Four Ways to Delight – Not Annoy – Visitors With the Element of Surprise

During its most recent keynote event, Apple announced that it had a surprise in store for their customers: every iTunes accountholder in 119 countries would receive a free copy of U2’s latest album “Songs of Innocence.” This giveaway translated into over half a billion albums given away, representing the largest release in history in a deal that is speculated to have cost Apple $100 million dollars. It would be easy to assume that Apple’s customers would be thrilled by this generous gesture. While many certainly were, there was also a very vocal segment who were not so pleased to see this album suddenly appear in their music collection. Many of these naysayers took to social media to express their concerns, which were centered not as much on the album itself but rather on the way that its delivery had been handled. While Apple undoubtedly thought that they were providing a convenience by automatically pushing the album out to all iTunes accounts, in doing so, they took away the customer’s ability to choose whether or not they wanted to receive this gift. What was meant to be a nice surprise came across as an act of overstepping the bounds of privacy for some customers – definitely not what Apple was hoping for when they conceived this promotion. Employing the element of surprise in marketing and in web design is tricky business. When done right, it can delight your customers, but if handled incorrectly – as with the Apple giveaway – it has the potential to frustrate and alienate them instead. Let’s take a look at four ways to use the unexpected to make a favorable impression on your website visitors and leave them wanting more – and the pitfalls to avoid along the way.

Surprise! Here’s a free gift!

Freebies have long been a staple of marketing and promotion. From product sampling to contests to incentives for joining a mailing list or sharing contact information, they are an effective way to break the ice when building relationships with new customers. There’s nothing wrong with a good giveaway – as long as you obey the fundamental rule of trustcasting, recognizing that all promotional efforts must be founded first and foremost in building trust with your customers and website visitors. As we touched on above, the problem with Apple’s U2 album promotion had nothing to do with the giveaway itself but rather with its delivery. Permission is a key element of trust-based marketing, and Apple’s circumvention of the act of permission seeking was perceived as a violation of trust by some iTunes customers. A direct contrast to this is MailChimp’s free t-shirt promotion. When a new customer opens a paid account and sends their first email campaign, they receive a message of congratulations along with the offer of a free t-shirt. In order to receive the t-shirt, however, the customer must select the size they would like, thereby accepting the offer; the shirt doesn’t simply turn up unexpectedly in their mailbox. Of course, we have no way of knowing how many people actually decline this free gift, but regardless of whether it’s zero percent or fifty, the most important aspect is the respect for the customer demonstrated by the act of seeking permission. MailChimp allows the customer to maintain a sense of control over the transaction rather than removing that control the way that Apple did. As this comparison shows, permission is a make-or-break element between a surprise that delights and one that compromises trust and goodwill.

Surprise! You’ve got mail!

Email is definitely an area of online marketing that’s fraught with pitfalls. You can be a welcome presence in your customers’ inboxes, or you can be a nuisance that’s banished to the junk mail heap. One way to practically guarantee that you’ll end up in the latter category is by “surprising” your customers with a flood of emails that they did not expect to receive. Undoubtedly, you’ve experienced this scenario at some point: you make a purchase from a website or register for an account, and all of a sudden your inbox is overrun with promotional emails from that company trying to get you to come back to their site and buy, buy, buy. Make no mistake: the simple act of placing an order is not an invitation to unleash a deluge of spammy messages. Again, returning to the theme of permission, the first step to ensuring that your emails are welcome is by allowing your customers to explicitly request to receive them. A common way to accomplish this is by including a mailing list opt-in on your site’s checkout form accompanied by a message affirming that the customer wishes to receive updates with special offers and future promotions. In and of itself, this is a fine practice. If someone wants this information, allow them to receive it! The problem is that many companies have this option selected by default, and as a result, in their rush to complete their transaction, many customers will overlook this feature entirely and will unwittingly opt in to the series of emails that will follow. Again, this is an unpleasant surprise that does not contribute to improving the customer’s perception of your brand. If you are going to employ a mailing list opt-in checkbox anywhere on your site, make sure that it’s unchecked by default and that customers must actually see, read and make a conscious effort to elect to receive ongoing communication from you. Your mailing list won’t grow as quickly this way, but you will avoid surprising unwitting subscribers with emails that they did not expect or want. But obtaining permission to send these emails is only half the story. You also need to make sure that the content of your messages is designed to delight. Anything that is purely self-promotional in nature will be regarded as nothing more than an annoyance. You must use your carefully garnered inbox privileges to provide value to your customers – whether that comes in the form of special offers, fun promotions, reminders about upcoming events or just plain useful information. Your focus should be on crafting email campaigns that leave your customers looking forward to seeing what you’ll send next – not hitting the “spam” button as soon as it lands.

Surprise! Let’s watch a video!

Video content is a great way to engage with visitors to your website. As much as we writer types are loathe to admit it, people don’t like to read. They like to look at pretty pictures, and even more, they like to be entertained by videos. If you can create compelling videos – whether they demonstrate your products, offer helpful tips or are just flat-out amusing – your visitors will be delighted that you’ve gone the extra mile to give them the kind of content that they prefer rather than forcing them to wade through page after page of written text, and you’ll be head and shoulders above your competition. But there’s one important caveat to video content: never, ever, ever set your videos to auto-play on your site. Uncued audio, video, animations and pop-ups are completely taboo in modern website design, and if you use them, you’ll provide an unpleasant surprise that sends visitors scrambling for the back button to get away from this sensory onslaught. Don’t insult the intelligence of your visitors by forcing content upon them. It’s the online equivalent of having a pushy salesman pounce on them the minute they walk in the door and hound them into looking at products or services that may not be relevant to their interests at all. Instead, provide contextual clues on the page that indicate what your video is about, and allow your visitors to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to view it. This removes the element of unwelcome surprise without eliminating the value of the video content itself.

Surprise! We’ve made changes to our website!

Inevitably, there will come a time when it’s necessary to make changes to your website. These changes could be as minor as adding new types of products or services or as significant as a complete redesign. The problem comes when regular visitors return to your site expecting one thing (the site that they have become familiar and comfortable with) but receive something else instead (the new site). Of course, it goes without saying that any changes you make to your site should be driven by the objective of creating a better experience for your users. Make sure you carry this objective through to the launch of your new site or its new features by smoothing the transition for your regular visitors. After all, every website comes with an inherent learning curve. If you’ve done your job right, that learning curve should not be very steep; yet, it will still exist as visitors determine where they need to go and what they need to do to accomplish their goals. Therefore, when you make a change, you can ensure that it’s well received by visitors simply by alerting them to these changes and guiding them through the process of navigating them. One example of how to execute a re-launch right is Citizens Bank. Weeks before the release of their new site, they posted a message on their existing home page announcing that changes were ahead and signaling the date when the newly overhauled site would launch. They also offered a preview of the new site complete with an overview of new features and instructions for where to find commonly used tools. Did every customer see this message and take the tour? Of course not, but many did, and as a result, they were not taken aback by a jarring surprise on the day of the new site’s launch. Instead, they were already acclimated to the new features and functions, thereby maintaining a sense of certainty and control throughout the transition process. By demonstrating to their customers that their needs and desires were an important consideration in the bank’s plans for their new site, Citizens Bank was able to create a positive experience out of their redesign and avoid the potentially hazardous pitfall of forcing their customers to stumble unassisted through the process of re-learning how to use their site.

In summary

Going above and beyond to provide customers with unexpected value can be a powerful way to separate yourself from the competition, but if done incorrectly, it can also backfire in a big way. In the case of Apple, the company had to release a tool to allow customers to remove the free U2 album that they had been gifted – something they clearly did not foresee as necessary when they conceived the promotion. When you are considering how to implement the element of surprise in your marketing and website design plans, remember never to lose sight of your customers and their needs. Always ask their permission, keep the power in their hands and allow them to remain in control of the process as much as possible so that your surprise will be welcomed with delight and satisfaction.

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Keep it Social

Human communication is complex. The words that you use, the tone and volume of your voice as well as your body language and facial expressions all play a role in how your message is received by those that you are communicating with. A poorly chosen phrase or a simple misstep in your body language can steer a conversation into unexpected, and unintended, territory. In an age when so much of our communication has now become digital, the challenges have become even greater. Many of the social cues present in face-to-face interactions are all but impossible to convey. Body language and facial expressions are a non‐factor, and tone is as hard to express as it is easy to misinterpret. As a result, when communicating online, achieving clear understanding of meaning and intention comes down to the words that you use and how you use them.

Social communication

In today’s Digital Age, social media plays a pivotal role in the way companies communicate with their customers. But with the proliferation of social platforms – from standard bearers like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ to niche sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Flickr and Foursquare – it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the task of managing your brand’s social presence. As a result, it’s tempting to find ways to automate this communication in order to save time and resources. This is exactly the solution that I discussed recently with a vendor who was promoting a platform that would automatically broadcast updates to dozens of social media sites each time a blog post, news release or similar content was published to our website. Rather than spending the time to post this content to each of our social profiles individually, this tool would do it all for us in one quick shot. While this may sound like a dream come true, the problem is that it is a blunt instrument-style approach to communication: every profile gets exactly the same update at the same time. But the reality is that not all social media sites are the same, and neither are the audiences that use them. The way you communicate with connections on LinkedIn should differ from how you do so on Facebook. Similarly, the content you’d publish on photo-sharing sites like Instagram, Pinterest or Flickr is completely different from the updates you’d post to a micro‐blogging site like Twitter. Each site has a syntax specific to that particular social media platform, and ignoring that syntax greatly compromises the effectiveness your communication. You absolutely have something to lose – the opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way. Some might argue that since the posts are automated, you’ve got nothing to lose by trying this approach, but that is incorrect. You absolutely have something to lose – the opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way. And that lost opportunity could cost you dearly if the tailored messages of your competitors reach your potential customers where your robotic, automated communications miss the mark or, even worse, alienate your followers. In the end, while automation will save you time, it does so by taking away your ability to customize your message for specific audiences and platforms.

Be social, be specific

Stepping back from social media for a moment, think about human communication in general. We change the way that we speak and the messages that we send depending on who our audience is. You speak to your friends differently than you speak to your family. You communicate with co‐workers and peers differently than with clients and customers. Effective interpersonal communication requires an understanding of how best to convey your desired message to those you are speaking with. This is not something you could ever automate; it requires a human touch. When it comes to communicating via social media, the medium and the methods may be different, but the basic underlying principal remains the same: to be effective, your message must be tailored to the audience that will receive it. Although the channels themselves may be digital, you can’t eliminate the human element. For an example of how different messages should be tailored to different platforms – and why not every update is right for every social media profile you manage – let’s take a look at how my company shares our news and announcements. When we acquire a new certification or receive recognition that’s worthy of a press release, we promote that accomplishment on sites like Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook where followers naturally expect to see updates about what’s going on with our company. In each case, we use the specific syntax and conventions of that site – such as hashtags on Twitter – to make sure those updates are in a format that audiences are familiar with and can easily find. We do not, however, share content like this on sites like Flickr or dribbble because those platforms are visual in nature, and these particular announcements have no meaningful visual component to them. If instead we are publishing an update about a new website project that we are launching for a client, we will again post that announcement to Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook, but we will also add updates to social media sites that are more visual in nature because, for this update, we do have good image-based content (i.e., a screenshot of the new design) that can accompany the post. Each time we post an update to social media, we consider the nature of the content to decide which sites are most appropriate for those updates. Additionally, each social media post that we make uses the specific syntax of that social media platform.

Forget trying to do it all; focus on doing it right

The concept of automating your social media communication is only an attractive option if you are trying to publish content to so many social media sites that doing so has become unmanageable drain on your time. If this is the case, the solution isn’t to find a way to automate the work; it’s to streamline your activities to include only those sites that are a good fit for your needs. Trying to use every single social media site available to post as much content as possible is not a sound strategy. Why? Because social media platforms are overrun with self-promotional content that is irrelevant to audiences, and users of these platforms are quickly becoming conditioned to tune out this static. Sending automated updates to dozens of sites at once, without ever considering whether or not those updates are appropriate for those sites, just adds to this problem. Is that how you want your company’s news and announcements to be perceived – as part of the useless glut of social media updates? So if taking the time to individually update dozens of social media profiles for your company is not the answer, and automating those updates is also a no‐go, then how can you use social media to effectively communicate your organization’s message? The first step is to speak with a professional team that can help you establish an appropriate social media strategy – one that suits your brand and fits into your overall marketing plan. That team can help you identify which social media sites your audience is actually using and what types of updates you should send to each platform. They can also help you develop a rhythm for social media updates – one that you will be comfortable executing on a regular basis. By identifying the right sites for your organization and understanding how to use those sites effectively, you can capitalize on the power of social media to grow your brand and your business.

Case in point: KLR

KLR is a large accounting and business consulting firm headquartered in New England. In developing their social media strategy, they realized that while their target audience does likely use Facebook (after all, who doesn’t at this point?), they do not use that platform to search for the types of high‐end accounting and business planning services that the firm offers. As a result, promoting their services to that audience on that platform would be inappropriate, and their content would fall on deaf ears. Instead, KLR uses sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, where they have built a network of business connections that recognize them as thought leaders in their industry, to promote their services. Does this mean they turned away from Facebook altogether? Not at all; rather, they determined a more effective use for the platform: communicating with current and prospective employees, including interns whom they were looking to attract to the firm. Recognizing that college-age students would absolutely be using Facebook to research potential employers and positions, KLR decided to use their Facebook profile to showcase their company culture and their standing as a “Best Place to Work” for eight years running. By evaluating different social media sites, which segments of their audience (if any) are using those sites, and how they can most effectively convey their messages across that landscape, KLR has made the most out of the time they spend managing their social media presence.

A final word

Social media can be invaluable in its role as an open line of communication between your company and its customers. However, it can also be one of the surest ways to waste time and resources if you don’t have the right strategy in place. Make sure you’re getting the most from your efforts by contacting a digital marketing specialist to discuss your company’s needs. Together, you’ll be able to define your company’s voice and bring a human touch to your social media strategy.

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