Trusting Your Gut Instinct

It's soooo "scientific" these days, trust your gut! Of course, you won't get promoted. But you'll feel good.

Just finished reading another Email Insider by David Baker (11/20/06 from Media Post). I really should stop reading them. There must have been a rash on getting past the data measurement fix at Media Post (http://www.mediapost.com), which may be putting some direct marketers into the Constant Spin Cycle.

Baker's core message in, "Don't Believe Everythng You Hear," deals with the unmasking of Urban Legends in E-mail Marketing. For example...

• He takes on the one about putting all of your content on the top left of the preview pane. Yet, it's not so air tight as it may seem. What's the Reality? "Test different layouts," he says.

• Then, there's the one that says, "don't put your main content below the fold." So what's the reality behind this Urban Legend? If it's just clicks you're using to measure success, think again. Maybe you should consider measuring sales, or leads, or opens over time and put the content where it works best in the final analysis which may be above, or below, the infamous fold.

• Finally, there's the legend on long copy, which says that all copy must be short, that no one has time to read anymore, etc. Yet, as long as marketers continue testing copy length, they'll rediscover the truth about long copy, that it often performs much better than short copy.

Okay. So the data can take you only so far.

Innovation is the art of doing something unexpected, finding new patterns in old things, engaging the reader or vistor. The value of your product of company may require longer treatment. If that's the case, you can chalk it up to "good writing and solid content" which translates into more copy, e.g. the old direct mail mantra: the more you tell the more you sell.

I guess you can trust your gut if it's working properly. However, maybe it's not such a good idea if you haven't got any gut or instinct, or hunch to invest. We tend to forget this point. The fixation on data happens because many otherwise bright people won't automatically know which way to go next, without a few objective correlatives to fall back on.

Data is what the brain wants to see when it comes time to analyze.

Information is what we use to confirm our gut instinct.

It' okay to trust you gut if you take the time to become well informed. That's why measurement is so important. Why scientific analysis should be done carefully, each step of the way. Why you should read widely in the emerging field of internet marketing.

With regard to the web, on-going usability analysis has emerged on the study of interfaces and how people use them which are nearly immutable.* Yet, on closer inspection, you'll see many points of analysis and observation which are changing, as the technology changes, as people become more accustomed to using the web.

This too becomes of primary importance to the practice of email marketing. We may have reached a point where the fascination with metrics and analytics has nearly driven everyone mad with an over-abundance of conclusions which have not necessarily been confirmed as universal.

There's still a whole lot of learning going on.


*See "Prioritizing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsen and Hoa Loranger, from New Riders Press