Signals: Will it change how you interact with your inbox forever?
John Larkin is a digital marketer from Dublin, Ireland. He is passionate about startups, analytics, tech, optimisation, product and growth.
  He can help you with:
  You can also find him on Google+ and Twitter.
  •  Digital marketing strategy & planning   •  Search Engine Optimization   •  Social media management   •  Pay Per Click advertising   •  Email marketing   •  Product marketing & optimization   •  Copy writing |
Have you ever been pissed with someone because they didn’t reply to a text message? You know they got it. Why didn’t they reply? Have they been in an accident? Should I call 911? Am I crazy?
We make an assumption when texting people - that they will receive it, they will read it and then reply if necessary. Email has traditionally been different. Today this may change. This afternoon at Inbound ’13 Hubspot made a number of new product announcements. The one that grabbed my attention is a product they are calling ‘Signals’. Signals is a chrome extension that lets you see when your leads open your emails, change jobs on LinkedIn and track web interactions via Hubspot. Contrary to how they normally release products, this time Hubspot have decided to open it up to the public and let anyone have limited usage for free. Premium features get unlocked after you sign up to a standard SaaS deal of 10$ per month. For the purpose of this post the only feature I am interested in is the ability to see when a recipient opens your email. They are selling this as a sales tool. It helps you track your leads, build better relationships with them, and close more deals. Yes, it is a sales tool and I can immediately see how useful this will be for sales reps. But.. In my opinion, this has the potential to actually change the very fabric of email itself. Not knowing whether or not someone has received our message totally affects how we interact with email as a medium. Personal email, for example, follows some assumptions. We all know people who only check their emails once a week or who are slow to reply, we get used to who these people are. We know our personal connections, we understand how they react to our emails & messages and we adjust accordingly.
|
Business email is different.
We send a work email and are often unsure of the reaction. We don’t expect an immediate response. Depending on the nature of the email we usually expect a few things
Enter Signals.
Now I get notified when you opened my email. This is huge.
I know you are ignoring my support request. It has been thirty minutes since you opened it and still no reply. Where is the nearest social network to call you out?
Now that I know you read that email and still haven’t replied enter the anxiety… is the customer going to churn? The second guessing… do they know I know they opened the email? The irrational behaviour… maybe I should email them again? The power of knowing when someone opens a mail from you is substantial and extends much further than the sales pipeline. Think M&A, raising investment, crisis management, HR.
Take recruitment as an example- finding a job can be a demoralizing process. You spend time perfecting that application email and fire it off into the abyss. You have no clue if it will even get looked at, never mind replied to. Now that changes. Or cold emailing & reaching out to influencers. You can adjust follow up emails depending on whether or not they read your first email. It’s very powerful to know when our emails target did NOT open it, so we can ping them again.
Signals feels a little bit wrong. It feels like I am spying on someone. Will it make email a bit like LinkedIn? Eg. I want to look at your profile but I don’t want you to see me do it? I want to read your email but I don’t want you to know I did…
It gives you more information. And information is king. This feels like a tool you are not going to be able to live without.
We send a work email and are often unsure of the reaction. We don’t expect an immediate response. Depending on the nature of the email we usually expect a few things
- an immediate response (‘Your app lost my work!’’)
- a response when you get around to it (‘Nice to meet you at Inbound...’)
- a 50/50 response (‘Would you mind giving me some feedback on...’)
- a longshot response (‘You don’t know me but I thought you might be interested in..’)
Enter Signals.
Now I get notified when you opened my email. This is huge.
I know you are ignoring my support request. It has been thirty minutes since you opened it and still no reply. Where is the nearest social network to call you out?
Now that I know you read that email and still haven’t replied enter the anxiety… is the customer going to churn? The second guessing… do they know I know they opened the email? The irrational behaviour… maybe I should email them again? The power of knowing when someone opens a mail from you is substantial and extends much further than the sales pipeline. Think M&A, raising investment, crisis management, HR.
Take recruitment as an example- finding a job can be a demoralizing process. You spend time perfecting that application email and fire it off into the abyss. You have no clue if it will even get looked at, never mind replied to. Now that changes. Or cold emailing & reaching out to influencers. You can adjust follow up emails depending on whether or not they read your first email. It’s very powerful to know when our emails target did NOT open it, so we can ping them again.
Signals feels a little bit wrong. It feels like I am spying on someone. Will it make email a bit like LinkedIn? Eg. I want to look at your profile but I don’t want you to see me do it? I want to read your email but I don’t want you to know I did…
It gives you more information. And information is king. This feels like a tool you are not going to be able to live without.
“ It is only the enlightened ruler and the wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for the purposes of spying, and thereby they achieve great results. ”
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
What do you think, if Signals gets widespread adoption, will it affect how you interact with your inbox? Let me know your thoughts in the comment box below.
Liked it? Share it!