Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream of Vermont announced in an email to their subscribers last week that they will be discontinuing their regular email marketing campaigns, in favor of social media. This was a major surprise - Usually, I think of social media and email marketing as having a close relationship and that they are most effective when used together. However, Ben & Jerry's clearly feels otherwise and that their customers prefer contact through social media sites to email in their inbox. In their last email message, they invited their subscribers to connect with them via their Facebook or Twitter accounts, and this would be the last email they would receive from the famous ice cream brand.

Since this announcement, internet marketers and marketing blogs have been buzzing with the news. This is the first major corporation to completely discontinue email marketing, a mainstay of internet marketing since the 90's, for other internet channels. Ben & Jerry's customers had indicated that they disliked the email despite loving the brand, which means that it wasn't building the positive relationship that the famously brand-conscious ice cream company wanted.

Why is this working for them so well? Their presence in social media was already well established, and their fans wanted to continue the connection beyond the email. Their Facebook and Twitter profiles are already delivering tremendous value to them, and so it was easy for them to expand the energy behind those accounts. Their Facebook Page has over 1.3 million fans as of the time of writing, and they maintain several Twitter profiles (Such as [...]

Wed Jul 14, 2010 11:41 am

Wikipedia is rolling out new changes this month to all its users. They include an editing toolbar and a simplified navigation and search.

Wikipedia started testing these changes and others in March, according to the Wikipedia blog.

Sponsor

Changes to come in the next few days include:

Improved navigation - tabs at top of each page more clearly define whether you are viewing the page or discussion page, and whether you are reading or editing a page Editing toolbar improvements - simpler and more intuitive. Link wizard - allows you to add links to other wiki pages as well as links to external sites Search improvements Table wizard to make creating tables easier Find and replace feature to simplify page editing

This is part of Wikipedia's "Usability Initiative," devoted to "measurably increase the usability of Wikipedia for new contributors by improving the underlying software on the basis of user behavioral studies, thereby reducing barriers to public participation."