In my last blog entry I was talking about the evolution of email accounts and the convenience of the Priority Inbox for users and the opportunities for marketers. In order to better explain how this works, I added a link to an Gmail-video. After realizing how much impact that video had on me and how I could picture myself coming home from a smartphone-free weekend not having to wear my suit of armour while checking my emails, I thought about the tremendous emotional influence videos can have – especially the ones that are recommended by friends. “The use of video as the central organizing element for social interaction and storytelling online“ is referred to as ‘Social Video’ Marketing (Definition by Advertising Age in 2009).

According to a recently conducted study by Decipher Research, viewers are far more likely to recall a brand name and engage with an ad’s message if a branded video has been recommended to them by a peer. This made me think of the most striking advertisments I remember – have a look and tell me what you think about them and if you have enjoyed them watching as much as I did.

Snickers Football Game

Old Spice Guy

Evian Baby Rollers

and my all-time favourite Heineken Fridge

Apart from the fact that I think that they are hilarious, they have three more things in common. Although those videos are the ones that come to my mind whenever I think about successful advertising, I have never ever seen one of them on television but they were all – without exception – recommended by friends or posted on their walls on various social networks. Exactly this phenomenon was proven by the survey. Social video recommendations have a direct impact on traditional brand metrics and ad enjoyment.

Here are some striking results:

• Brand recall and brand association rose 7 percent among viewers who had peers recommend the videos versus viewers who found it by browsing
• 73 percent of respondents who viewed a peer-recommended video recalled the brand when prompted versus 68 percent of viewers who had browsed to the video directly;
• People who enjoyed a video were 97 percent more likely to purchase the product featured in the video.

Although I’m in possession of a smartphone and sometimes even in obsession with it, I occasionally leave my phone at home when I go away for the weekend and spend a couple of days without constantly checking socialnetworks or my emails. Although a „weekend off“ can be relaxing, the first time back in „real life“ isn’t so much – 53 new emails to be looked through on a Monday morning is not exactly how I like to start a week.

Gmail and Hotmail presented a new tool called Priority Inbox. This feature automatically identifies important emails and separates them from other received emails in order to help users to focus on the content that matters to them most. This feature operates on a complex set of algorithms that can analyse a user’s email behaviour. In addition, you can also mark certain senders as priority by teaching Google to interpret your mail properly by clicking either the “mark as important” or “mark as not important” buttons.To get a first insight into this advanced email delivery, check out this video!

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But what does this mean for emarketers? How will the future of email marketing be affected by the Priority inbox?

Just like the Spamfilters, the Priority inbox does not ultimately represent a danger to email marketing but – correctly addressed- can also represent a challenge and opportunity for companies using email marketing. Mailers that might suffer from this new development are those that send generic mails en masse and do not emphasize on personalized content. But in my opinion, this is just another advantage about the Priority Inbox! Just as any other form of communication, emails to your subscribers should be relevant, welcome and of interest for your companies customer. I personally only engage with emails if they are part of an ongoing conversation or interaction. One way of starting a – in the best case scenario – long lasting customer relationship is to implement a double opt-in sign-up form. This process requires the potential customer to sign up via an opt-in form and then confirm via e-mail and ensures that marketers only address „engaged“ users in the future. To open the first e-mail and click the confirmation link is probably the biggest barrier to overcome and best way of making sure to land into the „right“ inbox.

Although I think that spamfilters are the best invention after the email itself, I’m sometimes happy to receive marketing campaigns and discover offers that I didn’t even know I was interested in – so, I guess Steve jobs was definately right, when he said that „ A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.“

Therefore having personalized, tailored marketing emails be allowed in my priority box (so I can make sure not to miss a great but only temporary offer on Groupon or SocialLiving) is a smart tool for me!