Ben & Jerry’s drops email in favour of social media
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Ben & Jerry’s will become one of the first big brands to abandon regular email marketing. It will instead focus on social media.
The ice cream brand has decided to cut its monthly newsletter because the feedback it received from customers suggested that the majority would prefer to be contacted on social media sites.
Email marketing has long been established as one of the most effective digital marketing channels and has become a standard marketing channel for most brands.
In a move away from established practice, Ben & Jerry’s plans only one email update to customers each year. Instead, Facebook and Twitter profiles will be used to engage with customers on an ongoing basis, both in-house and through its PR agency Mischief.
Vicky Willis, Ben & Jerry’s senior brand manager, said it wanted to focus on building relationships with customers and that it sees social media as the best channel for this.
“Developing friendship and a relationship is key for us and social media is the best place for that,” said Willis.
Ben & Jerry’s put out a final email newsletter to customers last week , prompting them to instead connect with the brand on Twitter and Facebook. Since then, Willis said the company had received mainly positive feedback on the decision.
Felix Velarde, managing director of eCRM and digital agency Underwired, said, “There are fairly compelling arguments for focusing on social platforms but perhaps only for younger people who do not use email in the same way as older people do. To switch off a channel that is used by large swathes of people seems premature.”
This story first appeared on newmediaage.co.uk
YouGov Insight:
· When buying chocolate for their own consumption 11% of UK consumers look for products that contain Fair Trade chocolate.
· 1 in 5 consumers base their chocolate purchases based on whether or not they approve of that brand.
· As of March 2010, 94% of consumers were aware of the takeover of Cadbury’s by Kraft.
· Of those who were aware of the takeover 5% said that they would boycott Cadbury’s as a result.
· 37% of consumers say that they only eat high quality chocolate.
Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:24 am
I received the email from Ben & Jerry's & it's great that they're going to a new platform to build the consumer relationships, but there's a clear chance some established & valuable relationships are going to slip through the net as the transition to Twitter/Facebook has been fairly sudden and they have not guided consumers over there clearly and easily enough. I am on both of those platforms but have been given no incentive to connect to the brand. Also email can be welcomed where it is useful (e.g. notifying me that tickets are on sale for the Summer Sundae) where this can be missed in the mass of status updates etc. Just a couple of thoughts to consider.
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Steve Abbott | Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:35 pm
Interesting, with email being used by 92% of all those with internet access and Social Media by 47% this would, in the words of Sir Humphrey, seem to be 'Very Brave'
Data from The British Population Survey, Jan to June 2010.
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