You Ask, I Answer: Email Marketing vs. Livestreaming?

In today's episode, Catherine asks, most marketers are evangelizing about doing live streaming as being the media who gets the highest reach in engagement. Why did it come in last in your almost timely poll? Really good question. So over the holidays, uh, I ran a poll in my newsletter, the almost timely newsletter, asking people what content format you would like more content for me in. And these are the results here.

We can see that email content, uh text-based email, uh, came in first, uh, 29% of the votes there, uh, followed by uh we have uh text blogs at 22%. Uh we have video at 19%, audio at 16%, and live streams down at the bottom at 12%. So why is everyone talking about the benefits of live streaming? Well, there's a couple of reasons for this. Um, and I I'll preface this by saying this is speculation, I don't have any hard data on this, uh, is algorithms.

Uh as all these different companies and services like Facebook and stuff roll out live streaming and live video and stuff, uh they want people to use that feature. And so they give it preference. But what typically happens with uh any of these formats is that the algorithm is tuned to give preference to it for a little while. And the percentages of engagement for it are not substantially higher than uh than you would that's not like a hundred X the performance. Back when Instagram rolled out uh uh Instagram TV, uh, for a while it was you know 2x the performance of Instagram posts, like 2%, 3% engagement rates as opposed to like in 1%.

Uh I think it would have been higher than that. But either way, it was not like 70% engagement by any means. It was it was still in the single digits. And so if you are a social media marketer and you are focused very heavily on trying to scrape together as any engagement whatsoever, then yes, live streaming, because it is favored by the algorithm right now, uh, is does deliver temporarily higher results. And it's been a little while, and we don't have any really good data because it's not in the reporting APIs about whether uh it continues to do so.

I know looking at the show's performance for the the Trust Insights live stream, which is typically Thursdays at one PM Eastern time, um, and uh a few other shows that I follow that are live shows. I mean the average number of viewers is single or double digits at most, uh, even for really really big shows. Um you know, I uh I follow a bunch of musicians and stuff on YouTube and stuff, and when there's a a a live show that they do, there's one band uh has about half a million followers, and on any given show they've got about a hundred people watching, so the numbers are still pretty small. So uh that's why I think marketers are evangelizing about it, um, because it does get you slight preference in the algorithms. Now, why did it come in last in the poll?

Well, live streams are appointment media, they are appointment media, which means that you have to be there at a specific date and time if you want to get benefit from them, unless they're recorded. If you are busy, right, and if you have other things to be doing, a live stream is something that you have to make time for. Um, and for that to be the case, it has to be really, really valuable. Like it has to be super super valuable, and a lot of them aren't. You know, uh a lot of them fall in the category of I'll I'll catch if I have the time, but I don't.

And if you think about it, a live stream, because it's appointment-based media, you have to be at a specific time in a specific place. It really is just another meeting. It's just another meeting, and who wants another meeting on their calendar? So why did it come in last? Because nobody wants another meeting on their calendar.

Um, which is one of the reasons why it's so important that if you're going to pursue live streaming, uh, to engage with those die hard fans, and you should. I'm not saying you shouldn't do it, uh, because it does help you identify very quickly who are the die hard fans who have the time or are willing to make the time for your business. And it's gonna be small numbers, so exp expect that. Um you need to also pursue a a transmedia strategy on top of it, which is to say you take that live stream and then you record it and you uh slice up the recording and you turn it into text, you turn it into an audio file for a podcast, you turn it into a uh a video file for your YouTube channel, you do all the things that uh you should be doing with any kind of uh media to make it as convenient as possible for people to consume after the fact. Okay, that's the goal after the live stream is to make it redistributable, make it something that people can pick up when they want it.

That's one of the reasons why email is at the top of the poll, right? Email is as much as also nobody wants more email, at least conceptually for the busy professional on the other end of your email, it's the minimum amount of effort. There's no blog to remember to go to, there's no special app, there's no uh separate device. They literally go into the place that they're used to going the most, which is their inbox, right? And the content is there.

It's it's zero effort for them. Um except, you know, maybe the only thing that's effort for them is hitting the delete key if they didn't want to read it. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I think it came in at the top of the poll because from a behavioral perspective, you're making it easier for people. An email shows up, they either read it or they don't. They don't have to go any do anything, they don't remember anything, right?

You're taking cognitive load away from people. You're you're removing burdens as opposed to adding burdens. Mitch Joel, uh, my friend Mitch Joel has a great expression. He says, Don't be another thing for somebody to do, right? Don't be another thing on someone's to do list.

Um the more complex you make the the format of data, like a live stream. We got to be at a certain time at a certain place in a certain app. You're giving people more things to do on their to-do list. An email, nothing to do, right? If they'll get to it when they get to it, and if there's value in it, they'll look for it, right?

And they may ask, oh, hey, I didn't get this week's email, but you're not making them work any harder. So that's why these results I think are are the way they are. Now, I will caveat this. This is my audience. Um, this is not even the trust insights audience.

This is not marketers in general. This is specific to the people uh like you who follow me. Um and so I would not generalize these results. I would not say this is applicable to all marketers, it's not. My audience is a very specific audience.

You are a very specific, special kind of person who is interested in you know data and marketing hacks and tricks and analytics and stuff. That's not every marketer. Um I would encourage you to run the same poll to your audience, right? Asking what content format people you want people in your audience want more of, and get that information directly from your audience and use it to customize your marketing. Because it may turn up for your audience, they love live streaming.

They may love it, love it, love it, and they want more of it. And you should know that. If you got follow up questions, leave them in the comments box below. Subscribe to the YouTube channel and the newsletter. And I'll talk to you soon.

Take care. Want help solving your company's data analytics and digital marketing problems? Visit TrustInsights.ai today and let us know how we can help you.