What GIFs Have Taught Me About Marketing Communications
Call me a quintessential millennial, but I LOVE GIFs. For a period of time, it felt like they were an exclusive piece of media, reserved for social media or group chats with friends. Now, they’ve gone even deeper inside personal networks and infiltrated the business world- for the better.
Communicating Through Images
I don’t know about everyone else, but growing up (and to this day), I constantly reference quotes from movies and TV shows. Not to an extreme extent, but at least once a day. Growing up, my family watched a lot of Austin Powers; like, saw each movie in theatres type of fandom. My Sister even has a theory that she/me/our friends will inadvertently make an Austin Powers reference at least once a day (this has held true for about a month now). So naturally, for me there’s nothing more satisfactory than replying to someone’s text message with a perfectly relevant GIF from a movie and thriving off the string of “lololololols” that follow.
Take my parents, for example. In the past year or two, I’ve noticed them sending more GIFs through iMessage, which is like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. My Stepdad is a typically private, serious type of person- but lately, he’s been really favouring the keyboard cat GIFs, and if you knew him, you’d understand how crazy this seems. Most of the time, I’m just surprised that they‘re so good at it (’cause let’s be real- the native GIF search in iMessage is NOT the greatest). But what I’ve been getting from the whole experience, is this part superficial, part deepened sense of communication that leaves a lasting impression. It’s special.
Workplace, Meet GIFs
When you take that sense of deepened communication through GIFs and apply it to business, things take a turn for the interesting. In my current position with iTMethods, one of the most vivid things I remember from my first call with the HR Manager, was that the team had made their own Giphy bot in HipChat. When I actually started at iTMethods, one of the first tasks of my on-boarding was to generate a GIF in the team chat. THIS. WAS. AWESOME.
Through this team-chat, employees exclusively send each other GIFs. What I actually found, especially being new to the team, was that it actually helped me get to know everyone on a more personal level. There were some people that I related to about movies, some music, and some just absurdly random GIFs. The bottom line is, even though it’s an online chat, it helps everyone connect in a positive way. Since then, our team has moved to Slack from HipChat. We still have a team-GIF chat, but now the GIPHY command lets you choose which GIF you send, instead of being randomly generated (where’s the fun in that?!)
Enter: The Most Epic Marketing Email of All Time
Now let’s rewind to 2016. I had recently started using SideKick, a plugin by HubSpot that creepily allows you to see when prospects were opening and reading your emails (sorry, not sorry for using this on a lot of people). So I had recently gotten a trial version of SideKick when I received an email from a HubSpot Account Executive. I’m a huge fan of clever emails, but this one was extra special.
It started off with the subject line: “yo, imma let you finish prospecting, but…” SO OBVIOUSLY I OPENED IT. What greeted me inside was the following:
“I don’t know about you, but I used to HATE prospecting.
It sucked up my time, wasn’t fun, and felt unproductive. In hindsight, I’ve realized it sucked so much for one reason reason — I was using outdated tactics.
So when I see someone using old school prospecting tactics and tools today, I’m so tempted to channel my inner Kanye, jump in front of their 2003 Windows monitor and scream:
Immediately, I gasped in pure delight. Did that just happen? Did a fellow business person just send me a relevant popular culture reference to promote a piece of software? Yes. Did I immediately feel a connection? Yes. Did I feel like responding? Yes. So I sent back an email telling the Account Executive that it was one of the best emails I’ve ever received.
And what does she send back?
I mean, I’m not in the business of saying no to Béyonce, are you?!
Knowing Your Audience, Establishing a Connection
To this day, I still reference this email conversation when talking to friends and colleagues. It is one of the most memorable marketing/sales emails I have ever received. And it’s not just that, this conversation taught me an important lesson about relating to people and knowing your audience — whether via social, a website, email, content, or a call — the more you know about your target audience and the more you can establish a human connection, the more successful your marketing efforts are going to be.
Even in a recent sales email from a company called Engagio, the sender took the time to look at my LinkedIn profile and mention a couple details from it. And it didn’t even come off as creepy, it was sincerely an un-invasive way to say “Hey, I see you have experience here, and this is where our software can help you”. It was a welcomed change from being inundated with robotic prospecting emails that you can’t seem to unsubscribe from.
So, whether it’s a well-crafted UVP on your website, tweeting a GIF in reply to an end-user, or a personal touch on an email to prospects, understanding your buyer personas and making a simple connection with someone can have a hugely positive impact, which can help establish a deeper connection with people, prospects, MQLs, and SQLs— and ultimately, help to land them as a customer.