Takeaway from the SPAM or Good Marketing Conversation

As you probably remember I recently raised questions about the use of mass DMs as a marketing tool.  While I used the recent example from Jeffrey Hayzlett, the focus of the post was not on Hayzlett but on the use of Mass DMs and if they were a good, or bad, marketing practice. In order to fully understand the answer to the question I had to go to the source.

So, does it pay off to send promotional DMs to your followers?

• While I did not view the message as SPAM I did view it as a bad decision, poor marketing.  For me, and for some others, it left a bad taste in my mouth.  The reason, I opt in to follow an individual to learn from them, potentially to engage in conversations with them.  Some percentage of the conversation will be self-promotion, obviously.  DMs, for me, have been a method to take conversations off-line prior to moving them to a richer channel.  Those that use them for self-promotion without first establishing a relationship are usually unfollowed immediately.
• In the last post I included a survey.  With 65 votes in at this time, 83.1% of you felt that the practice was either SPAM or poor marketing.
• In chatting with Jeffrey it is clear that he feels that the nature of opt-in with Twitter makes this acceptable. If you are following someone you are opting in, giving them permission to DM you.  According to Jeffrey, the majority of his followers agree.  In fact, he received hundreds of congratulatory comments and only 17 negative responses.  With those numbers it is clear that the majority of his audience was okay with the message.
• Digging a little deeper, I took a look at the number of followers.  There has been no dip in followers, no negative fall-out.
• Alright, lets focus on book sales. I estimated a couple hundred sales from this action but Jeffrey was clear that I was low in my estimates, just saying that several hundred books have been sold based upon this messaging.

So, looking at the facts…

• Hundreds of books sold.
• No measurable negative impact.

Do you think we will see more of this activity in the twittersphere  in the months to come?   Negatives, if they exist, will only be visible in time as a result of  eroding trust, weakened relationships.  With most people focused on short-term benefits I can assure you that we will all be seeing more of this in the future.

Jeffrey, thank you for exploring this approach further with me, it is truly appreciated.

John