Four Innovations
Attention Messaging can be revitalised via four innovations: Ems (short, informational, sequenced emails), Microns (messages with rewards), Mu (the attention currency), and Micronbox (a new inbox for push messages).
None of these are being used today. Emails tend to long and poster-like, messages have no incentives for recipients to open or act on them, there is no pan-brand attention-currency to drive actions at the top and middle of the funnel, and brand messages have to vie with personal emails, transactional messages and spam in our various inboxes.
Ems: Emails are the best RoI channel to engage with existing customers. Over the years, brand emails have become longer and require more of our time to consume. They have also become purely promotional. This is where Ems can make a difference. I have written about this idea earlier. (I had called them “Microns” when I first wrote about the idea of short, informational emails so it may confuse with the next idea.)
- Microns: Making B2C Emails Better
- Microns: Theory and Economics
- Microns and Brands: Made for Each Other
- Micron-verse: The New World of Brand-Customer Communications
- Microns: Solving the Customer Reactivation Problem
- Microns and AMP: A Powerful Combo
Microns: To get customers to pay attention, brands must consider paying for attention. Who doesn’t like some rewards for actions done?! Microns are push messages with rewards. They nudge the recipient to stop ignoring messages and start opening them. I wrote about this in my series: Microns and Loyalty: Gamifying and Rewarding Attention.
Mu: While brands can try and create their own loyalty programs for attention, what will work best is a rewards program that works across brands and thus is focused on the inbox actions. Mu is one such idea that I have written about: Imagining Mus: An Attention-Action Currency. By combining financial incentives and gamification, Mu can become a magnet for attention.
Micronbox: The all-in-one inboxes we use today need to give away to a specialised inbox for brand messages. I covered this idea in my series: Micronbox: A New Inbox.
All these ideas came together in Micron-verse: Making It Happen. Short emails and messages with goodies, combined with a new currency and new inbox can bring the world of Attention Messaging to life, and enable smart marketers to reduce their dependence on acquisition spending. They will also change the customer mindset from ‘delete’ to ‘delight’. They are big gains awaiting the pioneering marketers: loyal, attentive customers.
