddies, they also are probably into the tools that can group activity such as TweetDeck and many others.

Also, it’s clear that traditional mailing still needs to be done for major operations, such as Wes Hagen’s BBQ events (although these exceptional happenings may be word of mouth) , allocations, new web sites, change of phone number or price lists. However, what Wes and others do on a weekly or even daily basis on Twitter can disseminate tidbits on a timely basis, rather than the big lump of stuff that one receives typically in a mailing. To this last point, ever wondered if people who send out mailings don’t think about the ones they receive? They are all too long! No one reads through them, if we did, we’d spend all day on email, literally.

By: Wink Lorch

Wink Lorch — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:22:19 +0000

Yes, Randulo, I do think that any winery with a name is a brand and that increasingly, we as invidiual self-employed writers or consultants are also a brand.

Regarding your hypothesis on twitter being the new mailing list, I agree with the arguments for this and even personally like the idea. However, I fear that too many twitter users may be disorganised (like me) if they end up following lots of people and don’t have them properly grouped or time enough to monitor everything. This may mean they miss certain important messages unless they come through on email as well (not that I’m much more organised with my emails). There’s an awful lot of noise out there from brands, both big, small and personal.

By: randulo

randulo — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 05:55:41 +0000

Great points, Dean, thanks for adding these more developed thoughts. You didn’t address the question about whether you think Clos Pepe is a “brand” as such, but you added some very useful notions.

By: dean guadagni

dean guadagni — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:21:59 +0000

Excellent post!

Taking the ideas and questions a step further. . .

1. “I wonder how many people who are on the list are also on Twitter?

A: This is a huge opportunity most wineries are missing. We perform data appends, with a simple email address, that returns up to 25 social network urls for that email address.

2. “I know at least one person. I wonder if he follows @ClosPepe?”

A: This is the key. If a winery has club members or consumers who do not follow them on Twitter but have a Twitter account, this a perfect opportunity to create an offer. Twitter is another touch point but it is not being measured and perceived as the direct marketing and sales channel that it is becoming.

Facts about Twitter Evolution:

1. It is a direct marketing and sales channel that can be keycoded and measured

2. It is a huge list building opportunity
3. List segmentation is available for those who understand how to segment
4. New touch point for consumers
5. Prospecting tool leading to real time conversations which can be converted into tasting room traffic, new relationships, sales offers, and list adoption
6. List “fatigue” can be averted by utilizing messaging on Twitter rather than blast emails