Microns: Theory and Economics (Part 4)

T, R, S Metrics

The metrics to measure the success of an email campaign are, in that order, inbox delivery, open rates and clickthroughs. Inbox delivery hinges on the brand’s domain reputation and to a large extent an assessment by the email provider’s spam filtering algorithms. Every mail has to be tested against how Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail would handle it. Once delivered, there is a competition among various other emails to get opened and not ignored – this is where the subject line and send time optimisations come in. AI assists the marketer in both – which subject line is likely to attract, and when should the email be sent to ensure the recipient has the greatest likelihood of opening it. After that, the goal is to get an action – the click which takes the user to the brand’s website or app. All these metrics serve like a funnel.

A micron’s success is not just being opened but that action happening without latency. Microns can also be shared thus bringing a multiplier in reach. Keeping these factors in mind, microns can be evaluated with three new metrics:

  • T (time): the time elapsed (latency) between receiving the email in the inbox and it being opened and read; this should be as low as possible; a good T would be under an hour given that we don’t check emails as often as say SMS or WhatsApp which intrude with notifications
  • R (reproduction number): this is used to measure virality; how many people does one person share the content with; an R of 1 or more ensures spread – as we have seen with the coronavirus
  • S (subscriptions): the number of active micron channels; from a brand’s perspective, the goal would be to have at 2 or more, with at least one of those subscriptions being a daily connect which creates the habit and offers recurring brand visibility

T, R and S are the metrics that can replace opens and clicks to measure micron efficacy. The simplicity of microns will ensure delivery into the primary inbox. The brevity and minimalism of the content-rich microns will ensure they get consumed. And the hope is that every so often the recipient will find something unique and interesting to share so that the micron can go viral. Consumers will have subscriptions to two types of microns: the infinite series (something new every day) or the finite series (a limited sequence of microns for a very specific purpose linked to a moment).

The target for a brand should be to have a T of less than an hour, an R of 1 or more and S of 2 or more.

Thinks 108

Anticipating the Unintended: “We have been trying to make sense of the three key trends dominating the global financial markets over the past 12 months – the excess liquidity in the system driven by loose monetary policies and stimulus announced by central banks the world over, the persistence of the central banks to keep interest rates at historic lows without worrying about potential inflation, and the booming equity markets that seem to be completely divorced from the ground economic realities during the pandemic. ”

David Perrell: “How people think about greatness: An artist creates something after a moment of perfect epiphany. How greatness actually happens: An artist spends years practicing their craft, even when the routine becomes mundane. Then, every once in a while, they make something beautiful.”

Reading: Lessons from the Titans

Microns: Theory and Economics (Part 3)

A Theory of Microns

We are now ready for a framework to better understand the world of microns.

  • A micron is a single short email which is sent as part of a subscription to a micron channel
  • A micron channel is what subscribers opt-in to. A channel consists of two or more microns.
  • Microns follow a pub-sub model: there is a publisher and a subscriber. The publisher is the brand, the micron creator. The subscriber makes an explicit decision to opt-in (subscribe) to receive microns.
  • A subscription is an active relationship between publisher and subscriber. When the subscription ends either because of the recipient’s decision to opt-out (unsubscribe) or because of the micron sequence getting exhausted, the subscription is rendered inactive and the relationship is terminated. Publishers cannot send any further microns to subscribers after this.
  • Micron channels can be of two types
    • Infinite series which can be live (instant publish, like news or alerts) or scheduled daily fresh (which are not time-sensitive like quotes or factoids); in all cases, the same micron is sent to everyone as a broadcast
    • Finite series which are part of a serial feed where a recipient starts with the first in the sequence; this means different subscribers could be receiving different microns; so this is more of a customcast (or a personcast) rather than a broadcast
  • Infinite series microns are activated to keep alive a relationship
    • Communicating with the long tail of customers: these are the ‘Rest Customers’ who can be nudged to the next purchase in a non-pushy manner – with a mix of information linked with their interests and suggestions on what to buy/read/view next
    • Targeting the inactive email database who may not want promotional content on a daily basis but would be open to receiving informational content and thus getting brand exposure
  • Finite series microns are activated because of a moment
    • Product-linked: pre-purchase persuasion, post-purchase engagement
    • Visit-linked: Connecting with unknown customers, Interacting with anonymous visitors
  • Microns can be measured with three metrics: T, R, S (for time, reproduction factor and subscriptions)

Microns can thus open up a new, unexplored world for marketers – long-term relationship building with informational content, going beyond the transactional and promotional mails with a focus on branding, and leveraging moments to trigger short-duration enriching engagements.

Thinks 107

Wisdom from The Economist: “Whatever you tweet may be used against you..Tweets feel like conversation but are judged like writing.”

Ajay Kelkar on Nudge Theory: “Nudge theory is the science behind leading people to the ‘right’ decision through non-intrusive, subtle interactions. It works on the principle that small nudges can have a substantial impact on the way people behave. By breaking down the last mile customer transactions and rebuilding them with behavioral and experiential principles, companies could hugely impact the customer experience.”

Watched: Tenet; very confusing so read the explainers online to understand

Microns: Theory and Economics (Part 2)

The Past of Microcontent

As I was thinking of microns, another word from my past flashed in my mind. Microcontent. It was very much a part of my life around 2005-10. And there was much discussion then around it among bloggers, writers and innovators. So, I went into my Emergic.org blog archives and searched for some of the thinking around that time. Here is a collection. (As I read it, I was surprised how some ideas come back – perhaps they never went away.)

Sep 2006: Quoting Wikipedia then: “The term Microcontent has first been systematically introduced and defined by Anil Dash in 2002: Today, microcontent is being used as a more general term indicating content that conveys one primary idea or concept, is accessible through a single definitive URL or permalink, and is appropriately written and formatted for presentation in email clients, web browsers, or on handheld devices as needed. A day’s weather forecast, the arrival and departure times for an airplane flight, an abstract from a long publication, or a single instant message can all be examples of microcontent.”

Sep 2006: Quoting Dion Hinchliffe: “Information is often the most useful in bite-sized pieces.”

Feb 2004: Quoting Steve Gillmor: “In a micro-content world, business documents are broken down into their constituent elements: notification, transaction, context, priority and lifetime.”

Jan 2009: “Is it possible to build a direct-to-consumer model for content subscriptions, a sort-of iTunes for microcontent. Pushed content has a charm of its own on the mobile. It just comes to us. Because of the immediacy and 24×7 availability, we welcome it – as long as it not spam.”

July 2003: About an RSS aggregator that I had created in the early days of Netcore: “Our Info Aggregator was created with the same belief in mind: people (the mass market) want fewer tools and programs. Email is the one everyone is familiar with. I see the future as being driven by RSS feeds to which we will subscribe to, microcontent from these feeds which we will read in the email client, and then blogging tools which we will post to. The RSS ecosystem is being created, nearly a decade after the HTML system ecosystem brought us the web. The new web will be a Publish-Subscribe web.”

June 2003: Me. “What is needed is a mechanism for microcontent from the sites (or people or databases) we want to be delivered to us in near real-time. Ideally, we should be able to do this with the tools that we already have, specifically the email client and the browser. There is no need to add to the complexity of downloading and learning yet another application… Another way to think of the PubSubWeb is as an EventWeb. Each update of the content (publishing) is akin to the occurrence of an event. What is needed is for us to be able to (a) subscribe to the event stream and (b) receive notification and details of the event as and when it happens. From a publisher’s point of view, there may also be a need to restrict access to who can subscribe to the event stream.”

The context that time was different. It was a world of blogs, RSS, aggregators, P2P content, XML. The precursor to what became Web 2.0. I tried many things then – an IMAP-to-email RSS aggregator, a blog search engine, MyToday SMS (content subscription channels) and MyToday Mobs (SMS grups). None of them succeeded. But the basic idea of microcontent has not gone away. Twitter epitomises it, so do the various other social media platforms. RSS gave way to the feed – the stream of endless content that so consumes us.

It is in this world that I think microns delivered over email from trusted sources (publishers, businesses) to willing subscribers can find a place. In our new world of clutter, microns can deliver clean and clear content. Amidst noise, microns are the signals. A breath of fresh air. And just about the length of a breath!

Thinks 106

Morgan Housel: “You are one person in a game with seven billion other people and infinite moving parts. The accidental impact of actions outside of your control can be more consequential than the ones you consciously take.” [via Yuvaraj]

An Introduction to Entrepreneurship: a free book by Eamonn Butler (IEA of UK). “This is not a management book about how to make your – self a successful entrepreneur. It is a basic introduction to what entrepreneurship is, why we need it, and how we can encourage it.”

The State of the Libertarian Movement after 50 Years (1970-2020): by David Hart. “The year 2020 has turned out to be a watershed year in the struggle for liberty. Little did we expect that a corona virus (remember when they called it the “novel” corona virus which meant it was merely the latest of several such viruses we have encountered?) would turn the tables against liberty and the liberty movement so suddenly, so completely, and with so little resistance on the part of the public.”

Microns: Theory and Economics (Part 1)

Less is More

When Twitter launched in March 2007, a lot of people wondered what could be communicated in 140 characters. Its popularity soared through the years, and it has more than 300 million users and a market cap of over $40 billion. (In 2017, Twitter doubled its maximum tweet length to 280 characters.) A single SMS is 160 characters and until WhatsApp came along, we had all learnt how to keep most messages within that limit. So, brevity in communication and information is not something new.

Some of us will remember the world of the postcard. When writing letters, we had two primary choices – the inland letter or the postcard. The postcard was the shorter and cheaper option. We all learnt how to say maximum with the minimum words. And if we go further back, we had the telegram where the pricing was by the word – all the more reason to stick to the basics.

In the early days of the Internet, with dial-up speeds slow, websites had to keep the page size under control. It’s only in the past 10 years or so as access speeds have accelerated that the worries on page size have vanished.

Marketing email too had started with plain text and then evolved to web page like design with the use of HTML for formatting the content. Images became the norm along with long emails full of clickable links.

What has not changed is our attention; it is the currency. With our time as the constraint and the rise in incoming messages across multiple channels (emails, SMS, push notifications, WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Snap, Pinterest), the time we spend with each message has diminished. Studies have shown than marketing emails have just 3 seconds to capture a reader’s attention. Tick, tick, tick. Done. Next email. Repeat. No wonder that Tik Tok’s 6 second videos took the world by storm – something new before our impulse for something new takes over.

Marketers have little incentive to shorten their emails. Since open rates are anyways low, the focus is on maximising RoI from those who do open, and give them many possible reasons to click through. And it has worked well. Email has very high RoI given its low unit cost. So why try and fix something that is apparently not broken with microns?

Because less can be more. Small can be big. Signal can and must overwhelm noise. That’s why microns which can be fully consumed in 15-30 seconds. Information-rich, permission-led microns can transform email communication. Think of microns as driving the minimalism revolution in brand-customer interactions.

Thinks 105

India Should Embrace Not Ban Crypto: by Alex Tabarrok. “The irony is that India has one of the world’s most advanced identity and payments systems, the India stack. By integrating the India stack with crypto systems regulated similarly to foreign currencies under India’s Foreign Exchange Management Act, India could become a leader in fintech.”

Speeding up Justice in India: by Swaminathan Aiyar. “The 2019 Economic Survey emphasised that judicial speed was needed not just for justice but enforcement of contracts, without which a market system cannot flourish. It estimated that adding just 2,279 judges in the lower courts, 93 in high courts and one in the Supreme Court would suffice for a 100% case clearance rate. Has this been done? Alas no.”

James Otteson: “The story of increasing worldwide wealth over the last two centuries has resulted from allowing ever more people to engage in mutually voluntary and mutually beneficial transactions without third-party interposition.” [via CafeHayek]

United Voters of India: Constructing the Collective (Part 8)

Contract, Constitution, Code

The idea of UVI needs to be embedded into software – just like Bitcoin. Essentially, UVI is a set of rules wrapped into code. Just like miners and traders gave Bitcoin its initial value, it will be the members and candidates who will provide the impetus to UVI.

Contract: This is the promise to the UVI members. Its twin pillars are freedom and prosperity. The contract comprises the agenda and the Bills that need to be passed when the Swatantra Lok Sabha becomes a reality. The core premise is anchored in the ideas embedded in Nayi Disha’s five Prosperity Principles and 5 Starting Solutions. The idea of Dhan Vapasi can be the big attractor for people.

Constitution: These are the rules that govern UVI. Some examples: members are guaranteed total anonymity, primaries need 10% support base, no politician can contest, winning candidate needs 50%+1 (implying a run-off if needed). Simple rules for a complex world. The rules should be such that everyone can understand them and which can be enforced without needing the discretion of a central authority.

Code: This is the UVI app. It brings to life the ideas we have discussed. It should be open-source so everyone knows there is total transparency. Membership data can be encrypted to ensure the complete confidentiality of all members. Bitcoin with its underlying base of blockchain has accomplished this to create a cryptocurrency. A similar framework needs to do it for a voting bloc.

**

These are the starting ideas for UVI. Much more work needs to be done but hopefully this can get a few people excited enough to want to start work on the project. If it works, the idea can spread rapidly to people – each of us is capable of being a super spreader. If it fails, maybe a new and better idea can take its place.

The larger point is what I had begun with. We need to rid India of its politicians and their parties. They are the single largest roadblock for Indians to create wealth. While they are in power, there is little real hope for mass prosperity and realisation of the true potential of the Indian people. Politicians and their accomplices in the form of bureaucrats have kept Indians away from Lakshmi. UVI is the way to bring Lakshmi into the home of every Indian.

Thinks 104

India’s ever-increasing reservations: by Jaimini Bhagwati. “A more divisive society and economic disasters ahead if reservations above 50 per cent are deemed legal by the Supreme Court…India needs to gradually wean itself off all forms of reservations while providing adequate financial support to those who are socially and educationally backward.

Is China Capitalist? by Atanu Dey. “If you look at the numbers, it’s very difficult to argue that China is not a capitalist country.” – according to Branko Milanovic.

Hydrogen — Fantasy or fuel of the future? Financial Times.