This essay originally was published on November 3, 2022, with the email subject line "CT No. 140: The Strangest People of 2022."
The strangest people of 2022 are those who keep operating as they did before the decade began. Before America’s attempted coup, before the pandemic, before the protests that followed George Floyd’s murder—not only going about their business just as they did, but also continuing on as if their customers and audiences weren’t extraordinarily tired of new interfaces masquerading as fixes for very physical, real-world problems.
The tech barons accomplished their stated goal of connecting the world, and now we’re wading through the junk they left in their wake: the push notifications you never signed up for. The feeds of ire. The unsolicited DMs. The automated “scam likely” calls. The piles of wires and old machines and old models in landfills and “recycling.” And the claims of business triumph and exciting new frontiers as we slide into another recession.
While the garbage overload of tech-enabled messaging is certainly manageable, it’s harder to course correct for the cause. My filter is strong; I can solve for the symptoms. But no matter how often I smash that “spam” button on my emails or type “STOP” on those unsolicited texts, it’s not going to deter the folks who believe it’s a good idea to keep sending them because “it works.”
Because they are the strangest people of 2022: the ones who claim we’ve returned to business as usual, pushing the newest version of last decade’s tech missteps. You hear them at conferences, in digital communities, on LinkedIn. They’re the ones who complain excessively about Apple’s privacy changes, the ones who don’t understand why I’m not excited about setting up yet another public-facing user profile just to read an article. The ones who haven’t changed their tone on tech or marketing significantly since 2019—those are the ones who baffle me.
Fast failures, bad listeners
In the past two decades, on sales teams and in executive offices, somehow “don’t take no for an answer” collided with “fail fast.” As a result, we ended up with a bunch of fellas clutching their buyouts and bonuses, thinking, “Well, I made a bunch of people feel disrespected, exploited, and angered for no reason, over and over again, but at least I learned a valuable lesson about marketing: It attracts attention!”
These folks think only about the amount of messaging they can push outward through never-ending automation. They see only that the automation can make them louder without considering how their message might be received.
But if we automate our content and forget about the user on the other end, we’re forcing a 20th century broadcast mindset on a 21st century medium, one where we never hear the audience respond or complain. We impose endless notifications upon an already frustrated audience: stop what you’re doing right now and read my new thing! It’s breaking! Never mind the boundaries that you’ve set for yourself, check out my new thing again!
Constantly pushing out nothing-burger messaging on new channels ignores why many audiences ditched their magazines and newspapers in favor of digital media: Because the content was deeper, cleverer, more focused on individuals, less encumbered by the status quo, and, most importantly, not rotten with advertising pushes. Many people chose digital media because they felt they were creating along with the rest of the world, that the activity was happening because of them and not to them.
And yet, I still see marketers ignore the fact that only 25% of Apple customers worldwide want to opt into app tracking and personalization.* They complain about bare-minimum consumer protections and privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. They say things like, “Each consumer’s individual data is worth a fraction of a cent! I don’t know why they care so much about how we use that data.”
When you ask the Strangest People of 2022 to consider that users often want to explore content for themselves before getting pushed into a sales funnel, they say, “But we don’t want them to explore content. We want them to buy our product, now.” Or, one of my favorites: “We don’t want to link off our website in any way because we don’t want our audience to leave.”
These folks remind me of dates with one-sided conversationalists, the ones who told you about their accomplishments but never bothered to listen to what you had to share. When you say no or express disinterest, they insult you or try to coerce you into staying longer. They weasel their way into your contacts and never take the hint when you won’t return their calls, when you don’t answer the door. You’re left screaming, “Can you please leave me alone?” until they depart. No one feels good at the end of it.
Similarly, aggressive automation across channels often ignores the audience’s right to politely refuse contact. Excessive messaging makes it easy to appear as if your brand can’t take a loss gracefully, that your content can’t stand on its own. If your potential customers ignore your seven emails, it’s not a good idea to hop into their text messages just because you had previously asked for their phone number on a form. Another ad, a sales email, a subject line “Are you still there?”— anything to catch the attention of the audience who has already said no—it reeks of desperation.
I’m not saying that all automated advertising and remarketing is bad. It does work, but only in moderation, and as part of a cross-channel strategy. If you’re only building content awareness through pushes, through promotions, through contests and advertisements—it dampens the potential of a positive experience. At worst, it could make customers actively dislike your brand.
Instead of paid ads and remarketing as the only means of acquisition, I recommend a more consensual approach:
- Make content that people want to seek out, and make it easy for them to discover. Focus on your user experience alongside customer acquisition.
- Don’t abuse your presence in anyone’s inbox. They’ve invited you in, to their push notifications, to their DMs, to their emails and texts. Remember that every interaction should be something that makes them want to stay close to you, and that you’ll get diminishing returns if you take advantage of their attention.
- Then, once your audience is there, make them want to stay. Give them options to scale back on communications if they’re feeling it. You don’t need to coerce or harass people into consuming good content.
- Remember that if .01% of people who saw your pop-up are converting to customers, more than 99% of people ignored it and potentially became annoyed.
- Hosting advertising on your website is fine and good, but ensure that your audience can enjoy a peaceful reading experience without too many pop-ups or ad units. If you can, sell premium ads that are directly relevant to your audience and avoid programmatic chum.
- If you’re spending money on digital ads, cap your impressions so your audience doesn’t become fatigued with your brand. Only insurance companies can afford brand fatigue.
*Apple’s privacy policies are a good thing for consumers. That said, Apple is also a shitty tech monopoly and the associated app fees that went along with the ATT changes aren’t much good.
Optimize the digital presence you can control
I’m similarly confused by those who insist that the future of the latest technology is nigh and we have no choice but to obey or else we’ll be left behind. Without turning to glance at their audience’s needs or wants, they push more fodder forward without fixing the near-catastrophic externalities of their “fail fast” mentality. When you insist that you would rather focus on preserving the physical world and fighting for basic human rights, they point to the billions the billionaires have burnt on toy communication systems and say, “But the future is clearly there.”
Forever glorifying the memory of queuing up for their first iPhone, the future-pushers don’t realize that many consider the communications and tech practices we’ve accelerated over the past decade to be disappointing, if not downright annoying. None of us wants to be addicted to our phone, especially when more pressing issues are revealed there, literally in front of us.
Especially this week, many people don’t want to learn a new interface or social network, create a new profile, add yet more personal details, only to watch the platform rapidly change when it achieves mass adoption and is sold. Not everyone is up for the rapid iterations and forced obsolescence that eats up time and feels excessively wasteful, particularly when we have very real climate change and income inequality problems.
Instead, I recommend that publishers and content creators of all sizes focus on optimizing the channels where you already have a presence. Think about the content and the form, the existing passionate audiences in your current channels, not continually expanding distribution. Get creative within existing channels.
Here are some other tactics for publishers and content marketers to expand with consent within the channels where you’re already present:
- Stop failing fast, especially when it involves interface design changes or other major cognitive shifts for users. Fail slow and for the love of god, test your big changes with actual people.
- Accept that a good number of adults have an extremely low cultural bullshit tolerance at the moment. Disruptive is no longer innovative. Now’s a good time to be welcoming and social. Consistency and conversation build stronger audiences.
- Experiment with new content formats within a medium instead of major shifts in design or function.
- If someone on your team or in your life says they’re not interested in the metaverse or web3 or crypto or whatever new buzzword, believe them. Do not assume that they don’t know what they’re talking about or that they will be left behind.
Respect your subscribers’ ability to consent
The practices of user experience, customer experience and human-centered design became popular in the tech industry because of the promise of mutual consent: We shouldn’t force people to use products that anger and upset them. It’s these practices that keep me on the side of tech, if forced to choose between tech and legacy media. We should understand our audiences’ needs and opinions and build products to engage them as they see fit for a reasonable amount of time. Frankly, it’s weird to want audiences to be so obsessed with you they can’t look away, and it’s predatory to trap them so they can’t leave.
But tech-industry terms like UX remain anathema to many marketers and advertisers who, according to a Digiday subject line this week, are just hearing the term “dark pattern” for the first time. Legacy media companies are among the worst offenders for tech privacy, packing their homepages with ad tracking, assuming every new subscriber wants to be placed on every mailing list, and prohibiting customers from opting out without a call to a salesperson.
Consent, in tech and in life, is based on mutual respect. It’s not pandering to respect and value your audience’s experience, to treat them as people rather than dollar signs.
In the world of messaging overload and tech frustration under which we’re currently operating, I recommend the following tactics to make your content feel more consensual:
- Ensure that your audience’s data is protected under GDPR and CCPA, which are designed to protect consumer privacy.
- Make it easy to opt out. In business, in digital, in life, people will say “no” all the time. Be ok with it. People need a break from your voice and are entitled to prefer other content. Don’t make them double-down on their no by forcing them to jump through hoops to get away. They’re just not that into you.
- If you have automated subscriptions set up, do your customers a solid and send them a reminder email before their subscription is automatically deducted from their bank account. When they keep subscribing despite that monthly reminder, that’s the ultimate opt-in.
- Chill out on the requests for surveys and feedback, the widgets and chatboxes. Use your analytics to evaluate which ones are working and nix the rest.
- Keep in mind that you may have learned some marketing practices in school or in previous jobs that were deceptive. You don’t have to use those tactics now.
- Do not purchase mailing lists, and do not sell mailing lists. You may think they “work” because an extremely small percentage of users might open an email, but they wind up alienating potential customers on the first impression. Bought-and-sold email lists are low quality and will tank your deliverability score.
- Remember that most people consume content at a slower pace than those considered “extremely online.” Most people don’t spend all day reading your content or hanging out in your community, but they still value your work highly. Don’t take those lurkers for granted.
Your audience is filled with smart, capable people who want to read, watch and hear your content. None of us wants to feel like our attention and our data are being bought and sold. Empower your readers to easily access the quality content they seek and your business will be rewarded.
Additional resources on consent, design and UX best practices
Deborah Carver
And it has no metadata to make a pretty bookmark link, but here is a very good PDF from the French government (I think?) on design and consent.