Continuing with my recent theme of The Beatles Teach Marketing, let’s have a look at a new song.

“And Your Bird Can Sing” was recorded in April of 1966, and like many Beatles songs appears not to have much of a history. John Lennon, its author, referred to it as “another of my throwaways…fancy paper around an empty box”.¹ Still, it has some important lessons for marketers when we consider it to be written from a recipient’s viewpoint.

First up is the first stanza:

You tell me that you’ve got everything you want
And your bird can sing
But you don’t get me, you don’t get me

It seems that most marketers don’t truly get their target audiences. As I mentioned in my first post, “even today, we find many marketers are looking at email recipients ‘the same old way’ thinking that they are above their captive recipients, even though that’s no longer the case.”

The medium is different and your recipients expect you to know that, understand that, and most importantly, live that. Email is fundamentally different from paper communication in that things are much more immediate and much more measurable. With email (as well as with social media), your recipients expect to be part of a conversation, not treated like you had just handed them a sale flyer at the local Mega Mart.

I think that it is rather telling that getting images displayed at GMail is linked to this very idea. Part of Google’s requirements to display images by default is that the recipient has to have emailed you twice. That engagement is key to actually getting your recipients, not just showing that you might.

You say you’ve seen seven wonders
and your bird is green
But you can’t see me, you can’t see me

Your product might be “Best in Breed” and it may actually help people to “Leverage Their Synergies Going Forward by Enhancing Capacity Using Blue Sky Thinking That Creates a Paradigm Shift Leading to Incentivised, End-to-End, 24/7, Mission Critical, Robust, Value-added Deliverables” (does anyone have a bingo yet?), and a loaf of sliced bread, but if you aren’t engaging with your recipients, then you will find that your mail be blocked and/or filtered in such a way that it is never seen by the people you are trying to help.

When your prized possessions
Start to weigh you down
Look in my direction,
I’ll be round, I’ll be round

When your bird is broken will it bring you down
You may be awoken,
I’ll be round, I’ll be round

These two stanzas are the key to everything for the modern email marketer. Your possessions here are not really the products you are marketing, but rather your ideas and prejudices. As long as you allow them to weigh you down, then things will never work as well as you think they should.

You have to be willing to swallow your pride and break things down and figure out what works. In evangelical religious discussions, you may hear people discuss being “broken before God,” by which they usually mean that something happens that causes someone to swallow their pride and look in a new direction, and at the risk of sounding like I may advocate religious thought which I don’t, let me suggest that the same is needed by email marketers.

As long as you are content to continue doing the same things in the same ways, then you will continue to get the same results. But, when you find that your bird is broken and your own negative reputation is weighing you down then maybe you will start looking in new directions and trying new things. When you start listening to your subscribers instead of talking AT them, then the things that were weighing you down will be gone. Your campaigns will be more successful, not just because you are enjoying a better reputation, but because you are truly

You tell me that you’ve heard every sound there is
And your bird can swing
But you can’t hear me, you can’t hear me

“You can’t hear me” doesn’t denote a lack of ability to hear, but rather a lack of will to hear. This is a terrible thing because engagement and conversation mean that communication flows in both directions. That means really listening to your recipients. Not just allowing them to make comments in your direction that get summarily ignored, but actually hearing what they are trying to tell you and altering what you are doing as a result of that feedback.

I know that John Lennon didn’t intend this song to be a commentary on email marketing any more than Paul McCartney intended for “I’m Looking Through You” to be a commentary on email marketing. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t find something good in there to help things go more smoothly.

Following up yesterday’s blog post on the Beatles’ song “I’m Looking Through You,” I’d like to revisit a sort of one-off statement that formed the genesis for that post:

And, as I listened to the lyrics, it occurred to me that often marketers forget that relationships are not forever.

Looking at client lists and expectations, I am often struck by an insidious thought: marketers are like spurned ex-boyfriends now stalking their exes. They’re just not willing to let go of the relationship even though it’s over. I’ll let you draw your own mental parallels. But, it didn’t take me long to come up with one that was accurate enough to be creepy to several of my friends.

Ultimately, though, understand that your recipients are not looking for a life-time exclusive commitment. You don’t have one of those with your providers, your recipients don’t want one with you, either. Often they are only after something temporary.

After a certain amount of time another lyric from “I’m Looking Through You” comes into play:

Love has a nasty habit of disappearing overnight

Time changes everything and that includes the interests of your recipients. People who used to be responsive aren’t responsive any more. They no longer care about you and your mailings. Things they loved before they don’t love any more. And all that continuing to mail them accomplishes is making you look like the stalker ex-boyfriend who just can’t seem to let go.

On the one hand, you don’t want to look like the stalker ex-boyfriend, but on the other you don’t want to lose someone as a customer who may have a recurring need but on a longer scale. So, what’s the solution?

First, pay attention to your customer purchase cycles. For instance, if you sell running shoes then let your market dictate the cycle. Back when I was high school and running cross-country, we figured a pair of racing shoes would be good for approximately 300 miles and everyday running shoes about 1000 miles. If you specialize in selling high-end shoes to serious athletes who will run 10 marathons in three months and rotate their shoes, then weekly contact might be just the thing. On the other hand, if your clients are people looking for comfortable shoes that they will wear for a year, then even monthly contact will be overkill, and the love will disappear. This is a great opportunity to use list segmentation. Find out what your clients’ needs are and cater to those needs instead of expecting your customers to cater their purchasing needs to you’re doing and send mail accordingly.

Second, pay attention to what people do with your mail and adjust what you’re doing accordingly, even if that means removing them from your list. If you are running a list for a conventions and visitors bureau, then consider that many people on your list may not care about your city after they go to that convention or take that vacation. Perhaps that should mean that you capture that information at collection and then offer options after the trip has been concluded.

Someone who hasn’t followed any calls to action should certainly be removed from your list after a six months or two complete average buying cycles (which ever is longer). It might not have happened overnight, but the love has certainly disappeared.

As the old trope goes, diamonds are forever. Relationships are not. Yes, that includes customer relationships.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 1965, Paul McCartney was engaged to Jane Asher, but he wasn’t that happy in his relationship. That frustration gave rise to this song. And, as I listened to the lyrics, it occurred to me that often marketers forget that relationships are not forever.

Not only that, but there are powerful messages in this song for marketers. Consider the following lyrics:

Your lips are moving,
I cannot hear.
Your voice is soothing,
But the words aren’t clear.

At a certain point in your relationship, things are going to cool and the recipient won’t be responsive any more. They’ll see your lips moving (your mail in their mail readers), but they won’t listen anymore. If your lips keep moving they’ll eventually get your mail blocked (either by their own filters or by their ISPs) and then they will truly no longer be able to hear you anymore.

You’re thinking of me,
The same old way.
You were above me.
But not today.

The only difference,
Is you’re down there.
I’m looking through you,
And you’re nowhere.

What used to work doesn’t work any more. Marketing related blogs are full of posts on how email marketing isn’t the same as paper marketing. But still, even today, we find many marketers are looking at email recipients “the same old way” thinking that they are above their captive recipients, even though that’s no longer the case. The customer is king in ways that they never were before.

Not only that, but ISPs are paying more and more attention to what your recipients are doing. No longer is permission and authentication alone good enough. Now, engagement is the rising star. If you aren’t keeping your recipients engaged, then they’ll be looking through you, but you’ll be no where.

It’s time to leave the past behind and understand that things really aren’t the same any more and your approach to has to be as different as the times in which you live. Otherwise, your recipients will be singing this song — to you.